Does iMX53 starter board have iMX534 on it?

[lijiao]

Hi everybody,

I would like to use iMX534 that has a FlexCAN module. And for iMX53 series, there is Starter board, the website says this board support all iMX534,535,536, 537. But we have already bought a Starter, which has iMX535 on it. I'm wondering whether there is a starter board which has iMX534 on it?

Because I would like to use it for testing the CAN interface. We can not test it with the starter board we have now.  If all starter boards have iMX535 on it, how people develop CAN bus interface with it?

In addition, does the software package together with the board have driver for FlexCAN?

I appreciate any reponse here, thank you in advance.

Mingyuexin

[TheAdmiral · Accepted solution]

Update: In my last post, I basically told you that Freescale does not currently sell an i.MX53 based development board which can be used for developing CAN solutions/software. The board originally designed for this purpose has been discontiued and is no longer in production.

I asked the Freescale Marketing department if they new of a third party with an i.MX53 based demonstration board that had CAN capability. I was given the name AllGo Embedded Systems. I did not see on their website that they sell a development board, but I would contact them directly to see what they have. You may also try AvNet.

Cheers,

Mark

[admin]

TheAdmiral responded:

The Freescale i.MX53 Quick Start Board comes assembled with a i.MX535 processor. The Quick Start Board PCB will technically support any of the i.MX53 family processors, but only comes from Freescale with the i.MX535 processor. If a customer wishes to remove the i.MX535 processor and replace it with a different processor in the family, they must do so on their own.

CAN is a network capability primarily used by the Automotive industry. Freescale provided the MCIMX53SABREAI reference board to demonstrate this capabilty. Unfortunately, the MCIMX53SABREAI board is no longer available from Freescale and has been replaced by the MCIMX6QAICPU1 board.

The Quick Start Board was actually designed as a subset of the i.MX53 SMD board (tablet) and never included a feature to demonstrate CAN.

In order to create a CAN network using the Quick Start Board, you would not only need to replace the processor, but the only traces that would support CAN are being used by the SD3 card slot (SD3_CLK and SD3_CMD). You would need to somehow connect a CAN Transceiver and a DB9 connector to these two pins, and supply the correct voltage for the Transceiver chip. This is not trivial work, and I would not recommend it.

There may be a third-party vendor that has made a development board that has CAN as a feature. I need to check with someone else to find out if that is the case.

As for whether the board package supports FlexCAN?

The board software package has the drivers necessary to support FlexCAN. But you will need to make sure the IOMUX settings are correct for the board you are using and that the drivers are properly initiated by uboot/Linux Kernal.