Add-ons

In the following section, the installation and operation of a 7 inch LeMaker LCD is described. In the first step, the system will be updated:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Let's look at the software part afterwards. Replace the /boot/bananapro.bin directory with your boot directory and script.bin with your binary startup file:

git clone http://github.com/LeMaker/fex_configuration
cd fex_configuration/
sudo cp bin/banana_pro_7lcd.bin /boot/bananapro/script.bin

Afterwards, edit the /etc/modules file and add the lcd module to it. If the lcd module is already available and commented out using #, simply remove the hash sign as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 18

After this, power off Banana Pro before installing a cable for the 7 inch LCD. The 7 inch display comes together with a 100 mm and 0.5 mm spacing flexible printed circuit (FPC) cable.

Figure 19: The LeMaker 7 inch LCD with the FPC cable and Banana Pro

Turn the LCD around carefully and gently pull out the brown cable clamp from both ends:

Figure 20

Push the flexible cable carefully. Make sure it is straight and the silver conductive end faces downwards toward the blue circuit board, and blue tape faces upwards (Figure 18). After the cable has been inserted completely, push down on both sides of the cable clamp at the same time.

Installing a cable on Banana Pro is pretty much the same as installing the cable on the preceding LCD module. The cable connects to the CON2 connector of Banana Pro board. Do not use the CON1 camera connector. Again, pull out the cable clamps at both sides and push the cable in from the top. The blue protective tape must face the Ethernet jack, while the conductive fingers at the end of the cable face Banana Pro board (Figure 21):

Figure 21: Connecting the LCD to Banana Pro

After the cable is inserted completely, push down on both sides of the clamp and boot your Banana Pro. You should now see this booting screen on the LCD (refer to Figure 22).

Figure 22: Banana Pi using the 7 inch LCD module

The flex cable that's provided is quite short (100 mm only). If you want a larger cable, you may search the Internet for FPC cable 40 0.5 mm. The LCD is capable of showing the X11 desktop (refer to Figure 23) as well as high-resolution videos in full HD.

Figure 23

Banana Pro shows an H264 video on a 7 inch LCD using mplayer. This will look similar to what is shown in the following image:

Figure 24

The installation of a camera module is as easy as the installation of an LCD module. Firstly, required kernel modules will be inserted and are specifically used by this component:

sudo modprobe ov5640
sudo modprobe sun4i_csi0

The preceding commands load the Omnivision camera kernel driver and the CSI driver. In order to load these drivers permanently, add the ov5640 and sun4i_csi0 modules to /etc/modules using this command:

sudo nano /etc/modules

Before installing the hardware to your Banana Pro, make sure it is shut down and disconnected from any power supply. Similar to the LCD module cable, remember to also not touch the silver ends of the camera module flexible cable. The cable, again, is quite short (about 6 cm in length).

The Banana Pro camera module connector is shown in Figure 24. Open the connector and insert the flexible cable carefully (Figure 25).

The connector in Banana Pro is called CON1. Do not use CON2 instead as this is the LCD connector (refer to The LCD module section). Using the wrong connector can cause serious damage to your Banana Pro or the extension board because the pin definitions are completely different.

Open the CON1 connector and put the free end of the camera flexible cable into this connector as shown in Figure 26. Finally, confirm that both ends of the flexible cable are sitting correctly in their sockets. Before using the camera, peel off the plastic foil that covers the lens. The complete arrangement can be seen in the following figure:

Figure 26

The mplayer software can be used in order to test the camera:

sudo apt-get install mplayer
sudo mplayer tv://

On a television, the result would look like what is shown in the following image:

Figure 27