Overview

Real Connect is a VS Code extension designed to simplify the development workflows of wireless applications based on Realtek BT/WiFi SDKs. It provides a streamlined interface to import SDKs, create projects, download images and monitor the console output of the target device.

Dependency Extensions Installation

Cortex Debug and Serial Monitor extensions are essential for Real Connect to provide debug and monitor functionalities.

Quick Start

1. Import SDK: Click the Import SDK button to import SDK from remote server or local workspace as needed.
2. Create Project: Click the Create Project button to create a project based on the example template from the imported SDK.
3. Build: Click the Build button associated with the project to build the project against the SDK.
4. Flash: Click the Flash button associated with the project to download the images to the target device.
5. Monitor: Click the Monitor button, select the serial port associated with target device and start the console.

Build Environment Setup

Introduction

This chapter illustrates how to build Realtek's SDK under GCC environment. It focuses on both Windows platform and Linux distribution. The build and download procedures are quite similar between Windows and Linux operating systems.

For Windows, Windows 10 64-bit is used as a platform.

For Linux server, Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit is used as a platform.

Preparing GCC Environment

Windows

PowerShell can be used as a GCC build environment on Windows after the following software list is installed.

• cmake
• ninja
• ccache
• python3
• wget
• 7z
• git

There are two ways to install these Windows software.

Install software list by Chocolatey (Recommend).

Chocolatey is a package manager for Windows, which can manage the complete lifecycle of software packages. If you can run PowerShell with administrator privileges, using Chocolatey to install packages is more convenient.

Install Chocolatey.

First, run Windows PowerShell as administrator. If you have correct privilege, the title of opening terminal will be "Administrator: Windows PowerShell".

Execute the following two commands in Administrator mode:

Set-ExecutionPolicy AllSigned

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force;
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol =
[System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072;
iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://community.chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

Install packages.

choco feature enable -n allowGlobalConfirmation
choco install cmake --installargs 'ADD_CMAKE_TO_PATH=System'
choco install ninja gperf python311 dtc-msys2 wget 7zip ccache git 

Install software manually (For users without admin rights)

If do not have administrator privileges, you will need to download each binary zip file one by one. Remember to add the installation paths to the Windows environment variables after unzipping them.

1. Download CMake binary file at https://cmake.org/download/. Ensure the CMake version must be 3.20.0 or higher. Unzip the cmake-xxx-windows-x86-64.zip then add the path of cmake.exe to environment variables. Run ">cmake --version" in PowerShell to verify.

2. Download the latest ccache binary file at https://ccache.dev/download.html. Unzip the ccache-xxx-windows-x86-64.zip then add the path of ccache.exe to environment variables. Run ">ccache --version" in PowerShell to verify

3. Download the latest ninja-win.zip at https://github.com/ninja-build/ninja/releases. Unzip the ninja-win.zip then add the path of ninja.exe to environment variables. Run ">ninja --version" in PowerShell to verify.

4. Download python 3.10 embeddable package at https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-31011/ . Unzip it then add the path of python.exe to environment variables. Run ">python --version" in PowerShell to verify.

5. Download wget and 7zip at http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gnuwin32/wget-1.11.4-1-bin.zip and https://www.7-zip.org/download.html, respectively. Do not forget add path to environment variables.

6. Git installing can refers to official tutorials. Then add the path of bin\bash.exe and usr\bin\bash.exe from Git directory to environment variables.

Linux

On Linux, 32-bit Linux is not supported because of the toolchain.

The packages listed below should be installed for the GCC environment:

• libncurses5
• bash
• git
• cmake
• ninja-build
• gperf
• ccache
• dfu-util
• device-tree-compiler
• python3-dev
• python3-pip
• python3-setuptools
• python3-tk
• python3-wheel
• python3-venv
• xz-utils
• file
• make
• gcc
• gcc-multilib
• g++-multilib
• libsdl2-dev
• libmagic1
• libssl-dev
• binutils

Some of the packages above may have been pre-installed in your operating system. You can either use package manager or type the corresponding version command on terminal to check whether these packages have already existed. If not, make them installed.

$ ls -l /bin/sh

Starting from Ubuntu 6.10, dash is used by default instead of bash. You can use $ ls -l /bin/sh command to check whether the system shell is bash or dash.

(Optional) If the system shell is dash, use $ sudo dpkg-reconfigure dash command to switch from dash to bash.

If the system shell is bash, continue to do the subsequent operations.

ninja --version
ccache --version
cmake --version
sudo apt install --no-install-recommends git cmake ninja-build gperf  ccache dfu-util device-tree-compiler python3-dev python3-pip python3-setuptools python3-tk python3-wheel python3-venv xz-utils file  make gcc gcc-multilib g++-multilib libsdl2-dev libmagic1 libssl-dev binutils

Use ld -v command to check if binutils has been installed. If not, the following error may occur

Troubleshooting

Choco is responsible for managing and installing software, which is similar to apt-get in ubuntu. When " cannot find ***.exe, make sure you typed the name correctly and then try again" appears, you can try instruction "choco install <package_name>" to install.

If error messages such as "access denied" or "permission denied" appears when using "choco install", please ensure that you have opened Windows PowerShell as administrator. In the event not have the required administrator access, you will need to install the packages manually. Additionally, remember to add the paths to Windows environment variables after installing manually.

For multi-version Python host, command "update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python3.x 1" can be used to select Python of specific version 3.x on Linux, where x represents a desired version number. On Windows, you can adjust the priority of the Python environment variables to ensure the correct version is used. This involves modifying the system's PATH environment variable to prioritize the desired Python installation.

If the error "command 'python' not found" appears on Linux during compilation, type command "ln -s /usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/python" first to make sure that Python3 is used when running Python.

Install Toolchain

Windows

This section introduces the steps to prepare the toolchain environment.

1. Acquire the zip files of <$$CHIP_NAME> toolchain from Realtek.

2. Create a new directory rtk-toolchain under the root path of Disk C.

3. Unzip asdk-10.3.x-mingw32-newlib-build-xxxx.zip and place the toolchain folder asdk-10.3.x to the folder rtk-toolchain created in step (2).

The unzip folders should stay the same with the figure above and do NOT change them, otherwise you need to type -D TOOLCHAIN_DIR=xxx each time or modify the toolchain directory in cmake/toolchain/ameba-toolchain-xxx.cmake to customize the path.

If toolchain path don't match to cmake definition, a downloading task will be created automatically. The toolchain will be downloaded and extracted to default directory.

Linux

This section introduces the steps to prepare the toolchain environment.

1. Acquire the zip files of <$$CHIP_NAME> toolchain from Realtek.

2. Create a new directory rtk-toolchain under the path /opt.

3. Unzip asdk-10.3.x-linux-newlib-build-xxxx.tar.bz2 to /opt/rtk-toolchain , then you can get the directory below:

The unzip folders should stay the same with the figure above and do NOT change them, otherwise you need to type -D TOOLCHAIN_DIR=xxx each time or modify the toolchain directory in cmake/toolchain/ameba-toolchain-xxx.cmake to customize the path.