How to get access to Qualcomm documentation and support? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: vespasian
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 07, 2020, 12:50:52 am
content: Apologies. I know this is not quite the correct forum for this, but I really need help and I don't know where else to get it.I'm hoping that someone can at least point me in the right direction.I am software engineer with almost no embedded development experience (except for a recent course on yocto) and have been handed a board (Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ SoC) with1: an image (Automotive Grade Linux: Halibut release)2: flashing instructions3: some source code for building the image4: some build instructions (limited not from Qualcomm)I need to1: flash the existing image to the board to verify that it works2: build a new AGL image with some additional packages (primarily a package manager and build tools)3: flash the new image to the boardHowever, I am having great difficulty trying to figure out how to do this.I do not have access to the Qualcomm documentation for this product (though I know it exists and is extensive) or support from Qualcomm engineering.The instructions that I was given to flash the image with QFIL do not work. It gets stuck at the moment of flashing. Here is a video:https://photos.app.goo.gl/oYLyrEwsQn7MLxUY9I'm thinking this might be related to the fact the instructions said that DIP switches 1&2 needed to be ON.However, the only way for QFIL to detect the device is if they are turned off.Apparently the instructions for the board elsewhere (which I don't have access to) specify that they should be off.As for building, I recently did a Udemy tutorial on yocto and I am now able to build an arm64 image and deploy it to a raspberry pi 3 and my understanding is that build AGL will just involve building a few more layers.However, getting it flashed to my hardware will be more challenging.As a non-embedded developer my competency is not very strong in this area to begin with and I am under a tremendous amount of pressure from management to make this work, so I could really benefit from access to Qualcomm (1) documentation, (2) engineering support, (3) source code updates.But I have no idea how to get these things.The organization within our company who sent this hardware to me has the relationship with Qualcomm are many timezones away from me and they have not been as responsive to my requests for assistance as I need to make this happen, so I really don't know how to solve this problem.I've tried posting on Stack Exchange:https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/583887/how-do-i-build-and-flash-to-a-qualcomm-snapdragon-boardI've opened a case with IoT Sales to inquire about purchasing support, but I'm not sure how long they will take to respond or if they will be able to help me.I've opened a case on this site:https://qualcomm-cdmatech-support.my.salesforce.com/home/home.jspSimilar doubts. No response yet and not sure if they will be able to help me.If anyone has any ideas about how I might go about getting access to the resources I need, I would very very much appreciate that.Thanks,Alex

author: radioactive
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2020, 01:06:48 am
content: I would suggest avoiding Qualcomm. They don't share any information on products that they have designed or acquired. I barely managed to get by on some projects based on the little knowledge that was in the open-source community regarding the Atheros-9k chipsets. For the rest, I just poked various values into registers until I got the desired results. So grateful to the people who freed enough information that helped me to be successful in those endeavors. I will probably never work on that type of project again. My advice is to use Analog Devices or anyone else that is open whenever possible. Avoid Qualcomm and Broadcomm, etc at all costs. They make it absolutely impossible for the small company to succeed.