Getting Started - Get to know your Timecard Mini PCIe base board

If you recently bought a Timecard Mini from us, then it is likely that everything will be ready to go out of the box—plug the card in and use the guides to start configuring it. Also, if you selected a CM4 option when buying your Timecard Mini, we will prepare it with a boot image. In the case that you didn't, however, you will need to perform some additional steps.

Perhaps you bought a CM4 to complement a baseboard and GNSS module combination you already purchased.  To save time, we recommend downloading our Timebeat boot image, which is available at the timebeat.app downloads page. This image is suitable for writing to the eMMC memory on your Pi or an SD card (depending on whether your Pi has external or onboard memory) with the Raspberry Pi Imager tool.  This tool works on Windows and Linux, and our good friend Jeff Geerling has written an excellent article on how to use it with the Compute Module 4 IO board.  "I don't have the IO board, though!" I hear you cry.  Fear not.  You can use your Timecard Mini baseboard to do the same thing.  Flipping the "disable eMMC boot" dipswitch (switch 1) to ON will have the same effect as putting the jumper over the first two pins in block J2, as Jeff describes.

If you don't want to use the image we provide and have the operating system installed, you must manually enable USB2/USB3 super speed to get the most out of your Timecard Mini.  This will require you to configure the EEPROM chip on the CM4.  The following guide will help you to do this:

 
To get your base board into the correct mode follow the below steps:

Step 1:

Set dip switch 1 to on. This disables the RPI eMMC Boot, which has it boot as a USB device.

Step 2:

Seat the CM4 into the 100-pin connector on the TimeCard Mini. (You should do this without any GNSS module present.)

Step 3:

Connect a micro-USB cable to the “eMMC Boot” port on the TimeCard mini near the ethernet port. Then, connect the other end of the cable to a host system.

Step 4:

Powering the TimeCard mini will be required. If you have an external power system, you can use it or connect via PCIe to the host device.

Step 4:

On the host device, run the following commands:

root@rpi ~]# git clone https://github.com/raspberrypi/usbboot.git

root@rpi ~]# cd usbboot

root@rpi ~]# make

root@rpi ~]# cd recovery/

root@rpi ~]#  echo 'VL805=1' >> boot.conf
root@rpi ~]# ../rpiboot -d .

You should now see something similar to the below when running lsusb:

This will now have configured the EEPROM device for correct functionality. 

Power off the Timecard Mini board and change the “Disable eMMC boot“ dip switch to the off position.

After booting the CM4, you run the rpi-eeprom-config command to verify the VL805=1 setting is correctly applied.

Running 'lspci' on the CM4 should present something similar to the below:

We highly recommend applying a heatsink to the Raspberry Pi CM4 with a TimeCard mini. As the CM4 is likely to generate heat, we recommend taking the appropriate steps to mitigate it.

To Enable Serial Console

On the CM4, edit the /boot/config.txt file and ensure all the following are present:

[all]

dtoverlay=uart2

dtoverlay=uart1

enable_uart=1

Then:

Edit the /boot/cmdline.txt to change the start of the line from something like “console=serial0…” to:

console=ttyAMA1,115200…

Now reboot the Pi.

Timebeat Default image login details:

Our standard image will boot up and load into the userspace so you can always connect a screen and keyboard for instant access. You can also access the device via the network, our units ship with the current defaults:

IP address: 10.101.101.99

username: admin

password: 1234