Configuring Panasonic ADK in Windows Vista for MHP Development

Panasonic ADK was developed for Linux environment.

For guys who prefers development in Windows OS, this is what you can do.

It took me one whole week to trial and error to finally get the first xlet running on the set top box!
Here's the short-cut...

This is my first instructable :-)

Step 1: Set Top Box Setup and Confiiguration

The first thing to do is to connect all the hardware properly.

The Panasonic ADK comes with a Promocard developement kit that plugs into the PCMCIA slot.
It allows developement via a host computer.
Read the ADK documents for more information.

Steps:
1. Connect the Set Top Box (STB) via an ethernet cable to a switching hub, the SCART cables to the TV and get ready the STB remote control.

2. Connect the host computer to the same hub.

3. Switch on the STB. (see picture) and after a booting, you will see the ADK Main Menu.

4. Select 'Configure Network' and you will be brought to the Configure Network screen

5. Enter the STB IP addtress. I choose 192.168.1.5

6. Enter the netmask. For my configuration, it is 255.255.255.0

7. If you use a gateway, choose 'ENABLED' under gateway

8. Enter the gateway IP address.

9. For the Search Path, choose NFS.
The STB can run xlets either from a NFS shared directory from a host computer or internally in the Flash memory. In our case, we want to run the xlet directly on our host computer

10. Enter the mount point. You must enter exxactly what is being shared in your NFS host computer.
Start with the IP address of the host computer
then with the NFS directory
For my case, it is 192.168.1.111:f:/nfs/hello

When you are happy with all the settings, select 'save and Exit'

Do a reboot.

Step 2: Host Computer Setup : Serial Terminal

There are a few steps before you can start development.

(a) Setup Serial term
1. First, you need to connect the serial port of the STB to the serial port of the host computer.

Unfortunately, many modern computers do not come with serial ports anymore. Not to fear, there are a lot of USB to Serial convertors in the market.

In my case, I use a USB to serial cable commonly available in ebay.
It uses a prolific USB chip and after installing the driver, you will see the virtual serial port under Device Manager. (see picture)
In my case, it is COM8

2. Next, you need a serial modem software. I downloaded REALTERM but you can use any software.
http://realterm.sourceforge.net/

3. Configuration of serial port (see pictures)
Use the following settings:
Display: ANSI
PORT: COM8 (use you own value)
Baud: 19200, 8N1
No hardware flow control, No software control

4. Test
If you connect and configure properly, everytime you press the remote control and the STB respond, you will see debugging information on the serial terminal.
In my case, the yellow text in the realterm software are the debuggin text.

Step 3: Host Computer Setup : NFS Share

This is the part that is most crucial; I spend quite some time trying to get the STB to recognise and parse the Locator files without success until I figure this part out....

Before you begin, it is good to test that the host computer can ping the Set Top Box.
Do this by opening up a command prompt window and type ping IP address of STB
For me, it is ping 192.168.1.5
You should see the responses from the STB.

1. NFS
Windows does not support NFS natively; at least not Vista. I read that Windows XP does have a free NFS component but it is turned off by default. Do a search on NFS on Windows XP if you are using XP.

In order to create NFS shares, I download a software call nfsAxe from
http://www.labf.com/nfsaxe/index.html

2. Create the Export (see picture)
After installing the software, you must create a NFS share that mirrors the setting entered in the STB.
Click 'Add Directory' and point it to the location where you keep the locator file and the xlet classes.
For more information on locator file, please refer to the ADK documentaiton.

In my case, the directory is F:\nfs\hello\
the export mount path will be /f/nfs/hello
this matches the setting in the STP 192.168.1.111:/f/nfs/hello

Next, you must Add User Access
Create a all hosts, all users, all groups, R/W access for this export.

3. Name Conversion (*VERY IMPORTANT)
Change the Mode to 'Allow illegal chars' and
check 'Use UTF8 Name format'

Move on to the next step

Step 4: Test and Start Development!

The last step before setiing up your software development involves testing that the STB is able to run the xlet in the host computer.

1. Using the remote control, select 'Start Xlet' from the Main Menu of the STB.

2. The STB will try to locate and parse the Locator file in your host computer based on the settings stored in the STB network configuration.

3. If successful,
- in the NFS server, you will see the STB IP address mount (see picture)
- in the STB, you will see the 'Start Xlet' menu and any locator file.
- at the same time, you will see all the debugging information on the serial terminal

4. Run the Xlet!!
If step 3 above is successful, you can now select the xlet and run it.
In my case, the xlet locator file is call 'start'
Select it and press 'Enter' on the remote control

5. Xlet running (see picture)

6. To stop the xlet, press 'NAV' on the remote.

7. Well, that's all and you can now start to create your software development environment using your favourite IDE such as Eclipse.

A note about developing for MHP using Eclipse:
The most important thing is to follow the instructions (JRE 1.4.2, Stubs, etc) listed in
http://www.code4tv.com/c/downloads

Thanks!!