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Getting started

Synaptics Coralboard™ SL

The Synaptics Coralboard™ SL is the first development kit in the Coralboard™ Series, an edge AI development kit series designed to make prototyping energy-efficient AI-enabled products more accessible to developers. The Coralboard series was created in partnership with Google Research for products using Coral NPU technology.

Quick Overview​

Configurations​

The Synaptics Coralboard™ SL is designed to be highly capable in a headless configuration without a display. In the headless configuration, you will need to connect to the Coralboard from your host machine and interact with it entirely through a command-line interface (CLI) using a terminal window.

If your project requires a visual interface, Coralboard SL also supports display configuration with an optional MIPI DSI display. For more details on compatible displays, pinouts, and hardware configuration, refer to the User Guide.

Setup​

1. What You will Need​

  • Synaptics Coralboard SL
  • Micro SD Card
    • Capacity: 16 GB minimum
    • Speed: 10 MB/s minimum sustained write, rated C10, U1, or V10, or better
    • Application performance: A1 or better
  • USB Type-C cable
  • USB-to-Serial adapter (optional)

2. Prepare the image for the SD Card​

See Updating Astra SDK (Linux) image in the User Guide for instructions on preparing and flashing an SD card image.

3. Connect and boot up​

Insert the micro SD Card​

With the power cable disconnected, insert the micro SD card.

Power the Coralboard​

Coralboard is powered through a USB-C connector located in the lower right-hand corner of the board. This power may be supplied through a connection to a host machine (where a data connection is desired) or a USB-C power supply.

Status LEDs​

Coralboard features three status LEDs to help you monitor operation:

  • Green LED: Power indicator (always on when powered up)
  • Red LED: Heartbeat indicator (two short blinks with a delay)
  • Blue LED: IO indicator (sporadic based on memory access)

4. Open a terminal and log in​

In the headless configuration, you will access the operating system using a terminal window using one of two options:

Option 1 - Use the Android ADB Interface (via the host USB-C cable) - Recommended​

On your host machine, download Android SDK Platform-Tools and see details on using the ADB interface

Open a terminal on your host machine and use the following command to open a shell:

adb shell

Option 2 - Use a USB-to-Serial adapter​

Connect to the serial pins on the header of the Coralboard. Open your preferred terminal emulator and connect using the designated serial port set to a baud rate of 115200.

Login:

  • Login: root
  • Password: (none)

See the User Guide for more details about connecting to serial.

For the best experience, we recommend you connect your Coralboard to a network. There are a few different methods but we recommend using Network Sharing through the USB port.

Option 1 - USB network sharing - recommended​

Requirements:

  • Host machine that supports network sharing

Follow these steps:

  1. With the USB type C cable connected, enable network sharing on your host machine (the method depends on your machine type - Windows, macOS, or Linux supported, see User Guide for details).
  2. Share the network to the "NCM".

Option 2 - Wi-Fi Module​

If you have an m.2 Wi-Fi module then see the User Guide for more details on how to enable it.

6. Try out the AI demos!​

Once you have successfully logged into the terminal, and connected to a network, download example applications to start experimenting with on-device AI.

Each demo application is organized into its own subdirectory. Navigate to any of the subdirectories and open its README file for specific execution instructions and details. Available Demo Subdirectories:

  • gemma_translate -- Text translation using Gemma
  • jellectronica -- Interactive audio and sensor demo
  • object_detection -- Real-time object identification using the camera
  • Function_calling -- LLM tool use and function calling workflows
  • image_classification -- Image categorization models
  • scene_description -- Describe images using a VLM
  • and more

For more on each of these applications, head over to the Demos page.

To obtain the examples, connect to a Coralboard terminal and clone the examples to the home directory.

    cd /home/root
    git clone https://github.com/synaptics-astra-demos/sl2610-examples

Follow the instructions in the top level README.md to get started.

    cd sl2610-examples
    more README.md
note

Each example has an option to run with or without a display. See README.md for details.

Can't get online?​

Network sharing is disabled on some host machines. The object detection and image classification examples support offline dependency install.

Host machine requirements:

  • Network-connected
  • git (optional)
  • ADB

Follow these steps:

  1. On the host machine, download sl2610-examples as a zip file or clone with git and compress to a zip file to make the transfer easier (e.g. zip -r sl2610-examples-main.zip sl2610-examples).
  2. Copy with ADB: adb push sl2610-examples-main.zip /home/root/

Follow the instructions in the top level README.md to get started. See offline dependency installation.

Next steps​

Ready to go deeper? Once you have gotten started, visit the full User guide for comprehensive details on advanced hardware configuration, deep-dive software setups, and full technical specifications.