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@Ikesankom sorry for the late replies. wait can you share us the code for that? i probably might need it for checking on stuff. also i get weird SSH timeouts whenever i overload the board for some reason. thanks!

@crr sorry if it took this late, i dont usually read the forums that much. also i downtimed my media box for other reasons (cleanup, transferring files, diagnostics) with that said. yeah i should try that in the future honestly. but for now i just ignored this because this happened spontaneously, with only same thing being there's failing HDDs. i removed the offending HDDs and that worked. the power supply has an ammeter and voltmeter on it. it stays under 0.7A to 1.4A whenever i use it on my usual usecase. problem persists. oh right i forgot to mention, i use a boost down converter here with adjustable current and voltage. checking back i use 5.7V @ 3.0A. should i increase it to 6v? tinkerboard can handle up to 6.2V, everything else is regulated. i dunno if this is valid, but i used an ATX PSU on this because i can separate the SATA power lines of my internal SATA. so the current running through the USB lines is all just for powering the SATA-USB hub. problem persists even if i only connect a single (failing) drive i wonder if there's like this on tinkerboard? thanks

to recap: Tinkerboard (rev 1?) has 2 USB devices (from RK3288's internal ports), one for the Realtek HD audio, and one for the 4 USB ports (Genesys 4-port USB hub). while i have no info for the HD audio, the hub is powered via the 5V lines (noted as V5 pin in the datasheet). my mistake would be not checking if all the 5V power lines are shorted, or it's just connected to the hub. there's an option to NC the pin if using an external regulator (say, the RK808 power management chip?) The LAN is separated to the hub and instead directly connected to the RK3288 At least the datasheet for RK3288 says. no pinouts whatsoever so i think this is all inside the chip I noticed this strange behavior across unique setups (LAN connected, 1x keyboard-usb combo, and even 1x-3x USB SATA devices (power separated since these are 3.5 inch drives)) Sometimes the USB hub disconnects for no particular reason while turned on "disconnects", i mean, when SSH over the device the `lsusb` appears nothing but the Realtek devices. the Genesys hub isnt listed. i wouldnt associate it with power considering that the whole board only consumes 0.7A Max (on all those setups) when connected to an ammeter this carries over across reboots and wont reset until power was disconnected off the wall. i need to rest the board for a while (like several minutes) without power and peripherals. probably a polyfuse triggering and resetting? this also happens on occasions when i plugged failing drives. i was thinking if it has to do with `usb 1-1 disconnected` where the kernel restarts the USB devices on General Failure on the SATA commands. but it's a weird behavior that it restarts the whole hub rather than the device itself. Sometimes the LAN disconnects as well simultaneously cant SSH over the LAN, only via WiFi. this can be resetted via a reboot, unlike the USB hub. any help would be appreciated, or tips to recreate this. i was thinking of using USB load testers as a stress test. a limitation of mine is also me not providing /var/log/syslogs on these events considering i cant access the device when this happened.

weird "bumping" this old question but here are some of my findings, just quick answer (my tinkerboard runs on 2x USB-SATA HDD's, 1x 2TB, 1x 500gb, and 1x 1.5TB external hard drive) 1. flash firmware on your USB-SATA. it shuts down every 10 minutes or so, depending on the chip, but other firmware dont have those issues (eg, those HDD cloners). check your SATA-USB controller for reflashing. this is left as an exercise to the reader. 2. remember that tinkerboard isnt 4x usb but rather 2x USB device, 1 lane is reserved for the audio controller and the other lane is split to a Genesys 4USB hub controller. since this is USB2.0, you're stuck at 480Mbps, around 60MB/s transfer rates. since it's half-duplex, it's halved to 30MB/s on the hub alone. expect a max throughput of 30MB/s shared. real life performance may vary: i sometimes get full 30MB/s on one device, sometimes, all devices are just the slow. depends on your use case, 30MB/s is just *slow* that's pretty much it about my experiences on the device. now i'm getting a used 500GB HDD running e2fsck. i hope it works well, for 2 days it seems okay. this is while one HDD runs tar while the other does downloading. also be wary of power consumption: 3A on the whole device (take note without peripherals, tinkerboard runs at ~1A on idle and ~2.5A on full load) . go beyond that will cause instability (either boot issues, or in my case USB hub stops working.) i wont recommend using a hub (no issue in power, but slow-downs are a real pain in the butt) but instead those USB-Y splitters that split the device's power. use a separate USB power brick to power the devices alone (i taped my power lines going on the device's side, just to be safe.)

idk if this is the proper way to comment, but i made a forum post about powering tinkerboard, inspired from this question to keep it short: i didnt find any difference between powering via USB, GPIO, or USB-GPIO (by user @berin). still shut itself down when it hit 3A sustained, i can power it from 3.4V to 6.2V without triggering the power delivery's undervoltage or overvoltage switches. i concluded that even microusb and/or gpio would do so long as it wont all hit 3A. i used this power adjustable power supply to make my adjustment. idk if this is in line with y'all findings. the operating voltages are 0.7V too high also idk if it's exact in relying the own board's voltmeter and ammeter. actual lab supplies arent reachable for me, and my multimeter's broken down so i can't do a second opinion, or even probing pins. thanks for anyone's help.

probably a post bragging of my christmas gifts, but mostly just documentation because it really confused and stumbled me from the get go so, my setup was powering tinkerboard (the first revision, without the new fangled eMMCs) via GPIO because it confused the hell out of me how to power this beast. this was powered through the XL4015 buck converter 12.1/12.2 V on input, with ammeter and voltmeter included on the board. (the board was current limited to 5A, because why not? the rk808 is 6A tops) ok from the get go the board powers (not load tested, just power through and run kodi-gbm UI) from 3.4V to 6.2V. undervolting or overvolting it doesnt shuts itself down (no red light), then bringing back to operating voltages boots the board up also take not that operating voltages for RK808 was 2.7V to 5.5V. the missing 0.7V was probably the diode drop people are talking about. maybe? without a multimeter (only using the power supply's voltmeter-ammeter) i can't check it that much. but i'm fine that it has wide range of operating voltages. on all observed voltages, 3A seems to be the max current. it needs to be sustained though. also full load without peripherals (and HDMI, HDMI seems to be active than passive) is observed 2.3-2.5A. booting up the board needs about 0.7A to keep on going this would probably contradict as well the "increase voltage to 5.25 or smthing" given that no matter how many volts you put into it, it would only use 3A. weirdly (since this contradicts the block schematics from tinkerboard), #1 and #2 are observed in both USB and GPIO with no difference (significant or not) under load. it's weird since 3.1. if USB lines were protected, there should be a diode drop *only* on USB lines. but this was seen on GPIO as well. 3.2. some claims microUSB only has max 2.5A but this is not seen in this case: the setup sustained 2.7A going 2.9A. also, powering both GPIO and USB with the same power block doesnt seem to affect stability at all (still hard limits at 3A.) so with that, there are few suggestions for powering the board as well (and minor observations. opinionated parts ahead) people talking about overvolting or undervolting the power rails doesnt really help at all at slightest. it'll still top at 3A. what overvolting could help were powering via USB peripherals, but i wouldnt recommend it plugging straight given the fact that 2.5A on full load? you only have 0.5A to spare on heavy load. get a usb y splitter (tape over the USB power lines to the board. idk why but i have usb resets whenever i dont have them. then again plugging a hard drive in there shouldnt be happening in the first place) the raspberry pi 3B+ adaptor (5.25V, 2.5A)? good enough actually! as long as it can deliver 5V across the device, AND as long as you dont have power heavy devices on it. it doesnt matter that much so long as your USB cable can handle phone-charger level of amps. rk3288 was designed with mobile phones in mind. it'll always power at 3.7V. i always having issues when im using a cable that can only do 0.5A across it. no can do. probably for me, but this is why you dont need to be hung with the minor details. starting from this, im wracking my brain around if tinkerboard was sensitive to power drops (like 5.1v or 5.2v would show stability improvements) but nope! just chuck it right in, it'll be fine. just check your connections and stuff. powering through the GPIO pins is recommended of course, but it's an overkill. probably the reason for it was most USB chargers only go 2A max and that would underpower the tinkerboard, doing boot loops instead of starting correctly. then again YMMV: my place has 3A or 5A chargers everywhere. and with the introduction and interests of fast chargers, you'll find chargers (and cables) that can deliver more than you expect. on sidenote on powering through the GPIO: PLEASE GET YOUR GAUGES RIGHT. i powered it via the ATX FDD (remember those?) connector, with 12V pin removed. it turns out for some reason its max current is 1A and its just thin flimsy as hell. get a thicker wire. it didnt drop the current (thankfully) but the wire became so warm to touch, it's weird. i wouldnt wanna run this on full load. at least i didnt get burned wires. cooling fan helps a lot also you cant bypass that 3A limit. that's 3A total, both GPIO and USB inputs. even powering both USB and GPIO (like that one person suggested) doesnt really do anything. you wouldnt get that much power in, but at least you can protect your wires? which is weird since block schematics shows GPIO and USB has different lines? so it should have different protections and stuff. a multimeter can help see if those inputs are shorted (GPIO vs microUSB vs peripherals) but i dont have one at the moment i would also like to measure the voltage across the peripherals if any load situations will lead to undervolting the outputs, but i dont have a USB tester at the moment. RK808 seems to be programmable but interfacing with it is outside of my skill set. any help would do i hope this post helps everyone well. no one uses these boards anymore except for niche use cases but i still enjoy it. i hope in the future i can get myself a huge NAS server with an RK3588S on it. kinda lonely to be honest

for some reason i can't edit the post, and sorry for the accidental bump so it turns out i'm having those reboot cycles because of power supply issues, obvi. but for some context the first case was where i found out that ATX power supply was dicey to begin with given it's already 13 years old now with no recaps or anything, the fan was broken and it runs sweltering hot all the time. not a good sign. i replaced it with another ATX power supply for christmas, and even the Molex/HDD 5V lines work like nothing. so maybe one off? either way i changed to XL4015 5A adjustable buck converter using the +12VATX lines to 5.5V. works fine. the second case comes from few days after. my pets ate my cable and the USB turned dicey. cant really confirm the resistance of my usb but the red and white wires were touching each other, so thats something. also the XL4015 indicated charging (short circuit?). so i can safely say i have problems with my cables, and replacing them with proper ones fixed my problems. that old ATX is gone to the crapper now due to an accidental short. might harvest its wires for something

i'm stuck with this since day 1 but now i upgraded to armbian (with kodi-gbm) i had this problem worse stress testing the board with stress -c 4 doesn't bring the board into shutdown, but logging in to kodi-gbm or using graphical interface? it brings instability all of a sudden. there's no inherent pattern from the shudowns except when i launch kodi or access some files (emby transcoding doesn't cause any instability). anything outside the text mode should cause it to shutdown. weirdly enough, when i removed the USB peripherals (2xUSB HDD, own power supply for both cases) the instability worsens and doesn't boot or sometimes reboot cycle after fsck.ext4 on startup. this board was powered by an ATX PSU (using the FDD connector). measured 5.1V across it. is there a possibility i tripped some overcurrent protection or something? any suggestions how to fix it? can i actually power it using a separate usb 5v/3a connector as stated here? https://github.com/berinc/Asus-Tinker-Board i don't have any troubleshooting tools at the moment. i don't have a usb tester or a multimeter (leads broke.) thanks for your help.