atharmian

zador + tkaiser, You guys get me all wrong. Hard doesn't mean worthless ! I think you completely ignored what I keep saying about your contributions. Do you have some kind of weird filter on ??? Open source is great...I promoted it at my employers and then startups. Again: Nothing wrong with volunteering. But the real burden is unfairly shifted to you volunteers, by those who make/lose the money. Sure your contributions are valuable. But your own stress shows that it is a tough job, and startups like CHIP who walk the talk can best the other Pis that don't. Do you understand now? When there are random subjects, clearly there would be random questions. Just ignore those you don't like. All you had to say upfront was what you guys are saying here- that most that stuff is crap and not worth paying much attention. OK ! And if you tech guys are so confused, where does this lead your readers? Ever thought of that besides making your selective arguments? So bottom line is what ? You guys are volunteering for Sisyphian tasks?

hmartin, I am doing what my skill set allows me to do- I am neither a HW or SW guy, but have been and am a product manager. And I do see some product questions need to be asked here. Btw, that monthly report is in the best time/effort interests of contributors themselves- less questions, more work. Tkaiser says that xr819 work OK ish, a very technical reply, so how do you dare say the driver sucks ? You don't have to do everything I ask. When does that ever happen? If you have an answer, great; if not, you can pay attention elsewhere. Volunteering is just about that. You can always find a paid gig and maybe do better- exactly the case I see with Free Electron guys bring hired by CHIP, and CHIP zooming. I detect the NIH syndrome here re: CHIP. But I thought Armbian also targeted CHIP.

hmartin, 1. If I had the long term background of folks making significant volunteer contributions (cheers to all), I would volunteer too. The other problem: as ex engineer, I know we are terrible at documentation anyway ( communication) so a lot of good work gets lost ! Btw, tkaiser said similar in those discussions with Igor about structuring distro updates: about being more consumer friendly. 2. [Just realized you edited out your 2nd point.] You are exactly right: you did the update as the guy in charge with access and I asked the questions. But you do realize asking questions is half the job? Some dimwit had to do it, and then it became much more easier to understand for all. I didn't take credit for the edit. Merely said that listening with some patience can be productive. Thanks again for helping folks understand the real nature of PoE support with OPi0. The amazing thing is that passive PoE is so simple to implement, yet so rare. Who needs expensive 802.3af/at PoE when a cheap buck converter gets the job done ( yes, pointed by tkaiser.) In the end we got to admit some facts.

zador, That's exactly the point- mainlining. Isnt that what this forum is also doing? How do you argue with it regardless of actual tech merit, or general Realtek problems? IMHO, people will always complain. But you need to be just good enough in most categories and excel in a couple ones you can then hype. Again the market speaks

zador, Thanks for pointing out many things. 1. By lack of transparency with XR819 I meant some speed/ features which actually were recently posted on this thread. 2. I didn't call eMMC NAND. But there are many other very tech folks saying so online. Like calling many functions collectively as GPU. Yes lots of confusion- no right or wrong here. 3. Exactly what I said about SPI flash now included. I am not criticizing anyone - it might be useful in the future. 4.Why is this CHIP with seemingly better WiFi / BT marketing hype? Can you disprove it , or isn't this just one of those subjective assessments as above??? In sum, Armbian/ sunxi does a lot of good work for FREE. And thus competing with paid contribution is hard! Now isn't this a fact? May I suggest that Armbian forum post a monthly update with relevant links and a short summary so everyone is on the same page, as opposed to milling around different threads and getting confused? If you read my posts in all, I am trying to help. I truly believe in OPi/0 more than CHIPs, Pine, RPi/0. There is a reason why the world chose Steve Jobs over Steve Wozniak ( not to say I am Jobs)- it's called the Market, and it acts in its own way and it wants out-of-box operation. Or you get to be IWoz.

tkaiser, I am asking quite significant questions given many of your own comments about XR819...Clearly many other quite tech folks don't necessarily agree with you either. What I do see is this amazing lack of transparency with xr819 Armbian support ! You want to scream about accuracy re: some benchmarks, but what kind of benchmark is "ok-ish"? When did I talk about different RTL models except say I would like to see 8189 vs xr819 comp, given someone said 8189 is the wifi chip for other than Zero OPi models. I call 4GB as eMMC because tons of other folks say so. What counter argument do you have which majority folks will agree with you on? I still don't get your morbid fascination with 2MB SPI NOR which still does nothing very useful in practise. But I still want to ask questions, not reach quick judgement. My marketing bullshit or your tech hype? What BS have I offered so far except ask very legitimate tech questions that really few people seem to address...Can you give me any examples of my marketing BS??? Am I promoting any vendor product except OPi itself? If you have a legitimate gripe against my OPi0 v2 wish list, say so. Don't pretend it's bullshit. Re:" all that is known about Zero Plus 2..." Well maybe Xunlong knows a bit more, including some guy named Steven? " All" here arguably is a bullshit construct here on your part. I keep saying OPi + Armbian OS has the best price/performance so that is what excites me. Now, do you have specifics on WiFi speeds on Zero and other models ? Do you know if any supports WiFi Direct or Miracast as host? Or should I assume your bullshit OK-ish is a logical, tech focused answer, as opposed to your plain BS? Let's be honest...Despite many good volunteer efforts including your own, we don't have a "mainline" Armbian OS yet for Allwinner. But nothing wrong with that. And yes it is true that CHIP has pulled ahead in the market given its paid tech savvy and market PR. Problem as I said is that OPis are exploiting volunteers to their own long term detriment. Now can you show this claim to be marketing bullshit too? I call it common sense. I remember your recent remark about making the distro updates more consumer friendly. You should think same about answering other serious questions. PS. My and hmartin's PoE discussions did result in updating the OPi0 linux-sunxi sunxi page. So useful things can happen with a cool head or two.

Steven sounds to me a pretty smart cookie. In our emails from last week he talked about a "new version" (OPi0 version?) coming out in about a month, so we'll see. He said he didn't have info on the leaked NAS board. But...it's really frustrating to see smart China vendors thinking they can produce good but cheap HW and make volunteers do all the software work; and on top experiment with just inexcusable things like XR819 for widely adopted RTL8189 that is already working on their own well selling models. I look at CHIP, using Allwinner chip, which hired Free Electrons to do the mainlining ( apparently done since June), even though the HW is old. But CHIP also had the sense to add good WiFi/ BT and recognize that SD cards are a pain, so voila ! 4GB eMMC. Yes CHIP has other issues compared with OPi0 ( no Eth port/ PoE, single core A13, no cheap expansion board with extra ports, etc), but they will sell, keep upgrading features and build the market hype. Still cheap enough. Pretty much like the non production RPi0. I still hope they go back to RTL8189: they already have those tested designs, or maybe put in quietly on a v2 $2.50-3 expansion board for now. Who imagined WiFi would become a bottleneck for no good reason? Don't see other problems with OPi0 for the $7/9 price, only upgrade opportunities like v2 proposed. Otherwise by the time patches arrive, OPi0 will have been forgotten as a niche/ failed product with much potential.

IMHO, XR819 is killing the OPi0 golden goose...All else looks so perfect for the price ! Can't they just go back to RTL8189 in the next couple production batches? Will that make life easier? Ironic to hear that XR819 has its own ARM core- what good is the core? What is the prospect of Xunlong offering a eMMC 4-8GB version of OPi0? SD cards are expensive and unreliable, plus can add an SD card drive for more memory. And adding a power barrel to the $2 expansion board that is otherwise just what is needed, maybe make it $2.50? My take: OPi0 v2 512MB, say $12-15, with RTL8189, 4-8 GB eMMC + $2.50 expansion board adding power barrel + Armbian OS = market winner. Other GbE, NAS stuff can be taken care of on higher models. H3 has USB- SATA bottleneck.

It is a bit disappointing that Xunlong chose to use an obscure and cheapo XR819 wifi chip to save maybe a dollar so OPi0 could look like a more featured $9 CHIP. But CHIP has way better marketing: https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/06/next-thing-chip-pro/ 1. Can someone elaborate a bit on OPi0 WiFi available vs missing features, e.g. speed in Mbps over what range, AP, bridge etc modes? 2. How does above compare with WiFi on other OPis? Do other models all have same WiFi chip, not XR819? 3. Any comments on comparison with CHIP WiFi capabilities?

jernej, Good. So is Wifi OK on legacy? I can wait for the SPI Uboot magic

jernej + zador, OK, so I should stick to legacy Armbian which I am assuming is from Nov 14. So confirming that OPi0 Wifi is working under legacy Armbian? Anything else I need to worry about besides PSU preferably from pins not OTG, and a "fast" SD card? Has the presence of 2MB SPI NOR flash on the 512MB version recently changed anything? I still can't avoid an SD card?

ErwinH, Thanks. Hopefully my OPi0 will arrive in the next few days, from my Dec 19 order. Will it make sense to use the legacy Armbian image from Nov 14 as listed on linux-sunxi page? Is wifi now working? Why do they say use legacy for multimedia, but mainline for headless? Any caveats?

ErwinH, I was afraid so ;( So how much power does an OPi0 require roughly, without external devices, but with WiFi and TVout streaming? And, with receiving a video stream from a USB camera over PoE, to display over TVout?

Powering question: Can we use the OTG USB port on OPi0 to draw 500mA from USB , and also use a second power source, e.g., via GPIO pins?

jernej, Thanks for the detailed reply. I didn't imagine that VLC really mostly talks about desktop x86/64- always thought that ARM too was included. Yes VLC doc says mpeg4 Part 2 may not be supported but h264 is fully handled-good enough. OK so got to run experiments when OPis arrive. I am now assuming that it is the same story with WiFi as with HDMI and TVout? The alt to HDMI/ TVout is to stream to multiple TV sets that have the Miracast HDMI dongles attached. USB streaming without non existent MHL HW as zador pointed out is not possible.

zador, Yes the hardware MHL support wasn't clear. But looks like people have ignored MHL and moved onto software supported wireless Miracast ! In any case, do you know if we can supply power to OPis from both OTG USB (500mA) and another source, say power pins?

zador, I keep asking because I keep getting very different answers ! I didn't realize this would be so tough. So now you are saying the VLC wiki has nothing to do with ARM, but only x86/64? I don't see VLC saying that at all...Hence my questions. So does libcedrus or vdpau-sunxi say anything about multi video-streaming support? I am only interested in HW decoding, not rendering/ 3D. The other confusion is what I thought I read above: that Allwinner CedarX is a not so good alternative to Armbian VDPAU? Now that USB is out as a cheap streamer to TV HDMI (need MHL HW), I will substitute for it WiFi streaming to Miracast HDMI dongles on TV sets !

zador, I read the wiki. If we connect an Android device with proper drivers to stream video from phone to HDMI on TV, why can't we stream from OPi to HDMI TV too? What other hw do you have in mind? See here: Micro USB MHL to HDMI Cable HDTV Adapter Converter for Samsung Galaxy S5 S4 S3 Note 3 Note 2 Galaxy Tab 3, Tab S, Tab Pro MHL http://s.aliexpress.com/MzieeUJn

jernej, I found this info about VDPAU and VLC. Current VLC Debian version is 2.2.x: " VDPAU VDPAU is supported for decoding since VLC version 2.1.0, and for post-processing and rendering since VLC 2.2.0 (still in development as of late 2013). VDPAU will be enabled automatically by default in VLC version 2.2.0 onward. Refer to http://www.remlab.net/op/vlc-vdpau.shtmlfor technical details. The following video codecs are supported for decoding: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Visual (and possibly H.263), WMV3, VC-1 and H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC). Almost all video codecs are supported for post-processing and rendering." The wiki further talks about GPU support: https://wiki.videolan.org/VLC_GPU_Decoding/ 1. But I guess Allwinner only uses GPU for 3D, HW decoding actually happens on H2+/H3 CPU only? Is rendering also on GPU? 2. So does that mean we can use VLC on OPis for both HW decoding and rendering for HDMI and TVout? In any case my interest is regular TV channels streaming where h.264 decoding is needed but no rendering as for videogames. Any USB video streaming (no rendering) comments? 3. VLC can support multiple streams in a single instance: https://wiki.videolan.org/VLC_HowTo/Play_multiple_instances/ Hopefully this could work on OPis too with HDMI and TVout available. Maybe even on USBs...

See wiki for MHL: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_High-Definition_Link The OTG micro USB to HDMI via MHL 1.0 connector is $3 on AliExpress: Micro USB MHL to HDMI Cable HDTV Adapter Converter for Samsung Galaxy S5 S4 S3 Note 3 Note 2 Galaxy Tab 3, Tab S, Tab Pro MHL http://s.aliexpress.com/MzieeUJn Looks like there are MHL Linux drivers available which hopefully will work under Armbian. Question: Can we draw 500 ma from USB power port into USB OTG on the SBC, and more power for SBC, if needed, via the SBC power pins?

I just read this article...Any relevance for OPi? It talks about tweaking settings to get much better memory performance. To me good SD cards cost a lot compared with OPi prices themselves, and have usability and reliability issues. Can "slower" SD cards be used with some tricks? Perhaps with onboard SPI NOR bootloader, with or without netbooting? http://hackaday.com/2016/12/29/improving-raspberry-pi-disk-performance/

jernej, I meant the driver for multiple video outputs. But then without HW video decoding, multiple streams might be too much for the system? So sounds like Allwinner might have such a multiple stream driver. But then can Allwinner library run under Armbian OS? TV should run at 25 fps, so 720p resolution should then take about 35 MiB/s on USB which should be just possible. The 60fps I thought was H3's total video throughput.

jernej, So we are getting somewhere Yes, my questions are for OPis. OPi0 only has TVout + USBs, of course. 1. So you are saying it is a driver issue, not an H3 issue? 2. Is it possible to substitute another driver, or will H3 HW decoding only run with vdpau* ? How about without HW decoding, or will video decoding get horribly slow? 3. What is the role of mpv here? 4. How does USB then output, say a 1280 x720 or 720p stream? I have to wait for my OPi0x2, expansion board, OPi PC Plus, OPi Lite + camera I ordered Dec 19 from AliExpress. Tracking shows they still haven't shipped from China after customs clearance. Surprisingly my CHIPs arrived within 11 days, to Toronto, shipped by Next Thing Co, Burlington, Ontario. And the solder iron set from AliExpress. I plan to run Armbian OS on CHIP too, once I get some other parts including power supply, breadboard etc. Hope they have stuff working after "mainlining" in June.

zador, Thanks. 1. So is there existing OPi0 support for USB/ WiFi video streaming, regardless of multi-streaming? I am still confused about 3.4 v 4.9 kernel support due to rapid pace of work. Is it true that Armbian currently only needs update WiFi driver for "full" 4.9 kernel? What else might be missing? 2. So for video streaming purposes Mali 400 GPU is redundant? All load is on CPU cores? Can H2+ do a total load of 1080@60fps with some processing left over with 512 MB RAM, or even 256MB? 3. Tried reading mpv v VLC online, including mpv Wikipedia. Not much info for comparison. Looks like mpv does have extensive libraries like VLC, and is just a new open source alternative. I guess VLC GUI is not a requirement, but nice to know about support via recompilation. 4. Basically I am looking at OPi0 as a cheap media player that can input an MPEG 4 TS ( transport stream with multiple video TV channels, EPG and control stuff), and output to one or multiple TV sets (HDMI, TVout- RCA, even via USB using MHP format like USB- HDMI or USB- RCA/ S- video. These converters look cheap on AliExpress, $2-8.) TV channels on each TV set will be selected by IR remote control handsets using, e.g., LIRC. Essentially the input MPEG 4 TS stream will be decoded ( hopefully no need for CPU intensive transcoding) and TV channels output via RC as digital as-is ( HDMI ), or DAC converted for analog RCA/ S- video output via TVout or USB MHP. It sounds a new idea here, but it has good price/performance potential compared with LCD or other text displays, within a LAN

jernej, Thanks for offering your comments. I am asking questions not making assumptions To me it is strange that a quad core H3 seems so hampered with video streaming where PC and Mac seem to do fine. tkaiser said starting on post#2 H2+/H3/H5 can do simultaneous outputs perhaps thru disp init configuration on legacy kernel, but he tried only on A20 with HDMI + LCD. Can't be an ARM limitation since VLC does fine on ARM too? I do plan on testing once I get my OPis that I ordered Dec 19. What is the definition of HW decoding here? Where is it done, as I read yesterday that in ARM, unlike x86, GPU is only used for 3D ( not the case here?) So GPU here is just a game processing unit? Or, can GPU help with video processing in any way? Seems a big waste otherwise. I am surprised that a versatile VLC cannot be used with HW decoding here. Any reasons? Is this a kernel version issue, 3.4 v 4.9? Can we also video output from USB/ WiFi besides HDMI and TVout? I truly appreciate you folks' great volunteer efforts, and do believe that OPi+ Armbian is the best price/performance out there. This multi-streaming problem question is a first-ask, but very interesting since PC/ Mac folks do it all the time with VLC. Don't think Allwinner will respond. Steven@OPi first said yes then no. Same with Friendly ARM, whose NanoPi M1 photo and text specifically said few months ago that it supports different simultaneous outputs from HDMI and TVout, which motivated me. So I am assuming that OPi and FA know something they can't share now.