@Aapo Tahkola thank you, but the orangepi 5 is way over budget. The appeal of a tvbox is to spend 20€ for something that includes a box and a power supply. For much less than the price of the orange pi 5 I could get an AP with proper openwrt support.

Thank you @jock the Radxa Pi-e board is interesting, but if you add a case and shipping it would at least double or triple the price of a tv-box shipped.

Of course it is better to spend more money once instead of buying something cheap that you have to throw in the trash, but I really like cheap things (provided they work well enough 😅).

I'll keep thinking about it.

Is it a really stupid idea to buy one of these boxes, install armbian+raspap (or  openwrt) and use it as a travel router/access point (I need both 2.4 and 5GHz)?

Most cheap routers (i.e. at the same price point of a tv-box) with openwrt support have no usb port (I need one for tethering with an android phone).

OTOH tv-boxes have flaky wifi, but I have several usb wifi sticks that I could use (though I'd prefer to use the integrated wifi if at all possible, at least for one of the bands).

If it's really stupid (and the first message of the threads seems to imply so) I'll go back to my cave, but if it isn't, what's the most suitable box?

10 hours ago, chucklz said:

It would be easier for you to get a compatible ov**** camera

 

Any suggested model (known working, that is)?

See: it's a sign you have to write a kernel driver for the gc2035 (just kidding).

Yes, now hostapd has no newer version.

Today unattended-upgrades warned me that hostapd was on hold:

 

Unattended upgrade returned: True

Packages that were upgraded:
 
Packages with upgradable origin but kept back:
 Armbian xenial:
  hostapd 

 

I checked and it's because it depends on libssl1.1 >= 1.1.1 which isn't available

 

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 hostapd : Depends: libssl1.1 (>= 1.1.1) but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

 

The package comes from armbian's repository (ubuntu has an older version)

 

$ apt-cache policy hostapd
hostapd:
  Installed: 3:2.7-99~armbian5.73+1
  Candidate: 3:2.9-100~armbian20.05.0-trunk+1
  Version table:
     3:2.9-100~armbian20.05.0-trunk+1 500
        500 http://apt.armbian.com xenial/main armhf Packages
 *** 3:2.7-99~armbian5.73+1 100
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1:2.4-0ubuntu6.6 500
        500 http://ports.ubuntu.com xenial-security/universe armhf Packages
        500 http://ports.ubuntu.com xenial-updates/universe armhf Packages
     1:2.4-0ubuntu6 500
        500 http://ports.ubuntu.com xenial/universe armhf Packages

 

I don't use or need it (I suppose it was installed by default in the original image) but I thought to report it anyway.

Well, if you manage to get that (the gc2035) working it will make my day

Thank you. Well, if I have to replace the gc2035 with an ov56xx I could as well replace it with an usb webcam. For the time being I'll keep using the legacy kernel.

Any update on the mainline drivers for the gc2035?

On 9/15/2019 at 11:48 PM, 5kft said:

For what it's worth, I gave up on OPi.GPIO some time back, and switched to the standard libgpiod instead (e.g., see https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/libs/libgpiod/libgpiod.git/about/).  Use of libgpiod eliminates almost all pain in terms of permissions to manage GPIOs for non-root users.

 

I still use OPi.GPIO and it works fine for non root users with the proper udev rules. When I started using it I had to patch it to delay opening the files (the udev rules take some time to apply), but now it does it itself (it checks that the file is accessible before giving up).

There are no drivers for the camera in mainline kernel. You have to use a version based on a legacy kernel (https://dl.armbian.com/orangepilite/Ubuntu_xenial_default_desktop.7z). I don't know the progress in mainline regarding gc2035.

Edit: looking  at the table here  I see that the csi driver has been mainlined in kernel 5.0. Without that the camera cannot work. What I don't know is if the gc2035 driver is available in 5.0

On 8/22/2019 at 10:38 AM, kreston said:

 

Dear olivluca, I read "man gpio". There no command "set"! May be need to use command "write"? And I dont know, how can understand what pin need activate for supply CSI of  OrangePiPcPlus??? PL10? PG11? where can I to read it? I'm really afraid to give voltage on wrong pin!

 

The "gpio" there is an uboot command, not a linux one, so "set" is correct. I cannot help on the correct gpio to set for your board, mine is an opi pc.

Well, if you look earlier in the thread, I solved the problem by activating the gpio in uboot (and even then the pin could be different depending on the board). I never managed to make it work using sunxi-pio (though I never really tried).

I think you have to activate the gpio before loading the modules

No, I mean the SBC you used in your "success" message above, where you say you got 850Mbps throughput (with or without NAT btw?).

 

What sbc did you settle for and which final combination of NICs?

Links or it didn't happen

In the EU

6 hours ago, Stuart Naylor said:

is this a Brexit shape of things to come?

 

 

 

No, it's an EU thing

Edit: didn't finish - but there are variations depending on each country. Here in Spain, over 22€ you have to pay VAT + handling charges (IIRC 20 or so €), over 150€ you have to pay VAT + customs duties + handling charges. Less that 22€ you pay nothing (in theory).

But many parcels pass through customs with no charges (they cannot control everything).

Thank you, I knew it was me being stupid

Edit doubly stupid: I commented that source myself from /etc/apt/sources.list when I saw the rest of the sources giving me 404

On 3/26/2019 at 4:54 PM, guidol said:

[1] Keep in mind that they have no security support at all! --

 

I understand that, but at least they could have archived the latest security updates (or I'm just stupid and cannot find them.....for wheezy).

 

17 hours ago, purple_fish said:

Have you had problems with the CSI connectors getting loose over time and needing to be reseated?

 

I'm using the gc2035 camera and had no problem with the csi connector during the ~1.5 years it has been in service.

And the noise (some comments say it's loud, some say it's quiet )

5 hours ago, Reddwarf said:

I have Norwegian ketboard(s), but the one I use for testing is a small simplified wireless keyboard with tackball...

 

Instead of the two backticks you can use $(), i.e. instead of `uname -r' you can use $(uname -r)

I'm using armbian 5.73 (actually I reached that after various apt-get upgrade, I started with whatever image was available at the time), xenial, legacy kernel and I have no network problems, ssh or otherwise, (though I'm using exclusively wired ethernet).

1 hour ago, C0NPAQ said:

Do you have UART console, what did it say?
 

 

I didn't open the box (yet ), I'm happy enough with libreelec, though I'd like a real linux system to tinker with, but consider that I have less and less time to tinker