orion

Kobol is now taking pre-orders:
https://shop.kobol.io/

It seems so. Also they kept their promises for the case.
The price for all what it offers I think it is quite decent. I like the expansion capability through the USB-C (DAS) I hope it works well with armbian.
 
What is the opinion of more experienced people?
 

Yeah I should have mentioned that also. Through the same USB Type-C we also support Flash over USB with the rockchip dev/flash tools available. The recovery button is on one of 3 push button on the board. Each on-board memory (SPI and eMMC) can be disabled with a proper jumper ( No need to have 16 fingers to flash the board ).
 
We will try our best. Also we will sell a simple adapter kit in order for people to use Helios64 with any mini-ITX and ATX PSU. This way people could recycle their old case and save money.

We will offer an ECC option. The Rockchip RK3399 SoC itself doesn't have a memory controller that has ECC feature, however we are currently working with a SDRAM vendor that now offer built-in ECC feature inside the SDRAM directly. It's not impossible it will be available on day one.
 
 
 
No. It is not a use case that make sense from our point of view. I don't believe there will be a lot of people out there with a USB Type-C power adapter that can delivered up to 100W. Plus the power circuitry (and the PSU) would be quite expensive.
 
 
No. It's a pure M.2 SATA port. FYI it's share with the SATA port 1, so the combination is either ( 1x M.2 SSD + 4x HDD/SSD ) or 5x HDD/SSD.
 
 
Yes there is a 128Mb SPI NOR Flash.
 
 
Something we didn't disclose because too much info already on the picture, the USB Type-C has been designed with a 4-in-1 mode concept :
- Display Port
- DAS mode
- Host mode
- Serial Console Access
We will explain more at a later stage... but it's quite a unique design we did.
 
 
We wanted to make the eMMC a basic feature of our board. I mean what's the point to sell it as a module when you know that in 90% of the case your user should use eMMC instead of SDcard. It also help in term of software support to know that all user Helios64 user will have the same config, therefore we can focus on installation guide that use the eMMC.
 
 
 
You guess right this is not just some bare bone carrier board with a SoC in the middle. Between the PCIe-to-SATA bridge, the 2.5Gbe interface, the built-in UPS feature, RAM, eMMC, etc... it adds-up quickly. We also paid a lot of attention on the different power rails, this is a premium design compare to all the RK3399 board out there.
Helios4 was USD200 with the full kit (PSU, case, cable, fan, etc...), our goal it to try to be in the same ballpark. This time we will sell a-la-carte style, you can just buy the board alone, our with the case, if you already have a PSU then no need to order one...
 

Hi guys,
 
I guess some might have heard that we (Kobol Team) were spinning a new project to succeed to Helios4. Here it is... Helios64
 

 
 
We didn't have to look too far for the board name since in essence the goal was to redesign from scratch Helios4 with a 64-bit SoC and try to improve every key features that made Helios4 a very targeted board for NAS setup.
 
Right now we are at the prototyping test phase, hopefully in a 2 month time will have dozen of Eval boards to send around for evaluation and review... and if all goes well first batch should be available for order in Feb / March 2020.
 
Happy to answer any question :-)
 

- added support for V3
- included latest upstream changes
- updated repository

It was a minor/partial update, firmware blobs and armbian-config.
 
If you want to have latest stuff (which might break for no reason because it's untested) switch to the beta repository.