NicoD

Thanks for the tips  The load is from BOINC with tasks from seti@home
Installing BOINC on Ubuntu
https://boinc.berkeley.edu/wiki/Installing_BOINC_on_Ubuntu
 

Hi all,
 
a new RK3399 board appeared, it is called RockPi4
 
I have two of these beasts here already, and they works nicely - I like the small details about it (nice eMMC fixture, all heat plates on the bottom side for simple cooling, and an M.2 PICe slot for my second network card
Do you see any chance to get Armbian working on that beast, and if so, what can *I* do (with my limited experience in kernel programming)?
Debian is working on it already, in case you need more specific information please let me know.
 
Any help is appreciated.
 
So far, Michael
 

ok 
I did it with armbian's build system, use userspace kernel config 
right now , kind of knowing armbian's build system 
btw
How to add board into armbian system?
I would like see gameshell board in armbian ,armbian is the best linux I've ever seen in linux world
 
it would be great to see gameshell board in armbian
 

 

I received a Drok Model UM25 tester, and started checking the voltage and amperage used.  I noticed that the NanoPi M4 when running at between 98% and 100% on all 6 cores draws a little over 5.1V and between 1.9A to 2.2A,  This is getting close to the maximum of 5A and 2.5A that the cable, (Anker Powerline+ II USB-C to USB-A 2.0 Cable (3ft)), and power supply, (Anker 60W 10-Port USB Wall Charger), are rated.
I shut down the 7 Raspberry PI 3B + devices also on the power supply and watched the NanoPi M4 use over 5.3V and 2.59A then reboot.
I looked up the specs for the NanoPi M4, it needs 5V 3A
The RaspberryPi 3B+ needs 5V 2.5A, (which is where the power supply and cables I am using are rated)
I ordered a 5V 4A power supply and a cable rated for 4A.
Until they arrive I an running the NanoPi M4 at 1.42GHz and 1.80GHz using the following commands
cpufreq-set -c0 -u1.42GHz
cpufreq-set -c1 -u1.42GHz
cpufreq-set -c2 -u1.42GHz
cpufreq-set -c3 -u1.42GHz
cpufreq-set -c4 -u1.80GHz
cpufreq-set -c5 -u1.80GHz
It is now using 5.2V between 1.61A to 1.82A and does not reboot and the temp is showing 53C
 

Where are you from? Odroid`s are easy to get. There`s a European sell point, an American, Korean, Australian. ...
https://www.odroid.co.uk/
https://ameridroid.com/
https://www.hardkernel.com/main/shop/good_list.php?lang=en
http://auseparts.com.au/index.php?route=product/category&path=97
 
The Tinker Board has got many faults. My first one broke, components just fell of. It`s powerhungry and overheats too quickly what makes the use of a fan needed. It does have good youtube and ok environment.
The Libre Computer Board ROC-RK3328-CC should be ok. I did not try it yet. I should look into getting some of their boards. I don`t know of the youtube playback on that. Could be awful,could be good.

The NanoPi M4 is awesome. It`s future proof with it`s USB3, gigabit ethernet, great wifi on-board, eMMC, 6-cores, .. I`ve never had a board that does everything so well from the start. Check my youtube for that one.
Cheers

Under 20$
the Raspberry Pi Zero W for 10$. It's very slow with only 1 core at 1Ghz. You can watch youtube with kiosk browser. And surf, very slowly.
The Banana Pi M2 Zero for 20$. A lot faster. 4x1.2Ghz. You need a good heatsink for it or it overheats constantly. Not very good video playback.
For 25$ the Rock64. Faster, better, but no wifi on-board.
A raspberry pi 3b+ is 35$ and again a bit better.
For your use case an Odroid C2 is perfect. Good Youtube playback, fast, doesn't overheat, ... That's about 50$

Those or the ones I have, and I can recommend. But for 20$ you will not get much.
You need to know that many sbc's don't have hardware acceleration for video playback in browsers. So expect choppy and low resolution video with most. The Odroid C2 does this best in Linux.
Also if a board only has 512MB ram then you want be able to open many tabs.

FriendlyArm also has got some interesting cheap boards.

I review sbc's on their desktop capabilities. Of all those I've got a video, except the C2.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpv7NFr0-9AB5xoklh3Snhg

Works in firefox. Even in Armbian. I don't know how. But it does. But Firefox does suck for surfing.
For that I use Vivaldi. There 1/3 lost frames in 1080p Youtube. Chromium 2/3 lost frames. Firefox 0 frames lost. All video works perfect. I even use it as video player on the NanoPi M4.
For me the NanoPi M4 is the perfect 2nd desktop pc. It's very fast. It's got an amazing heatsink. It's stable, haven't had 1 crash with it in hundreds of hours use. I've tried many different sbc's on there desktop capabillity's. The Odroid C2 was the best until the NanoPi M4.
Tinker board does ok in video, but many things don't work. I've tried it again this week, and it even got worse. I need 3 different OS'es to be able to do everything.
To my knowledge not many others than the C2, tinker, rasp and RK3399 have HW acc in Linux. The Raspberry sucks to work with.

https://ifixit.org/blog/11986/iphones-are-allergic-to-helium/
 
LMAO, clowns and scientists shouldn't have an iPhone.
Background, to reduce the footprint, the quatz is replaced by an MEMS timing oscillators instead of a quartz. If this thingie gets now flushed with Helium, the MEMS micro-mechanics doesn't work properly anymore and the iPhone crashes.. Only solution:
 
 
Edit: might be interesting what happens when you flush your iPhone with Argon.. (heavier than air) Someone has one spare? I can test it..

Works in firefox. Even in Armbian. I don't know how. But it does. But Firefox does suck for surfing.
For that I use Vivaldi. There 1/3 lost frames in 1080p Youtube. Chromium 2/3 lost frames. Firefox 0 frames lost. All video works perfect. I even use it as video player on the NanoPi M4.
For me the NanoPi M4 is the perfect 2nd desktop pc. It's very fast. It's got an amazing heatsink. It's stable, haven't had 1 crash with it in hundreds of hours use. I've tried many different sbc's on there desktop capabillity's. The Odroid C2 was the best until the NanoPi M4.
Tinker board does ok in video, but many things don't work. I've tried it again this week, and it even got worse. I need 3 different OS'es to be able to do everything.
To my knowledge not many others than the C2, tinker, rasp and RK3399 have HW acc in Linux. The Raspberry sucks to work with.

I`ve got exactly the same adapter and it works immediatly here.
Armbian Bionic kernel 4.4.162-rockchip.
Are you using the volume control? Here it finds the adapter and puts the sound thru the moment I connect.

I`ve got exactly the same adapter and it works immediatly here.
Armbian Bionic kernel 4.4.162-rockchip.
Are you using the volume control? Here it finds the adapter and puts the sound thru the moment I connect.

Well, that is in a sense what is done now with "board families". All the boards in the same family share the kernel and most filesystem tweaks, and differ only in the device tree and some adjustments for specific hardware. But it is only possible when all the boards share the same SoC or a very close one. With completely different SoC's, that is not possible, each one needs a different kernel. Notice that all different boxes supported by balbes150's images have some Amlogic Meson SoC, and that is why they can use the same image with minor tweaks.

People of firefox don't care about Linux on ARM devices. It's been broken for a long time on armhf. Even on arm64 it crashes constantly.
This is a fork of Chromium. But better optimised for ARM. I don't know how, but on most arm devices the video playback is a lot better than Chromium. This without using hardware acceleration.

For example, on my NanoPi M4 I get 2/3 lost frames 1080p. While on Vivaldi it's only 1/3 lost frames.
I use it to surf on most devices since it's fast and stable.
Greetings.
 

It's quite cool. Not really multitasking. But instead of using delay what stops everything you check if the time has passed long enough to start a task. So you can do other tasks during that waiting time.
But when a task is busy you can't start another task. That 2nd task will start when the 1st task is done.

Very simple but effective. Why didn't anybody come up with this earlier?

I assume it comes with SPI, so.. testing a small display on breadboard is easy.. And my famous balance example.. normally I need the measured weights when I write lab journal on my normal computer.. so, display is not really needed on the balance.. it still has one.. I just need it stored.. It somehow replaces the god old paper..  okay I'm working on a RFID implementation as well.. but that's just to have some sort of an inventory system but that's future..
 
as soon as you integrate area under signals a regular python makes things a way easier.. python has cool modules for such funny stuff. Indeed a bunch of this stuff could be achieved with ESPs but you must be somehow a masochist to do it.

I don't think so, IMO the nanopi duo was somehow 'useless' due to crappy wifi. So without a carrier board you didn't had a sane solution to drive it headless. AP6212 will fix this mostly. Having a board which is breadboard capable by default makes it quite easy to set up some testing. And once your small 'pet project' works as expected you can even solder it to something like this:

or you etch your custom pcb for a few bucks (it's a way cheaper than it was in the past). Those RPi compatible headers always need an adapter or a custom made adapter or PCB to get it usable for such tasks. Still wonder why breadboard like hats aren't default for all those boards. IMO something like this:

should be in every boardmakers store by default (with the default size for their RPi a like boards). Sell them for 5 bucks each and you'll sell a bunch of them.
Don't get me wrong, the ESP32 is a great board (especially some of the drawbacks on the ESP8266 were properly solved, e.g 512kb ram is a great enhancement for micro-python on it). It's even possible now to have somehow a 'nice' web-interface on it. Storing data on the SPI 'somehow' works but it's not as convenient as on a 'average Armbian board'. My ESPs mostly cache data only for a short time and then send them over mqtt to a linux machine where you've great frameworks for handling those data.. most of it would be possible with an ESP as well (there's not much fancy numbers crushing) but I'm simply to lazy to program such stuff in micro-python or 'C++' (aka arduino for ESPs). As soon as you want a more enhanced web-interface you're soon getting to the ESPs limits (e.g. user authentication, graphs, getting out logs - everything is possible, but it needs a lot of work to achieve). Storing on SD-Cards on ESPs is somehow archaic.. It works but my I like to pull data from my stuff without rejecting the SD-Card and doing this on ESPs is IMO hacky.
 
+ camera interface
 
To summarize, it's a BPi-M2-Zero with different pinheader...

Works in firefox. Even in Armbian. I don't know how. But it does. But Firefox does suck for surfing.
For that I use Vivaldi. There 1/3 lost frames in 1080p Youtube. Chromium 2/3 lost frames. Firefox 0 frames lost. All video works perfect. I even use it as video player on the NanoPi M4.
For me the NanoPi M4 is the perfect 2nd desktop pc. It's very fast. It's got an amazing heatsink. It's stable, haven't had 1 crash with it in hundreds of hours use. I've tried many different sbc's on there desktop capabillity's. The Odroid C2 was the best until the NanoPi M4.
Tinker board does ok in video, but many things don't work. I've tried it again this week, and it even got worse. I need 3 different OS'es to be able to do everything.
To my knowledge not many others than the C2, tinker, rasp and RK3399 have HW acc in Linux. The Raspberry sucks to work with.

Up to @tkaiser for results on sbc-bench...
 
working on an addition - byte-unixbench and sorting out things... removing some gcc over optimizations, looking at threads...
 
https://github.com/sfx2000/byte-unixbench
 
It's a better bench than sysbench, and portable... Doing a -c 1 -1 and -c4 -i 1  keeps things short - however - letting it run thru pushes heat/throttles...
 
UnixBench is interesting from a system perspective...
 
RPI3 B Plus vs Tinker....
 
Tinker is 15 pounds of power in a 5 pound sack - RPi3 B+ is a CPU that can do better that it is with raspbian....
 
Tinkerboard - Cortex-A12/A17 - Armbian ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Benchmark Run: Sat Oct 20 2018 17:02:37 - 17:31:22 4 CPUs in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests System Benchmarks Index Values               BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0    8709974.2    746.4 Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0       1031.4    187.5 Execl Throughput                                 43.0       1095.7    254.8 File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks          3960.0      91960.7    232.2 File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks            1655.0      26583.4    160.6 File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks          5800.0     246267.0    424.6 Pipe Throughput                               12440.0     149851.8    120.5 Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0      25850.9     64.6 Process Creation                                126.0       2429.0    192.8 Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4       2061.9    486.3 Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0        432.0    720.1 System Call Overhead                          15000.0     442992.8    295.3                                                                    ======== System Benchmarks Index Score                                         258.2 System Benchmarks Index Values               BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0   13538575.0   1160.1 Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0       1982.4    360.4 Execl Throughput                                 43.0       1752.7    407.6 File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks          3960.0      87122.4    220.0 File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks            1655.0      22948.6    138.7 File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks          5800.0     281302.7    485.0 Pipe Throughput                               12440.0     321233.1    258.2 Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0      40012.9    100.0 Process Creation                                126.0       3820.3    303.2 Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4       3399.0    801.7 Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0        433.6    722.7 System Call Overhead                          15000.0     952658.0    635.1                                                                    ======== System Benchmarks Index Score                                         373.1 Rpi 3B+ - Cortex-A53 - VCOS/ThreadX - Raspian ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Benchmark Run: Sat Oct 20 2018 17:02:32 - 17:30:38 4 CPUs in system; running 1 parallel copy of tests System Benchmarks Index Values               BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0    4324740.1    370.6 Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0        957.4    174.1 Execl Throughput                                 43.0        908.8    211.4 File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks          3960.0     140312.9    354.3 File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks            1655.0      40618.4    245.4 File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks          5800.0     353296.2    609.1 Pipe Throughput                               12440.0     280908.2    225.8 Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0      50734.2    126.8 Process Creation                                126.0       2212.2    175.6 Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4       1780.5    419.9 Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0        575.7    959.5 System Call Overhead                          15000.0     594784.0    396.5                                                                    ======== System Benchmarks Index Score                                         302.2 System Benchmarks Index Values               BASELINE       RESULT    INDEX Dhrystone 2 using register variables         116700.0   17082008.4   1463.8 Double-Precision Whetstone                       55.0       3803.4    691.5 Execl Throughput                                 43.0       2240.8    521.1 File Copy 1024 bufsize 2000 maxblocks          3960.0     228921.9    578.1 File Copy 256 bufsize 500 maxblocks            1655.0      62777.0    379.3 File Copy 4096 bufsize 8000 maxblocks          5800.0     578721.9    997.8 Pipe Throughput                               12440.0    1112342.2    894.2 Pipe-based Context Switching                   4000.0      98478.8    246.2 Process Creation                                126.0       4789.7    380.1 Shell Scripts (1 concurrent)                     42.4       4464.7   1053.0 Shell Scripts (8 concurrent)                      6.0        589.0    981.7 System Call Overhead                          15000.0    2289227.2   1526.2                                                                    ======== System Benchmarks Index Score                                         705.6  

Gah - watched the video - and a lot of problems across the board (pardon the pun).
 
Different kernels, built with different versions of GCC, userland (for example, Raspbian userland is all ARMv6 with exception of the kernel for the A7/A53 boards)....
 
(I wouldn't have included the any of the Pi's in the set of boards being evaluated because of the userland - <soapbox> nothing against Pi's in general, one must appreciate that 35M+ boards means they're doing something right, and they've spawned an entire HW/SW ecosystem around their platform, that's ok - and that ecosystem has in turn made affordable ARM boards available for hobbyists, makers, and developers - before Pi, if one wanted to do development around ARM, boards were expensive, and SW support was very limited to the vendor BSP - these days, it's a lot more open - not perfect, but much better than it was</soapbox>)
 
Rock64 vs Odroid XU4 - Quad A53 vs A7/A15 big.LITTLE - the big.LITTLE is a challenge for the scheduler, and depending on the BSP from the OEM, it's easy to get wrong, where threads can land on the lesser preferred core, this is an issue even on Android, where much work has been done outside of the mainline kernels (ARM and Qualcomm, I know they've done a lot of research there, but much of that has not been pushed back to mainline).
 
In my experience, with supported boards (for me this is Tinker and NanoPi NEO), Armbian is generally faster than the vendor's images - and that's doing Byte-Unixbench, which is discounted because it is compiler sensitive - that being said, it's still a useful tool when comparing apples to apples (e.g. tweaking settings on the same OS/Platform, but comparing Platform A to Platform B, one has to take the results with a grain of salt)
 
I haven't found a lot of evidence of cheating by any of the SBC vendors - it's really hard to do with FOSS, compared to Android, where cheating has occurred with certain OEM's and specific benchmark APK's - Android has enough hooks to enable this kind of cheating in any event.
 
sbc-bench, in my humble opinion, is a good benchmark for supported boards - as long as the boards being compared are all on the same version of Armbian - and this is made clear in the script comments (please review the script on github, and @tkaiser has been pushing updates, so if one has cloned the repo, it's worthwhile to do a git pull to get the latest revision.
 
To answer your question about the different versions of Cortex...
 
Small Cores - A7, A53 are the low power cores focused on efficiency
Big Cores - A15, A12(A17), A72 - big cores... 
 
Think of it like Atom (Small Core) vs Core i3/i5/i7 (Big Core) - even at the same clock, the big core is going to get more work done, but perhaps at the cost of heat, so thermal solution needs to be considered.

as far as I can see, the same wifi chip as for the firefly is populated on this board.. so by using the same drivers, and ensure it's properly defined in DT chances are high(er) that it should work 'as expected'. Using the same kernel as @hjc used for the firefly..
 
GbE is also the same, then it should be just adjustments in case DT definition changed slightly..  And if it performs badly:
https://github.com/ayufan-rock64/linux-build/blob/master/recipes/gmac-delays-test/range-test
 
well you've to be in case you want to give it a try.. I'll only help you.. build and test is then up to you... I prefer to mess with DT rather than fixing then broken things after the image is created.. From the sources, this is mostly a reference board with a few additional stuff populated (http://vamrs.com/sapphire-excavator).. There's not much an reason why things should not work. 
 
doesn't need years, DT is good enough described in the documentation to learn it.. 

interesting that they want to dive into the Intel world.. Well I assume it's less work to maintain (e.g. just fire up a recent ubuntu and you're done no hacky arm digging in u-boot or kernel ). CPU reminds me to the old AMDs 10/15 years ago where you always had to be afraid to kill it by mounting the cooler (kill one of those small caps on it and silver thermal paste was the standard so shorting was also an option ). A nice homeserver/NAS thingie for those who don't want to deal with arm. They planed funny cases.. e.g 'iteration iv':

 
but consumption looks IMO impressive (I've to admit, I've no clue how much recent intel low-level CPUs normally need - my last intel was a 7'' atom tablet with 16GB ram and a crappy display for 40$ on discount  the tablet collects dust and the USB charger is used to power an OPi Zero - they sent it with a good powering cable  ) 
 

Under 20$
the Raspberry Pi Zero W for 10$. It's very slow with only 1 core at 1Ghz. You can watch youtube with kiosk browser. And surf, very slowly.
The Banana Pi M2 Zero for 20$. A lot faster. 4x1.2Ghz. You need a good heatsink for it or it overheats constantly. Not very good video playback.
For 25$ the Rock64. Faster, better, but no wifi on-board.
A raspberry pi 3b+ is 35$ and again a bit better.
For your use case an Odroid C2 is perfect. Good Youtube playback, fast, doesn't overheat, ... That's about 50$

Those or the ones I have, and I can recommend. But for 20$ you will not get much.
You need to know that many sbc's don't have hardware acceleration for video playback in browsers. So expect choppy and low resolution video with most. The Odroid C2 does this best in Linux.
Also if a board only has 512MB ram then you want be able to open many tabs.

FriendlyArm also has got some interesting cheap boards.

I review sbc's on their desktop capabilities. Of all those I've got a video, except the C2.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpv7NFr0-9AB5xoklh3Snhg

That NanoPi M4 looks really great, even though it's still pretty new and software support is still in the works. I might be willing to take a gamble on this board since I suspect the Rockchip 3399 will become fairly well supported.
 
I forgot to mention that small form factor is important to me as my project is concealing a wifi-enabled server in an RGB accent lamp which I will carry around with me while living an "ultramobile" lifestyle So, the NanoPi M4 wins on form factor as well. I suspect I could arrive at a tolerable thermal situation by some combination of a copper shim to the heatsink, mounting non-horizontally and building the enclosure with convection in mind, and perhaps some tinkering with clock speeds as needed.
 
Looks like wifi might still be a bit dodgy. I suppose I'll have to take my chances with that and fall back on a known good USB adapter if support is problematic for longer than I have to wait.
 
Thanks so much for the pointers!

This is a good review of the Nano Pi M4.