Research Rock Pi S, RK3308 CPU, is it supported by anything?

ballsystemlord · August 10, 2019

Recently, a new SBC, the Rock Pi S by Radxa, was launched.

Here's it's wiki page: https://wiki.radxa.com/RockpiS

It's a 4 core A35 design. I'm debating getting one, but I can't find any information anywhere as to whether or not it's supported on Linux, or Armbian. Of course, if it's not listed in the download section it's not supported, but there's a difference between, "I need to add 100 lines of code and it will work." to "Geez, I need to redesign most of the Linux kernel after pulling my hair out."

I did search the sunxi wiki and the local armbian wiki without success.

Anyone know anything?

Thanks!

JMCC · August 10, 2019

Un the page you linked, there is a download of a Debian Stretch image. It looks like the official Rockchip Linaro image. I haven't tested that particular board because I don't have it, but at least you know that you have a working image to start from.

Since Armbian supports already other Rockchip SoC's, there are good chances that you can make Armbian work in the board, if you know what you are doing, with a config based on some of the supported RK boards. But I cannot guarantee how hard it will be.

Tido · August 10, 2019

4 hours ago, ballsystemlord said:

the sunxi wiki

is aimed at ALLWINNER SoC, not the ones from Rockchip

ballsystemlord · August 11, 2019

On 8/10/2019 at 2:41 AM, JMCC said:

On the page you linked, there is a download of a Debian Stretch image. It looks like the official Rockchip Linaro image. I haven't tested that particular board because I don't have it, but at least you know that you have a working image to start from.

Since Armbian supports already other Rockchip SoC's, there are good chances that you can make Armbian work in the board, if you know what you are doing, with a config based on some of the supported RK boards. But I cannot guarantee how hard it will be.

Cool, I hadn't thought to check that because I assumed, perhaps foolishly, that being a new SoC it would need a "special" kernel if it supported plain old linux.

On 8/10/2019 at 3:58 AM, Tido said:

is aimed at ALLWINNER SoC, not the ones from Rockchip

My bad. What's a better place for information on Rockchip SoCs?

Thanks!

chwe · August 11, 2019

45 minutes ago, ballsystemlord said:

My bad. What's a better place for information on Rockchip SoCs?

Thanks!

http://opensource.rock-chips.com/wiki_Main_Page

mostly around px30 cause it's the most similar one.

48 minutes ago, ballsystemlord said:

Cool, I hadn't thought to check that because I assumed, perhaps foolishly, that being a new SoC it would need a "special" kernel if it supported plain old linux.

the kernel adjustments are likely minor, rockchip64 might be probably the best starter, for sure a bit kernelconfig adjustments are needed. maybe a few patches cause ayufans repo didn't merge everything from rockchip 4.4

adjustments in u-boot are for sure also needed. obviously a board, a proper dt and a bit of time to see what raxda changed in their kernelfork for this board.

On 8/10/2019 at 5:53 AM, ballsystemlord said:

Of course, if it's not listed in the download section it's not supported, but there's a difference between, "I need to add 100 lines of code and it will work." to "Geez, I need to redesign most of the Linux kernel after pulling my hair out."

well, code which you'll have to write is likely below 100 lines of code.. but figure out what you'll have to patch and merge from other kernels to ensure things work properly (on a kernel level) can still be hours of work.

Nagy István · January 9, 2020

So the main Armbian page now lists Rock Pi S and has an unofficial image. Rock Pi S page

I can't see any information about what works and what not. I'm thinking about purchasing this board. Can somebody tell me how well it's supported?

I'm using Armbian on my Cubieboard 1 at the moment, and I'm really fond of it, so it's a nice pro if it's supported there.

piter75 · January 10, 2020

8 hours ago, Nagy István said:

Can somebody tell me how well it's supported?

See my post regarding Armbian for Rock Pi S on Radxa's forum.

Since then:

kernel was bumped to 4.4.207
wifi is supported

Bluetooth does not work (may be quite easy to fix) and audio features are not tested.

I use it as low power consumption server for MQTT / zigbee2mqtt / homebridge combo and it going on for weeks.

Preliminary support for rk3308 is coming to mainline in 5.5 and for RockPiS probably in 5.6.

I will probably prepare a "dev" kernel with one of 5.5 RCs soon.

Nagy István · January 10, 2020

That's great, home automation is my goal as well :) Thank you!

manuti · January 24, 2020

Thanks @piter75 for your excellent work!!!
Another question. Anyone as try to attach a LCD display with armbian?

I tried the recipe from here https://forum.radxa.com/t/how-to-use-gpio-to-connect-raspberry-pi-display/1645 but using amrbian as OS. I made some changes and try every single option. Display is ON but I can see the cli on it.

piter75 · January 24, 2020

3 hours ago, manuti said:

Display is ON but I can see the cli on it

I did not test it with LCD but... looking at the last post in the discussion you linked one cannot expect it to display cli on LCD without programming it themselves as it is using SPI and not the DSI interface.

manuti · January 24, 2020

Sorry, this is not the post I was talking is this on the official wiki https://wiki.radxa.com/RockpiS/hardware/display

And also mention that I have an SPI LCD display, not DSI.

Regards.

chwe · January 24, 2020

from docs.. it looks they use DT overlays... I don't think @piter75 implemented thin into 4.4 (it would be the first 64bit rockchip 4.4 kernel with dt overlay support - I did it for rk3288 back then to get both cameras supported).

Decompile the DT deactivate the nodes they do with the overlay.. activate the spi node and fill it with the data from the waveshare node and recompile it.

piter75 · January 24, 2020

2 hours ago, chwe said:

I don't think @piter75 implemented thin into 4.4

Well, the overlays actually work in this kernel 😜

It's just that they need to be Armbian style and not Radxa's so overlays for waveshare LCDs need to be named "rockchip-*.dtb, placed in /boot/dtb/rockchip/overlays folder and referenced in /boot/armbianEnv.txt's overlays stanza.

Dynamic overlays are not supported.

ashthespy · January 30, 2020

On 1/10/2020 at 6:54 AM, piter75 said:

See my post regarding Armbian for Rock Pi S on Radxa's forum.

Since then:

kernel was bumped to 4.4.207

wifi is supported

Bluetooth does not work (may be quite easy to fix) and audio features are not tested.

I use it as low power consumption server for MQTT / zigbee2mqtt / homebridge combo and it going on for weeks.

Preliminary support for rk3308 is coming to mainline in 5.5 and for RockPiS probably in 5.6.

I will probably prepare a "dev" kernel with one of 5.5 RCs soon.

@piter75 I have been playing around with mainline and the RockPiS (https://github.com/ashthespy/linux-rockchip/commits/rk3308-rockpis)
Have a booting board with the wired networking and console. Rest of it is quite sketchy.
Edit: opened up a PR so more people can play with it - https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/1773

Suggestions are welcome, as my experience with kernel stuff is quite low and I am learning as I go..

piter75 · January 30, 2020

1 hour ago, spy king said:

Have a booting board with the wired networking and console. Rest of it is quite sketchy.
Edit: opened up a PR so more people can play with it - https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/1773

This is a great work and a good start for the mainline dev target on ROCK Pi S!

I will play with the branch a bit over the weekend.

ashthespy · January 30, 2020

On 1/30/2020 at 8:40 PM, piter75 said:

This is a great work and a good start for the mainline dev target on ROCK Pi S!

I will play with the branch a bit over the weekend.

There is quite some noise with me trying to get the i2s up and running, will clean that up into a new branch soon.

In the meantime, will also try and get the RTL8723DS up and running. I only found Bluetooth support in mainline for it, but no wifi drivers - but I could be looking in the wrong place.
Else will try adding https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8723ds to compilation-prepare.sh and try and get some WiFi up and running.

EDIT: Made some(?) progress with the WiFi, got the kernel to see the device, ~~but not much more.~~ Seems to work find, need to test more!
https://pastebin.com/1uuQdKE0

piter75 · January 30, 2020

8 minutes ago, spy king said:

will clean that up into a new branch soon

Eventually I would like to end up with a tag from linux stable repo (even if it is -rcX) and a series of patches but it is more flexible to start with a custom repo now.

ashthespy · February 4, 2020

Managed to make some more progress - networking seems to work, plus ported across the audio codec so there is analogue out. Still need to get I2S working, am at my wits end there.

 ____   ___   ____ _  __  ____  _   ____
|  _ \ / _ \ / ___| |/ / |  _ \(_) / ___|
| |_) | | | | |   | ' /  | |_) | | \___ \
|  _ <| |_| | |___| . \  |  __/| |  ___) |
|_| \_\\___/ \____|_|\_\ |_|   |_| |____/

Welcome to Armbian buster with Linux 5.5.0-rockchip64

System load:   1.14 0.39 0.14   Up time:       6 min
Memory usage:  17 % of 471MB    IP:
Usage of /:    2% of 59G

New to Armbian? Check the documentation first: https://docs.armbian.com


You are using an Armbian preview build !!!

This image is provided AS IS with NO WARRANTY and NO END USER SUPPORT!.

pumuckl · March 24, 2020

Hello,

I know no support for this Board, i just have some questions.

I freshly installed "Armbian_20.02.5_Rockpi-s_bionic_legacy_4.4.207_minimal"

after apt update, apt upgrade and reboot

I cant access via ssh

can you confirm this?

Do you add the radxa apt, in armbian?

greetings

piter75 · March 24, 2020

1 hour ago, pumuckl said:

can you confirm this?

Unfortunately... yes. I did not test the upgrade path with latest changes

At this point, if you can discard your install, you can download latest image (v20.02.06 / v4.4.217).

If you want to recover your install you need to mount the SD in some other PC or SBC and modify "boot/armbianEnv.txt" as follows:

add line overlays=uart0
change overlay_prefix line to overlay_prefix=rk3308

I will be more careful next time...

As for the Radxa repos I don't use them.

pumuckl · March 25, 2020

Thx for your help.

Im sry too say, but with this build I cant connect vis ssh.

I burned the img 3 times too the sd.

piter75 · March 26, 2020

10 hours ago, pumuckl said:

Im sry too say, but with this build I cant connect vis ssh.

Ok, found the cultprit in the patching of network driver.

There is v20.02.7 version available in the download area that fixes it.

pumuckl · March 26, 2020

This build runs well, thanks

Cloud you show me a way to use usb camera, i2c or the gpio system?

Should I wait until its include in Armbain or should I use the Radxa apt with armbian?

Or is there a way to compile something?

To use a usb camera is on the Top of my list, I would like to make some test with ffmpeg, maybe hwaccl video streaming.

the rest is not important at the moment.

greetings

manuti · June 2, 2020

Good news!!! Rock Pi S is now officially supported (I see today but I don't when started)

And also with kernel 5.6 https://www.armbian.com/rockpi-s/#kernels-archive-all

cz172638 · June 2, 2020

1 hour ago, manuti said:

Good news!!! Rock Pi S is now officially supported (I see today but I don't when started)

And also with kernel 5.6 https://www.armbian.com/rockpi-s/#kernels-archive-all

unfortunately 5.6 image is not reliably booting on 256MB rockpi s

Igor · June 2, 2020

3 hours ago, cz172638 said:

unfortunately 5.6 image is not reliably booting on 256MB rockpi s

Did you miss the big banner on the download page saying that Focal images are broken? Or is the other one also broken?

manuti · June 2, 2020

I can't help with 256MB issues I only have a 512MB unit.

I see the banner so I downloaded the Debian Server image.

Igor · June 2, 2020

11 minutes ago, manuti said:

I can't help with 256MB issues I only have a 512MB unit.

I see the banner so I downloaded the Debian Server image.

Debian server with 5.6.y is working on your board, right?

cz172638 · June 3, 2020

16 hours ago, Igor said:

Debian server with 5.6.y is working on your board, right?

no i used buster server 5.6 image

manuti · June 3, 2020

On 6/2/2020 at 8:08 PM, Igor said:

Debian server with 5.6.y is working on your board, right?

Yes, but no Wi-Fi.

I pass the test from: https://github.com/armbian/testings/

Any additional information?

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Research Rock Pi S, RK3308 CPU, is it supported by anything?

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