KevinA Posted December 28, 2015 Posted December 28, 2015 Then you've fulfilled what 'the community' already expects: just another broken OS image for a new Allwinner SoC without 2D/3D acceleration and no HW accelerated video encoding/decoding)? I have a drawer full of broken promises, what's a few more. CHIP/Pine64 and many others as long as the public believe the marketing gerbils it's just more pet SBC ROCKs` (pun on Radxa). BUT if you have a use for a headless linux box it is a bonanza! There is no way for me to put a 1Ghz CPU with Hardware Floating Point, SD card, memory and flash on a six layer board for less than $50, for $15 the Pine64 is a deal. Not as good of a deal as the PI Zero or CHIP but the Pine64 is a toy to play with the latest version of Android on the cheap and throwaway or use as a door stop after Android 6 hits.
Guest technik007_cz Posted December 28, 2015 Posted December 28, 2015 I thought only people from far east do not know how to properly test devices before put in manufacturing of millions copies. I do not know why money and marketing must everytime win battle where thinner or smaller means better (or 32bit vs 64bit, 1GB ram vs 2GB ram, octacore VS dualcore ). I hope somebody will complain what bought and will want money back.
tkaiser Posted December 28, 2015 Posted December 28, 2015 BUT if you have a use for a headless linux box it is a bonanza! I tend to disagree. It might be interesting if you're interested in A64 or Aarch64 in general (then you're either clueless and think '64 bit' is better/faster/higher/cooler because it's twice as 'much' as '32 bit' without having any clue what's going on... or you're a developer interested in Aarch64). In reality the '64 bit' the PineA64 is advertised with is just... marketing. You won't benefit from it as an end user at all with the A64 due to limited amount of accessible physical memory and the relatively bad performance the A64 shows (look at Remix Mini reviews -- A64 is maybe the slowest Cortex-A53 implementation available combined with one of the slowest GPUs -- the dual core Mali400MP2 from 2008) In case you're interested in more available I/O bandwidth (or working HW accelerated video decoding in Linux and also working 2D/3D GPU acceleration in Linux) then choosing Allwinner's H3 might be the better choice. Since this SoC is older (read as 'longer available') and the community got all this stuff working in the meantime and mainlining efforts look also good (not to be expected to happen with the A64 anytime soon). You get boards with H3 currently for the same price as the Pine. And an 'Orange Pi One' is announced for less than $10 and to be available soon. But this SoC is just '32 bit' so definitely a no-go for the excited kickstarter crowd Regarding the '64 bit' hype: I already ordered a 'Geekbox' and as soon as the ODROID-C2 can be ordered here I will get that device too. But in the long run A64/H64/R18 (and other upcoming members of the 64 bit sun50i family) might be the SoCs receiving the best Linux support due to the strong linux-sunxi community. BTW: I'm still wondering how it's possible that thermal and consumption behaviour of the A64 used on the PineA64 can be that contradictory. The other Allwinner SoCs I'm familiar with idle at 16°C (A20), 19°C (H3) or 22°C (A83T) above ambient temperature when driven with sane dvfs settings. According to PineA64's marketing video the A64's idle consumption is higher compared to the aforementioned SoCs while the temperature after 30 minutes gaming is just a few degrees above 30°C (measured in an usual office with Miss Marketing sitting nearby the board and not a climate chamber). Really curious how Allwinner achieved this...
KevinA Posted December 29, 2015 Posted December 29, 2015 @tkaiser Don't care if it was a 32 bit or 64 bit: $15 for a Android 5.x board and add a 5" touch display to the header you have something to play with. Then I visited your Geekbox 'RK3368' that appears to be something worth spending time with but my time with Rockchip has not been, pleasant. While at that Web site (CNX-Soft) I noticed an article about ODRID-XU4 running Android 6 with USB GPS dongle support (and they appear to have the GPU working with Linux). After you get the ODROID-C2 working I might look but for now the $74 ODRID-XU4 running Android 6 sounds like fun. The Pine64/CHIP/Orange PI/Banana PI, PI Zero all have applications waiting to be found, a daughter board I'm working on will either be a Geo-logger, RTK 1cm survey grade GPS or a Fused IMU/GPS/Future Position forecaster with 8 PWM channels and 4G LTE support. The good news is the PI 40W header appears to work on all but the CHIP so I did a layout for it. I hope someone gets a Pine64 and does measure the power, while it is doing something.
Tido Posted December 29, 2015 Posted December 29, 2015 I suppose they play angry bird in ANDROID. This software should be optimized for this SoC. This game is rather slow with little changes than i.e. a car race - one CPU & VPU can then be possible @ 2,5W So I stay with my conclusion: a game is not a benchmark
tkaiser Posted December 29, 2015 Posted December 29, 2015 a game is not a benchmark This is such a simple exercise: You are a marketing person. You want to show that your device draws just 2.5W while being used. In case that's true you can produce a short video showing the device being in use (playing a game, decoding a video, running a benchmark -- whatever) and at the same time the consumption. It's easy since the equipment is already there and you can show both the PSU's display and the PineA64 being busy. They chose the opposite. The PSU's display can only be seen in the video while the PineA64 is totally idle. Simple question: What does this mean? Apart from that: there was another kickstarter campaign for an A64 based device: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jidetech/remix-mini-the-worlds-first-true-android-pc?ref=nav_search They're already shipping. These devices are intended to run Remix OS, that's simply Android optimised for desktop. And they ship with a 5V/3A PSU with barrel plug. For a reason. While the Pine people claim 5V/1A are enough: http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=75&pid=407#pid407 1
Tido Posted December 29, 2015 Posted December 29, 2015 Well, these guys are going to China, have real developers see 1
KevinA Posted December 30, 2015 Posted December 30, 2015 I looked into CHIP's power design: The total current for the AXP209 ISPOUT is 2,500ma: AXP209 Spec sheet. ISPOUT FEEDS The below devices LDO5 50ma LDO4 200 LDO3 200 LDO2 200 AVCC-3V LDO1 30ma LDO total 680ma DCDC2 CPU-1V2 1200ma DCDC3 INT-1V2 1500ma DCDC total 2800ma LDO stand alone ISPOUT supplies DRAM-VCC 1.6V 1000ma VCC-3V3 3.3V 1000ma VCC-5V 5V DC-DC Step up Limit 1500ma the thermal limit is 450mwatt SA-LDO total 3500ma LDO total 680ma DCDC total 2800ma SA-LDO total 3500ma Total 6980ma or 6.980 Amp VCC5 feeds: Total 1,000ma VBUS Mini (called MINI in the schematic) source or provider 500ma VBUS A 500ma VCC-WIFI is LDO3+LDO4 tied together or 400ma ? LDO3: 0.7-3 .5 V adjustable, 25mV/step, Drive capacity 200mA LDO4: low noise LDO, 1.8V-3.3V adjustable 100mV/step, drive capability of 200mA There is not enough information in the product specs to determine is tying the outputs of LDO regulators is a, smart idea. REALTEK RTL8723 WiFi only: TX Mode: (Throughput mode) 170mA (MCS7/BW40/13dBm) RX Mode: (Throughput mode) 130mA (MCS7/BW40/-60dBm) From J4 (The USB Micro/Mini connector) the USBVBUS travels to ACIN1 and ACIN2 pins 34&35 of the AXP209, there are no devices between the AXP209 and the USB connector, if you can get the 1000ma (Depends on the manufacture 500 to 1800ma) rated connector to feed the full amount of current that the AXP206 can handle, 2500ma, you would have all the power the PMU unit can deal with. You can hang a 100 amp 5 volt supply on PIN 1 GND and PIN 2 CHG-IN but it is hooked directly to ACIN1 and ACIN2 pins 34&35 and must go through the AXP206 PMU. The issue is the stand alone LDO and the Bluetooth/WiFi ALL get their power from the AXP206 instead of allowing them to source from raw voltage and use the AXP206 to enable their external LDO's. The idea of the PMU is to manage where power comes from and shut stuff off when it isn't being used to save battery life. The PMU does NOT merge power sources together, it politely switches to new sources without shutting the system down. As seen from above if the LDO standalone devices and the Bluetooth/WiFi were powered by RAW voltage the AXP206 would have some 'head room'. On the NEXT/THING schematic under POWER/PMU there is a list of current used:7850ma Didn't somebody ask about this? 7.850 Amps The AXP206 can sink 2.5 amp and you have exceeded that by three times, when you engineer something it is suppose to be the opposite, the source is three times the consumption. I sent the above to Pines 'engineer'. Next effect is the PCB will have to go through another REV to fix this, people are seeing the effect of brownout with only keyboard dongles plugged in and the people at Pine64 are telling them to add a powered hub!
Tido Posted December 30, 2015 Posted December 30, 2015 Hi I am a bit confused. You start with: CHIP's power design and AXP209, then you switch to AXP206 and ending with a quote about the Pine64. I don't understand whether you changed devices (C.H.I.P / Pine64) somewhere in between or what you want to express. Can you edit your posting, maybe? 1
Tido Posted January 18, 2016 Posted January 18, 2016 Weird, Kevin never answered. Anyway, by accident I came across this update - it talks about many many many disappointed backers who were hoping for LINUX, but it will be running ANDROID only = Remix OS will be offered as an option for the PINE64. Who needs 4K playback in 2016 ? You, a loyal backer, and 23,500+ others, have pledged over $1,000,000 to make PINE64 a reality. Well, many of them are just looking for a bargain. C.H.I.P at least hired a real Linux guy to help them - I cannot read about this on PINE 1
tkaiser Posted January 19, 2016 Posted January 19, 2016 C.H.I.P at least hired a real Linux guy to help them - I cannot read about this on PINE The C.H.I.P. people contracted with free-electrons for Mainline kernel support and hired the only US employee formerly working for Allwinner. And Linux (kernel 4.4) runs already on Pine64: http://irclog.whitequark.org/linux-sunxi/2016-01-18-- mainly because the A64 is a H3 with Cortex-A53 cores more or less. That means combining Allwinner's u-boot with Allwinner's 3.10.65 kernel with any Linux rootfs shouldn't be a problem at all (which is some sort of a problem -- see below) Obviously the strategies regarding announcements and OS support are different. We'll see what that means in the long run. I still fear for the Pine64 backers that they get flooded with a bunch of crappy Linux OS images and hope the Pine guys are smart enough to concentrate on one or two OS releases that receive full support (by whom?) to avoid crappyness. Otherwise situation could be like with Banana Pi M3 today: Many OS images all being broken more or less since the vendor fails to provide update mechanisms for the relevant parts (fixes for u-boot, sys_config.fex and kernel) 1
Guest Tim_N Posted January 20, 2016 Posted January 20, 2016 I've just read through your comments that seem to be very knowledgeable and cancelled my pledge. I think these issues should be addressed before making such promises on their funding pages. I was only looking to get this because I wanted fully supported ubuntu (mainly to run plex and transcode a stream) and think this will fall very short of my expectations. I imagine that the Raspberry Pi 2 will likely do the best job of this at the current time (even though it's likely as not underpowered for the job!) The C.H.I.P. people contracted with free-electrons for Mainline kernel support and hired the only US employee formerly working for Allwinner. And Linux (kernel 4.4) runs already on Pine64: http://irclog.whitequark.org/linux-sunxi/2016-01-18-- mainly because the A64 is a H3 with Cortex-A53 cores more or less. That means combining Allwinner's u-boot with Allwinner's 3.10.65 kernel with any Linux rootfs shouldn't be a problem at all (which is some sort of a problem -- see below) Obviously the strategies regarding announcements and OS support are different. We'll see what that means in the long run. I still fear for the Pine64 backers that they get flooded with a bunch of crappy Linux OS images and hope the Pine guys are smart enough to concentrate on one or two OS releases that receive full support (by whom?) to avoid crappyness. Otherwise situation could be like with Banana Pi M3 today: Many OS images all being broken more or less since the vendor fails to provide update mechanisms for the relevant parts (fixes for u-boot, sys_config.fex and kernel)
Guest videogu Posted January 21, 2016 Posted January 21, 2016 I've just read through your comments that seem to be very knowledgeable and cancelled my pledge. I think these issues should be addressed before making such promises on their funding pages. I was only looking to get this because I wanted fully supported ubuntu (mainly to run plex and transcode a stream) and think this will fall very short of my expectations. I imagine that the Raspberry Pi 2 will likely do the best job of this at the current time (even though it's likely as not underpowered for the job!) I personally stay away from ARM CPUs on Plex as I am getting x265 encoded H265 content in so I can bit-starve them and save a bunch of storage space. But I am not really thinking straight, x264 is a polished product, faster to encode and will be used due to support/licensing reasons for a long time to come. I guess I'm a little special to be using HEVC but it's no surprise that all ARM CPUs will die upon meeting these, as well as if you use HIgh bit-depth H.264
tkaiser Posted January 23, 2016 Posted January 23, 2016 Great news: My Pine64+ dev sample arrived. Due to advanced packaging techniques the position of components could easily be explored without opening the sleeve: And here you can see Eular + Ext connector: Serial console output from first (and also last ) boot attempt: http://pastebin.com/9NfD8FxX 2
Rui Ribeiro Posted January 23, 2016 Posted January 23, 2016 You actually tried to boot that? LOL Thanks for all the comments, I would like to buy an SbC to complement my Lamobo R1, but still very unsure of what to buy. Ideally it would be 64 bits and support FreeBSD. And I would prefer a MIPS to a ARM...but I would settle in a good ARM64 running Armbian. Yep, not that easy, I know. 1
tkaiser Posted January 24, 2016 Posted January 24, 2016 I would like to buy an SbC to complement my Lamobo R1, but still very unsure of what to buy. Ideally it would be 64 bits and support FreeBSD. And I would prefer a MIPS to a ARM...but I would settle in a good ARM64 running Armbian. Yep, not that easy, I know. No idea regarding MIPS but when you look for cheap Cortex-A53 boards, the Pine64+, Orange Pi 3 (H64 based) or the upcoming ODROID C2 might be worth a look (or any S905 based TV box).
Tido Posted January 24, 2016 Posted January 24, 2016 Great news: My Pine64+ dev sample arrived. Serial console output from first (and also last ) boot attempt: http://pastebin.com/9NfD8FxX It is sad, that they did such a bad job in packaging. Is this now the shippment from your posting mentioned before ? It doesn't say delivered Does the PCB say which version it is?
Guest Niceproduct Posted January 25, 2016 Posted January 25, 2016 If that is how my package is going to be treated when paying 12 USD for shipping from China no thanks I'm not buying there. I have anti-static bags that arrived with other PCBs that I have thrown, too bad, maybe I could send some to them so they could use it since it's obviously too costly for 12 dollars shipping? Looking for a device that can power my small website for $40 dollars or less, was considering a RPi 2 to do the job but heard that some other device could be fun. But considering all these strange boards going around I am scared, not only is it a gamble on support but some of these boards look like their main target is (excuse me) morons who want to throw money in their pockets for a useless product. ARM64? What the heck is this. Orange Pi PC was the closest I've found but it has no mainline. Maybe I should stay with RPi except that puts me back at 70 dollars, not that blowing up the budget with $20 extra matters but I got the feeling I'm paying a premium for something here. I probably want the one with the best CPU/RAM no reason to have GPU if I do any video its probably purely CPU based transcoding.
Tido Posted January 25, 2016 Posted January 25, 2016 Well, TK was supposed to receive a review board - so carton box and such may have not been ready at that stage.Although the boards have lousy software support, the box in which I received it were always appropriate. Go for the A20Banana Pi BPI - M1 Dual-core orBanana Pi BPI - M1+ Dual-core it is cheap and with SATA connector. Look here for more details
Guest Niceproduct Posted January 25, 2016 Posted January 25, 2016 Well, TK was supposed to receive a review board - so carton box and such may have not been ready at that stage. Although the boards have lousy software support, the box in which I received it were always appropriate. Go for the A20 Banana Pi BPI - M1 Dual-core or Banana Pi BPI - M1+ Dual-core it is cheap and with SATA connector. Look here for more details Nice, I saw the M1+ for exactly $40 which was my budget. Wi-Fi module is included though, useless one? I wonder how MicroUSB which barely powers my RPi to the point where if I attach a Wi-Fi adapter to it the current it will draw is so high it will actually get kernel panic and I'm not sure if its stable after boot. It is also going to power SATA through MicroUSB? For me that sounds too good to be true
Guest shory707 Posted January 25, 2016 Posted January 25, 2016 so anybody got a sample now? ... the iot stuff would be interesting
Guest shory707 Posted January 25, 2016 Posted January 25, 2016 so anybody got a sample now? ... the iot stuff would be interesting
Guest Niceproduct Posted January 25, 2016 Posted January 25, 2016 so anybody got a sample now? ... the iot stuff would be interesting Yeah, tkaiser here said he got a broken sample possibly from them not finishing the packaging? Need to see from the later sending if they have packed it properly. Also there seems to be a problem where the captcha breaks and it double posts. Happened to me too
tkaiser Posted January 25, 2016 Posted January 25, 2016 Anyone interested in Pine64 should monitor the linux-sunxi wiki page: http://linux-sunxi.org/Pine64 They admitted that packaging of developer samples wasn't that good and will improve that. Many devs already received their samples and development progress is really fast. I'm curious how long it will take this time (3rd and 4th tracking links received since they sent out another two samples)
Skygod Posted January 26, 2016 Posted January 26, 2016 Nice, I saw the M1+ for exactly $40 which was my budget. Wi-Fi module is included though, useless one? I wonder how MicroUSB which barely powers my RPi to the point where if I attach a Wi-Fi adapter to it the current it will draw is so high it will actually get kernel panic and I'm not sure if its stable after boot. It is also going to power SATA through MicroUSB? For me that sounds too good to be true I've got an M1+ which cost exactly $40. Powered by basic 5V 2A. 240Gb SSD and 500Gb external disk run fine. WiFi is a bit hit and miss and refuses to come up sometimes, but this could be because all power downs are not graceful (Power supply in Thailand is crap and my UPS is currently bust)
Tido Posted January 26, 2016 Posted January 26, 2016 Many devs already received their samples and development progress is really fast. Save your time to head over there, just to name a few: The U-Boot from the supplied Android image is severely crippled: It can only read from its own partitions. Of course there is no network support whatsoever. Until all 36000 people from the crowd-funding receive their PCB it will be end of April or later. 1
tkaiser Posted January 26, 2016 Posted January 26, 2016 The U-Boot from the supplied Android image is severely crippled So what? https://github.com/ssvb/u-boot-sunxi/commits/20160126-wip-a64-experimental 1
Rui Ribeiro Posted January 27, 2016 Posted January 27, 2016 Thanks for the pointers about the sbcs kaiser. I will investigate more about it.
tkaiser Posted February 3, 2016 Posted February 3, 2016 Thanks for the pointers about the sbcs kaiser. I will investigate more about it. Small update: the ODROID-C2 is now officially announced (and Hardkernel did it right again: large heatsink as factory default and same board dimensions and connector layout -- I hope they will release a C2+ based on S912 with 4GB RAM later that year). And the Pine guys started promoting their Peripheral On Top (POT) 'pseudo standard' with a few announced add-ons that look good to me (missing an 1-Wire-to-I2C POT, based on eg. DS2482S) 2
Rui Ribeiro Posted February 4, 2016 Posted February 4, 2016 cool for the link, cannot wait to order a C2. Glad I did not fail to the temptation of buying a PINE64.
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