Award for implementing Banana Pi M3 into armbian

[BPI_M3-Robs]

Hi to everyone,

 

I'm new at armbian forum, but following the project since some month. As far as I can tell all contributors make a great job to enable a stable debian based distribution to many as possible arm-based boards.

Thanks a lot for this great job.

I bought one of the first available Banana Pi M3-boards in Germany, because I wanted (and did it already very successfully) to set up a small server for email, music storage, mythtv-backend, read out my central heating.... Until now I use a stripped down image based on the provided Ubuntu 16.04 image from http://www.banana-pi.org/m3-download.html As you all know the "support" and further development of the OEM is more or less not there, and the provided image is based on kernel 3.4 (and not updated for ages). Until now it was more-or-less a "beauty mistake" for me, but not a real problem. But some weeks ago the mythtv-project released a new version, and installing this new version needs more-or-less a newer version of ubuntu (or debian in general).

 

So now I have 2 possibility:

1. Buy a better supported board

2. Get the latest armbian running on this board

 

Solution 1 seems to be the simplest way, but I don't want to go this way until 2nd is not completely impossible. But I have not the knowledge to make way 2 by myself.

 

I know Banana Pi M3 is very very unloved in the community, but as far as I understand https://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort and https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=359b5a1e1c2d81af6d68de509e11d08ab4c150dc  great success was made to implement this board into kernel 4.14.

 

So I want to make a promise to give a donation of 100€ to the armbian project if this board will be supported by armbian until X-mas 2017.

 

Main goals which have to work:

 

- Boot into CLI debian Stretch

- onboard USB host

- onboard I2C

- onboard Ethernet Networking

- actual mainline Kernel (4.14?)

- support for this board on regular level (.conf) instead of actual level (.csc)

 

Not needed (but of course not "forbidden")

- Graphical support

- Sound

- USB OTG

 

Please be so kind and tell what you think about this idea.

 

Thanks

 

Robert

[chwe]

To quote @Igor

Quote

Donations are like love. Unconditional.

 

6 hours ago, BPI_M3-Robs said:

But I have not the knowledge to make way 2 by myself.

Me neither, but it's never too late to learn something new...

 

Just as an example (for sure easier than your project):

In the meantime, I learned how to maintain websites with Django CMS.  And my background isn't in system administration nor web-design (I'm in science.. ).

 

[technik007_cz]

Do you want to support so overpriced product? Board you bought for about £60 should be selling for £20 with software support you can get now.

[BPI_M3-Robs]

Hi,

 

well I don't want to support an overpriced product, but support the product I'm using (more or less successfully) since ~2 years.  When I bought this product it was the only simple to get and  available board in Europe with 2 GB RAM, Giga-Bit-Ethernet and Raspberry compatible IOs. And the offered Operating System was more or less useable and state of the art. But there was no further development, so it's no longer sate of the art.

 

I believe that there are more users of this board in a similar situation. So I won't call it "support an overpriced product",  but "enhance the time of usage for product".

 

Regards

Robert

 

P.S. So X-MAS is over, but any help for this product is still welcome. And YES, I would pay money for better support of Banana Pi M3, and to give the results to the community.