Librecomputer Renegade RK3328

[Igor]

WIP

https://libre.computer/products/boards/roc-rk3328-cc/

 

Pro: 
- yet another RK3328

 

Cons:

- micro USB powering

[TonyMac32]

Up to 4 GB RAM, nice.  I don't believe the RK3328 (Quad core Cortex A53) is capable of pulling the kind of power the RK3288 can, so that shouldn't be as terrifying a prospect on microUSB (and to be fair, I've been running my Tinker Board on microUSB for over a week just to see what would happen, even plugged my cell phone into it).  

 

The campaign says this was done in conjunction with the Firefly board designers, explaining the name I saw floating around for a while.  It's using a Rockchip PMIC, from the look of it.  Probably RK805 like the Rock64.  

 

[edit]

 

 <---  The populated part is seemingly ADC, put the unpopulated part appears to have "P"s... could it be the elusive power header?      no, but system control buttons I think. While that would be amazing, I'm not going to hold out too much hope.  Would be interested in looking at these.

 

 

[mattkosem]

I ordered one of these the other day. Not sure when it'll be shipped or anything, but I was curious about the level of support it might have at this point.  The only Linux image I see for it anywhere is a 32-bit Ubuntu image on the Firefly site.  Any chance this would boot/run on a rock64 image, or anything like that, until a targeted install is available?

 

--Matt

[TonyMac32]

3 hours ago, mattkosem said:

Any chance this would boot/run on a rock64 image,

It's possible.  I don't have one, probably should look into getting one, and spend some time with it and the Rock64.  Currently mainline isn't very exciting, so it needs the 4.4 kernel to truly operate properly.

[mattkosem]

It seems like the board files for the ROCK64 mostly introduce some scripts (maybe would work?), a wip file that points to various ROCK64 info resources, references to kernel trees that are (at least in the default case) only a few commits away from off-the-shelf rockchip kernel sources, boot scripts, some kernel build configs, and defines some URLs for device-specific details.  Based in all that and given the RK3328(not ROCK64) naming in that stuff it seems to at least be trying to be pretty generic.  The present lack of any Libre-provided kernel sources suggesting any additional device-specific intricacies makes it seem like there should be a reasonable chance of success.

 

It seems like the boot and post install scripts are the most likely stuff to need changes, and even that stuff seems more RK3328 specific than ROCK64 specific  I guess I'll give it a go whenever the board decides to come.  If all goes well, it seems like the board may be a wip file away from experimental support.

 

--Matt

[blood]

On 1/17/2018 at 6:38 AM, mattkosem said:

I ordered one of these the other day. Not sure when it'll be shipped or anything, but I was curious about the level of support it might have at this point.  The only Linux image I see for it anywhere is a 32-bit Ubuntu image on the Firefly site.  Any chance this would boot/run on a rock64 image, or anything like that, until a targeted install is available?

 

--Matt

 

I bought one of these too after the project reported that they'd be supporting Armbian. It arrived last week. I did try to boot the rock64 armbian image on it but didn't have much success:

 

Starting kernel ...

<hit enter to activate fiq debugger>
Loading, please wait...
starting version 229
Begin: Loading essential drivers ... done.
Begin: Running /scripts/init-premount ... done.
Begin: Mounting root file system ... Begin: Running /scripts/local-top ... done.
Begin: Running /scripts/local-premount ... Scanning for Btrfs filesystems
done.
Begin: Waiting for root file system ... Begin: Running /scripts/local-block ....
Begin: Running /scripts/local-block ... done.

 

That last line then repeats a bunch of times and it reboots in a loop like that.

 

All things considered I'm used to these sorts of boards shipping with terrible support (not throwing shade at Armbian; you guys rock - it's the vendors' fault) so I won't say I'm surprised or even disappointed.

 

I'm not sure whether their promise of Armbian support was an assumption that this project would pick up their slack, or if they were actually going to contribute such support. Any news on how/if this is progressing?

[Xalius]

You might run into problems since either the rk miniloader or u-boot spl on Rock64 images are configured for the Rock64's LPDDR3 DRAM and not the LPDDR4 the Renegade uses, so you will most likely have to build a new boot firmware with the right RK miniloader or submit patches to the u-boot spl with detection for the LPDDR4 stuff...

[tkaiser]

On 8.12.2017 at 8:23 AM, Igor said:

Cons:

- micro USB powering

 

Has anyone the device in his hands and can tell whether this commenter on CNX is right or not? https://www.cnx-software.com/2017/12/05/libre-computer-renegade-sbc-features-rockchip-rk3328-processor-with-up-to-4gb-ddr4-ram-crowdfunding/#comment-552194

 

If they replaced Micro USB with something reliable there's zero Cons any more  

[chwe]

On 9.3.2018 at 8:42 AM, tkaiser said:

If they replaced Micro USB with something reliable there's zero Cons any more  

from their website:

https://libre.computer/products/boards/roc-rk3328-cc/

 

and all their specs, I don't see any hints that this changed...  Looks more that 'jack' though about rock64 when posting in the libre blogpost..   

From their "RPi compatibility" in case of dimensions, pin header etc. the only place where a barrel plug could be placed would be by removing 3.5mm jack and replace it with a barrel jack that fits there.. 

Prizes for Ram must be quite high:

1GB version 40$

2GB version 50$

4GB version 80$

 

Shipping a board but not provide at least one Image on your website is a bit... Seems that the collaboration with firefly wasn't ready when shipping has started.

 

@blood did you bought it with the heatsink they provide? I like boards which have proper mounting holes for heatsinks .

For initial testing I suggest you look here:

http://forum.loverpi.com/categories/libre-computer-board-roc-rk3328-cc

or there:

http://en.t-firefly.com/doc/product/info/id/471.html (to make images on your own)

https://pan.baidu.com/s/1c231RGG#list/path=%2F (baidu where a image is provided)

The whole stuff looks like it's close to RKs buildscript, but it didn't arrive in RK official buildscript (yet).

[TonyMac32]

22 minutes ago, chwe said:

Prizes for Ram must be quite high:

That's what I've been hearing, especially concerning ddr4.

 

I have a board coming, and a heatsink.  So I can give some comments on the design/etc later on.  My assumption going in is, other than RAM and a few pins, this should be virtually identical to Rock64.  RK805/RK3328/GbE/Same USB setup/eMMC/etc.  The big difference is the RAM.

 

[ces]

New Ubuntu image:

ROC-RK3328-CC_Ubuntu16.04_Arch64_20180309.zip  

at

 

https://libre.computer/products/boards/roc-rk3328-cc/

[Xalius]

Does anyone know where the sources for the image come from?

[TonyMac32]

No, it's not on their github, perhaps it's just the default Rockchip kernel -or- it's from Firefly.  

[tkaiser]

Just now, TonyMac32 said:

Firefly

http://share.loverpi.com/board/libre-computer-project/libre-computer-board-roc-rk3328-cc/image/ubuntu/README.txt

[TonyMac32]

https://github.com/T-Firefly?tab=repositories

 

I don't see it, but I'm using my cell phone. ;-)

 

 

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

 

 

 

 

[ces]

Found ROC-RK3328-CC Schematic diagram

http://www.t-firefly.com/download/ROC-RK3288-CC/ROC-RK3328-CC-V1.0-A_yl.pdf

Somebody out there to look for Powering via GPIO pins with input protection possible?

I learnt that this is no good idea:  https://hackaday.io/project/21222/gallery#f8c7116fcc2041399dd2f10ce5c9dfdd

 

Edit: No good idea to use only a 5VDC regulator. https://www.rugged-circuits.com/10-ways-to-destroy-an-arduino/

[TonyMac32]

VCC_SYS appears to be setup exactly the way it is on the RK3288 Tinker Board.  So the micro-USB provides VCC_SYS, which is piped directly to the RK805, the HDMI, and the USB.  To be honest other than over and reverse voltage, I don't think you can do much damage.  Nice reference materials though, thank you for the links!

[ces]

Thank you too. I have the 4GB Board, no sdcard right now. Had a lot of Shipping and Taxes to pay in germany. Total incl. board 150$ (t-firefly.com). Now i am trying not to brick it  

 

Some owners of this board tried to get running 1000M Ethernet. Looking at page 3 config 4 there is no! only 100M. Same owners think that one of the usb 2.0 ports has no function.

Buying this board i only missed dual channel for ddr4.

[bholland]

I don't mean to bring up a dead thread but I just got mine. The kernel doesn't have the options that I would like to see so I have to recompile and reimage ubuntu. (Aside, any good sources to figure out what to do with a compiled kernel, merge it with I guess u-boot?)

 

I am trying to go through their tutorials and I am finding it very difficult so I just wanted to make sure that I didn't have to enable anything strange to get the DDR4 or the gig ethernet working at the kernel level. I have to say though, this card is a beast. 

 

Thanks!

[TonyMac32]

I wouldn't call it dead.  ;-). I have purchased one for my personal uses, I haven't gotten it yet, so we'll see.

[bholland]

I have an ubuntu core build working with their 4.4.114 kernel. I am going to write up documentation tonight. I don't know how to test if the DDR4 works as intended but it did have the ethernet kernel module. 

 

Their kernel is weird. It doesn't have modules. Everything is baked into a single small kernel. 

 

I want to get an automated build environment set up for it. It wasn't easy following 4 different documents. I want something a bit more streamlined. 

 

Out of curiosity, do you happen to know of a list of packages that goes from an Ubuntu or Debian minimal build to something with a decent UI? 

[Igor]

2 minutes ago, bholland said:

I want to get an automated build environment set up for it. It wasn't easy following 4 different documents. I want something a bit more streamlined. 

https://docs.armbian.com/Developer-Guide_Build-Preparation/

We already have support for Rock64 and this board is similar so IMO only minor adjustments are needed.

[bholland]

Oh cool. I don't know how that works with their setup. 

 

If possible, do you mind if I put together a document and have you take a look at how to get the thing into your system? It isn't easy mostly because Firefly has all of their stuff scripted out. I think it is all the same, but going from bare metal to something usable is unfamiliar territory for me. 

 

For the ubuntu core image, I followed http://docs.khadas.com/social/BuildUbuntuRootfsViaUbuntuBase/ but didn't need to create a boot image since Firefly uses u-boot and provides a method to get from a compiled kernel to something bootable. This is very raw. It basically provides a command line. I have almost no experience building out a functional and friendly OS but that just depends on whatever package sets you would want to have installed. 

 

Their kernel script is really strange. They basically do:

cd (kernel directory)

make firefly_kernel_version

make -j8

cd (build directory)

 

They don't build any modules and when I tried building them out, I couldn't figure out where they went. 

 

 

[TonyMac32]

For u-boot you need to handle the ddr4 iirc. Other than that...

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

[Chris White]

I have one of the 1 GB Renegade SBC's and have played around with it a bit using the Ubuntu image supplied on the Firefly forums.  I don't know enough about the base system or how it was created to be of much help in that regard but if anybody wants to take me under their wing so to speak, I'd be happy to offer my assistance.  I really want a good system that will get mainline updates before I try to deploy this SBC as a NAS at my home.

[bholland]

 

1 hour ago, TonyMac32 said:

For u-boot you need to handle the ddr4 iirc. Other than that...

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk
 

1

 

I don't know what you mean by this.  I can look at how they make the u-boot image when I get home tonight. I guess also, if it runs, it could be running in DDR3 mode rather than DDR4. 

[tkaiser]

@Da Xue are you able to provide the DRAM initialization stuff and appropriate .dts files for 4.4 and mainline?

[jock]

On 27/3/2018 at 6:48 PM, TonyMac32 said:

For u-boot you need to handle the ddr4 iirc. Other than that...

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk
 

 

Until someone put the bits for the DDR4 in mainline u-boot, you can use u-boot as a third program loader and extract the DDR4 memory initialization blob from the original image. I don't know if the booting procedure is the same as in rk3288 (I guess it is), but my rk3288 tv-box with DDR2 now boots mainline u-boot despite u-boot not supporting DDR2 initialization

 

[Da Xue]

On 3/28/2018 at 2:21 AM, tkaiser said:

@Da Xue are you able to provide the DRAM initialization stuff and appropriate .dts files for 4.4 and mainline?

I will request it and get back to you.

[JMCC]

Anybody knows how this board compares to Rock64? They seem pretty identical to me, but for the power plug. I'm thinking about fitting a RK3328 board into this month's budget, because this SoC seems very interesting for multimedia stuff.