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Helios4 Support


gprovost

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1 hour ago, jimbolaya said:

I just received and set up my Helios4. I set it up with Buster and it seems to be working OK.

 

One thing that seems to be missing is the ch341 usb serial driver. I have this attached to an old APC UPS that has a serial port and a USB serial cable that uses the HL-340 serial chip.

 

I was unable to find the driver in /lib/modules. Will I need to compile the driver myself or am I missing a package?

 

If it wasn't included intentionally, is there a technical reason not to include the driver for this kernel?

Hi,
you're right, the driver is not included, you'd need to compile the driver by yourself if you need ASAP.

I don't see any technical reason not to include the driver. After i test, I will enable it on Armbian kernel

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@tekrantz @epleminator

 

If you can we will need you to measure following 2 points on the board while the board is powered-up.

 

This will help us to determine if it's just a faulty PSU or if it's an issue on the board.

This way we know if we just need to send you a new PSU or if we need to request you to send us back the board in order to repair or replace.

 

You need to be careful while doing such measure to respect the polarity as shown in the picture.

If you don't feel comfortable to do such measure then you can just Direct Message me and will arrange something else.

 

Measure 1 :

Measuring at capacitor C18. You should read 12V

 

c18_probe.jpg.b16a74d3c73de4e7a3a3c7fec3714779.jpg

 

Measure 2 :

Measuring at inductor L1 and capacitor C34. You should read 3.3V

 

l1_probe.thumb.jpg.19c36401bb83701c249fea28abf5bea7.jpg

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8 hours ago, aprayoga said:

Hi,
you're right, the driver is not included, you'd need to compile the driver by yourself if you need ASAP.

I don't see any technical reason not to include the driver. After i test, I will enable it on Armbian kernel

Thank you for the info. I'll figure out how to compile it myself for now. I look forward to future updates including it.

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I measured at t points referenced above.  I got 12.69 at C18.  At C34 I got 0.0.  Now I am going to admit I am not that good with that particular kind of stuff.  I could have been doing something improperly.  If there is something else I can test for you I am glad to try it.  I will also admit that I tried to get a reading from the pins inside the plug as well but my hands are just not steady enough and I could never get a reading.

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@tekrantz @epleminator Thanks both for the measurement (epleminator measured the same values than tekrantz - sent by DM). I will follow up with each of you by Direct Message to arrange product replacement and by safety we will replace also the PSU because we are still not sure what happened, could be just a electronic discharge or something wrong with the PSU.

 

Our apologies for the inconvenience.

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Hi,

I am trying to compile and run U-BOOT on SATA1 but I don't succeed. What I can do is boot from flash memory using the armbian binary provided on the armbian sd card.

 

And I cannot find the SATA installation documentation on the wiki, except the picture with the DIP switches (I used this from Solidrun, : dd if=u-boot-spl-sata.kwb of=/dev/sdX bs=512 seek=1 conv=sync, not working).

And I cannot get a self-compiled working U-BOOT binary with helios4_defconfig

 

So my questions is what options do I need to activate to have a self-compiled U-BOOT binary that can boot on SATA ? Is the dd command from Solidrun OK for the sata option ?

 

(For now, I will boot from flash memory, running Gentoo Linux and concentrate later on U-Boot... I want to understand and master that part too)

 

Kind regards,

Xavier Miller

 

 

 

Edited by alchemist
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18 hours ago, alchemist said:

Hi,

I am trying to compile and run U-BOOT on SATA1 but I don't succeed. What I can do is boot from flash memory using the armbian binary provided on the armbian sd card.

 

And I cannot find the SATA installation documentation on the wiki, except the picture with the DIP switches (I used this from Solidrun, : dd if=u-boot-spl-sata.kwb of=/dev/sdX bs=512 seek=1 conv=sync, not working).

And I cannot get a self-compiled working U-BOOT binary with helios4_defconfig

 

So my questions is what options do I need to activate to have a self-compiled U-BOOT binary that can boot on SATA ? Is the dd command from Solidrun OK for the sata option ?

 

(For now, I will boot from flash memory, running Gentoo Linux and concentrate later on U-Boot... I want to understand and master that part too)

 

Kind regards,

Xavier Miller

 

 

 

Hi,

currently booting directly to SATA1 is not supported. It was supported using Marvell U-boot 2013.01.

 

If your intention is to boot without SD Card, you can boot from SPI NOR flash. The U-Boot on SPI NOR flash then would search boot.scr on following order

  1. USB
  2. SATA1
  3. SD Card

 

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On 8/17/2019 at 4:22 AM, aprayoga said:

Hi,

currently booting directly to SATA1 is not supported. It was supported using Marvell U-boot 2013.01.

 

If your intention is to boot without SD Card, you can boot from SPI NOR flash. The U-Boot on SPI NOR flash then would search boot.scr on following order

  1. USB
  2. SATA1
  3. SD Card

 

Hi!

 

I will then boot from SPI NOR flash. The boot order is OK, I can then boot a "system rescue" from USB, or run armbian on sd as fall-back.

 

I can run Gentoo with one binary linked on the wiki page you pointed out, empty environment, and a minimal boot.scr on SATA

 

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5 hours ago, alchemist said:

Hi,

 

An other question : I would like to run the latest vanilla kernel (5.2.*). Is there a patch for the dual fan ? The patch provided in the pwm section seems for kernel 4.x and is is rejected.

 

Thanks!

 

Kind regards,

Xavier Miller.

Hi,

 

We haven't started to work on 5.2 but maybe you can try the patch by Gontran Baerts for ArchLinux

https://github.com/gbcreation/linux-helios4/blob/master/92-mvebu-gpio-remove-hardcoded-timer-assignment.patch

 

 

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8 hours ago, aprayoga said:

Hi,

 

We haven't started to work on 5.2 but maybe you can try the patch by Gontran Baerts for ArchLinux

https://github.com/gbcreation/linux-helios4/blob/master/92-mvebu-gpio-remove-hardcoded-timer-assignment.patch

 

 

Hi Thanks!

I will take a try for this patch and tell you if it works for me.

 

Really nice board, it's responsive and well documented

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Can I just say how delighted I am with my new Helios4? It’s a lovely piece of kit, and the online instructions are extremely well-written, too. Many congratulations to everyone concerned, a great job!

 

I just have a minor query on the OLED screen, see attached pic.

 

a) top line of the display is garbled, anything I can do about that?

 

b) I don’t really need to display free space on the SD card, but would like to show the two volumes, /dev/dm-0 and /dev/dm-1. As you can see, dm-0 is not showing correctly, at the moment, showing total space as 997M when it should be 15.82TB. Current sys-oled.conf file is below.

 

Again, thanks for your hard work!

 

# Storage Device 1
# Device name
storage1_name = sd

# Device mount path
storage1_path = /

# Storage Device 2
storage2_name= dm-0
storage2_path= /dev/dm-0
 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ie7xclyq8ip7hr4/2019-08-19 08.25.20.jpg?dl=0

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20 hours ago, AgentPete said:

a) top line of the display is garbled, anything I can do about that?

 This is not normal. Could be a faulty I2C screen. Even after a full power cycle the OLED screen still show this doodles on the first few lines ?

 

20 hours ago, AgentPete said:

b) I don’t really need to display free space on the SD card, but would like to show the two volumes, /dev/dm-0 and /dev/dm-1. As you can see, dm-0 is not showing correctly, at the moment, showing total space as 997M when it should be 15.82TB. Current sys-oled.conf file is below.

The reason is not showing correctly is because you put the device path (/dev/...) instead of putting the mount point. You can use command lsblk to see the mount point of your dm device.

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When I move the power cord that powers the helios 4 the damn thing will suddenly turn off. Do I have a faulty power cable? Or have I not jammed the board-end connector in hard enough? Keep in mind you can't really apply much force on that tiny board mounted inside plastic since there's nothing to brace it with. I'm sure its in well enough its just when I move the cable to a less cluttered part of the desk that suddenly the power stops flowing. This is becoming an issue since I have a lot of important data on this thing.

Any ideas?

 

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When I move the power cord that powers the helios 4 the damn thing will suddenly turn off. Do I have a faulty power cable? Or have I not jammed the board-end connector in hard enough? Keep in mind you can't really apply much force on that tiny board mounted inside plastic since there's nothing to brace it with. I'm sure its in well enough its just when I move the cable to a less cluttered part of the desk that suddenly the power stops flowing. This is becoming an issue since I have a lot of important data on this thing.
Any ideas?
 


What is the connection like between your power cable and the power brick? I found mine was a little loose there.
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@customer001 If as you described, it is not the connection between the AC cable and the PSU but the connection between the DC cable and the PSU, maybe effectively there is something wrong with the PSU.

Take note that you should plug in all the way the DC 4-Pin plug in the board, however you should still see a bit of connector shield.

 

1753371713_2019-08-2112-37-07-1.JPG.6832bc5f6f33805f57e97741515daa51.JPG

 

 

Maybe do some test without the HDD connected in order to narrow down the issue. Then you can PM me and we see what we can do in order to fix your issue (e.g replace your PSU).

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Hello! Received my Helios4 today, haven't set ip up yet. I'm planning on not using the plexiglas chassis, but use a gutted Qnap TS419 as a frame instead, provided things do fit.

 

I'm curious - has anyone tried interesting things using the GPIO yet?

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I won't use the backplane. The main issue is that the RAID controller is located there and not on the original motherboard, and I can't interact with it (physically difficult, and, ironically enough, it's an Armada chip with very poor documentation preventing me from running FreeNAS on the thing in the first place). I'll just go with cables as-is for now, and if ever, I'll try to make a custom PCB with just passthrough Power / SATA.

 

I do want to use the existing status LEDs though, at least. The rest of my plans would be to use the buttons as well (interfacing them with GPIO, but not sure what scenarios I want to have here), re-route the front USB, and maybe have another identical 1.3" OLED screen on the I²C bus to "fill" the Qnap front display cutout. No idea how feasible all of this is; it should all fit, but cable management is likely to be very tricky.

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Helios4 OLED

 

I've just received my batch 3 Helios4 and gotten it running: moved drives, configured NFS, DLNA, SMB, FTP etc etc etc.

Works beautifully and silently (especially when the drives spin down!).

 

One issue though: the OLED display appears to be unreadable:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/17EH_zAGJaqeO0TbMkG_gp6ENy8TnFhya/view?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Y9MYaMlG0geIiBjJQx86xiZ21SF8EzOS/view?usp=sharing

 

Any ideas what went wrong ... the installation of HW and SW seemed easy enough with the wiki instructions...

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@customer001 Please send me private message with your details and order number.

 

@pekkal Well based on the picture I can see cracks on the OLED display (bottom right corner of the diplay), so you might have tighten the screw a bit too hard and bend the PCB which can have effect on how operate the display. You can also send me private message and see what we can do.

 

 

image.png.f6e876e4c0a66afa7199f62b5fa7a5f8.png

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On 4/29/2019 at 10:54 AM, gprovost said:

@djurny Well at least you narrow down the issue as being the board. Running out of clue of what it could be.

 

Anyhow, let's proceed to a board replacement then since we can't figure out the root cause. Please PM me.

Hi,

A quick update to all who have Helios4 boxes freeze up. After board replacement and switching PSUs, the box still froze from time to time. After the last freeze, I decided to move the rootfs to a USB stick, to rule out anything related to the SDcard.

 

The SDcard is a SanDisk Ultra. 32GB class 10 A1 UHS-I HC1 type of card, picture below.

 

Spoiler

image.thumb.png.0d7bd0daa47496362149dd25490262c9.png

 

After using the SDcard for booting kernel + initrd only, the box has been going strong for quite a while, when under load and when idling around:

 

07:39:29 up 21 days, 29 min,  6 users,  load average: 0.14, 0.14, 0.10

Note that the uptime is actually more than shown, but the box has been rebooted due to unrelated issues and some planned downtime.

 

Hope this will help any of you.

 

Groetjes,

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