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Stability problem Tinker Board

NicoD

By NicoD
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NicoD

NicoD

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Hello all.

I'm doing some tests with the Tinker Board to see what's the best operating system for it for a new video.

I'm using the Armbian Ubuntu Desktop legacy kernel.

For this I do Blender and Kdenlive renders to see if there's a speed difference. But with both I've got the problem that it crashes the Tinker Board. Sometimes it's a hard crash and the whole system freezes, and sometimes Blender or Kdenlive just close themselfs but Armbian keeps working.
I do not have this problem in Lubuntu. In TinekrOS Kdenlive totally doesn't work.

It looks the same as an unstable overclock on a system.

I've tried different psu's.

I'm using the Tinker heatsink with a 5V fan ontop, so it's not overheating.

It's always after around 20minutes of rendering when it crashes. I've tried many times, none of the renders finished.

 

Does anyone have any idea what's the problem?

Also bad youtube playback, is there a fix for that? (I still have to check if hardware acceleration is possible)

 

Thank you, greetings.

 

NicoD

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tkaiser

tkaiser

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1 minute ago, NicoD said:

Does anyone have any idea what's the problem?

 

If you do not already power the board via GPIO pins then it's most likely the crappy Micro USB connector (voltage drop by design).

 

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NicoD

NicoD

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11 minutes ago, tkaiser said:

 

If you do not already power the board via GPIO pins then it's most likely the crappy Micro USB connector (voltage drop by design).

 

Thank you, very useful information.
I'm not powering via GPIO pins. Which pins do I need to use for that? I've got everyting laying here to solder an adapter for that.
Thanks a lot.

NicoD

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tkaiser

tkaiser

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29 minutes ago, NicoD said:

Which pins do I need to use for that?

 

No idea. For me the Tinkerboard is simply 'broken by design' and so I never looked into any details. But you might find the information here: 

 

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Rfreire

Rfreire

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32 minutes ago, NicoD said:

Thank you, very useful information.
I'm not powering via GPIO pins. Which pins do I need to use for that? I've got everyting laying here to solder an adapter for that.
Thanks a lot.

NicoD

 

Hello there Nico,

 

Use both RED pin headers. I mean, BOTH. Usual warnings here: Careful to not short with any other pins, use a high quality (properly filtered) and with at least 2 Amps power supply, etc.

 

There's a *lenghty* discussion here about $SUBJECT, look up posts from @TonyMac32. He even discusses how to build a good power supply.

 

Good luck :-)

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NicoD

NicoD

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Thanks a lot.

I'm making a usb connector with Vcc and negative where I solder each a wire to. Do you mean that I need 2 wires for 5V(or 3 to power my fan since there's no 5V pin left then)?

Sorry for my confusion.

Thank you.

 

edit. I'm going to connect it to a very good power bank with very clean output.

 

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NicoD

NicoD

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28 minutes ago, Rfreire said:

 

Hello there Nico,

 

Use both RED pin headers. I mean, BOTH. Usual warnings here: Careful to not short with any other pins, use a high quality (properly filtered) and with at least 2 Amps power supply, etc.

 

There's a *lenghty* discussion here about $SUBJECT, look up posts from @TonyMac32. He even discusses how to build a good power supply.

 

Good luck :-)

I tried it with 2 5V wires. Again the same crash.

I think the problem will be with the Armbian distro. Blender works fine in TinkerOS, and Blender and Kdenlive work fine in Lubuntu.

 

I also monitored the voltage/amperage. It peaked above 2amps without anything connected to it.

It's been a while since I've used my Tinker Board. I made a video about it a while ago and then there were a lot of problems, seems like not much has changed. Except that you can watch youtube videos in TinkerOS now. Lubuntu then again is the most stable, and all the programs I need work there.

I guess I'll have to look for another subject then. Because like this there's not much to choose from :)

Thank you very much, have a nice day.

NicoD
 

 

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Rfreire

Rfreire

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Hello Nico

 

You could use a single header. But by using both, you have more 'copper surface' and less ohmic losses (read: voltage drop).

 

Connect GND to any black header and then you will be all set.

 

Best of luck :-)

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JMCC

JMCC

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8 minutes ago, NicoD said:

It peaked above 2amps without anything connected to it.

Do you mean at full CPU usage? No wonder. Just consider that XU4 peaks above 3A, also with nothing connected to it. You need a minimum of a 5V 2.5A PSU to work with the Tinkerboard.

 

Powering through GPIO gives you the best power throughput, but if you don't use a filtered PSU or make a tailored circuit for that yourself, you risk to burn your board. I personally use a 5v 2.5A PSU connected through MicroUSB, and never get a crash as long as I don't connect to the USB ports anything more than the keyboard dongle (I tested dual CPU+GPU mining for several days). The key is to get a good MicroUSB cable, with a plug that makes as much contact as possible. If you're only going to do benchmarks, that should be enough.

 

23 minutes ago, NicoD said:

Except that you can watch youtube videos in TinkerOS now

You can test the Armbian multimedia package for the Tinkerboard here:

It will make streaming videos, webGL, and more stuff, work, and will give you a real idea of the Tinkerboard's potential.

 

I'll try to make a Blender BMW render (that is your test, right?), and let you know about my results.

 

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freak

freak

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My opinion about the supposed power issues with tinker is that when people have issues they cannot explain they blame the power.  I've measured the current draw on the tinker and it never reaches anywhere near 2amps.  I find no reason to power with the gpio pins.  If you have a power supply that can supply 2A you are good.  I have 49 tinkers running armbian in our plant, every one powered by a cheap supply from amazon.  No issues at all.  I really wish the warnings about power and the bs about gpio pins were taken off of this site as I really believe they are unfounded.  It creates unnecessary fear, uncertainty, and doubt.  Now if your power supply cannot supply 5V @2A or you have a usb cable with excessive resistance then you could have troubles but it's not the tinker or the tinker engineers fault.

 

Here is what I measured the current draw and power supply performance with...  http://amz.avhzy.com/index.php/2017/12/11/avhzy-usb-power-meter-tester-usb-multimeter-usb-load-current-tester-voltage-detector-dc-6a-26v-0-0001a-test-speed-of-chargercablescapacity-of-power-bankpd-2-03-0-qc-2-03-04-0-or-pps-trigger/

 

 

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NicoD

NicoD

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2 minutes ago, freak said:

My opinion about the supposed power issues with tinker is that when people have issues they cannot explain they blame the power.  I've measured the current draw on the tinker and it never reaches anywhere near 2amps.  I find no reason to power with the gpio pins.  If you have a power supply that can supply 2A you are good.  I have 49 tinkers running armbian in our plant, every one powered by a cheap supply from amazon.  No issues at all.  I really wish the warnings about power and the bs about gpio pins were taken off of this site as I really believe they are unfounded.  It creates unnecessary fear, uncertainty, and doubt.  Now if your power supply cannot supply 5V @2A or you have a usb cable with excessive resistance then you could have troubles but it's not the tinker or the tinker engineers fault.

 

Here is what I measured the current draw and power supply performance with...  http://amz.avhzy.com/index.php/2017/12/11/avhzy-usb-power-meter-tester-usb-multimeter-usb-load-current-tester-voltage-detector-dc-6a-26v-0-0001a-test-speed-of-chargercablescapacity-of-power-bankpd-2-03-0-qc-2-03-04-0-or-pps-trigger/

 

 

I'm still measuring. Now with a normal 2.5Amp pover supply. When starting to render in Blender it reaches 2.30A in TinkerOS.

This without using a fan or so. My fan uses 150milliamps. So a 2.5A psu would not be enough for that. You can test it yourself, start rendering a Blender project with TinkerOS and measure the power.

 

I've done the same test in Armbian. There at the same moments it only goes to 2.07A where TinkerOS reaches 2.30A. Is the cpu voltage the same in TinkerOS and Armbian?

Is there a possible undervoltage wich makes it unstable at max load?

Thank you jmcc for the link, I tried it earlier but I can't download the file.

Is not secure.  ->> https://mega.nz/#!UuRThALT!FcgA72sKKk179giSYzPooJQy6SbDYFpy4NJ8Gkp95Xc

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tkaiser

tkaiser

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22 minutes ago, freak said:

Here is what I measured the current draw and power supply performance with

 

Very funny :) So you did not measure on the GPIO pins but on the wrong side of the USB cable, right?

 

https://forum.armbian.com/topic/3327-asus-tinkerboard/?do=findComment&comment=31711

 

Micro USB for such a power hungry board is still one of the most crappy ideas an 'engineer' can have. The problem is not that you can buy cables that are 20AWG rated and that there exist PSUs that are able to provide 2A at 5V. The problem is that the Micro USB connector encourages users to use average (crappy) USB cables and average (crappy) chargers/PSUs. They provide either 2A or 5V but not both at the same time. And there's nothing to discuss since this problem is real. Check @MickMake's video I linked too above.

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tkaiser

tkaiser

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3 minutes ago, NicoD said:

I'm still measuring

 

Where? At the power source? Or when you power through Micro USB at the GPIO pins? The problem is the insane voltage drop occuring under load. To measure this effect you need to measure at the board and not at the PSU.

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NicoD

NicoD

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@tkaiser

I'm measuring at the power source. For a while it goes up to 2.30A in TinkerOS, in Armbian to 2.07A.

Indeed the man who invented micro usb should be locked away and banned from engineering. Mini USB is way better, how can you make something new but crapier than what already exists. The've invented it so our devices would break earlier...

 

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freak

freak

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3 minutes ago, tkaiser said:

 

Very funny :) So you did not measure on the GPIO pins but on the wrong side of the USB cable, right?

 

https://forum.armbian.com/topic/3327-asus-tinkerboard/?do=findComment&comment=31711

 

Micro USB for such a power hungry board is still one of the most crappy ideas and 'engineer' can have. The problem is not that you can buy cables that are 20AWG rated and that there exist PSUs that are able to provide 2A at 5V. The problem is that the Micro USB connector encourages users to use average (crappy) USB cables and average (crappy) chargers/PSUs. They provide either 2A or 5V but not both at the same time. And there's nothing to discuss since this problem is real. Check @MickMake's video I linked too above.

 

 

The wrong side of the usb cable?   I'm inline between the tinker and power supply.  That's how you do it.  Here it is with a keyboard, mouse dongle and usb speakers plugged into it.

MVIMG_20180409_101152.jpg

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JMCC

JMCC

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1 minute ago, freak said:

Here it is with a keyboard, mouse dongle and usb speakers plugged into it.

Sure. Now fire up something that raises CPU usage to 400% and 100% GPU. You'll see those numbers raise to at least 12W/2.2A, and probably if you measure voltage at the USB ports with that load, it will be no higher than 4.7V

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NicoD

NicoD

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2 minutes ago, freak said:

 

 

The wrong side of the usb cable?   I'm inline between the tinker and power supply.  That's how you do it.  Here it is with a keyboard, mouse dongle and usb speakers plugged into it.

MVIMG_20180409_101152.jpg

And without a load. Please try a blender render. It's going to be more than 2A. But it's peak power, so a 2A psu can sometimes handle it, but not always. I do very heavy workloads on my SBC's, a good power supply is important, and better is a barrel jack.
Never had a problem with my Odriod C2. Power from it is always clean. I'll take it always before the Tinker Board.
Greetings

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tkaiser

tkaiser

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6 minutes ago, freak said:

The wrong side of the usb cable?

 

Of course. Thank you for the confirmation. BTW: It's really easy to get the problem by clicking at the links I provided above: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/6934-stability-problem-tinker-board/?do=findComment&comment=52629

 

If you want to measure how crappy Micro USB is (it's the VOLTAGE DROP we have to look after) then how do you want to measure on the wrong side of the cable? Contact and cable resistance are the problem so of course you have to measure AT THE BOARD and behind the crappy connector to get an idea what's happening!

 

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tkaiser

tkaiser

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2 minutes ago, NicoD said:

But it's peak power, so a 2A psu can sometimes handle it, but not always

 

This is just one part of the problem. The other one is the VOLTAGE DROP! Crappy PSUs provide either 5V or 2A but not both at the same time. And then there's cable and contact resistance and voltage available to the board being way lower than the one provided by the PSU. Now the third time: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/4614-asus-tinker-board/

  • Power supplied to micro USB port:  5.25 volts 800 - 950 mA "normal" use
  • Playing a Youtube Video (software render) this hits 1.7 Amps
  • Voltage present at Tinker Board USB Host port:  4.7 Volts under "normal" use
  • Playing a Youtube Video this drops to 4.2 Volts, meaning a > 1 Volt drop.

This is simply insane. And the direct result of using this shitty connector.

 

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NicoD

NicoD

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Still no answer why Armbian uses less power when maxed out compared to Tinker OS. And why in Armbian it's crashing and not in the other OS'es.
I know about the micro usb problems. Contacts too small, so resistance too high, so you can't push a lot of power thru and it gets hot.

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tkaiser

tkaiser

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3 minutes ago, freak said:

Sounds like your entire argument depends on using poor power supplies and/or cables.

 

And a connector rated for 1.8A max with a device that can draw easily a lot more with connected peripherals. Yes, that's the reality out there and engineers know about this (or they aren't engineers). Those lousy RPi folks unfortunately started with this Micro USB crap and now other board makers do the same just to advertise their boards as being totally compatible.

 

Too bad you do not want to understand what the problem is and where to measure. In my personal opinion Armbian should really stop trying to support these piles of crap equipped with Micro USB for powering since average users are either not able or willing to understand what's happening (seriously: if it's about THE BOARD being undervolted how on earth should measuring at the wrong location help getting a clue?! Of course you have to generate a real load and measure behind the shit connector to get an idea how severe the voltage drops THERE)

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JMCC

JMCC

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4 minutes ago, NicoD said:

Still no answer why Armbian uses less power when maxed out compared to Tinker OS. And why in Armbian it's crashing and not in the other OS'es.

Hey, don't worry, in addition to releasing my weekly allowance of testosterone in this discussion, I am meanwhile making tests on the Tinker. So far, render is going well, I'll get to you with the results.

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NicoD

NicoD

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4 minutes ago, freak said:

Well like I said we have 49 tinkers running in an industrial setting and none of them every crash.

I believe you. It all depends on the use case. Don't worry about it.

@JMCC

Thank you, here it crashes at about 20minutes.
Greetings.

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tkaiser

tkaiser

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55 minutes ago, NicoD said:

There at the same moments it only goes to 2.07A where TinkerOS reaches 2.30A. Is the cpu voltage the same in TinkerOS and Armbian?

Is there a possible undervoltage wich makes it unstable at max load?

 

Quite possible that different DVFS settings are used. IIRC @TonyMac32 switched with kernel/settings from Tinker sources to upstream Rockchip BSP a while ago. The individual DVFS OPP should be accessible from userspace (sysfs -- but don't know details. I skipped RK3288 entirely so far)

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Tido

Tido

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1 hour ago, freak said:

an industrial setting

by the way, either you have industrial  or  powering via Micro-USB  ---  with tinker board.

 

An industrial application would never use a plug that doesn't fit its specification. Do you agree ?

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