ballsystemlord Posted June 30, 2018 Posted June 30, 2018 @TonyMac32 I have bought a Firefly-RK3399 from firefly ( http://shop.t-firefly.com/goods.php?id=45 ). I did not realize it at the time of purchase, but the Mosfets are unable to provide sufficient power for the board plus the USB ports, EDP connector, MIPI-CSI interface, M.2 slot, etc. I really love the IO of the board and want to try to find a way to get it to work (plus I don't have the money to go trying out more boards ). Would your idea help such a board? Thanks!
TonyMac32 Posted June 30, 2018 Posted June 30, 2018 I'm afraid I don't have any good details on that board, can you elaborate on your statement? Is it underpowered using the vendor supply? The rk3399 boards seem a bit more complex where it comes to power, needing 12V a lot of the time.
ballsystemlord Posted June 30, 2018 Author Posted June 30, 2018 I was writing from memory. Let me read the exact details of the board. Docs can be found here: http://en.t-firefly.com/doc/download/page/id/3.html I was referring to the power delivery schematic in "Firefly-RK3399_V10_SCH_(2017-2-8).pdf" on page 4. The 12v 2A power supply is connected to several bucks (fet type), and a Mosfet. A SY8113B capable of putting out 9W total, 3V at 3A with 1W power dissipation to the M.2 slot. I have read (sorry, I don't remember where) that the M.2 slot is rated at 10W. 9W - 10W = -1W. A 12v fan switch at 3.6A. I do not think I have a schematic for it. The fans resistance is 132K ohms, which is too high to make sense (I don't know what to do with the third pin). So, I'm not going to do the math to find the amperage that way. A MP1495 capable of 3A at 3V for an M.2 4G module, which I'm not planning on using currently. A TPS563200 buck outputting 5v at 3A with ~1.5W power dissipation to everything but the above. Total of 15W. The TPS563200 is the most worrying. I have no idea how much power the MIPI-CSI interfaces (2x), processor, DDR3 RAM, and EDP interface uses. I have tried to find this information out without success. All the above I plan on using, plus the USB ports. The USB 3.0 interface, as per the specs should output 9A at 5V for 4.5W, the USB C is the same and the USB 2.0 interfaces should output 0.5 amps at 5V each for a total of 5W. Add that together for a total of 14W. That leaves 1W for all the aforementioned peripherals, the processor, and RAM. I bought a 1080p screen for this SBC, 1W will not fill the power budget! And did I mention that I might connect the SBC to a projector someday which will use the DP or HDMI interfaces for ever more power draw?! Now onto the board's input supply which as you might recall from above is 24W. 10W for the SY8113B. I'll assume 6W for the fan. 16.5W for the TPS563200. Add that up and you get 32.5W, too much for the 24W power supply, and that is without the M.2 4G module (another 9.5W). That sums up my concerns. I might be able to do something with the 3V battery terminal (it is for discharging only), . I really want some advice before trying anything. I am not an expert at electricity yet, and the board does cost $300 USD. Thanks!
codnoscope Posted July 1, 2018 Posted July 1, 2018 Hey ballsystemlord. I have this board too, I'm running the board with the firefly barrel adaptor no problem. I'm running Firefly's latest ubuntu build from eMMC. I can power one 2.5 inch spining hard drive (with a usb adaptor board) from the USB 3.0 port no problem. system is stable enough to run Xypron's debian build script (which need an aarch64 machine). I don't have any eDP LCD screen so can't comment on that. Problems I have encountered so far, seems mostly due to poor software support from firefly: 1. SSD attached to the internal M.2 slot doesn't show up in ubuntu. 2. If I run shutdown -p now, the board will just reboot itself, I need to pull power cable to shut it down for real 3. Firefly's ubuntu follows the andriod way, /boot is empty so you can't update the kernel with normal apt-get upgrade command 4. Limited OS selection, I've tried Mara's slackware build, Xypron's debian build script and hjc's armbian build script, nothing seems to boot. So you will be stuck with a year old 4.4.77 kernel for the time being. 5. Xserver will crush when ever an user application (chromium, MPV etc...) try to invoke libmali, so you got to apt remove it to make the system stable. Hope it helps
hjc Posted July 1, 2018 Posted July 1, 2018 5 hours ago, codnoscope said: hjc's armbian build script Which kernel did you use? The mainline (dev) kernel is currently broken for Firefly-RK3399 (if you disable the USB-C related stuff in the config, it should boot), but 4.4.132 works fine on my board.
tkaiser Posted July 1, 2018 Posted July 1, 2018 5 hours ago, codnoscope said: 1. SSD attached to the internal M.2 slot doesn't show up in ubuntu The slot is PCIe only so SATA SSDs will never show up.
codnoscope Posted July 1, 2018 Posted July 1, 2018 4 hours ago, hjc said: Which kernel did you use? The mainline (dev) kernel is currently broken for Firefly-RK3399 (if you disable the USB-C related stuff in the config, it should boot), but 4.4.132 works fine on my board. Hey hjc, the kernel I used is the 4.4.132, which seems strange to me too. What is the status of your internal eMMC? I have the official firefly ubuntu flashed on my eMMC, could it be the problem? Would "dd if=/dev/zero" the eMMC force the board to boot from sd card? I just noticed that my board have a stiker saying the version of the board is "Firefly RK-3399R" what is your board version? 4 hours ago, tkaiser said: The slot is PCIe only so SATA SSDs will never show up. Hey tkaiser, this is unfortunate, I guess my option for this internal M.2 slot is basically some kind of sata adaptor board.
tkaiser Posted July 1, 2018 Posted July 1, 2018 48 minutes ago, codnoscope said: I guess my option for this internal M.2 slot is basically some kind of sata adaptor board You could also attach a NVMe SSD (but then you need either Firefly's adapter or you choose one of those few 42 mm long NVMe SSDs but need to check whether they support also key B). For whatever bizarre reasons Firefly engineers chose an M.2 key B slot which ensures that only 2 PCIe lanes are routed to the slot (wasting the other 2 lanes RK3399 has) ensures that you can't use key M cards without the adapter Most probably you end up with this thing anyway (for performance numbers look at ODROID-N1 review since for whatever bizarre reasons both Firefly and Hardkernel engineers chose to use an ASM1061 instead of an ASM1062 to ensure another PCIe lane is wasted).
hjc Posted July 1, 2018 Posted July 1, 2018 3 hours ago, codnoscope said: 8 hours ago, hjc said: Which kernel did you use? The mainline (dev) kernel is currently broken for Firefly-RK3399 (if you disable the USB-C related stuff in the config, it should boot), but 4.4.132 works fine on my board. Hey hjc, the kernel I used is the 4.4.132, which seems strange to me too. What is the status of your internal eMMC? I have the official firefly ubuntu flashed on my eMMC, could it be the problem? Would "dd if=/dev/zero" the eMMC force the board to boot from sd card? I just noticed that my board have a stiker saying the version of the board is "Firefly RK-3399R" what is your board version? I always do a "blkdiscard /dev/mmcblk1" before I try to boot from SD card. Haven't tried to boot with stock OS installed. If no u-boot spl is found on eMMC, Rockchip bootrom will try to load that from SD card. My board is Firefly-RK3399 Plus, purchased in October 2017.
codnoscope Posted July 2, 2018 Posted July 2, 2018 16 hours ago, hjc said: I always do a "blkdiscard /dev/mmcblk1" before I try to boot from SD card. Haven't tried to boot with stock OS installed. If no u-boot spl is found on eMMC, Rockchip bootrom will try to load that from SD card. Hey hjc, the board booted with 4.4.132 kernel after I cleared the internal eMMC as per your instruction. Thank you very much.
ballsystemlord Posted July 8, 2018 Author Posted July 8, 2018 @codnoscope You need to place more load on it then that. You should get all the USB ports loaded down. A HDD is good (unless it is externally powered), I'd hook a cd/dvd drive to the USB 2.0 ports. The USB C you could charge a phone or something on it using an adapter cable. Then you cat the HDD into /dev/null, write a cd/dvd from a file on the internet which you live download, play an audio file from the speakers, and load the processor down with stress-ng. Watch the processor's speed the whole time and verify the burn. I know that that seems outrageous for a running system, but I and probably you too would be using the MIPI-CSI and eDP interfaces, audio jack, M.2 slot, internet (WIFI or Ethernet), USB ports for the keyboard and mouse, and processor at the same time for a video conferencing call. That is just one example of a real world use case. @tkaiser Thanks for the M.2 info, I would not have guessed! You saved me a lot of wasted money! BTW: Did you intend for your pic look like you're dead on your feet? @hjc Really good to know! I can't think of a reason not to use the emmc though...
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