Igor_K Posted October 10, 2018 Posted October 10, 2018 Kickstarter campaign is about to start. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/librecomputer/390161934?ref=399083&token=2af98f81 1
TonyMac32 Posted October 11, 2018 Posted October 11, 2018 Cute. I'll have to get out the Kapton tape before I go adding a heat sink to this little guy to avoid accidents... Power consumption numbers on it would be interesting to see, especially if this is as cheap as I would hope given the low connector count and the SoC being a "cost-improved" model of the S905(x) family. Now, it would be really fun to be able to buy this with nothing but the HDMI populated to use like a SOM.
Tido Posted October 11, 2018 Posted October 11, 2018 MicroUSB, I just had my bad experience with tinker board. Well Libre's design maybe still changes a bit, I would like to see this : https://forum.armbian.com/topic/4767-powering-through-micro-usb/?do=findComment&comment=63762
Igor_K Posted October 11, 2018 Author Posted October 11, 2018 I hope a media player experience will be improved sooner or later. @TonyMac32 I see only two holes for heatsink mounting (probably). I hope it just a prototype issue.
vlad59 Posted October 11, 2018 Posted October 11, 2018 2 mounting holes on the same side will make any heatsink design "mechanically interesting" 1
Igor_K Posted October 11, 2018 Author Posted October 11, 2018 57 minutes ago, vlad59 said: 2 mounting holes on the same side will make any heatsink design "mechanically interesting" This is exactly the reason why I think it is just a prototype or they have a different purpose (I hope not).
Da Xue Posted October 12, 2018 Posted October 12, 2018 The two holes are for eMMC module securement. You can use double sided stickie stuff since the heat dissipation isn't that bad at 1.2GHz.
Igor_K Posted October 12, 2018 Author Posted October 12, 2018 @Da XueI'm afraid you will have many complains about lack of SD card. I mean It would be good to have a big flashing banner >>[[ There is no SD card folks ]]<< 1
Tido Posted October 12, 2018 Posted October 12, 2018 (edited) 2 hours ago, Igor_K said: lack of SD card instead 128Mb SPI NOR or buy eMMC. Yes, it is better to advise in advance than getting a bad reputation. I couldn't agree more. Edit: customized booting of upstream Linux from a variety of sources including USB flash drives, USB hard drives and PXE. Edited October 12, 2018 by Tido added the other media
chwe Posted October 12, 2018 Posted October 12, 2018 smart! the connector the user normally only touches once (HDMI, Network, Powering) is on the back-side and connectors which are touched more often (USB) are on the front (assuming IR is normally on the front side). A bit risky but IMO interesting is to throw out the microSD slot. It may solve a bunch of those support questions which end normally here: https://forum.armbian.com/forum/31-sd-card-and-power-supply/ (at least the SD related ones ) and 12MB SPI flash is more than enough. IMO an important 'what if' question: What if I mess up the bootloader and brick it? I'm not familiar with enough with Amlogic SoCs, are they 'failsave' to unbrick SPI once it's messed up (e.g. something like RKs recovery tools?). I've a talent in messing up u-boot, luckily this only happened on SD-card (of fail-save sunxi) yet, where it wasn't much an issue. I probably pledge for a 1gb version if there are still some left for 19$ when I'm back at home.. Not that I'm interested in Kodi on Linux stuff, still a mystery to me why people want Kodi on Linux (anyway, I don't need to understand everything).. But I appreciate your contribution towards mainline support for hardware accelerated video en/decoding and it could be a cute little IoT end-node for systems where you can't trust that your device doesn't magically disappears (others would call it someone steals your stuff). At least potential confidential information of this node is not in the wrong hands as soon as they cut power. A cute little toy to get a feeling for PXE related stuff. 2
guidol Posted October 12, 2018 Posted October 12, 2018 9 hours ago, Igor_K said: The campaign has launched. but only for credit cards - when will they made it work with paypal
Igor_K Posted October 12, 2018 Author Posted October 12, 2018 > still a mystery to me why people want Kodi on Linux @chwe just out of my curiosity what is a better option in your opinion?
chwe Posted October 13, 2018 Posted October 13, 2018 7 hours ago, Igor_K said: @chwe just out of my curiosity what is a better option in your opinion? Well, I'm likely the wrong person for such a topic (I don't even own an TV anymore the last one got trashed after some big caps inside dried out and I wasn't comfortable to solder high voltage caps inside a TV - I don't miss it). I watch streams on my Ipad. But if I would go back to streaming on TV I would probably go for an android TV box which gets regular updates (well, this board supports android as well so why not) or something like an apple TV. I happily waste hours in bringing up some IoT stuff or server stuff to my boards, but I wouldn't have the nerves to 'teach my TV' what I expect from it.. If my android box/appleTV doesn't do what it is supposed to do I can piss off their customers service - at least they get payed for it. If it doesn't work on linux I mostly had to piss off people doing this in their spare time (something I don't want) or doing the work on my own to get it working (IMO not worth my time - not experienced to solve such issues in a reasonable time frame). If you know (partly) what you're doing go out and bring up kodi on linux, if you're just a consumer which then complains that "but it doesn't run as smooth as I expected" go for a android box and complain there that it doesn't work, they'll likely just ignore you whereas in 'opensource linux world' someone is again and again polite enough to explain you why *random codec* doesn't run smoothly yet. But we have people here more familiar/interested with such task here. E.g. @JMCC or @balbes150 do amazing work here for multimedia on arm-linux. Besides a waveshare knock off on an RPi3 all HDMIs on my SBCs are still unused.. (you need an HDMI connector? I can unsolder them with a heatgun, I won't miss them... ). The cool kid in those days has a TV box with linux, cause even the uncool kid can buy and set up an android TV box.. If it does the needed research to buy the right board and invest the time needed to bring his board up properly working if you just buy *random crap* to complain after its that it's not perfect.. Please go somewhere else.. for example drinking crafts beer, it's also cool in those days.
Igor_K Posted October 13, 2018 Author Posted October 13, 2018 @chwe "TV box with Linux" means TV box with Android?
Tido Posted October 13, 2018 Posted October 13, 2018 17 hours ago, chwe said: where you can't trust that your device doesn't magically disappears (others would call it someone steals your stuff). and others may wonder were you place your stuff
chwe Posted October 13, 2018 Posted October 13, 2018 5 hours ago, Igor_K said: "TV box with Linux" means TV box with Android? technically yes. Android is based on Linux. How is: "still a mystery to me why people want Kodi on Linux where you have root access per default" sounding? Well people say then this could also be possible for Android. The fist definition with an exception for Android.. I do understand, people might not feel comfortable anymore to potentially share all their information with google they balance privacy concerns against business opportunities every day (well, it's a company, per definition a company has to make profit so if the software is for free, you pay with your data - not clear to me why people don't get this) but going away from a "free beer for your data" company towards *something else* comes normally with a price. I'm going off topic here: Spoiler You either have to collect the hops, malt and yeast yourself to craft your own beer or you visit the shiny bar where you pay enough for it. As far as I can see, apple balances your privacy higher combined with a higher price for their devices (e.g. my apple devices were never bloated as much as my android devices - not only googles fault, mostly the hardware companies android runs on played here a role too), but I don't follow apples privacy model close enough anymore to make here a proper fact based statement anymore. Just look into the 'investors plan' a company has. If they offer something like 'micro targeting' or 'personalized ads' they collect the data of their users. Personalized ads are only possible when you know your users (or at least you think/claim you know it). If your insurance company offers you a 'nice' fitness tracker they want to track you (or let you feel comfortable that they may track you in the future). People studied stuff like math, physics, physical chemistry etc. but didn't stay in academics after their studies will then calculate for them how they can make more profit with you. It's somehow a 'multidimensional local maxima/minima problem' during your studies you solve similar problems to compute optimal structures of molecules or chemical reaction pathways. Whereas physical chemist take repulsion, attraction, nucleus spin etc. into account the guy at the insurance company uses the dataset from your fitness tracker, your age, your med. history, your gender (and soon probably your whole genome - it's getting cheaper, academics takes care to make it cheaper ) into account. Computational calculation power in those days is so cheap so that even 'trivial' datasets are worth to look at them. Even when your data isn't worth at the moment to look at, it might be worth in the future. Remember when usenet slowly morphed to something like groups.google.com, a bunch of ISPs and other companies shut down their usenet servers (outdated, not as shiny as those new toys we have now) and google tried slowly to take over those groups. This is a huge dataset back to the 1980's where people didn't had to care towards privacy as much cause nobody back then thought that one company may 'waste' so much CPU time to analyze the whole dataset.. Now CPU/GPU time is cheap enough for such a project. 2 hours ago, Tido said: and others may wonder were you place your stuff the BUZZ-word term for it is to my knowledge 'shared workspace' or 'workplace as a service' sorry, not familiar with the newest bull-shit terms anymore.. Still interested if someone has an answer towards this one: 19 hours ago, chwe said: What if I mess up the bootloader and brick it? I'm not familiar with enough with Amlogic SoCs, are they 'failsave' to unbrick SPI once it's messed up (e.g. something like RKs recovery tools?). I've a talent in messing up u-boot, luckily this only happened on SD-card (of fail-save sunxi) yet, where it wasn't much an issue. Where are all those Amlogic hackers being familiar with their boot logic? Missed the 19$ for 1GB pledge.. hmm @Da Xue is your PSU/eMMC worth 20$? The eMMC will likely collecting dust cause I want to do PXE stuff with it, but having one might be good in case I go for another of your products in the future, looks sane to me that they're compatible to each other . You sell: Quote USB Type A to USB Type A cable for programming eMMC with vendor tools. AML-S905X-CC, well I assume the same approach works for S805X but also SPI NOR?
gounthar Posted October 13, 2018 Posted October 13, 2018 Too bad the best perks have already gone... I was not fast enough. The ones that are left are interesting too, but more expensive. May I expect a support for this board one of these days?
Igor_K Posted October 13, 2018 Author Posted October 13, 2018 5 hours ago, gounthar said: Too bad the best perks have already gone... I was not fast enough. 1 wow that is impressive
constantius Posted October 16, 2018 Posted October 16, 2018 La Frite will be avalaible on november 2018. Now you can back it on kickstarter web page. specs.; https://libre.computer/products/boards/aml-s805x-ac/ This is my proposal to support. Best regards 1
TonyMac32 Posted October 17, 2018 Posted October 17, 2018 16 hours ago, constantius said: This is my proposal to support. Someone sends me one I'll look at the prospects, but a proposal for support needs to be under the board bringup thread 1
chwe Posted October 17, 2018 Posted October 17, 2018 8 hours ago, TonyMac32 said: but a proposal for support needs to be under the board bringup thread then it should be a real 'proposal' with an intention to contribute to the board bring up process.. If it's just an 'I want armbian on it' but don't even summarize specs and a pro/cons, better keep it here.. @constantius thread was merged from development subforum (but not board bring up) by myself to this one cause it didn't make sense to have a second thread with the same infos yo get here. We have a search engine to spot such threads before you've to open a new one: Before the board isn't on the table it IMO doesn't make sense to discuss a 'board bring up'.. 2
TonyMac32 Posted October 17, 2018 Posted October 17, 2018 6 hours ago, chwe said: Before the board isn't on the table it IMO doesn't make sense to discuss a 'board bring up'.. Correct of course. In theory this should be straightforward, but only experience will tell for sure.
TonyMac32 Posted November 12, 2018 Posted November 12, 2018 Now that this is getting closer to physically existing (ideally I'll have one soon, whether we support it here or not) 1) No SD initially worried me because of the normal proprietary loaders/etc. However we support FEL on Sunxi, UMS on Tinker, and @Neil Armstrong / BayLibre is shoving a ton of patches to get the Amlogic USB boot support into u-boot (2018.11?) 2) SPI flash for u-boot, or at least the u-boot environment. I don't have all the details, but if done correctly this board could keep a consistent hardware profile across distros (MAC address/etc). ASUS tried this halfway, but didn't go full on for a SPI flash boot. 3) The SoC is a Meson64, and has nothing to do with an S805, so think low-power S905X 4) This thing should be able to run in very low power mode, assuming the Amlogic blob behaves. 2
jeanrhum Posted November 12, 2018 Posted November 12, 2018 Until the campaign ends and they send the boards, I should receive one (1GB). I'll be able to test if there is any armbian build for it. I'm impressed (if verified when testing the board) by the current support status of this board. It often requires several months (years) when we look at existing boards (even if open source communities are doing a really great job).
TonyMac32 Posted November 12, 2018 Posted November 12, 2018 2 hours ago, jeanrhum said: I'm impressed (if verified when testing the board) by the current support status of this board It is extremely helpful that this is billed as a low-cost S905X. What I've read so far just basically says it's a clocked down Meson GXL with a few missing hardware supports (Max 1 GB RAM, 1080p, simpler vdec, etc). So software support should be mainly the same drivers, just a sparser device tree (I'm obviously glossing over some specifics that could be theoretically be an issue, but this is nothing like using an all-new SoC). 1
gounthar Posted November 12, 2018 Posted November 12, 2018 I should receive one naked, and another one with the eMMC, charger, and so on. Count me in for some tests...
devman Posted June 17, 2019 Posted June 17, 2019 FYI, the Kickstarter rewards are starting to arrive. 1
TonyMac32 Posted June 19, 2019 Posted June 19, 2019 On 6/17/2019 at 5:48 AM, devman said: Kickstarter rewards are starting to arrive. Good, I can't wait to play with the little thing.
gounthar Posted June 19, 2019 Posted June 19, 2019 Same here. Too bad we did not get any tracking number...
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