Very Small Platforms - Rockchip 3308 and Allwinner V3s

[sfx2000]

MAIN Thread - presently working on a router/AP, and got a bit into a networking issue - solved on my end, and thanks to @TonyMac32 for killing the other unintended posts.

 

Prompted here...

 

and here...

 

 

@TonyMac32and @Ma Tianfu - cortex-a7 is good target for both SoC's

 

Might be tight for Armbian...

 

Spending my time recently in the depths of hell*, erm openwrt, on a MIPS 24kc project - onboarding an older platform that has lost support from the vendor - QC Atheros AP121 (AR9331) with some extras, and catching OpenWRT on their MIPS Device Tree migration for that platform. Along with a current GCC (7.4) ,Kernel (4.14), MUSL,  and dependencies on what many would consider to be an obsolete arch - MIPS big endian- MIPS can swing either way, but the QCA chip does things the network style (which is perhaps good as that chip is network oriented)

 

* Depths of hell is sorting out big-endian when most platforms are little endian when debugging

 

It's actually surprising with what one can do with 64MB of RAM and 16MB of SPI-NOR and getting a working platform.

 

Anyways - not sure where the RK3308 and AW H3v lives - there are layers - the MCU's like the Arduino and similar (ESP32 is my friend right now), the SBC's as the various boards supported here, and things in the middle - capable boards on MIPS/ARM/PPC....

 

Thoughts here?

[TonyMac32]

The V3s is very much centered around video processing, for cameras and such.  That said, it has far more I/O capability than the Broadcom SoC's used on Raspberry Pi, and the ARM core is the master of the SoC, not the video hardware. 

https://github.com/petit-miner/Blueberry-PI

 

I just ordered some boards to build one of these to experiment with, need to get the components on order, I apparently managed to squeak my PCB order in just before Chinese New Year shut everything down.

[sfx2000]

19 hours ago, TonyMac32 said:

The V3s is very much centered around video processing, for cameras and such.  That said, it has far more I/O capability than the Broadcom SoC's used on Raspberry Pi, and the ARM core is the master of the SoC, not the video hardware. 

https://github.com/petit-miner/Blueberry-PI

 

I just ordered some boards to build one of these to experiment with, need to get the components on order, I apparently managed to squeak my PCB order in just before Chinese New Year shut everything down.

 

Cool - could be an interesting board with SPI OneNAND, which is bootable using the MTD drivers... 

 

http://www.linux-mtd.infradead.org/index.html

 

(the MTD stuff might also be handy for the various TV boxes folks ask about that are raw NAND and not eMMC based)

 

I've got a MIPS based router board running OpenWRT with 128MB of SPI NAND and 16MB of SPI NOR

 

https://blog.hackster.io/the-blueberry-pi-just-another-fruity-sbc-9edf26a0db8c

https://hackaday.com/2018/08/12/build-your-own-linux-single-board-computer/

 

@TonyMac32 - going 2 Layer (the simple one) or 4 Layer (the full monty)?

 

Example below - notice that the SPI flash is unpopulated, so it must obviously boot from SD card - nice to see no MicroUSB as power

 

 

 

[TonyMac32]

I went 2-layer, of course they both have surface mounts on both sides, so it might be hot air reflow time.

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

[sfx2000]

23 minutes ago, TonyMac32 said:

I went 2-layer, of course they both have surface mounts on both sides, so it might be hot air reflow time.

 

Hehe... 

 

The one comment I have on the Blueberry-PI PCB is the realtek module - one could have done an ESP32 (or ESP8266) SOM over SDIO, and made it even more interesting as an IOT board...

 

There's an SDIO driver for the ESP8266 over in the Linux-Rockchip github...

 

and V3 linux-sunxi related -- http://linux-sunxi.org/Wifi#Espressif

[chwe]

3 hours ago, TonyMac32 said:

I went 2-layer, of course they both have surface mounts on both sides, so it might be hot air reflow time.

didn't you call a challenge for the first one who gets armbian to run on a V3s some months ago?

 

_     _      _               ____  _   _____              
| |   (_) ___| |__   ___  ___|  _ \(_) |__  /___ _ __ ___  
| |   | |/ __| '_ \ / _ \/ _ \ |_) | |   / // _ \ '__/ _ \ 
| |___| | (__| | | |  __/  __/  __/| |  / /|  __/ | | (_) |
|_____|_|\___|_| |_|\___|\___|_|   |_| /____\___|_|  \___/ 
                                                           

Welcome to ARMBIAN 5.74 user-built Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch) 4.20.2-sunxi   
System load:   1.90 0.67 0.24  	Up time:       1 min		
Memory usage:  58 % of 50MB   	Zram usage:    36 % of 25Mb   	IP:            
Usage of /:    4% of 29G    	

[ General system configuration (beta): armbian-config ]

New to Armbian? Check the documentation first: https://docs.armbian.com


Thank you for choosing Armbian! Support: www.armbian.com

Creating a new user account. Press <Ctrl-C> to abort

Please provide a username (eg. your forename): 

got one on Christmas.. didn't have time to dig into it.. but well.. here you are.. Armbian booting from a LicheePiZero 

 

Does it make sense? not really.. but hey.. who cares.. it boots.. in less than 30 seconds..

[TonyMac32]

I think the challenge was to boot it on your own board. :-P

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

[chwe]

well.. my v3s sits around unsoldered as before.. don't have time to get familiar with kicad to design a board..  maybe in the future..

 

pine comes with an S3L...

https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=7093

so most of the 'nice ideas' I had in mind for my V3s

[sfx2000]

19 hours ago, chwe said:

pine comes with an S3L...

 

So Allwinner continues to split up their product lineup....

[markbirss]

On 2/2/2019 at 3:38 AM, chwe said:

didn't you call a challenge for the first one who gets armbian to run on a V3s some months ago?

 

_     _      _               ____  _   _____              
| |   (_) ___| |__   ___  ___|  _ \(_) |__  /___ _ __ ___  
| |   | |/ __| '_ \ / _ \/ _ \ |_) | |   / // _ \ '__/ _ \ 
| |___| | (__| | | |  __/  __/  __/| |  / /|  __/ | | (_) |
|_____|_|\___|_| |_|\___|\___|_|   |_| /____\___|_|  \___/ 
                                                           

Welcome to ARMBIAN 5.74 user-built Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch) 4.20.2-sunxi   
System load:   1.90 0.67 0.24  	Up time:       1 min		
Memory usage:  58 % of 50MB   	Zram usage:    36 % of 25Mb   	IP:            

got one on Christmas.. didn't have time to dig into it.. but well.. here you are.. Armbian booting from a LicheePiZero 

 

Does it make sense? not really.. but hey.. who cares.. it boots.. in less than 30 seconds..

 

Looks like you only using serial console for output? No screen

 

I used the zero-4.13.y kernel to get the Ethernet on the Dock working and want to also use a 1024x600 screen. It looks like the 40.20.2-sunxi kernel is missing the dts changes for to enable the Ethernet on the Dock

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 3, 2019 by Tido
added spoiler.. shorted quote - please add a spoiler nexttime yourself, thx

[markbirss]

Im using a ESP8266 ESP-01 as wifi serial terminal

 

 

[chwe]

3 hours ago, markbirss said:

Looks like you only using serial console for output? No screen

well, booting armbian was just more or less 'a joke'.. Don't get me wrong.. it works.. I would strip down an image quite a lot to make it usable for the v3s... But it would work under the sun8i family.. https://github.com/armbian/build/compare/master...chwe17:v3s

(whereas the kernel-config is a left over from some funny ideas I had with this board.., just forget about it)

 

But if you need the armbian buildscript as a lazy tool to crosscompile u-boot or kernel.. armbians current sunxi kernel works out of the box..  And debian stretch can boot from 64MB ram..

 

I don't know yet where it will end.. Likely that I solder SPI flash on it in the future.

[chwe]

3 hours ago, markbirss said:

Im using a ESP8266 ESP-01 as wifi serial terminal

I had this in mind for quite a long time... E.g. have serial access to boards which hangs or to trigger a reboot.. Do you have the sourcecode laying around?

[guidol]

51 minutes ago, chwe said:

I had this in mind for quite a long time... E.g. have serial access to boards which hangs or to trigger a reboot.. Do you have the sourcecode laying around?

take a look here

 

[sfx2000]

15 hours ago, guidol said:

take a look here

 

Cool - very nice for 8266 - will have to check on esp32, as API's changed...

[markbirss]

16 hours ago, chwe said:

well, booting armbian was just more or less 'a joke'.. Don't get me wrong.. it works.. I would strip down an image quite a lot to make it usable for the v3s... But it would work under the sun8i family.. https://github.com/armbian/build/compare/master...chwe17:v3s

(whereas the kernel-config is a left over from some funny ideas I had with this board.., just forget about it)

 

But if you need the armbian buildscript as a lazy tool to crosscompile u-boot or kernel.. armbians current sunxi kernel works out of the box..  And debian stretch can boot from 64MB ram..

 

I don't know yet where it will end.. Likely that I solder SPI flash on it in the future.

 

Yes, Im going to try add a 32mb spi flash myself

 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/5pcs-MX25L25645-SOP8-MX25L25645GM2I-10G-W25Q256/32954479081.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.27424c4dxgXvFR

 

I want just a basic ssh capable terminal nothing more

[markbirss]

30 minutes ago, sfx2000 said:

 

Cool - very nice for 8266 - will have to check on esp32, as API's changed...

a ESP-01 (1mb version) is enough for espterm

 

the ESP-01 (512kb version) can work but the source has to be modified

[TonyMac32]

https://groboards.com/giant-board/

 

Just in case anyone wanted to toss out another tiny platform for discussion.  ;-)  I was thinking of using this SoC, now it's "been done", but at the same time not the way I was going to use it...

[guidol]

10 hours ago, TonyMac32 said:

https://groboards.com/giant-board/

the board reminds me at the AcmeSystems Aritetta:
https://www.acmesystems.it/arietta

https://www.acmesystems.it/catalog_arietta

 

or the WiFiG25:

http://www.armdevs.com/WiFiG25 Module.html

They also do have a 256MB version of the Arietta, but they wouldnt send it to turkey

[TonyMac32]

Interesting.  The Giant Board is in an Adafruit form factor, so has a bunch of random peripherals ready to go, which is a pro.  It also showed me that I should be able to design within relatively cheap board constraints fab wise.

[sfx2000]

15 hours ago, guidol said:

or the WiFiG25:

http://www.armdevs.com/WiFiG25 Module.html

 

Gah - realtek wifi...

[sfx2000]

On 2/17/2019 at 1:41 PM, TonyMac32 said:

Just in case anyone wanted to toss out another tiny platform for discussion.  ;-)  I was thinking of using this SoC, now it's "been done", but at the same time not the way I was going to use it...

 

Hehe - and I'm looking at MIP24Kc boards recently, specially QCA9331/9531... as most of the hard work there has already been done getting things up and running...

[TonyMac32]

Ah, so I see why the original thread about the 3308 came to be:

 

http://shop.t-firefly.com/goods.php?id=86

 

If T-firefly wants Armbian, they can help out. 

 

Drivers would be the fun part, not just for the RK3308, but for the raw NAND as well. (If pictures are accurate it might have an eMMC wired into the middle of where a raw nand chip would go)  Might be a fun board for an appliance, which I think is the goal.

[chwe]

8 hours ago, TonyMac32 said:

(If pictures are accurate it might have an eMMC wired into the middle of where a raw nand chip would go)

that's not as uncommon.. A lot of TV boxes have this layout as well.. The BPi R2 too..

 

45$ for a board with a 'It is a miniature and compact main board which is equipped with a cost-effective RK3308' is a bit pricey isn't it? A35 core isn't supposed to be a speedy one.. The microphone array thing might be the most interesting part of it..

 

[TonyMac32]

All Firefly hardware is expensive, to be honest. The board without the microphone is $30 if I read correctly. That said, as an IoT board, after being spoiled with $20 high-ram Linux hardware, it does seem expensive

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

[SvOlli]

On 2/2/2019 at 3:38 AM, chwe said:

didn't you call a challenge for the first one who gets armbian to run on a V3s some months ago?

 

_     _      _               ____  _   _____              
| |   (_) ___| |__   ___  ___|  _ \(_) |__  /___ _ __ ___  
| |   | |/ __| '_ \ / _ \/ _ \ |_) | |   / // _ \ '__/ _ \ 
| |___| | (__| | | |  __/  __/  __/| |  / /|  __/ | | (_) |
|_____|_|\___|_| |_|\___|\___|_|   |_| /____\___|_|  \___/ 
                                                           

Welcome to ARMBIAN 5.74 user-built Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch) 4.20.2-sunxi   
System load:   1.90 0.67 0.24  	Up time:       1 min

got one on Christmas.. didn't have time to dig into it.. but well.. here you are.. Armbian booting from a LicheePiZero 

 

Does it make sense? not really.. but hey.. who cares.. it boots.. in less than 30 seconds..

 

Would you mind sharing your configuration for building? A friend of mine is building his own board based upon the V3s and we're about to bring it up. To have something that can be built in a defined and reproducible way would really help.

Edited March 19, 2019 by Tido
shorted quote - for better reading

[chwe]

it's our default sunxi kernel and mainline u-boo and choosen the right device tree. See those 3 commits

 

https://github.com/armbian/build/compare/master...chwe17:v3s

 

first I thought about it's own SoC family.. but it's not really needed.. The board works also with defaults..

 

BOOTCONFIG="LicheePi_Zero_defconfig"

and a normal sunxi kernel..

[sfx2000]

On 2/17/2019 at 1:41 PM, TonyMac32 said:

Just in case anyone wanted to toss out another tiny platform for discussion.  ;-)  I was thinking of using this SoC, now it's "been done", but at the same time not the way I was going to use it...

 

I've been working for the last few weeks on AR9331 - not ARM mind you, but it's surprisingly capable - and having onboard WiFi (single stream 11n - but it's ATH9K, which is awesome for wifi) and a 5 port ethernet switch.

 

Current based on 64MB DDR2, 16MB SPI NOR-Flash...

 

Pricewise - it's comparable to AllWinner H3, different feature set - eg AR7331 doesn't have a GPU, but it does have WiFi and the ethernet switch onboard - single thread performance is ok for my needs...

[sfx2000]

On 2/19/2019 at 5:19 AM, chwe said:

that's not as uncommon.. A lot of TV boxes have this layout as well.. The BPi R2 too..

 

45$ for a board with a 'It is a miniature and compact main board which is equipped with a cost-effective RK3308' is a bit pricey isn't it? A35 core isn't supposed to be a speedy one.. The microphone array thing might be the most interesting part of it..

 

 

When getting into Low-End platforms - always curious why folks do raw NAND or eMMC - that's a lot of lines to place... but I get it, it's easy

 

SPI is cleaner and simpler - and SPI can be NOR or NAND - do NOR for bootloader and kernel/rootfs, and then if needed, one can do a SPI NAND for expansion...

 

One example of SPI NOR/NAND combo... in this use case, the NAND is expansion, the device can run on NOR exclusively... SPI can have multiple devices on the same bus.

 

[TonyMac32]

2 minutes ago, sfx2000 said:

When getting into Low-End platforms - always curious why folks do raw NAND or eMMC - that's a lot of lines to place...

 

Copy-Paste of the reference design.

 

14 minutes ago, sfx2000 said:

I've been working for the last few weeks on AR9331 - not ARM mind you, but it's surprisingly capable

 

Very nice

 

At the moment I'm playing with ESP32, looking in the direction of the ATSAMD51 (it has a lot of high-end interfaces but is still a micro)  The ESP32 has existing software support going for it, the Atmega not as much, other than circuitpython and an Arduino core.

 

 

 

As this is a hobby for me, and because I like the idea anyway, I'm planning on licensing everything under the CERN OHL, as long as I can at least recoup the dev costs I can keep making new things.  This is as much me improving my technical knowledge as anything. (QFN24 soldered on a hot plate in my basement = new territory)