Very Small Platforms - Rockchip 3308 and Allwinner V3s

[SvOlli]

2 hours ago, TonyMac32 said:

My understanding was 2G was being retired though, I'll have to check.

Nope. 2G is used for all voice transmission in 3G and 4G/LTE. It's also used for services like automated emergency calls after a car accident. If something gets migrated for the use of 5G, it's rather 3G.

[sfx2000]

16 hours ago, SvOlli said:

Nope. 2G is used for all voice transmission in 3G and 4G/LTE. It's also used for services like automated emergency calls after a car accident. If something gets migrated for the use of 5G, it's rather 3G.

 

Not quite accurate - 2G (GSM/GPRS) is a completely different radio access network, including waveforms and modulation scheme.

 

2G was turned down some time back here in the US, and now the major operators have scheduled the 3G sunset in the next couple.

[sfx2000]

On 6/17/2019 at 3:01 PM, chwe said:

remember those dirt cheap android sticks you could buy years ago? The MK802.. I knew that I bought one years ago.. but didn't know for a long time that they're equipped with a AW A10..

 

Here's something crazy - found this in my goodie/junk box... mad dog linux something or other - from back in 2006 timeframe - well before kickstarter.

 

PowerPC device implemented on an FPGA - the shiny item is a fingerprint sensor that would log a person in...

 

Mounted as a mass-storage device, with a lightweight desktop environment that one would run in Windows 98...

 

The SD Card (or maybe MMC) was for storage for the linux space, booted off the internal flash...

 

[sfx2000]

On 5/8/2019 at 11:17 PM, TonyMac32 said:

Too small for Linux, but if people don't want to fool with Linux but want the shiny HAT's: https://www.crowdsupply.com/thomas-mckahan/obsidian-esp32

 

I've been following that project - good work there...

[TonyMac32]

That Linux stick thing is cool, what were they hoping to do with it?

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

[sfx2000]

On 10/5/2019 at 6:04 AM, TonyMac32 said:

That Linux stick thing is cool, what were they hoping to do with it?

 

Hehe - not sure these days as it;

 

Doesn't boot anymore

Was supported in Win98 as a mass storage device with software cleverness to install an ancient window manager for Win

 

 

[sfx2000]

Quick update on DingleBerry Pi...

 

Schematics - done - It's essentially a respin of the QC/Atheros reference design into a Pi board form factor.

Layout/Gerbers - done - 4 layer board, single sided - nice to have a friend with an Orcad license from Cadence.

 

Specifics

• MIPS24kc @ 650Mhz - big endian
• 802.11n - ATH9K driver - 2*2:2 for 300Mbps at 2.4GHz (wide channels) - PCB trace antennas
• Two 100Base-2 Ethernet - WAN dedicated port, LAN on switched port
• One USB-A for peripherals
• MicroUSB for Power/Console
• 32MB SPI-NOR flash - uboot and OS
• 128MB SPI-NAND flash - extending FS for application and user space
• 64MB DDR2 RAM
• SW - OpenWRT Master on the ATH79 target
• Bootloader - uboot with Pepe2K mods (web server fail-safe)

 

The 4351 does have PCIe, but I've decided not to implement

 

Performance Targets:

• Reference board is good for 100Mbps WiFi and NAT LAN/WAN performance so fairly balanced there.
• Power - 5V5DC, 1000ma for PS - right now with everything active on reference design, we're around 850ma at max load.

 

BOM is reasonable, COGS says we're around $50USD to cover the NRE and breakeven with 1K boards with kits (box, cables, boards, ac adapter)

 

I will not build/ship at a loss... So the next step before doing the engineering sample boards it to gauge the potential market interest.

[sfx2000]

Have been exploring Dingleberry Pi 2

 

QC/Atheros IPQ4019 - more relevant here for the ARM folks - IPQ4019 is a quad core Cortex-A7@800MHz

 

Buys us GigE on WAN/LAN ports, along with ATH10K for dual-band 802.11 a/b/g/n/AC Wave2 along with USB3.0 for the USB user facing port.

 

BOM cost is higher, as it manf. costs with more layers, and more power needs - and numbers there do not make sense for an affordable board for this community - $100 GOGS there...

[guidol]

12 hours ago, sfx2000 said:

Quick update on DingleBerry Pi...

 

Specifics

• MIPS24kc @ 650Mhz - big endian
• 802.11n - ATH9K driver - 2*2:2 for 300Mbps at 2.4GHz (wide channels) - PCB trace antennas
• Two 100Base-2 Ethernet - WAN dedicated port, LAN on switched port
• One USB-A for peripherals
• MicroUSB for Power/Console
• 32MB SPI-NOR flash - uboot and OS
• 128MB SPI-NAND flash - extending FS for application and user space
• 64MB DDR2 RAM
• SW - OpenWRT Master on the ATH79 target
• Bootloader - uboot with Pepe2K mods (web server fail-safe)

BOM is reasonable, COGS says we're around $50USD to cover the NRE and breakeven with 1K boards with kits (box, cables, boards, ac adapter)

 

for me this sounds like the data of a <$50 DSL-Router in a Pi-factor size.
I dont think you will sell so much, that you can make profit

 

[sfx2000]

14 hours ago, guidol said:

for me this sounds like the data of a <$50 DSL-Router in a Pi-factor size.
I dont think you will sell so much, that you can make profit

 

That's the challenge - I can do a DNI on the SPI-NAND, which takes a couple of dollars off...

 

moving to 16MB NOR brings prices also down a bit - saving about 2 bucks

 

Moving from QCA4351 to MT7628NN saves one dollar, but not worth the frustration there of re-doing schematics/layout and more NRE - so that's a non-starter, not to mention having to establish ties into the MediaTek ecosystem - I have good logistics into the Qualcomm and Marvell arena based on past projects.

 

So that knocks 3 to 4 dollars off the BOM - moving manf from US to Shenzen drops conversion costs (cost to make the boards), but not enough to offset the shipping to distribution here in the US.

 

Anyways, as @guidol points out - it's a narrow focused product, so volume isn't going to be very high.

[sfx2000]

On 10/28/2019 at 8:13 PM, sfx2000 said:

Anyways, as @guidol points out - it's a narrow focused product, so volume isn't going to be very high.

 

I have to put my program manager hat on - the numbers don't work with potential volume, so I'm putting the project idea on the shelf for now.

 

That being said - there are a number of boards that are suitable and similar in concept - and they available now.

 

these boards are hacker friendly, accessable, and supported.

 

GL-iNet AR150 - This is a QCA9331 MIPS24Kc @ 400MHz, 64MB DDR2, 16MB SPI-NOR

GL-iNet AR300M - QCA9531 MIPS24Kc @ 650MHz, 128MB RAM, 128MB SPI-NAND and 16MB SPI-NOR, there's a couple of variants there - one with no NAND, the 16M, and the lite, which is single ethernet.

 

AR150 is fully supported on OpenWRT ar71xx, and is very affordable, and a cool hacker board due to the open nature of the CPU and more importantly, the ath9k radio, along with a robust uboot implementation.

[markbirss]

@sfx2000 those GL-iNet devices are not bad. But not always cheap

 

At around $ 3.39 used not bad as OpenWRT support was added earlier this year. 

 

I use my own mesh firmware on them

 

https://openwrt.org/toh/aruba/aruba_ap-105

Hardware

CPU Atheros AR7161-8C1A 680 MHz

Flash size 16 MiB

RAM 128MiB

Wireless Atheros AR9220-AC1A, Atheros AR9223-AC1A

Ethernet Atheros AR8021-BL1E 10/100/1000 PoE

USB No

Serial Yes

Power: POE or dc jack

 

or 

 

Used Cisco Meraki MR24 between $ 10-20

 https://openwrt.org/toh/meraki/mr24?s[]=mr24

[sfx2000]

true, true... and that was one the market barriers to entry.

 

the ar150 is easily available on the various sales portals (amazon/alibaba/etc), and relatively affordable - they typically run in the $20-25 USD range, which for a board of that price, is actually a lot of bang for the buck - ar150 is essentially the QC-Atheros AP-121 platform at a firmware level.

 

OpenWRT direct support is very good - and the ath9k driver makes it even more so...

[guidol]

A new(?) V3s-like SBC:

Daniel Palmer's BreadBee is based on a relatively unknown IP camera SoC, the MSC313E

 i.e. the AllWinner V3s is very similar to the SoC used here but it only has one SPI controller that is lost as soon as you put SPI NOR on it.

https://www.hackster.io/news/daniel-palmer-s-breadbee-is-an-ultra-compact-1ghz-arm-cortex-a7-sbc-with-on-board-ethernet-577cab543154

[guidol]

For Retro-reasons:
I did buy a old Acme Systems FOX G20 (because it was cheap (10EUR) -

normally I would like own a Acme Systems Arietta G25 because of the formfactor / pinout).
The Fox has only 400Mhz and 64MB of Ram (Arietta has 128 or 256MB but same CPU-Speed)

but could boot a wheezy (Sorry no armbian) in 9MB
I do find it very cool this very low memory useage - while running the SSH/FTP-Server.

 

Also I like the company name  

Reminds me at the companys allways could be seen in Cartoon series
(ACME Co. = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acme_Corporation )

The original image on the companys webpage was "infected" with emdebian wheezy-grip which is long EOL
So I had to multistrap a new rootfs from the pure debian archive wheezy and transplant the modules/firmware to the newer rootfs (kernel is the same).

Was something nice to learn here while staying home

[shamsmehra90]

Hi,

 sits around unsoldered as before.. don't have time to get familiar with kicad to design a board

[TonyMac32]

@guidol how bad do you want something like that, but say, just a bit more powerful?

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

[shamsmehra90]

Please help me? Have some issues. Is this the best place to ask or should I start a new thread instead.

 

Regards..

[sfx2000]

On 4/14/2020 at 2:52 AM, guidol said:

Daniel Palmer's BreadBee is based on a relatively unknown IP camera SoC, the MSC313E

 i.e. the AllWinner V3s is very similar to the SoC used here but it only has one SPI controller that is lost as soon as you put SPI NOR on it.

 

Maybe in his design - but SPI can support multiple slaves... only one master of course...

 

Here's a couple of different topologies using SPI and multiple slaves - I did something similar a few years back with SPI-NOR and SPI-NAND for expansion... there, each devices was and MTD device, using UBI and formatting with UBIFS - bootloader, kernel, rootfs on the NOR, storage on the NAND

 

I've seen crazy stuff on SPI - everything from MUX's to Switches, to doing a Serial-Parallel converter...

 

 

[peterbmckinley]

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

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

 

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Usage of /:    4% of 29G    	

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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..

Hi Chwe, awesome work. We are interested in starting and maintaining support for Lichee Zero in Armbian. Have you published your work anywhere, that we could use as a starting point in this effort?

 

Peter