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CHIP Pro

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Re: CHIP Pro

#121

Post by gravypod »

platz wrote: post #22

I have the chip, esp8266, rpi, teensies, trinkets, arduinos... I studied electronics principles and built various circuits.. yet I have no idea what I can practically use these devices for in my life. They all sit in a box and I have a hard time justifying buying more of them.

You can actually probably use the RPi as a desktop. I was thinking about picking up the Orange Pi and replacing my AMD 5350 machine with that.

For gaming I use steam streaming.

The only down side is finding a working build of the distro I use for the RPi.

Re: CHIP Pro

#122

Post by StavrosK »

Crosseye_Jack wrote: post #103
staticelf wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Media devices or home automation is two big players I would say. But I feel exactly the same as you. I used my rpi as a server for different things and I have used it as a media player. But now I want to build video surveillance and control it all with my rpi. Though, I live in an apartment so there is not a super large need which makes me prioritize other stuff since I don't really need it. Another thing I want to d…

You can get RF Controllable Wall Light switches that replace the existing switch. The ones in the UK commonly use 433mhz and a configurable static code to turn them on/off. The benefit of them are that you can still control them from the switch itself so you won't be looking around for the bloody remote, The in socket types have to have the wall switch on all the time so if someone turns the light off from the switch…

I wrote up how you can read the signals here:

https://www.stavros.io/posts/how-remote-control-rf-devices-r...

Although I would (and did) use an ESP8266 to connect everything to MQTT, it's much more flexible and secure (you control the entire firmware).

Re: CHIP Pro

#123

Post by lucb1e »

wyager wrote: post #50
LAMike wrote: post #30

Is it possible to make use this as a starting point for an open source smartphone?

You can use any SoC as the starting point for an open source smartphone. I don't think this is appropriate, though, given the inability to break out high-bandwidth busses from the board, e.g. for a video display or LTE networking.

3g is plenty fast, for the next few years at least. The only advantage of LTE is latency, and there's only LTE when you're in the middle of a city and probably have wifi anyway.

Owning a phone that came out like 3 months before 4g got built into everything (from high-end to cheap stuff), I can say I've never missed it. I'd rather they spend money on improving 3g reception, which is pretty good but could still be a lot better.

Re: CHIP Pro

#124

Post by creshal »

graycrow wrote: post #86
graycrow wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, CHIP Pro is not suitable for this use case. I would recommend RPi3 because it have more CPU power, more USB ports (you can connect kb and mouse without using a hub), built in Ethernet and HDMI port, so you can connect HDMI and DVI monitors directly (DVI with passive adapter). CHIP have only composite video out of the box (as well as RPi) and in order to connect HDMI or VGA you need to purchase additional "dip"…

But on second though, CHIP have a 4GB on-board storage, and or RPi you need to use removable micro SD card. I'm not sure if kids and removable micro SD's is a good combination, it may be ok, may be not, I just don't know.

Nothing you can't fix with liberal application of glue.

Re: CHIP Pro

#125

Post by geppetto »

platz wrote: post #22

I have the chip, esp8266, rpi, teensies, trinkets, arduinos... I studied electronics principles and built various circuits.. yet I have no idea what I can practically use these devices for in my life. They all sit in a box and I have a hard time justifying buying more of them.

Same feeling here... I hardly get excited with all the pointless/because-I-can projects based on these boards. It's fun, OK, but that's all.

Anyway I use Arduino a lot to teach electronics in high school - really useful there - and a Cubieboard (think RPi with SATA and decent eth) as webserver (small sites via home DSL).

Re: CHIP Pro

#126

Post by faragon »

sobkas wrote: post #111
faragon wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Previous CHIP has twice the RAM (512MB vs 256MB) and eight times more flash (4GB vs 512MB), and it is much cheaper (9$ vs 16$). The "Pro" CPU has same specs (1GHz ARM v7a). The only advantadge is smaller components, and probably less power consumption. In my opinion, the 8$ CHIP is better than the 16$ "CHIP Pro". Also, for 15$ you can get a Pine64 [1] with much better specs (512MB RAM, 4 ARM64 Cortex A53 cores, ether…

Did you have any problems mentioned in this blog post[1]? [1] http://vincentsanders.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-pine-stays-gr...

I had only three minor issues:

1) A 5V 2A power suply is required (cheap to buy e.g. on Amazon or eBay). It boots with 5V 1.5A, too, but less stable if you are using the two USB ports at once with devices requiring notable power (e.g. wifi adapter).

2) Requires a 1080p HDMI monitor/TV, at least, for the images I tried (you can change that, editing a file in the SD card image, I knew that afterwards).

3) The OS image I use (Debian) have a bug in the network driver so I have to boot with network cable unplugged, and after booting, plugging it, and stop/start the network in the network icon (top right Debian desktop bar). It may be already fixed, but because it works as it is, I have no problem to click twice to restart the network after infrequent reboots I do for maintenance (e.g. once a month). I'll update it when I see someone reporting that it got fixed.

Regarding temperature, I put small metallic heatsinks (fanless) over the SoC and over the I/O chip. Running flawless on 100% load (where I live maximum temperature is about 35ºC in Summer, and I had not problems at all running the board 24/7 as ARM64 build server).

It is true that some provided images have issues, e.g. lack of 3D hardware acceleration on Debian.

TL;DR: for ARM64 development and GPIO stuff the Pine64 board is great (1 and 2GB model, the 512MB for head-less Linux), as "Linux desktop home cinema", it is not, because of lack of hardware-accelerated video and 3D support on provided Linux desktop disk images. However, using the same board (models with >= 1GB) you can run Android, with hardware acceleration, if I recall correctly (haven't tested Android myself on that board, yet).

Re: CHIP Pro

#127

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

...Now if only we unwashed, non-kickstarter-using masses could actually buy a chip+pocketchip. I'd pay good money for it, but with orders this backed up, I'm not putting money in for a ticket to a waiting list that may never end.

Re: CHIP Pro

#128

Post by thom_nic »

Palomides wrote: post #114
duskwuff wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are parts on the bottom of the board, including the NAND flash. How does it sit flat?

you have a cutout underneath, with only a small overlap for the connection.

Milled cut out in the middle of the mainboard seems like an annoying additional cost. Headers that raise the module off the board would be acceptable, except when vertical space is a constraint.

Re: CHIP Pro

#129

Post by thom_nic »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #7
Jasper_ wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every chip vendor I've dealt with, from Amlogic to Allwinner to Freescale, requires a signed NDA for full documentation. Public documentation is usually heavily redacted. The GR8 seems to be a rebadged Allwinner chip, and the no-NDA datasheet seems to be next to useless, to be honest.

> "The GR8 seems to be a rebadged Allwinner chip" It could be, but reading up on the features of the C.H.I.P. Pro it supports mainline Linux. I assumed this meant without blobs. Is there mainline support for any Allwinner chips?

The GR8 is an AllWinner R8 with RAM in a single piece of resin. They are targeting product builders, see the section:

> Powered by a chip you can actually buy. > R8 SoC + 256MB DDR3 > 1 package. 1 price. > $6 in any quantity.

(that's $6 for their rebadged chip.) TBH this looks like not a bad solution for someone looking to board-down a linux capable product. I wonder if the GR8 needs a power mgt chip or if that's integrated into the SoC as well.

Back to your original question, NTC (among others) worked with AllWinner I believe to mainline some of the R8 code and reduce (or possibly eliminate?) binary blobs.

Re: CHIP Pro

#130

Post by thom_nic »

mappu wrote: post #10
ZenoArrow wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "The GR8 seems to be a rebadged Allwinner chip" It could be, but reading up on the features of the C.H.I.P. Pro it supports mainline Linux. I assumed this meant without blobs. Is there mainline support for any Allwinner chips?

Many A20 features are in mainline kernels now, although sunxi-3.4 is still recommended for full hardware support. http://linux-sunxi.org/Linux_mainlining_effort#Status_Matrix EDIT: The GR8 is specifically called out on this page as having mainline support from kernel 4.9.

I've been running bananian with the 4.4 kernel on my bpi-R1 (A20 SoC) and everything seems to be working fine. Although I don't use it for anything graphical (it's a networking/storage/server device.) Can't say how much it's relying on binary blobs though.
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