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The $8 Linux Computer

thelittleengineerthatcould.blogspot.com

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Re: The $8 Linux Computer

#151

Post by teleforce »

nine_k wrote: post #142
schwartzworld wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to connect dozens of devices. Esp32 can communicate as a server or a client so you can directly connect them without getting the router involved.

Say, your house has 15 light switches on esp32 running Tasmota. Do they all talk to each other in a mesh network, or do they all connect to your router in WIFI infrastructure mode?

In addition to ESP-Mesh protocol as mentioned in the sibling's comment, alternatively ESP-Now protocol also enabled lightweight support for direct networking without AP:

https://www.espressif.com/en/products/software/esp-now/overv...

https://github.com/espressif/esp-now

Re: The $8 Linux Computer

#152

Post by genericacct »

nine_k wrote: post #142
schwartzworld wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to connect dozens of devices. Esp32 can communicate as a server or a client so you can directly connect them without getting the router involved.

Say, your house has 15 light switches on esp32 running Tasmota. Do they all talk to each other in a mesh network, or do they all connect to your router in WIFI infrastructure mode?

There are some mesh protocols (ESP-Link i believe) but tasmota doesnt support them. It doesn't even support SoftAP for anything but initial configuration. However there are some wifi repeater projects for the ESP series that might be of use.

Re: The $8 Linux Computer

#153

Post by themoonisachees »

HPsquared wrote: post #136
imhoguy wrote: post #101

We could have pretty decent $8 Linux machines, with USB, screen, touch, audio, MBs or even GBs RAM, if there would be some standard way to sideload fresh GNU/Linux onto billions of retired Android devices.

The Termux app provides a pretty good fraction of the useful Linux stuff. It's basically a userspace chroot environment. You can run a lot of Linux distributions this way, though some of the features don't work. Can even have a desktop environment and run things like desktop Chromium. Or things like FTP servers, etc etc. Basically you get most of the useful functionality from installing Linux, without needing root.

Is it really chroot? As far as I can tell termux is just a terminal emulator +shell, and if given proper permissions it can very well access regular root without doing anything special.

Re: The $8 Linux Computer

#154

Post by alexisread »

monocasa wrote: post #131
alexisread wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This chip has 4 cores, and I believe they all share the same memory bus ie. Each core can access the 64GB ram directly. There is also 768K sram for low power use. Only the RV64 large core has an mmu, the two RV32 cores don't. I think the chip's main use could be robotics- the lowest power core for networking, npu for image processing, the mid core for simple tasks and the large core for Linux and complex tasks eg. Na…

> This chip has 4 cores 3 cores > For your use then, you could just use the lowest power microcontroller with 64GB ram. You can't get that ability anywhere else. I don't think the LP core has access to PSRAM. So most of the networking would run on the mid core, and the LP core just makes decisions to wake up a bigger core based on the events it sees.

I'm counting the NPU :) I couldn't find anything in the datasheet about the LP core PSRAM access - do you have a confirmation on that? It'd be a shame if it didn't, but kinda makes sense with the 768K sram. I was hoping it had access to both.

Re: The $8 Linux Computer

#155

Post by solarkraft »

karmanyaahm wrote: post #107
solarkraft wrote: post #72

Show me one with an integrated serial adapter and I'll buy it. I know how to generally program things via UART, but really would prefer not having to bother with it. It's not a great development experience. Pine64 keep making these silly little mistakes limiting their products' appeal.

The lack of USB serial is just a bug in the first batch https://gist.github.com/lupyuen/7a0c697b89abccda8e38b33dfe5e...

Oh nice, thanks!

I guess after the restock this won't be a problem since it'll be the second batch?

Re: The $8 Linux Computer

#156

Post by alexisread »

imhoguy wrote: post #140
HPsquared wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Termux app provides a pretty good fraction of the useful Linux stuff. It's basically a userspace chroot environment. You can run a lot of Linux distributions this way, though some of the features don't work. Can even have a desktop environment and run things like desktop Chromium. Or things like FTP servers, etc etc. Basically you get most of the useful functionality from installing Linux, without needing root.

I use Termux as my daily driver, but I never thought it can run desktop stuff. Still HW (Samsung) is locked down a bit as it doesn't allow autostart after power failure or can't power up without battery.

I have manjaro installed on my note 9 under termux, with vnc viewer to loopback to display x-windows stuff. With the Dex functionality I can plug in a mouse, keyboard and monitor to use it as a Linux desktop.

It runs blender and gcc pretty well!

Re: The $8 Linux Computer

#157

Post by HPsquared »

themoonisachees wrote: post #153
HPsquared wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Termux app provides a pretty good fraction of the useful Linux stuff. It's basically a userspace chroot environment. You can run a lot of Linux distributions this way, though some of the features don't work. Can even have a desktop environment and run things like desktop Chromium. Or things like FTP servers, etc etc. Basically you get most of the useful functionality from installing Linux, without needing root.

Is it really chroot? As far as I can tell termux is just a terminal emulator +shell, and if given proper permissions it can very well access regular root without doing anything special.

It's called PRoot, you can install other Linux distributions (e.g. Arch, Debian, etc.) within the virtual root environment.

https://wiki.termux.com/wiki/PRoot

Re: The $8 Linux Computer

#158

Post by joezydeco »

magicalhippo wrote: post #145
joezydeco wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NXP's software support for the heterogenous ARM cores is abysmal. I had to abandon an architecture on the iMX7 because their RPMSG drivers were simply broken. Documentation and examples were multiple-years old and their FAE support came down to "well, the examples work." Except they didn't. Perhaps it's better with the newer BSPs on the 8, but I wouldn't be too quick to jump back into it.

Yikes that doesn't sound very promising. I've seen the i.MX 8 used in several different products, so clearly someone has made them work, or at least kinda work... but I can imagine that might be despite the "support".

The iMX line is totally solid for ARM/Linux application work. I've been shipping with them for over a decade. The automotive sector uses it heavily because of the onboard hardware codecs for video and camera.

It's just the coprocessor stuff they're weak on. It's easier to just link up to a Cortex-M3 offboard, but then again NXP has completely screwed up their supply chain and these parts are somewhat hard to get.

Re: The $8 Linux Computer

#159

Post by joezydeco »

monocasa wrote: post #133
guerrilla wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok fair enough, Linux can't run normally without an MMU. It kind of defeats the purpose of using a UNIX, but yes, you get all the Linux drivers and the UNIX API for free.

You still have processes and mutual protection between them and the kernel with no-MMU, they just get less options about where they can mmap(2) and you have to vfork(2) instead of fork(2). Otherwise it feels like a pretty standard Linux.

Applications built with dynamic libraries are a pain in the ass with ucLinux.

Re: The $8 Linux Computer

#160

Post by monocasa »

joezydeco wrote: post #159
monocasa wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still have processes and mutual protection between them and the kernel with no-MMU, they just get less options about where they can mmap(2) and you have to vfork(2) instead of fork(2). Otherwise it feels like a pretty standard Linux.

Applications built with dynamic libraries are a pain in the ass with ucLinux.

It is an archs without position independent code. As long as you have FDPIC, it's fairly painless.
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