USB-C dock

[leonidas]

Thank you, flipping the usb cable helped, though on my smartphone it worked both ways. 

I noticed some strange effect after connecting the second monitor (see the picture attached), sort of graphic lag. Is it because two monitors are too "heavy" for my pinebook?

[Arwen]

Thank you, flipping the usb cable helped, though on my smartphone it worked both ways. 

I noticed some strange effect after connecting the second monitor (see the picture attached), sort of graphic lag. Is it because two monitors are too "heavy" for my pinebook?

Great.

It's possible as time goes on, we won't have that USB C cable polarity issue. The low level device is suppose to be able to handle it either way. But, it may take time for kernel developers to make auto-configuration work properly.

As for the graphic lag, I don't know. Our Pinebook Pros do not contain the fast graphics. More than enough for normal use. It's possible that the kernel you are using does not have all the GPU acceleration enabled. I don't have a good way to verify that right now. Whence we do, (for all kernels and the various graphic modules), we can add it to the Pinebook Pro Wiki site for trouble shooting.

[Caldor]

I have a USB-C dock that I am pretty sure is meant for Thunderbolt 3. It has 3 USB3 ports, Ethernet, SD+microSD card reader, VGA, 2xHDMI, mini-jack and a USB-C port for power. Everything except the video ports seems to work... not sure about the VGA port.

I read somewhere that it has to be DisplayPort based, so that even though it has HDMI ports, its using a DisplayPort... BUS or something? But I don't think this dock does that.

I will try flipping the USB-C as was suggested here. Another strange thing... when I try to charge my Pinebook Pro using USB-C it sometimes make this high pitched sound. Pretty annoying, but not sure it has to do with my USB-C power-supply, the dock or maybe some fault in my Pinebook? I first thought it had to do with the dock.

[xmixahlx]

it requires displayport alternate mode support. the connector on the other end can be anything with the right adaptor hardware in the dock, etc.

[Caldor]

I got it working I guess maybe it worked to flip around the USB-C. No audio through the HDMI, but maybe there is a way around that as well.

I did not expect this hub would work so well with this Pinebook. I also think that high pitched sound stopped being there after I tried using my Raspberry Pi 4 power supply.

I will have to experiment with this some more, but the dock fully working is pretty awesome.

This is the dock I am using, except it has two HDMI ports. Same brand.
http://www.baseus.com/product-181.html

[Caldor]

Reading through the thread, I see that some have gotten HDMI audio working for the Pinebook Pro, but not sure if its OS specific? I am going to try Debian and Ubuntu. My Pinebook came with Manjaro installed. I also have trouble getting Widewine to work on it and some other software I want to try that I think might be easier to get to work with Debian.

I think I will try the other HDMI port. That worked for my Pi 4. One port would have audio and the other would not. strange. My dock does seem to get detected as having an audio device, but switching to it has not given me audio. It does not otherwise have an audio port.

[wrzomar]

Reading through the thread, I see that some have gotten HDMI audio working for the Pinebook Pro, but not sure if its OS specific? I am going to try Debian and Ubuntu. My Pinebook came with Manjaro installed. I also have trouble getting Widewine to work on it and some other software I want to try that I think might be easier to get to work with Debian.

I think I will try the other HDMI port. That worked for my Pi 4. One port would have audio and the other would not. strange. My dock does seem to get detected as having an audio device, but switching to it has not given me audio. It does not otherwise have an audio port.

It is both, OS specific and hardware specific. Mine Pinebook Pro came with Debian onboard and my USB-c dock (GreenCell AK61 6 in 1 - by 6 they mean 3x USB3.0, Ethernet, HDMI and USB-c with Power Delivery  ) was working perfectly (the mouse cursor was "warping" image on second screen, but I could get over it). Then bluetooth drivers got corrupted by Debian update and PBP started accumulating dust. After Manjaro become the default OS, I've waited a few months, then ordered new eMMC module, eMMC adapter, serial console adapter with mini-jack, the ANSI keyboard, Ethernet dongle (just in case something goes wrong) and USB-barrel H cable, because on Debian PBP in the summer was charging only when turned off and USB-c PD was working only with powered on device.
On Manjaro 20.08 with mainline kernel 5.8 dock worked partially (only Ethernet and USB Hub, maybe PD, but I don't remember), HDMI don't work. I've found bug report and the workaround was to install older kernel (and custom). On kernel 5.7 from linux-pinebookpro package HDMI started working (without audio) after reboot, also rebooting PBP was causing main display to fail (grey screen with vertical white-ish stripes - every time after reboot, for some reason I had to power off and power on to restart) but HDMI was working fine. Then I've discovered by accident that HDMI works without reboot, but the monitor has to be plugged into the dock before dock will be plugged in USB-c port.
After recent update HDMI still don't work on mainline kernel.
I've found somewhere that missing audio over HDMI is just panfrost devs focusing on monitors and not TVs and they will fix it but I don't know if they are responsible for USB-c display port not working completely. Maybe they've fixed audio and someone f**ked up display port. The good news is bluetooth finally working (I got Muvo Play work in tandem and they work even better then before, lips are synchronized with words all the time) so I can live without HDMI audio for now.
In case of Power Delivery, it works good only with powerbanks with QC, any dumber ones are giving 500mA instead of 2,5A. The USB - barrel H cable on the other hand works good only with the dumbest powerbanks with 2A output that will not limit max current. I've tested PD in the dock only with HDMI and Ethernet plugged in and it's not worth it, QC didn't kicked in.
The other good news is USB-c PD works with turned off PBP on Manjaro, idk why.