I've been trying to make this application work on a Raspberry Pi 3 for about 3 months now to little effect, seemingly due to hardware limitations, and so now have been researching other, more powerful SCBs. The Rock64 looks beefy enough but I want to make sure the software will work before I purchase.

Here's my application:

My band uses VLC media player to display our visuals on stage, up until now through a laptop with HDMI out, and controlling a playlist through the keyboard and/or USB footpedal. The reason we use VLC is for its "pause on last frame" feature which is key to our performance and unavailable on any other media player. Our current laptop is running down and I'm hoping to replace it with an SCB as a dedicated device and for portability and cost-effectiveness.

The problem I've encountered with Pi 3 is that, though VLC can be compiled and play HD video in a playlist, the transition between videos isn't gapless and displays the desktop briefly between videos. Not very presentable for a concert.

I'd like to know if anybody has a Rock64 running VLC that can test this for me and let me know what RAM capacity they have, OS they're running etc. Any help is appreciated!

Hi!

I'm unable to find any info about how to start using the onboard IR receiver on the Rock64 on linux.

Can you point me to some info on this subject?

Well, I've spent hours through the forum but I can't seem to find posts that would help with my setup. I hope someone can help me by making this thread.

I ordered a Rock64 that may arrive today or tomorrow. Problem is that I still don't know what OS to install! Here are my needs:

1. Needs the desktop. I want to be able to browse the internet on it through VNC. For minor, periodic browsing throught the day.

2. I want it to be able to run Kodi (through HDMI) and play HVEC videos at 1080p. I don't want OpenElec since I can't web browse on that.

3. I despise Android. Please, no Android recommendation.

I am able to do this on a Raspberry Pi 3 but the hardware is so limited and it can't play HVEC videos at all.

I see Debian on the OS list but they're all stretch versions (that means they're beta, right?). Do they take advantage of Mali so I could play said video types I've just mentioned? Should I go for Ayufan's version? What about Xenial Mate?

Who uses a Rock64 for similar purposes? Much appreciated for any input!

Hi, 

I've just received my Rock64 and I'm planning to use Kodi and other multimedia apps on it, while it's connected to my TV. 

Should i be using the Android 7.1.2 or the Android TV 7.1.2 image? What's the difference between the two? 

Thanks!

Hello everyone, 

Since I'm totally new to single board computers I have read a lot on the internet, but still have some questions.  Based on the specs, the Pine SBC seems the most interesting to me.  However I've read several posts about long and/or difficult shippings and on top of that the official website informs the potential buyers the shipping time is somewhere between 3 and 9 weeks or even longer.  Therefore I'm worried about this. 

At this point I'm hesitating between purchasing an 'old' Pine A64+ at a local reseller just around the corner or purchasing the 'new' Pine 64 - LTS through the webstore.  This brings me to the question I would like to ask to the forum members: Is it worth waiting an undefined time to get the 'new' LTS-version or should the 'old' A64+ be good enough to be used as simple file server ?  (only a few and small files between max 10 PC's)

Thanks in advance for your replies. 

Kind regards. 

PS: Sorry for my English. I'm dutch.

Hi everyone,

I am using Rock64 and trying to play mp3 files on headphone jack. The playback part is working fine. I having trouble with controlling the volume with amixer command. When I try amixer sset Master 100 it shows me error "Cannot find simple control 'Master',0"

The reason behind the use of amixer is I have ported this application from raspberry pi and I need to keep it consistent on either device. I am using Debian stretch minimal image.
Exact version:

Hey Guys,

I have some problems to pair my BT keyboard.
I am using Debian Jessie with Mate DE [3.10.102 BSP 2] by Lenny Raposo.
My keyboard is a Rapoo e6700. BT is the on Board modul.
My problem is, I can pair the device but a second later it is disconnected.
The keyboard works fine with other devices like iPad oder Galaxy Tab 10.1.

Can someone help me?

Thanks Sebastian

I have read that it is possible to flash u-boot to the SPI flash to have more choice on boot devices. I have also seen a tutorial in the wiki mentioning it. But what I could not find is a detailed description of what is actually going on when u-boot is starting:

* does it look for a certain device type or are all USB mass storage or UBS/SATA bridges supported?
* does it look for a certain position in the USB bus, for example always the first USB storage found anywhere or always only the first port on the first hub?
* does it search all devices and look for a partition with a certain label?

I cannot seem to find any documentation about this u-boot configuration, also generally I cannot find much documentation about the boot process of the Rock64,  for example if the SPI flash is erased, what does it look for if it comes out of reset, is there always a fixed minimal loader in mask ROM somewhere and is it documented? Is it possible to accidentally brick the device?

It would be nice if someone could give a detailed description of the boot process, please describe it as detailed and low level as possible, target audience for this description would be an embedded (cortex M0 and M4) bare metal programmer who has no fear of beginnig to learn about the low level stuff going on during initialization and boot  in the larger ARM processors.

Thank you.

Hi guys,

The performance with Rock64 and Lakka aren't good enough to have a good experience out of the box, I got a better experience with a PI2 and Retropie.
Probably Lakka needs a better tuning so I would like to understand where is the place to get help to solve these issues, I mean here or on the Libretro forum.

Thanks in advance,

Daniel

Please, i need to enable the P5+ header ethernet interface, but the latest ayufan's image have it disabled. How can I re-enable it?