The 64bit Rock64 4K60p HDR Media Board Computer has been mounted in the C4Labs Emerald Zebra case designed by Dustin for the RPi. The Rock64 has the same form factor, so fits like a glove in the Zebra case with a couple of minor mods to allow for the additional power components of the Rock64;
The case comes with a heat-sink set that matches the Rock64 perfectly; this model sports the 16Gb eMMC module, usb3.0, 2Gb LPDDR3 memory (optional 4Gb), PI-2 bus, P5-bus, Gbe ethernet port, 10/100 ethernet port, two usb2.0 ports (one OTG) and IR receiver.
The pic below is the Rock64 running the Android media image 7.1.1:
I was able to mod the Emerald Zebra case from C4Labs with a dremel tool in about one hour. The following post will show the mods; which are necessary and which are optional:
Happiness is a Zebra cased Rock64 board from Pine; available after July 1 2017
The Zebra case from C4Labs is a seven layer plexiglass sandwich which holds the Rock64 board securely with a glimmer of elegance and ample protection. The case has been modded here to accommodate the new board; this is easily done with a dremel tool; although, in the near future the cases and boards will match without modding.
The prerelease boards will fit the case with a couple of quick changes to the existing seven layer design.
Four mods are actually visible here. The bottom two layers have been trimmed on the SD card slot (right side) to facilitate the removal of the SD card , which on the pre release boards is just off center; the production boards will have the SD card centered. The thin layer (up one) which holds the board in place needs to be defined better in the corners. The first clear layer above that requires a notch-out for the buttons ( power and reset ) and for the IR receiver module on the right.
In the pic above the lower green layer upon which the circuit board rests must be notched out to accommodate the front pins of the Gbe ethernet port , as well some of the components on the front edge of the card; note the semi circle notch-out for the resistor in the center.
I have removed the insert ( power , hdmi , audio jack ) to allow for better airflow around the heat-sinks ; passive cooling is sufficient in this case; however, the production boards will match the insert should that option be desired.
The Zebra black, and the Zebra Emerald (shown here) comes with the three heat-sink passive cooling set.
Okay, so I'm wondering if any of you have successfully installed Docker on any of the pinebook distros? If so, could you please point out the steps you have undertaken to make it all work?! Thanks in advance!
I've been working on a new project and am comparing all of the SBCs I have in my collection to figure out which is best for this project.
Among them is my Pine 64 (2GB) which I got from backing the kickstarter (A year ago now?)
I've never actually used it until now. I've written an SD card using the etcher tool Pine provide (Ubuntu Minimal) and it seems to power up but the network indicators turn on for about a second and then off again.
The network cable I'm certain works as I took it out of another computer I was using yesterday.
As I ordered also the hdmi adapter with the pinebook, i wanted to test the hdmi output. Unfortunately the monitor keeps being black and showing me "no signal".
I tried with my RasPi Zero (with the same adapter) and it worked, so cable/adapter are alright.
I tried with Ubuntu Mate and with Q4OS. Clicking on "Rescan monitors" doesn't change everything. Do i need some special drivers to get hdmi output?
Can the Ubuntu Mate [20170306] image for the SOPINE boot from a eMMC module? I have written the image twice successfully using Etcher to a eMMC module from the Pine store, but the SOPINE will not boot. It will boot from a micro SD card.
Can someone please tell me how to boot from SD card on the pinebook? Is there documentation on boot mode / options somewhere? I guess there's Uboot at work but I don't know how to access the bootloader etc.
EDIT: okay, so you just have to insert an sd card with a proper pinebook image into the sd card slot and power up the device. nice. right now I'm testing android 7.1 running from an sd card.
Over a YEAR ago, @tllim was kind enough to supply me with the files I needed to get to messing around with a cluster case/extension idea I had.
Its taken me a year to get my skills up in Blender (not the best tool? But the tool I wanted to use) so I could modify the plan and build an "insert" or "extension" that would clip inbetween the top and bottom of the playbox enclosure.
This would allow me to stack 5 nodes, include a touchscreen at the top, and theres just enough space for a USB hub for power, and a switch.
I've made some progress, so I'm posting what I have, and would love some advice on what I should do about the NIC/HDMI port holes on the side of the "sleeve" that I am building.
Some images for reference included.
The end setup should look similar to this, with the sleeve filling the gap between the bottom and the top:
So far, I have managed to create the following in blender (length of sleeve to be adjusted), but I'm having trouble with what I should do about the NIC and HDMI holes..
I just got my 14" pinebook and could not start it, when I press the power button, the power light goes green for a few moments and a red battery appears on the screen. When I plug it in, the power light goes also green, but just for a few moments, then no light at all.
Is that normal? Even with power supply plugged in, I cannot boot the pinebook, just getting the red battery signal again.
As many people have found, the default jackd version that comes with the Pine64 Ubuntu image (which is version 1.9.10) will crash as soon as you start it with a bus error and a message in the kernel log about an aligment problem. (Edit: strangely enough this error still occurs even if you are using a more recent image with jackd2 v1.9.11.) In later versions of jackd this has been solved, but as there is no package, you're currently required to compile it by hand. This is not as difficult as it might sound, but it requires some tinkering in the terminal. Also: make sure that your pine64 board has enough power. If you use a 2.0A rated power supply, the board might crash in the middle of the process (as has happened to me). This tutorial assumes you are working with either the Ubuntu Basic Image, or the Ubuntu Mate image. If you are running a different image, the same process will apply, but you might need to adjust some actions. The first thing we need to do is to install the old version of jack, because we need to make the system think that jackd is installed.
Code:
sudo apt install jackd2
During the installation it will ask whether jackd should be run with real time priority. Answer yes on this question. Then install all the audio applications you're going to use, such as for example Ardour. Then we are going to clone the latest version of jackd from github. Open a terminal by selecting Applications > System Tools > Mate Terminal or something equivalent:
Code:
git clone git://github.com/jackaudio/jack2
If you get a message about unknown command, install git first by running
Code:
sudo apt install git
. Then go into the jack2 directory as created by the git command:
Code:
cd jack2
. The compilation of jackd2 requires a few dependencies which we need to install:
Code:
sudo apt install libasound2-dev libexpat1-dev
Now we can start the compilation preparation by giving the following command:
Depending on what kind of hardware you are going to use, you might need to add additional parameters to this line. Check for more info by adding
Code:
--help
to the end of the line above. (In case I missed some dependency here, the process will warn you about it). We start the compilation by running
Code:
./waf
You will see now a lot of text scrolling over your screen. If everything went fine, you will get a
Code:
'build' finished successfully
message. We are now going to install this version of jackd by running:
Code:
sudo ./waf install
Sadly we are not entirely there yet. The source install puts certain files in a different spot compared to the standard packages, so in order to make jack not use the original files, we delete the files from the original package:
Code:
sudo rm /usr/lib/aarch64-linux-gnu/libjack*
Now test jackd by running
Code:
jackd -d alsa
Jack should now output something similar to
Code:
pine64@pine64:~/jack2$ jackd -d alsa
jackdmp 1.9.11
Copyright 2001-2005 Paul Davis and others.
Copyright 2004-2016 Grame.
jackdmp comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it
under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details
JACK server starting in realtime mode with priority 10
self-connect-mode is "Don't restrict self connect requests"
creating alsa driver ... hw:0|hw:0|1024|2|48000|0|0|nomon|swmeter|-|32bit
configuring for 48000Hz, period = 1024 frames (21.3 ms), buffer = 2 periods
ALSA: final selected sample format for capture: 32bit integer little-endian
ALSA: use 2 periods for capture
ALSA: final selected sample format for playback: 32bit integer little-endian
ALSA: use 2 periods for playback
If it replies with a message about permissions, it is possible that your user is not part of the audio group. Add yourself by doing
Code:
sudo usermod -a -G audio [username]
where you change
Code:
[username]
for your user.
If you do see the bit of text above, you now successfully installed jackd2 and it is running. You can now stop this process by pressing Ctrl-C. From here you can use qjackctl or any other tool to start jackd.
A few considerations When using jack on the Pine64, be aware that how smaller the buffer size is the more work it has to do. The latency will go down, but keep in mind that as soon as the CPU-temperature goes over 80 degrees Celsius, the CPU will be throttled. The performance of the board is pretty good. I had 32 mono tracks smoothly playing in Ardour with a few plugins on the side and the temperature didn't rise above 57 degrees C.
I managed to get jackd running in realtime with buffer sizes from 128 frames at a sample rate of 44100hz. Don't go lower as it will keep jackdbus hanging rather badly. I didn't test the upper limit well, but 192000Hz samplerate at 4096 frames buffer also seems to run fine.
I also tried LMMS and found that a sample rate of 192k didn't work very nicely with synthesis, as that is rather heavy on the CPU. You will notice quickly enough if you hear too many sample drops.
Troubleshooting I had a very weird problem where only one channel was playing of the two I saw playing in Ardour. I then used the builtin audio test of Mate and had the same problem there. It turns out that in my case the left channel was muted. I was able to solve this by using
Code:
alsamixer
It turned out that the DACL Mixer AIF1DAOL port (which was the left stereo channel) was muted. It is a bit unclear why this happened, but if you happen to run into the same kind of problem, this is where you should be able to solve it.
Credits Many thanks to Xalius for his help in getting to the bottom of this.
![[Image: Image%202017-06-16%20at%2010.47.51%20PM.png]](https://d3vv6lp55qjaqc.cloudfront.net/items/2d2P0X323o0r13203h0e/Image%202017-06-16%20at%2010.47.51%20PM.png)
![[Image: Image%202017-06-16%20at%2010.50.22%20PM.png]](https://d3vv6lp55qjaqc.cloudfront.net/items/1B1T2n0v1e0R0V3d202q/Image%202017-06-16%20at%2010.50.22%20PM.png)
![[Image: Image%202017-06-16%20at%2010.52.33%20PM.png]](https://d3vv6lp55qjaqc.cloudfront.net/items/031s3E3d1a3x2k0w0p2G/Image%202017-06-16%20at%2010.52.33%20PM.png)
