Well, for starters let me say that I am very frustrated by my interaction with this board. I'm in no way a hardware guy, but I'm a developer, so it should be fairly easy for me to get this thing started. However, nothing works. I'm pretty sure my board is not DOA, but that it doesn't like something I do; only there are too many things that it can dislike, for me to try them all.

So, here's my setup:
1. Memory
I've seen the posts about counterfeit SD cards, and I'm fairly sure that mine is not. It's a 64GB SanDisk Class 10 card. Nothing fancy, but it should do the trick. Nothing else to say here.

2. Display
I originally tried hooking it up to my Samsung monitor, which only has DVI and VGA, so I used a DVI -> HDMI converter. After I saw all the "no-no" posts about this, I hooked it up to my Phillips TV, which has HDMI input. My TV is HD Ready (meaning 720p, however it does say that it supports 1080p coming from computers). The only thing I can't verify is my HDMI cable, but it does work on my XBox 360, so why shouldn't it work with the Pine?

3. Peripherals
Originally I started it with just HDMI and ethernet cable. After a few seconds, the ethernet connection started showing activity (both yellow and green lights lit up; this is the reason I think my board is not DOA). However after I saw the posts about not hooking anything up but the display and card, I also removed the ethernet cable.

4. Power
First I tried with an old no-name phone charger and the USB cable I got with my phone. Later I found out that the charger only gives 5V 1A, so next I tried it with my OnePlus One charger, which outputs exactly 5V 2A. The cable seems also pretty good quality. The only thing I'm worried about here, is that my OPO charger has a US-type socket, and I live in Europe, so I'm also using an adapter (but AFAIK that doesn't transform the current).

5. Software
I tried all 3 methods of flashing Android and RemixOS onto my card: Win32DiskImager, PhoenixCard and DD (the last one via ubuntu). Since I haven't found a video which follows this process from start till end (including sticking the card into the board and booting), I have no idea about stuff like what filesystem to use (for Win32DiskImager and DD -- PhoenixCard formats the card), and stuff like that.

6. Other stuff
I'm pretty sure I've tried almost all the suggestions on this forum, and no, nothing worked.

After trying all these things, I will probably try flashing Ubuntu as my last resort (although I'm not getting my hopes up), but the end result will probably stay the same: the board starts (red LED), stays on as long as I let it, however there's no video to my screen.

As I said at the beginning, my experience with this board is incredibly frustrating, and I can barely refrain myself from using certain words to describe the project leaders, because honestly? I don't think I'll ever get it to work. Some people say it can be resolved via a software improvement, but I think it's a hardware problem, and that I can throw the board away. In any case, in hopes that I'm wrong, I'll keep the board for a couple of months, and try again. If it still won't work, I'll throw it away and get myself a Pi3, and always be angry at myself for being to cheap to spend an extra $20 to go for the Pi from the beginning.

Also, I understand that the project owners are still having headaches to fulfill the Kickstarter pledges, but that does not in any way mean that they should neglect documentation & software. The wiki page is nothing more than a bunch of user-written suggestions. The Android & Ubuntu images are also user-contrib, so basically low-to-none software support from the creators, just a shiny board.

PS. What's up with the power button being in the yellow shipping bag?! It should be in the box at least. I've thrown it away and had to go through my trash to get it back.

I honestly hope you guys are having better luck than me

Hi,

there was a power button shipped with the pine64. Where do I attach it to the board?

Hi,

I would like to know if there is any specific instruction on how to install Gentoo or Linux From Scratch on Pine64.

For raspberry pi I used to install raspbian and copy the firmware and kenrel files to my Gentoo installation.

I just wanted to know if there is any specific "setting" required in order to run a linux distribution on Pine64 or some firmware blobs and where I could find those.

Thank you very much in advance!

So I'm a little embarrassed this has stumped me. I've never set up a mail server before, though and I'm having some trouble. I don't want a full mail server at this point, I just want to send outbound notifications to myself, so I'm not linking this to a valid domain name.

First, I installed postfix , since that seemed to be the consensus as the best option. And.... that's where I'm stumped. The mail command just hangs when I try to send a test message to my Gmail account, and I'm sure I need to set up some parameters in the /etc/postfix/main.cf config file but I'm struggling to figure it out what exactly.

I've looked at this, but I'm not really seeing an answer there. Also, I should add that it appears postfix is running OK:

When I ordered my Pine64 there was no disclaimer that we would need to wait for every KS order to be fulfilled in order for people who bought it from the store to get their devices.

As far as these forums go, it seems that there are some issues with cases, addon boards etc. 

So does this mean we will wait until every other KS order is fully shipped for you to remember shop buyers ?

You should offer cancellation option for the people who bought via shop and whose orders are not fulfilled.

I have a two wire battery and I tried connecting it to the board on pin one and the but it seems not to work.  According to the silk screen, and schematic that is correct. The schematic has a note however that I don't understand
 "If do not use temp. Measure feature. Place OR."  I am not sure what this means or what OR  Is referring to, seems that I need to do something but I'm not sure what... Any ideas?

sometimes, my pine64 shows the startup screen for several minutes on startup, and then indicates that it is optimizing apps.
does this mean that the pine has done automatic  firmware / android updates or what's the reason for this behaviour?

Hi,

I want to bring pine64 to a "standby" mode. In this mode I want to disable three cpu cores, decrease the frequency of cpu0, unload drivers, disable HDMI. The only thing I want to keep active in this mode is the bluetooth module.

I'm thinking to use the command below to disable cpu cores:
echo 0 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu4/online

Can someone help me on how can I achieve this standby mode? E.g. how can I disable/enable the HDMI?

Thx a lot...

Does Android support WiFi USB Dongles? If not, they will be supported in future?

Hello, 

I'm just the messenger of the encountered issue - it was brought to by attention by Arffeh, who asked me to create this post. From what he wrote to me it transpires that a drained or partially drained battery can can cause a failed boot  even if the board is connected to the mains. 

He wrote:
"A completely dead lipo when connected, with the jumper correctly set, causes a failure to boot when correct power is applied (...). I'm talking about using actual normal power, with the battery just chilling out (...) Shouldn't cause a full failure to boot, but yeah. The battery is able to affect the 2.1 amp input (...) [I] plucked the battery and reapplied power [and it boot correctly]". 

Has anyone else encountered a similar problem or has a suggestion of how to resolve this ? 

Cheers