Hi,

I am a backer of the Pine 64 and am looking forward to the arrival of my unit board in March.  It is always interesting to see what other companies are doing and I noticed that the Raspberry Pi Foundation release the Raspberry Pi 3, and it has some interesting specs.  Here are some highlights:

1. 64 bit Quad Cortex A53 @ 1.2GHz
   
2. 1 GB SDRAM
   
3. 40mhz VideoCore IV
   
4. Integrated WiFi and Bluetooth
   
5. Price - $35
   

Hello,

As a long-time Raspberry Pi fan I jumped on this, mainly because I just wanted to have a bit of a play around.

Once these are delivered , I'm sure people will find many uses for them but I was wondering for what applications the 64-bit part actually is useful given the memory limitations. I write a lot of code but I practically never have to worry about 32-bit / 64 - bit as the libraries I use are available in both. It is onyl useful to me because I find more than 4 GB RAM very useful. 

I didn't find any threats here on the specific uses for the 64bit-ness, so if there are some I missed, please link.

I was wondering if there is any information on what shipping service will be used in Canada

I also built a mimimal Ubuntu image combined with the the BSP Kernel and my image building gear. Similar to the Arch Image **this image is intended for developers. If you are looking for accelerated 2D/3D or video decoding use Android** and do not bother with trying this image.

What you get:

- HDMI at 1080P
- HDMI analog audio (alsa, pulseaudio)
- Ethernet (including 1000M)
- USB
- Wifi
- Ubuntu Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) aarch64
- BSP Linux Kernel 3.10.65+ (see http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=293)
- BSP U-Boot (see http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=99)
- Support for all Pine64 models (512MB, 1GB, 2GB) with auto detection so Ethernet works with the same image on all models

It works good enough so it can be used as headless server, as compile platform for aarch64 or as virtualization host. You can even install a desktop environment if you wish.

These images require a 4GB medium (3700 MiB rootfs). Extend the partition with `sudo /usr/local/sbin/resize_rootfs`.

Download (for instructions see README.txt)

Starting with Kernel 3.10.101 it is possible to lower HDMI resolution from 1080p to 720p. See http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=980 for instructions.

History:

**20160228-2**
- Initial publish release
- Known issue: console-setup.service fails to start
- Firefox is very unstable

**20160306-1**
- Updated U-Boot and device tree to 20160306-1
- Updated Kernel to 3.10.65-2-pine64-longsleep-39-1
- Ethernet MAC address is now persistent (added to uEnv.txt on first boot)
- Added system service to reenable CPU cores
- Added helper Pine64 platform scripts to /usr/local/sbin
- Serial getty no longer waits on rc.local service
- Linux Kernel firmware and headers are now installed

**20160320-1**
- Added support for Pine64 512MB model (auto detected)
- Updated U-Boot and device trees to 20160319-1 (2014.07-3-pine64-longsleep)
- Updated Kernel to 3.10.65-3-pine64-longsleep-2
- Wireless tools are now installed by default (iw, rfkill, wpasupplicant)

**20160403-1**
- Updated Kernel to 3.10.65-4-pine64-longsleep-16 (fixing Pine64+ 2GB model Ethernet crash)

**20160424-1**
- Updated U-Boot and device trees to 20160423-1 (v2014.07-4-pine64-longsleep)
- Updated to Kernel 3.10.65-7-pine64-longsleep-28
- Initrd updated to support root= Kernel parameter and wait for rootfs delay (thanks to j0zzy)
- Ubuntu rootfs updated to 16.04 Xenial Xerus final release
- Platform scripts were updated to latest
- Mackeeper service was updated (thanks to sWski)
- UART2, UART3 and UART4 are now enabled (thanks to Martin Ayotte)

**20160507-1**
- Updated to Kernel 3.10.101-0-pine64-longsleep-39
- Alsa-utils are now installed by default, including sane mixer settings
- It is now possible to change the HDMI resolution via uEnv.txt (sunxi-disp-tool installed by default)
- Default hostname is now "pine64"
- Locale en_US.UTF-8 is now pre-generated

**20160716-1**
- Updated to Kernel 3.10.102-2-pine64-longsleep-66

**20161217-1**
- Updated to Kernel 3.10.104-2-pine64-longsleep-113
- Backports repository no longer enabled by default

**20161218-1**
- Ubuntu 16.04.1 base rootfs without proposed repository (was nightly before)
- Proposed repository no longer enabled by default


Released images are signed with a detached GPG signature (.asc) signed by my personal key 0x090EF0DB. Get the key and verify that the download is intact and unmodified.

Hi there!

I noticed the 8.000 mAh Lithium Polymer Battery can be delivered to certain europe countries too!
Can you please tell me which countries are these "certain countries"?

Btw: I'm from Austria and I saw the following right now...
"ADD-ON SHIPPING FEE - $0.50 (AT)"
So, the main question has been answered by myself, but I would be still interested in which other countries are these certain countries.

Best regards
Julian

Hi,

have you considered adding a heat-sink recommendation to Backerkit? It would be wise to do so, as many Linux users will require a heat sink to avoid thermal throttling, especially when using the Pine64 as base platform for virtualization or similar use cases.

Cheers
Simon

Hi,

I had a February order for the Pine64, but today I received an email saying my order couldn't be locked down.
I went through the survey and entered the exact same information as last time (even the add ons were saved).

Any idea why it couldn't be locked down?
At what date will orders unable to be locked down be re-checked and shipped?

Thanks

I'm planning to throw the wifi remote along with the temperature sensor, light sensor, and a couple relays into a box to control my outside shades.  I plan on making one such box for each group of shades, for a total of 5 boxes.  I've a couple of questions about the wifi remote as the documentation is quite spotty.

- The first question is whether I can connect 5 such boxes containing 5 wifi remotes to a single Pine64?  I would prefer to simplify the network as much as possible and avoid having to put a full computer in each box.

- Is the I2C bus of the wifi remote an extension of a Pine64 I2C bus, or is it separate?

- Equally importantly, is the addressing on the bus I2C bus of the wifi remotes separate?  The temperature sensor does not allow setting the I2C address, so you can only have one on the bus which would not work if the buses were all joined together to one, and with 5 boxes with a couple sensors and relays, I'd quickly run very close to the limit of I2C addresses.

- What's the range of the on-chip wifi antenna?

Why is the download for the Linux on the http://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pine_A6...re_Release
so large? Most ISO's that I have downloaded and burned to disk are in the 4.7 Gig range, so I do not understand why 23 gig worth?

I feel like this might be an overly simple question to ask, but I'd rather know for sure before I start spending money on "extras". Would I be correct in assuming that I can connect a USB hub to one of the two USB ports, to expand the number of USB devices used on a Pine64?

If yes, are there limitations such as number of active devices on one hub per port, or type of device? I'm considering a number of devices such as gamepads, where I might have multiple on a hub, or multiple gamepads connected to a usb adapter on one usb port on the hub (PSX multi-tap for instance). Also, external hard drives as well, to increase storage.