I recently purchased a 2nd pbpro as a gift and need some help with issues that I have been patient with my own device.  The gift in question was to replace a lackluster institution issued piece of hardware.  This hardware needs to be able to be able to have zoom meetings and surf the web (chromebook-ish).  I tested zoom in a web browser with the pbpro and it worked better than what was offered (so far so good), but the web browsing is a bit slower and therefore a problem (to them).  I have noticed lag in application launch as well on my own device with launch of ..everything. Terminal, web browser (all of them) email and chat applications... all basic stuff.  Before this second person with a pbpro I would have just considered these problems due to working from an sdcard instead of emmc.  I have proven that this is not the case through testing both my machine and theirs.

That was all background, here is the foreground question:  what can be doneto make the pbpro more "snappy" for a non saavy user (the gift recipient mainly but myself aslo). Ive tried manjaro in a few DE flavors and chromium from ayufan but haven't ventured too much further. I do not have gentoo skill and ubuntu (on x86) is too "easy" for the recipient of my gift pbpro (currently manjaro kde and manjaro budgie on sdcard) . Suggestions are appreciated and welcome

For myself, I have an sdcard that has my os tweaked how I like (minus the performance debuff) and I would like to move it to my emmc rather than reinstalling and reconfiguration.  Is there an option to move an existing install from an sd to emmc?  When I search the forums I get nothing but horror stories and no sure path to success. TIA

edit: grammar and words

I know the website recently changed formats and had a redesign but had a hard time navigating to the forums from pine64.org (had to scroll to the bottom of the page instead of a link at the top of the page).  My post is to suggest that the forums might be viewed as a higher priority and placed back in a more prominent place. As a largely open source project, I think that the forums should be a suggestion in the top level rather than something the user may have to hunt for in the fine print.  Just my $.02

I know there are a number of threads addressing issues similar to this, but this request is specific: 

I have spent a lot of time with Mobian, and gotten it as close to my liking as possible, but I am not ready to use it as a daily driver. I would like to back up my Mobian installation and then maybe try UbPorts again. If I don't find it useable I will switch to Graphene for now.

But, in a couple months, maybe I will boot my Mobian installation again, run some updates, and see how it handles. Of course, I don't want to lose my GrapheneOS installation in case I need to switch back. 

So how to manage multiple installations? Should I just use dd?

Sadly, I was not careful when taking the top layer of the factory screen protector off of my phone. I had already put in an order for a soft case and a pine book dock to try with my main laptop. As much as I would like to order a glass protector from pine, the shipping is a bit much for just the protector. If us power supply’s were in stock I would just order both. So what I am wondering is has any one here tried a proctor for another phone and how well did it work.

I have a kde ce pinephone, and I am having a problem reading the sd card. I have tried with two different cards with the same results.

The sd card is listed in lsblk, however none of the partitions on the card are listed. I thought that was strange, so I tried to open the device in fdisk, but all I got was this error:

[February 5, 2021]  Mobian CE PinePhones destined for all of European countries, bar the UK, will be dispatched on February 8th from the EU warehouse. This means that all those in Europe (minus UK) should receive their PinePhones by February 21.



Mobian CE PinePhones destined for the USA, Canada, Australia and other destinations will be shipped between February 22 and the 28th from Hong Kong. We initially hoped to ship all Mobian CE PinePhones prior to Chinese New Year (starting February 9th), but unfortunately logistics issues with the KDE CE and other factors prevented this from happening. Stay tuned for further news after CNY.

[February 22, 2021] Post-CNY shipments have resumed. Mobian CE PinePhones will be picked up by DHL tomorrow (feb 23) and, granted there are no delays, should be departing Hong Kong on Wednesday (Feb 24). Those of you waiting for your Mobian CE will receive tracking numbers at various points in time in the next 3-4 days. 

PinePhones purchase on clearance over the CNY period and destined for EU destinations will ship out tomorrow and Wednesday (Feb 23, 24).

PinePhones purchase on clearance over the CNY period destined for all other destinations will ship out Thursday (Feb 25) and Friday (Feb 26) from Hong Kong.

[quote pid='89016' dateline='1612558952']
These systems keep popping up everywhere, and they have a ton of potential, but the education-focused companies don't really take advantage of the full possibilities of the system.  They flood everything with gimmicky sensors for throwaways projects, but they're missing a lot of what makes the whole thing special.

I think there should be a new line of compatible systems, designed for building truly commercial quality products in a modular way.

Right now, modular systems just aren't that great for anything but educational use.  I never see anyone actually building anything with them, even on a DIY level.

But there's only a few changes needed to make them totally usable, none of which should add more than a few dollars to the price.   The whole thing might even be able to replace or supplement other ideas like the PineCom, by just letting people build their own device for everything that the PineTab and phone aren't suited for.

Lego Mindstorms already proved the concept.  Modular Electronics, even at the consumer level, is totally possible and practical, but only when it's actually modular and doesn't depend on adding in a ton of ugly non modular hacks.


Here's what I've noticed has room for improvement in the existing modular space:

* Modular power.  Define a new connector for unregulated 3-20v, which has a Vin bus and a main battery bus.  Any module can supply power or take power from either one with a diode.

In this way, things like robots that need 12v for motors can be totally modular.   

For maximum compatibility, the connector could be a 5-pin JST-PH, having ground, unregulated 0-24Vin, 0-24Vbat, and regulated 5v, and 12v, all busses that any module can take from or supply to.   

Almost every project has that one part that needs one of those voltages, with no way to supply it.

Power input modules should also provide power to the VBat bus, but batteries should not provide to Vin, to avoid charging a large battery from another battery.

And everything should be reasonably protected against input transients as might occur from cable inductance.

* Lower Power/better batteries

Although they're terribly hard to find in America, LTO batteries are cheap and last 20k cycles, and can be charged like capacitors, with a nice voltage curve that makes it easy to check the level.  To really let people make high quality devices, we should be using batteries that don't explode and don't wear out.

So many of the worlds "Throw an Arduino at it" projects use almost no power.  A huge number could in fact only be a mA or two.  

A mainboard should be able to run from USB or the 5V bus, but also should be able to at least run in very low power trickle charge mode from the unregulated VBat bus. 

There's so many projects you just can't do without building a ton of stuff from scratch, because nothing is really designed for this kind of thing.  Everything just has WAY too much idle power draw.




* Fewer Modules

At most, I think there should probably be an ESP32-S2 and an RFM69 or LoRa based module, a USB-C power input module, maybe a 12v battery, and maybe a motor/LED driver.

Most of the cheap modules are easy and trivial to make yourself, or else they're already covered by STEMMA or the like.  Just use the STEMMA standard connectors, give us a top notch base, and the rest will be pretty trivial with a basic breakout board for the connector.

Adding 800 different kinds of main processor chip is just fragmentation.

* Higher Quality modules

Things should be designed with all proper protections.  A motor driver with current limiting and I2C diagnostics for short/open can handle a whole crapload of use cases.  A giant relay is cheap, but needs support component and can't do certain things.

If there's an ADC module, it needs all appropriate ESD shielding you would want in an industrial grade part.

* Case Friendly mechanical design

We should be able to 3D print a case for this stuff, in a way that exposes the USB port, and maybe even a power switch and a button or two for things like easy pairing and setup.   The usual modular boards have tiny buttons that are not at all friendly to enclosures.

Perhaps a standard back panel layout could even be designed, that would be common to all mainboards, with a USB, power switch, and a button and LED or two.

Any additional addons should also be designed with consideration for enclosures.


* Standard connectors

Grove is cool and all, but Adafruit's STEMMA uses standard JST-PH connectors that are cloned basically everywhere.  Might as well use something like that.


* Sold as fully complete kits?

One way to avoid just making a bunch of random useless junk would be to start by focusing on complete kits that resulted in something usable for everyday use.

Imagine a PinePlug modular smarthome plug that you could customize with your own firmware, or add a motion sensor to the externally-exposed connector, etc.

Or a PineBot robot, or even a PineLight flashlight.   Maybe a PineStation weather station,  or a PineCalc graphing calc/universal remote/etc type device that could take over a lot of the PineCom's use cases.

Door and gate sensors that run forever on tiny solar panels would be amazing.  Tiny E-Ink displays would be cool.


It's easy to see how a half-dozen modules or so could be used to make most of these things, with so many consumer gadgets only having at most one custom bit of tech. A modular system like this would make it very easy to add new products without the risk of making e waste trash.

And a lot of potential product suggestions would, IMHO, be a lot better as modules than full products.

[/quote]

Since I am interested in the RISC-V architecture and the everyday use of open technologies, it would be nice to use a more open technology in my desktop (at the moment my desktop is RockPro64, about two years, if I'm not mistaken), so I want to know there are no plans to release boards with riscv64 processor?
So far there is one board for a good price and performance (at least according to the description).

Hello folks, if you're struggling to find a secure and free(as in freedom) software IM and VOIP client for Pinephone, this is suited for you. With latest changes it is currently possible to build jami client for the pinephone and have it in _usable_ state with nearly all features working out of box! To get familiar with Jami more, visit:
https://jami.net/

The above applies for jami-qt client (not the gnome one!) and Phosh

What works:
- importing account / registering
- sending messages
- receiving messages
- calling and receiving audio calls
- calling and receiving video calls*
- adding new contacts
- sending / receiving attachments

What doesn't work:
- *pinephone camera (e.g if you're on video call, you see the other side, but they don't see you) - UPDATE see thread and https://git.jami.net/savoirfairelinux/ja...issues/287
- ui is generally not scaled well (but not unusable) without scale-to-fit, but with scale-to-fit it's usable for daily driver (see https://git.jami.net/savoirfairelinux/ja...issues/257)
- squeekboard must be popped up / minimized manually when chatting (see https://git.jami.net/savoirfairelinux/ja...issues/281)
- there are relatively many small UI quirks which are more annoying than showstoppers
- the UI gets nearly unusable when screen rotation is performed (it's better to have it fixed in portrait when using Jami)
- the led indication for e.g new message, incoming/missed calls is not triggered at all
- there are no packages in any of the pinephone OS distributions, you have to build/compile on your own

Tested the compilation on:
- arch linux arm (latest updates) with Phosh

Screenshots:
see https://git.jami.net/savoirfairelinux/ri...note_26254

Steps to build / compile:
- see: https://git.jami.net/savoirfairelinux/jami-client-qt but iin my case it was:

Hey There,

I can't get any of the sms apps to work and receive messages on my new pine phone. Does anyone have any insight of which one is best and how to get it working?

Thanks