I have the need to record audio from my 1970s HiFi.  The most convenient way to do that at the moment is to use my Pinebook Pro.  I run NetBSD.

I bought two devices from Newegg, hoping that one of them would work.  This turned out to be very fortuitous. The first is a StarTech ICUSBAUDIO7D.  The second is a Toshiba PA3390U-1MPM.

First off, connecting or disconnecting either of these whilst the system is booted risks locking up the PBP. I am using Audacity to record, which also occasionally locks the machine. Since I am running NetBSD-current, this is not totally unexpected.

First the StarTech:
I was able to record audio via /dev/audio1, but this does not source the audio from Line In.  It sources it from the microphone jacks, which there are two and they are mono.  The audio level is about 10db too low.  There is a periodic tschk-stck noise in the recorded audio which I cannot figure out how to avoid.  I can play back audio, also via /dev/audio1.  This routes audio to the front speaker jacks.  The output audio seems to be an adequate level, and seems to be clear and acceptable.  Despite that these are labeled as speaker jacks, they seem to be line level.

Next the Toshiba:
I was able to record audio via /dev/audio1, and this sources audio from Line In.  The audio level again is about 10db too low.  The record audio seems to be clear and sufficient, albeit a low level.  I cannot get audio to play back from the device.  There is a mute button with indicator light on the front of the device, and this indicator is always on.  I assume that I would need the Windows software that comes with the device to turn the mute function off.

So, you can see I have one device that records well and one that plays back well.  I was able to daisy-chain them; the Toshiba device has an inbuilt USB hub.  In this case, the StarTech device becomes /dev/audio2.

The low record audio may have something to do with "line level" standards changing over the years.  The only other computer I've used with this stereo system is an Amiga with a Delfina audio card, and I don't recall ever having issues with low level audio on that.  (In fact, I'm pretty certain that there was plenty of headroom in the audio level; I did a lot of recording with that).  But that was over twenty years ago.  Things may have changed in the industry since; I have no idea.

This was my first experience ever using a "USB sound card".  So perhaps there are other things I could have done better and I am not aware.  But at least this is a workable solution, and I was able to record the audio that I needed.

Many Pinephone users have ssh access open. Result being their Pinephone's ssh server shows up/is by default accessible on the open internet. This can be dangerous (especially given many undoubtedly use weak number passwords (ie: guessable numbers doubling for screen unlock pin)),

So I thought fellow Pinephone users may find this video helpful.

A quick (5min), easy video walkthrough/guide. A simple to implement security enhancement (using Mobian Pinephone as example in the video but will work on any Linux).
Make your Pinephone ssh server only accessible as a Tor .onion address (Blocking access/portscans/shodan for users on standard internet).

https://youtu.be/syKZNMVxTM4

After following the video, edit  /etc/ssh/sshd_config and uncomment/edit the line to match:

ListenAddress 127.0.0.1

Optionally (in case anything in ssh config goes wrong) block using iptables issue the following afterwards:

I have been trying to flash the micro sd versions of android for a few days now and none will burn, they all crash at the begining, etcher even says theres no patition table, so what am I supposed to do here?

Hi all,
 I received my PinePhone Postmarket Edition a couple months ago.

Immediately  I ran into the issue whereby it asked you to create a password and then did not reccognize the password. i think this was a topic of discussion here for a while but I can't link to the thread. 


I am unable to get the attention of the  PinePhone makers so I am hoping someone here can help me. 

What happened to people was PinePhone asked you to create a "strong" password, which I did. This was one of the very first things it asked you to do when turning on the phone. 

The password I created was long  and  had a lot of symbols and capital letters. 

When I went to log into the phone, it did not recognize the password which I had written down accurately in fact.

The issue  as I recall was that the password routine did not accept either letters or symbols but didn't tell you that when you created the password. It would pass the creation of the password, but then not recognize the password it had permitted you to create. 

The solution to people who were caught in this, and there were quite a few, was to reflash the phone. It seemed to be absolutely the only way to fix the problem. 

I am looking for a tutorial on  how to reflash the phone. 

Thanks so much for your assistance.

I'm interested in getting the OMEMO plugin to work preferably on Gajim but Pidgin will do for more secure XMPP.  I am running Fedora on PBP.  Both Gajim and Pidgin installed and work with no problems.
I couldn't get the OMEMO Gajim instructions for Fedora to work.  Enabled the philfry/gajim copr repository but neither the plugin gajim-omemo or the dependencies python3-axolotl python3-axolotl-curve25519 python3-qrcode show as available, likely because they don't conform to ARM architecture.  
I made it farther with Pidgin where there are clear instructions for Fedora.  The dependencies, cmake libpurple-devel mxml-devel libxml2-devel libsqlite3x-devel libgcrypt-devel, install well but on attempting "make install-home" I get " make: cc: Command not found " or more fully:

Since the next Manjaro batch and the last PMOS batch were both the same hardware revision, which itself was a minor revision of the UBPorts board, are there any plans for a final-final-definitely-for-real-this-time hardware revision of the PinePhone, or should the 1.2a be considered as such?

Purpose

A serial connection is necessary when troubleshooting (or installing) on a headless system (no display/monitor).

Background

I have used a CH340 based USB Serial UART device and have had mixed results. That is why I use USB Serial UART devices based on FTDI's 232RL chip with 3.3v voltage or voltage selector. The version I use is this one:  https://www.microcenter.com/product/4865...controller

This is another model that should have no problems: https://www.amazon.com/DSD-TECH-SH-U09F-...07K76Q2DX/ Notice that it features a "genuine" chip.

You can use cheaper USB Serial UART models but those most likely use imitation chips. This is not an issue if you use linux, but windows machines will brick models with fake FTDI chips. The knockoffs can be unbricked, but that is beyond the scope of this tutorial.

The RockPro64 UART RX/TX pins use 3V by default according to the schematics. ENSURE you set your USB Serial UART device to 3.3V.

Warnings

1. Do not use a knockoff FT232RL based USB Serial UART with a windows system, it will brick the device.
   
2. Set your USB Serial UART device to 3.3V.
   
3. You are responsible for all outcomes resulting from the result of this information, including letting the smoke out™.
   

1. Check for a disconnected wire
   
2. Check that the wires are correctly connected
   
3. Check that you are using the correct device (i.e. /dev/ttyUSB#)
   
4. Check that the RockPro64 is plugged in
   
5. Check that the RockPro64 has a valid bootloader installed in the appropriate media
   

Greetings,

Do any of you use VPN's on your pinebook pro?  I tried installing PrivateInternetAccess on mine, but it doesn't want to run.  I was wondering if anybody here had any success with it, or could point me to a suitable alternative.  Also, how would I go about uninstalling it, I'm still presently a noob...

Thanks!

Hello all,

at Elimo Engineering we have designed Impetus, a SoM that shares the Allwinner S3 SoC with the PineCube. Our first supported platform is (going to be) Buildroot.

Given the similarities of the two, and the general lack of support for the S3, we have decided to do double purpose and integrate support for the PineCube into Buildroot.

You can find the repo on our GitHub account and build instructions in the board support directory readme.

The most important thing that this provides is support for the S3's DDR3 in u-boot. Unfortunately mainline u-boot does not have that yet.

Since we don't have a PineCube ourselves, this is unfortunately untested, but it should get a functional system that boots to a console on UART0. It's pretty fast too, getting there in 1.5 seconds from u-boot to login prompt.

All in all, I think this could be a good starting point for further development.

The wifi of my pmos 3GB edition pinephone does not work. It shows that wlan0 interface cannot be found, and dmesg log reports an error after modprobe.