Greetings!





I'm in the process of considering an order for a PinebookPro, PinePhone, and a Rock64. I'm very much interested in low-level coding on this unique hardware (and having an ARM laptop and linux phone!), so I'm interested in collecting information and making good purchases to support that endeavour. As such, I've got several questions, and would like to use this thread to list out the "ultimate hacking kit" of sorts for others who are similarly interested in this area. I'm going to edit this opening post with resources we bring together so it can be an effective one-stop-shop for people who are similarly interested in getting into hacking ARM hardware with the Pine64 products.

Rock64. The device I'm considering is 4GB (store page). Questions I have are about any necessary support hardware:

• Is a heat sink required? They're sold, so it seems like it might be desirable. I do intend on getting a metal case, if that would affect head dissipation enough.
  
• Given the Rock64 uses the same chip as the PineBook, it seems to follow that it can boot off of eMMC, SPI flash, USB, and SD?
  
• I suspect the answer is no, but does the Rock64 come with either of: a power cable and/or a eMMC module? (power cable separate as per store page)
  

• manawyrm recommends the TTL-232R-3V3-AJ for phone/laptop serial. It operates at the appropriate voltage. However, I noticed it only has three post segments, meaning one is missing compared to the broken official cable. I understand he says it works, but I'm concerned there would be a downside to losing that one segment (I'm not an electronics buff, so I would appreciate any explanation anybody could offer).
  
• Does the PinePhone come with an eMMC?
  
• What's the best economy NVMe SSD card that is compatible with the PineBook?
  
• Is the keyboard/touchpad firmware open source? Anybody do any neat hacks on it?
  

• Does the eMMC adapter work with the eMMC modules Pine64 sells? It is reported that it doesn't work with many eMMC modules (lost the thread, there's a wiki page too somewhere it linked to)
  
• Is the so-called "woodpecker" serial console adapter considered safe? The audio jack cable for sale is known to cause significant problems. Also, does it come with the wires necessary to hook it up to the Rock64? Finally, and this might be implicit from the first question, but can it be used to interface with the Phone and PineBook (with an appropriately built adapter)? Also, it is apparently the case this console can prevent correct booting if the TX pin is connected; is this the case with all serial consoles?
  

• The documentation reports an MMU that differs somewhat from the official ARM MMU. Is this the only MMU in the system? Or, is it only for the Cortex-M4? If it is the main MMU, then the documentation on the data structures it uses seems to imply it doesn't support virtualisation (the page table entries do not contain an ASID/VMID that I've seen). I partly suspect that the RK3399 doesn't FULLY document the page table structure (basically, it only shows the directory entries rather than the page table entries, which would be "standard").
  
• Related to the MMU, but is TrustZone supported?
  
• Related to the MMU, is there a No-Execute (NX) support? The pages only seem to have Read and Write flags.
  
• Some resources for comparison if anybody wants to try and interpret it:
  • RK3399 documentation:
    
  • • Chip overview: http://rockchip.wikidot.com/rk3399
      
    • Technical Manual P1: http://opensource.rock-chips.com/images/...170408.pdf
      
    • Technical Manual P2: https://www.rockchip.fr/Rockchip%20RK339...0Part2.pdf
      
  • ARM documentation: https://developer.arm.com/architectures/...ofile/docs
    

I didn't know where to put this, so I put it here. Sorry if that's wrong.

I haven't been able to get into the IRC for a couple days now.
It looks like the system is down.
Any idea when it can be back up?

Also, is there any way to access the #pinephone irc channel with a regular IRC client?

Thanks for any info.

I'm interested in getting a PinePhone to have more control over what my phone actually does.  By comparison, my Moto G6 running some variant of Android is so slow for almost all things I do.  There's even a delay with each character I type in a text message, though it wasn't always this way.  It was never fast, but with my employers control over my phone, it seems to be much worse (they have this Duo and some other admin type thing they installed).  I believe they actually have more control over my phone than I ever had. 

I hate this.  When I click a character, I want it to appear, and not decide to do some other background server task.  Or at least make me think I'm only doing that thing.  Don't be scanning my keys, uploading things somewhere.  If I take a picture, *I* want to decide to send it to AWS, or not.  If I turn that off, I don't want Jeff Bezos turning that back on as it currently happens.

However, I read the start of the PinePhone wiki for installation instructions, and it sounds like I have to buy some separate card, download any supported image and hope that it works on my AT&T phone.  I've installed Linux before on a desktop, I don't mind the command line.  However, I have about a 3-4 hour limit before I start to curse, loose patience.

I'd like to take pictures, have good phone calls, send and receive messages, surf the web including watching youtube videos.

Will this work?

Thanks,
mrb

Here are my first steps with video editing with a PBP.
We really need access to hardware video codecs, but that is another story.

I installed OpenShot and started working on a 720p video.
I only added a simple image before as intro and a simple image after as outro.

The preview in OpenShot already suffered from performance issues and it is really hard to get the right timings when you want to cut a video clip.
In the end I used VidCutter to get the start and end for a clip and used the time markers in a command line with FFMPEG.
VidCutter seems to start cutting from a key frame by default and smart cutting gave a strange jump in my clip.

Here is an example of the command line and the source where I found it.

ffmpeg -ss 00:01: 00 -i input.mp4 -to 00:02:00 -c copy output.mp4

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1844...ing-ffmpeg

At the moment video editing on a PBP is a bit like torturing yourself.
I really hope we do get access to the hardware video codecs in the future.

I have a UBports edition Pinephone.  When I run the factory test image it passes the auto test.  However anytime I take out the battery to change the SIM or micro SD card and boot up it says I have 0% battery and wifi will not work.  It only boots up when plugged in and shuts down if I unplug after it boots. Even thought the battery was showing fully charged before I changed the SIM or Micro SD card.  After a reboot it normally goes to say the battery is 100% but again only boots if plugged in and dies if unplugged and Wifi will not work.  After several boot cycles it will suddenly start working fine until I remove the battery and have to start this all over again.  Has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone know a solution?
thanks

I sort of asked for this before, but here's me trying to put an actual poll together.
----------------
Edit:
A) Try basing judgement out of total number of working software functions relative to the functions the hardware is capable of. If you've tried 2, 3, or even more that experience with each would be of great value!

B) Focus on out of box functions, since any OS can be tweaked.

C) I realize i may have missed some OS options, as i focused on the more common ones and ones with pinned sub forums. Feel free to vote for others simply by commenting. I'll add an edit below to reflect votes for others. Unfortunately i cant edit the poll.

D) Daily Drivers Alert: Mobian, ARCH ARM & Manjaro all appear to have near full functionality. A few shortcomings, but well enough for anyone who used a smartphone in 2013. UB touch was almost there, but seems to be encountering some hiccups.
-----------------
Some to consider:
1. Inbound/outbound calls
2. Sms
3. Mms
4. Data
5. Bluetooth
6. Gps
7. Volume button control
8. EMail client
9. Camera
10. Wifi
11. 1,2,3&4 all working across broad spectrum (2G/3G/4G)
12. Other considerations and apps

====================
Extra votes:
SXMO: 4 votes!

hello everybody i am very new on rock64 i dont have any power supply even now ...
i have a lcd for raspberry pi 3a this display is connected directly by the pin connector of the board (not by hdmi socket )
i wonder if the rock64 pin connector is comptatible with the rasperry pin connector in order to use my old raspberry display
thank you
by advance

  Screenshot from 2020-08-23 09-15-55.png (Size: 52.15 KB / Downloads: 728)

I was grabbing an image the other day and noticed that Oracle has an Linux for ARM64 available.  Just wondering if anyone has tried this on the PBP.   I wouldn't expect it to be great as a laptop OS, but curious anyway...

I went to order this today, and it was shown as sold out. If I knew it would, I'd have ordered sooner. Is there a waiting list I can get on? I'd like to get this one. the extra gig of RAM and dock would make me happy. If there's another similar edition with those elements, I'd be good with it as I am probably going to multiboot it anyway, but I'm getting that FOMO feeling and hope to alleviate it.

Thanks guys. Love the forum and community (and hardware, I'm looking to get probably several other devices shortly, just noticed this one was sold out. Will still probably get a few things)

Hello, I want to power my Rock64 and an External RAID enclosure (2 hard drives) with 1 single power supply.
The purpose is a DIY NAS project, I want to avoid multiple power cables.

- The Rock64 has an official adapter delivering 5V/3A.
- The RAID enclosure has an adapter delivering 5V/1.5A

I don't think the official Rock64 adapter can power both devices, so I would like to know what power supply should I buy (how much V and A) to avoid any risk of over/under voltage ?

Thank you very much for your kind help !