Earlier this week I got a Sabrent Rocket NANO 512 to try out in my PBP as a shared data drive.

Upon installation and first boot, everything seemed hunky-dory and normal. I took it to work, as usual, and noticed more battery drain than normal. After poking around with nvme-cli, I learned that drive doesn't have ideal power consumption or power savings settings for the PBP. When I took it home, I put it back on the charger, as I usually do, to let it sit until the next morning.

The next day (NVMe still installed) I grabbed it, went to work, and started it up. It was then that I noticed the PBP started with only 66% battery and it was still dropping fast. That day I initiated a return of the drive, wiped it, and removed the drive when I got home. I, again, plugged it back into the charger while off, to sit until the next morning.

Now that the drive is out, I'm still getting a max charge of 66%, whether I boot into Manjaro or Chromium OS. The only changes made were the installation of the NVMe drive, so I'm curious if anyone else has noticed this issue with a drive installed?

I'm pretty bothered that suddenly I lost ~40% battery life/capacity, and there's been no indication as to why or how to resolve it, from what I can tell. If anyone has any helpful suggestions to troubleshoot, please share!

Hello
Where is the CAD and blueprints of the pine64? I don't understand, is only the software is open-source?
Can you give me links?

Thanks in advance!

SnowCode

Good Morning Pineland -

First, I am not really a noob even though this issue will sound like it! I have used Linux almost 20 years and ARM chips about 5...

Got my new Pinebook64 Pro a few days ago and love it. Couldn't wait to try some other distros. But I could not get it to boot from the MicroSD any way I tried. Ran updates, etc. to no avail. Then I tried the keyboard update for ANSI keyboard and it seemed to run fine, and requested a reboot.

After the reboot, the keyboard is mapped completely differently and I can't even enter the username or password.

I booted with an external keyboard, which works fine, and checked the keyboard setup, which was still reporting US English. I added a second layout, deleted the US English, and re-added US English. No dice.

So I guess my questions are:

• How do I get the correct keyboard layout back?
  
• And, once I do that, how do I get the MicroSD to boot?
  

Whereas there are a number of problems commonly reported, such as weak WiFi, no sound, unable to set the time, keyboard and trackpad issues, etc., those are all most likely due to software and firmware.  Issues with docks and dongles could be either software or hardware problems.  This thread is to help keep track of electrical and mechanical issues that cannot be addressed through software or firmware.

1) The NVMe SSD interface adapter sold in the Pine Store did not fit.  It was announced that a repair kit would be shipped.  When will it ship? Does the adapter that is currently in the Pine store work, or is it the same one that doesn't work?

2) The serial console adapter sold in the Pine Store is apparently the wrong voltage and the wrong chipset for the PBP.  Which 3.3V adapters have the correct chipset?

3) We need a Bill of Materials for mechanical parts, including specificity for screws, spacers, and the CPU heat transfer pad.

4) There are reports of the plastic underneath the USB ports breaking.

5) There are reports of the battery discharging while connected to external power via barrel port or USB-C.   What is the maximum amount of current that the PBP can safely use from external power?

6) There are reports of various high-pitched or whining noises that seem related to the PBP's power supply circuitry.

Edited on 27.03.2020 - due to Manjaro not using boot.scr anymore.

I have taken below steps to achieve booting from NVME. It can be probably mirrored on Debian with some small changes since Manjaro is using boot.scr and Debian extlinux.conf.


First download a package: uboot-pinebookpro-2017.09-2-aarch64.pkg.tar.xz. It has uboot files with @pcm720 patches included. Current Manjaro uboot package does not have nvme support enabled. This is subject to change.

1. Extract the files from the package: idbloader.img, trust.img, uboot.img.
2. Write uboot files (pay attention to your device - it has to be eMMC !!! In my case /dev/mmcblk2):

"dd if=idbloader.img of=/dev/mmcblk2 bs=32k seek=1 conv=fsync"
"dd if=uboot.img of=/dev/mmcblk2 bs=64k seek=128 conv=fsync"
"dd if=trust.img of=/dev/mmcblk2 bs=64k seek=192 conv=fsync"

3. Create partition on your NVME drive to rsync filesystem from eMMC.
4. Mount the partition - lets say in /mnt
5. "cd /mnt"
6. "mkdir dev proc sys mnt"
7. "rsync -aHxv --numeric-ids --progress /* /mnt --exclude=/dev --exclude=/proc --exclude=/sys --exclude=/mnt"
8. chroot to your newly synced partition "chroot /mnt".
9. "cd /boot/extlinux"
9. Edit extlinux.conf and change "root=LABEL=ROOT" to "root=/dev/nvme0n1p1" (if your new partition is first on disk).
10. Exit chroot "exit".
11. On eMMC !!! Rename extlinux directory to something else eg. extlinux.old.
12. Reboot machine - you should boot from NVME.
13. After sucessful reboot check "lsblk" it should be something like:

[root@pbp ~]# lsblk
NAME         MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
mmcblk2      179:0    0  58.2G  0 disk
└─mmcblk2p1  179:1    0  58.2G  0 part
mmcblk2boot0 179:32   0     4M  1 disk
mmcblk2boot1 179:64   0     4M  1 disk
nvme0n1      259:0    0 894.3G  0 disk
└─nvme0n1p1  259:1    0    20G  0 part /


In case you want to start the system from eMMC just rename extlinux.old to extlinux on eMMC. Opposite to what has been done in step 11.

Enjoy !

After reading the new blog post, I really liked the idea of having the pine logo on the camera/flash protector.

However, I also noticed that it is a single piece of glass that covers both the camera and the flash. This is weird because almost every phone on the market uses distinct pieces to cover the flash and cameras.

I suspect they do this because the light from the flash can reflect and refract directly into the camera which may screw up the pictures. As this is just my speculation it would be nice if someone with a developer phone could test it (I will test it with my braveheart when it arrives if no one can do it sooner).

If this is an actual issue, the solution could be as simple as "breaking" the glass in half (for example the nokia 5 smartphone does this).

The January Community Update is up. Starting this thread if you rather ask questions here than in the blog comments.

Hi all, Ive found that .appimage does not work I'm trying to use cura.appimage but it does not work just like openscad.appimage is there any way to fix that maybe I'm missing something.. somebody having any luck with bouth programs ?

I flashed Bionic onto the eMMC and now SD boot is no longer working.  I think the uboot is the issue, but I do not know how to go about fixing it.  Ideas?

Hi All,

Strange solution occurred this morning.

I've been trying out different OS on my PBP to see which I may stick with. So far have Mate Bionic image on the Emmc (from the tutorial instrcutions) and have SD cards with mate, chromium, manjaro.

Strangely I just shutdown from manjaro sd card and now the PBP will only power on with that specific SD Card in the slot.

i.e. I get 0 response (not even an orange LED) when pressing and holding the power button with any of the following attempts:

1. No SD Card boot - Ubuntu Mate from EMMC  (worked last night)
   
2. SD Card with Bootable Bionic Mate image
   
3. SD Card with Chromium Image