April Community Update thread

[sebboh]

From the blog:

Lastly, work on the upgrade RK3399 kits for the original Pinebook is underway. We already did a fair bit of testing to determine the best way to cool the SOC in the plastic chassis. Our initial ideas to cool the RK3399 using a thin sheet of copper fell through, as the SOC ran hot and throttled quickly under moderate load. We’ve now moved onto testing using a graphene cooling system, which we believe will deliver much better thermal dissipation performance. One issue I’ve encountered insofar is with getting the keyboard firmware to play nice with the Pinebook Pro board – as a result, I expect this is likely something developers will have to get their hands on prior to end-users.

Ok.  So...  Hold on, I think I misunderstood what the upgrade kit is supposed to be.  May I start at the beginning?

If I have a pinebook 1080p and I want to have a pinebook pro (which I sorta invested in)... There are three main paths I may take.

• Throw out the PB1080p and buy a PBPro.
  

1. PRO: simple
   
2. CON: wasteful
   
3. CON: expensive, maybe?
   

• Throw out everything except some of these items, because they are identical or compatible enough (hackers gonna hack), and order the PBPro version of the remaining items
  

1. Screen?
   
2. eMMC?
   
3. Battery?
   
4. Keyboard?
   
5. Touchpad?
   
6. Top of the clamshell?
   
7. Bottom of the clamshell?
   
8. Webcam?
   
9. Mic?
   
10. Speakers?
    
11. screws/hardware/hinges/wires/ports/sockets?
    

• Throw out only the mainboard and painstakingly redesign a new PBPro within the constraints of the existing case and hardware
  

1. Well the daughter board might as well be replaced, eh?
   
2. Obviously heat will be a problem
   
3. etc
   

So, which broad path is the Pine64 crew taking?

Thank you, thank you!!