Quad Core 64bit Open Source Hardware Linux computer A64-OLinuXino now have version with external antenna

A64-OLinuXino is Open Source Hardware Quad core 64 bit Linux Computer.

We also offer nice metal box for it named BOX-A64-BLACK:

The only problem was that A64-OLinuXino have option for on board WiFi-BT but it uses PCB antenna and when put in box the communication range was decreasing signiificantly.

New revision of A64-OLinuXino board now supports both internal PCB antenna and U.FL externally attached 2.4Ghz antenna.

So A64-OLinuXino can be put inside the metal box and have the antenna outside:

New Product in stock: Metal box for A64-OLinuXino

BOX-A64-BLACK is metal box with PVC black coating for A64-OLinuXino

The box comes with all necessary fasteners for board assembly inside the box and four rubber feets.

Opening for external antenna is provided although current A64-OLinuXino revision has no WiFi module with U.FL connector inside. We work on next revision where this will be fixed and A64-OLinuXino board will be possible to order with internal or external antenna.

 

KODI pre-build images are now on on our ftp, A20 HDMI audio patches will be ready soon

Few days ago I blogged about the KODI build scripts for A20 and A64 OLinuXino ad promised pre-build images on our server. This is now done and the images can be downloaded from our ftp for A64 and A20.

A20 HDMI audio currently do not work, but Dimitar and Stefan work on this and they say this will be fixed soon. So crossing fingers we may have good news for Christmas!

A64-OLinuXino got new metal box design

After the blog for KODI image lot of people sent emails asking if we will release metal box for A64-OLinuXino, as it actually works very well as media player and can play 4K video @30fps according to Jernej:

Some remarks about blog post content:
"Both A20 and A64 decode up to 4K movies but of course can’t 
display  such resolutions." - A64 is actually capable displaying 
such resolutions. It supports up to 4K@30Hz. Kodi will render 
hardware decoded 4K videos without downsizing when connected 
to 4K TV/monitor.

 

So we start working on this and here is the result:

Now we have to laser-cut and bend some boxes and see if it’s done right 🙂

A20 and A64 OLinuXino now with Libre Elec and Kodi support!

LibreELEC is small OS which has everything to run KODI on top of it. Thanks to Dimitar Gamishev and Stefan Saraev now A20 and A64 OLinuXino has support for it.

A20 has one annoying problem there is no HDMI audio as listed in Linux-Sunxi mainlining efforts.

If someone is capable to do this and have time to spend would be great, as it seems nobody cares to use A20 as media player 🙂

On A64 everything works and HDMI has audio as well.

so KODI is running full featured:

Both A20 and A64 decode up to 4K movies but of course can’t display  such resolutions.

Build scripts are on GitHub. Images will be add to our FTP.

 

A64-OLinuXino got mainline Linux Kernel 5.0 images

Linux kernel 5.0 was just released and as we were working this week to the release of mainline Linux image for A64-OLinuXino (as till now it has the ugly android based 3.10 kernel) we decided to release latest kernel.

The images are available on our FTP.

There are two images Debian headless or Ubuntu desktop.

Known issues with these images:

• LCDs are not supported yet, HDMI output is only available, we need one more week to figure out how to automatically detect if the Ethernet or LCD are enabled (there is jumper on the board which switch between LCD or Ethernet as both share pins and can’t work together). So to make the DTS configurations  automatic at boot time.
• eMMC do not work in the fastest possible mode yet. We need some time, right now 50MB/s is the max speed to read write instead of 100-200MB/s which the installed eMMC supports, we will update the image soon with HS200/400 modes enabled.
• No CPU thermal. A64 has 3 thermal zones – CPU, GPU0 and GPU1. The driver doesn’t support monitoring them.

How to build the images is explained here.

Mainline Linux Kernel 5.0 images for A13, A20 and A33 OLinuXino and SOMs is in progress.

A20-SOM204 and SOM204-EVB preliminary info is uploaded on our web

SOM204 is SODIMM form factor System-On-Module we are working for a while (actually from so long time ago that SOM204-EVB platform is made in Eagle which we dropped to use officially from quite some time ago).

The SODIMM connector has these signals:

• Power supply: +5V, GND, LiPobattery, RTC_backup, Stepup-Output, Stepup-enable, USB+5V
• Interfaces: Gigabit Ethernet, Megabit Ethernet, CAN, SATA, PCIe, USB2.0 HOST x2, USB-OTG, USB3.0 HOST, HSIC, UARTx3, SPIx2, I2Cx2, CSI, microSD, GPIOs with interrupts,
• Display: HDMI, VGA
• Audio: SPDIF, Line-in/out, Microphone, Headphone.

You can see complete SOM204 platform signals here.

The idea behind SOM204 is to make Universal interchangeable SOM with different performance and resources.

Our first SOM204 module is with A20 processor, it’s now in production and will be available for purchase next week.

The second SOM204 module is with A64, the third is with RK3328 which we expect to be ready for production around June. Next to follow is AM335X which will be ready by end of the year together with RK3399. The goal is to have 5 different modules by the end of the year.

A20-SOM204 comes with 1GB RAM, optional SPI Flash or eMMC Flash up to 64GB, two native Ethernets (this is the only A20 board with dual native Ethernets) Gigabit and Megabit, SATA and so on. The USB3.0 interface and PICe interfaces are not wired. On top on SOM204 platform LCD and additional GPIOs are exposed on FPC connectors:

The A20-SOM204 schematic is here.

A20-SOM204-EVB is evaluatuon board with A20-SOM204

A20-SOM204 software is Armbian with mainline kernel and support for all SOM peripherials.

 

TERES I assembly workshop this Saturday!

This Saturday 21st of October we will have TERES I assembly workshop!

Customers from Bulgaria who placed orders for TERES I DIY Open Source laptop will have their laptop kits ready and are invited to come and we assembly them together!

The assembly workshop will be in OLIMEX Training Building and will start at 14.00 o’clock.

No need to have Laptop kit to participate, everyone is welcome to join us.

A64-OLinuXino Open Source Hardware board with 64-bit Cortex-A53 processor is in released

A64-OLinuXino OSHW board is now released. Current revision is Rev.C.

Features are:

• A64 Cortex-A53 64-bit SoC from Allwinner
• AXP803 PMU with Lipo charger and step-up
• 1 or 2GB or DDR3L @672 Mhz
• 0 / 4 or 16GB of industrial grade eMMC
• SPI Flash in SO8 package with hardware WP (not assembled)
• USB-OTG and USB-HOST
• HSIC connector (not assembled)
• Gigabit Ethernet
• BLE/WiFi module
• HDMI and MIPI display connectors
• microSD card
• Debug console serial connector
• Audio In and Out
• LCD display connector
• GPIO 40 pin connector (not assembled)
• UEXT connector (not assembled)
• 5V power jack
• Dimensions: 90×62.5 mm

For the moment we have three models:

• 1G0G with 1GB RAM, no Flash, no WiFi/BLE
• 1G4GW with 1GB RAM, 4GB eMMC and WiFi/BLE
• 2G16G-IND with 2GB RAM, 16GB eMMC with industrial grade components -40+85C

The optional connectors and SPI Flash etc may be assembled upon request for small fee.

Final updates on A64-OLinuXino GMAC and eMMC, we are ready to launch production

We complete our test with Rev.B

Good news is that Gigabit interface works well with Micrel/Microchip PHY and result is real Gigabit bandwidth. A20 although having Gigabit interface can’t make more than 700 Mbit I guess this is related to A20 capability to handle the data from GMAC. With A64 the speed is  932Mbit i.e. very close to 1Gb:

root@A64-OLinuXino:~# iperf -s 
 ------------------------------------------------------------ 
 Server listening on TCP port 5001 
 TCP window size: 85.3 KByte (default) 
 ------------------------------------------------------------ 
 [  4] local 10.0.0.4 port 5001 connected with 10.0.0.1 port 41144 
 [ ID] Interval       Transfer     Bandwidth 
 [  4]  0.0-10.0 sec  1.09 GBytes   932 Mbits/sec

 

For eMMC we followed the advice to make it dual voltage 3.3V and 1.8V with aim to have faster transfers and we implemented it in the hardware, but the tests show that transfer is same even at 1.8V is a bit lower. I don’t know if this is due to lame software settings we do in the eMMC drivers, or just the eMMC we use have same transfer on both voltages (we check datasheet and the eMMC we use have same speed quoted on both voltages), so this may be useless for our eMMC chip:

eMMC clock: 52 Mhz

eMMC@3.3V 
root@A64-OLinuXino:/home/olimex# dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/output conv=fdatasync bs=384k count=1k; rm -f /mnt/output 
1024+0 records in 
1024+0 records out 
402653184 bytes (403 MB, 384 MiB) copied, 33.0437 s, 12.2 MB/s 
 
eMMC@1.8V 
root@A64-OLinuXino:/home/olimex# dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/output conv=fdatasync bs=384k count=1k; rm -f /mnt/output 
1024+0 records in 
1024+0 records out 
402653184 bytes (403 MB, 384 MiB) copied, 37.9408 s, 10.6 MB/s 
 
SDMMC clock: 40MHz 
 
SDMMC@3.3V 
root@A64-OLinuXino:/home/olimex# dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/output conv=fdatasync bs=384k count=1k; rm -f /tmp/output 
1024+0 records in 
1024+0 records out 
402653184 bytes (403 MB, 384 MiB) copied, 41.1578 s, 9.8 MB/s 
 

With SDMMC as we don’t know what SD card will be inserted the clock is set to default 40Mhz.

After re-checking that everything works, we make last cosmetic changes to audio part we noticed in the last moment and will run Rev.C in production.