- arm-netbook - Mailman test

LWN: Hands on with the pi-top
by Paul Boddie 17 Dec '15

17 Dec '15

Hello, I thought that some of you might be interested in this, at least in the context of laptop projects, what other people are doing, and the finished products: http://lwn.net/Articles/667040/ I guess the Raspberry Pi aspect of it means that people are willing to throw their money at something that doesn't really seem to be a particularly good product: tied to the RPi, no speakers or audio outputs (apart from on the RPi board itself), the usual proprietary software dependencies and promotional activity, reportedly dodgy keyboard... Also of interest is that their desktop version recently got funded very quickly indeed. Again, the same RPi dependencies and constraints apply. I guess it shows that there's a market for such stuff, even if (or especially if) you take the RPi cargo culture out of the equation. Paul

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early alpha production run of libre laptop PCBs, microdesktops and CPU Cards
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 16 Dec '15

16 Dec '15

it's a little early but i wanted to get a poll out of people who might be interested to buy the PCBs (and other parts) as a kit, for both the libre laptop PCBs and the microdesktop units. when i say "early" i mean "there's pretty much no software" - i have preliminary working firmware that i'm using to confirm that various hardware functions work (keyboard, touchscreen, battery monitoring), however as for actual "useable drivers", those do not exist and will need to be written. this is therefore a solicitation for assistance in writing the drivers as much as it is an offer for people to be involved and have extremely-early hardware. the casework for the laptop is available as GPL pyopenscad files: i could potentially print some up for people but would prefer it if you used an online 3d printing service or local hackerspace. the micro-desktop, in direct contrast to the laptop, requires absolutely no drivers whatsoever and works straight away. estimated low-volume (5-10) pricing is going to be somewhere around: * eoma68-jz4775 CPU Card: $300 (cost of 5 PCBs is $1500) * eoma68-a20 CPU Card: same. * laptop main PCB1: $150 * laptop E/C PCB2: $120 * laptop PMIC PCB3: $120 * microdesktop PCB: $150 * laptop battery: $12 * 15.6in LCD: $50 (obtainable on ebay) * Chicony Keyboard: $20 (again, obtainable on ebay) * USB-UART: $5 (obtainable on ebay or adafruit or digikey or anywhere) there are various other sundries that are needed - cables, connectors etc. i can put together kits for people. if we can get as high as 25 units on particular boards, that pricing is likely to drop by something like 25%, at least. if anyone is considering this, please *do* consider prioritising getting the micro-desktop as well, i find it is very useful to have a working setup with the micro-desktop, separate from the laptop PCB, in a totally separate area of my desk. please also bear in mind, i am going through to a 2nd revision of all of the above PCBs, so we will be looking at about 2 months before these boards can go to a (larger) run - i wanted to give people an opportunity to say if they'd like to be involved. l.

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15in libre laptop, 1366x768 LCD operational
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 14 Dec '15

14 Dec '15

http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/laptop_15in/news/ yippeee! i cleaned up the tracks around the SN75LVDS83b, and also i disabled HDMI (2nd) output entirely in the script.fex. the LCD is now fully operational, and is running at a low-power-saving screen refresh rate of only 37hz. that drops the power consumption of the LCD panel by a huge 40%, as well as allowing the SN75LVDS83b to operate at a lower speed and use less power as well. yaaaa :)

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A64 SDK
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 11 Dec '15

11 Dec '15

small favour to ask of people (anyone): search "lichee_A64_A5.1_V1.0.tar.gz", this should come up with a link on baidu. endeavour to download this file, then check whether it's corrupted or not. thanks in advance, l.

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HX8357D SPI LCD and STM32F072 nucleo dev-board success
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 10 Dec '15

10 Dec '15

http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/laptop_15in/news/ managed to *reliably* initialise the adafruit hx8357d LCD from the STM32F072 using 9-bit SPI bit-banging. the yunlea LCD will need to be tested next, with PCB2. l.

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Paypal sabotage crowdfunding
by Philip Hands 06 Dec '15

06 Dec '15

Hi Folks, Since this list has people that are reasonably likely to come up with crowdfunding projects, I thought I'd point at this sorry state of affairs, caused by Paypal: http://neo900.org/news/paypal-trouble-delays-project (the link to http://garethhayes.net/paypal-warning/ is hardly encouraging either) Cheers, Phil. -- |)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560] HANDS.COM Ltd. |-| http://www.hands.com/ http://ftp.uk.debian.org/ |(| Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34, 21075 Hamburg, GERMANY

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Free Soft & Hardware: ControLeo2 Reflow Oven
by Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross 04 Dec '15

04 Dec '15

came across this thought it might be on interest maybe. http://www.whizoo.com/

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15in laptop LCD up on PCB1
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 04 Dec '15

04 Dec '15

http://rhombus-tech.net/community_ideas/laptop_15in/news/ it's by no means perfect, but i have at least data on-screen. i suspect EM interference is causing the corruption, so another revision of PCB1 will need the LVDS IC layout to be reworked. this is however huge progress. the only 2 parts of PCB1 that need to be checked and debugged are the MicroSD card slot and the 1W speaker/headphone amplifier circuits. the CM108AH USB Audio IC has already been confirmed as operational on the USB bus, as has the GL850G and the 3 USB ports. l.

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LTC4155 design flaw
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 02 Dec '15

02 Dec '15

i've got an enquiry out with Linear, however it looks like there's a serious design flaw with the LTC4155 - not one that's safety-related but one that makes it functionally completely useless. the clue is in looking at page 15 of the datasheet - a diagram which shows the internal operation. in the bottom left corner is a power-selection arrangement, where there are two AND gates. note that they're not symmetrically arranged. the difference between the two is that WALLSNS output is connected to the *input* (inverted) of the USBGT enabler AND gate. what that means is that it is ABSOLUTELY CAST-IRON GUARANTEED - i.e. hard-wired in an inviolate way - that if the 5VDC input is plugged into a wall charger, USB OTG Host Power is ABSOLUTELY 100% WITHOUT FAIL ABSOLUTE guaranteed to be terminated without warning. which: (a) violates the USB-OTG Power Specification (b) is in direct contravention of the statement on page 1 of the LTC4155 datasheet which *clearly* states that the LTC4155 is compliant with USB-OTG Host Power Mode (c) is in clear violation of various laws like "Trade Descriptions Act" of the UK due to the qualifier statement in paragraph 2 which reads "....without needing additional components". all of which is a frickin nuisance, as i now have to go find alternative dual-supply OTG-compliant [boost-mode] battery charger ICs. i've found two already - bq24192i ($7 in low volume and it would require a 2A 5V step-up converter IC as well....], or the MAX77818 which is a 0.4mm pitch BGA - perfect because it even has battery status monitoring built-in, but the 0.4mm pitch BGA _wow_ that's gonna be tough for small china pcb assembly factories to deal with when they're used to QFNs and QFPs. argh! i'll let people know how this goes: i'm expecting to hear from Linear, they *might* confirm that the I2C "REQUEST_OTG" mode does in fact honour the USB OTG Host Power mode properly. if they do, then all is well - otherwise i will need to do a redesign of PCB3. l.

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qualcom snapdragon 410
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 28 Nov '15

28 Nov '15

> [*] https://developer.qualcomm.com/hardware/dragonboard-410c > > ("Free graphics possible" according to the Debian Wiki's ARM 64 port page... > > https://wiki.debian.org/Arm64Port Adreno GPU. niiiice. minimalist hardware datasheet (with pinouts but not mechanical layout) on arrow electronics, as well as a five THOUSAND page datasheet on the hardware registers. this might actually qualify as an FSF-Endorseable processor, and, with a bit of work, might actually be a great candidate for an EOMA68 CPU Card. it will need a MIPI-to-RGB/TTL converter IC on-board. there's I2C, UART, SPI, 2 SDCs (one is eMMC, the other is SD/MMC), only one USB port (bleeeergh!), which means that a USB Hub IC is needed.. so we're looking at... whatever the SoC cost is (knowing qualcomm they'll want around the $12 mark for it), plus USB Hub IC and components ($1.50), plus a MIPI-to-RGB/TTL converter IC (could be as high as $2.50), so we'd be looking at what.... $15.... ... and the allwinner A64 we know is only $5. with 2 USB interfaces, RGB/TTL output.... whyy, god, whyyyyy... :) l.

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laptop power board
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 28 Nov '15

28 Nov '15

.... i have the LTC 4155 15W power IC as well as the STC3115 battery monitor ICs recognised on the I2C bus with 5V power applied, yippeee. embarrassingly, i had the 5V DC socket wired reverse-polarity. this is, uhh, an officially-sanctioned test of the reverse-voltage protection on the power board design. no, really :) on a 2nd (minimally-populated) board i have the 5V regulated output up, but not on the fully-populated board. what i'll do is fill in all the components from the minimally-populated board, testing it as i go along. i'm looking forward to _not_ setting fire to the apartment when i plug in the e-bike lithium battery. unlike many of these "laptop" batteries it has no current protection circuit built-in, and it's perfectly capable of delivering 20 amps maximum current :) l.

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The $5 Raspberry Pi Zero is out
by joem 27 Nov '15

27 Nov '15

The $5 Raspberry Pi is out https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspberry-pi-zero/ All sold out everywhere in hours :(

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laptop main board, power board and ingenic jz4775 cpu card
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 26 Nov '15

26 Nov '15

ok, been quite busy, 3 to 4 different things going on. first one: i've been working on getting the eoma68-a20 board up and running (booting) out of NAND flash, that's been quite hair-raising. using a sunxi 3.15-10-rc5 kernel i was able to use the standard mtd-tools package to erase and write to the hynix TSOP48 NAND chip, placing an SPL-enabled recent version of u-boot onto it. this all worked fine... except it turns out that MLC NAND can self-destruct just by reading! all i can say is, no wonder allwinner's bootloader process is so damn complex! it's like a 4-stage boot: boot0 (minimum bring-up), boot1 (capable of reading NAND as well as SD/MMC FAT partitions), then u-boot (modified to read allwinner's strange partition format) and finally linux kernel. second, the jz4775 CPU Card is finally underway: http://rhombus-tech.net/ingenic/jz4775/news/ this is the first FSF-Endorseable CPU Card, using the 1.2ghz low-power Ingenic MIPS. it seems strange to put a $3 processor alongside $2.50 of NAND Flash and then put in almost $12 of DDR3 RAM ICs (2 GB RAM) but the threshold where SoCs were no longer the most expensive part of a BOM was passed a loong time ago. third, the laptop main board, i've got everything working except the LCD. i've blown up 2 LCDs already, it was necessary to buy 2 more. first mistake was that it was hard to read the datasheet so the connector was reversed: that resulted in -20V being shoved up the backside of the +3.3v sensitive ICs on the LCD, end result when i was finally able to make up a reversed-cable, the "magic smoke" left that LCD. also i hadn't noticed that i'd shorted the 5V rail to the 3.3v rail, which didn't help, and may have damaged some of the GPIOs on one of the EOMA68-A20 boards i have here. still quite a bit to investigate there. fourth, i've managed to smoke about 3-4 Power ICs already - various MOSFETs, two 3 Amp RT8288 PMICs from microdesktop boards i'm using for test purposes - all to get the laptop power / charger board up and running. annoying! but finally a couple of hours ago, by making up a 2nd board with minimal components, i managed to get the LTC4155 up and recognised on the I2C bus, as well as check that it was outputting stable 5V from USB-style input. the next phase is to populate the over-voltage and reverse-voltage protection components. it's getting there... it's just slower than i would like. l.

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laptop power PCB working!
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 26 Nov '15

26 Nov '15

yaaaaa, i have battery-operation, i am currently running an eoma68-a20 off of a 10Ah e-bike battery, and both the LTC4155 charger/dual-supply IC and the ST3115 battery guage IC are up and recogniseable on the I2C bus. i have yet to compile up the linux kernel modules for both these devices, but they are both available... somewhere :) only slight issue to track down: power drops to 4V when the 5V DC is plugged in, i still have to investigate that, but it may be related to the setting of 3A input and i only have a 2A 5V charger. i can change the settings, and i can also "ping" the LTC4155 over the I2C bus... maybe :) but.... progress, yay! l.

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Cool Recycled Laptop Bag for EOMA-68 Laptop?
by Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross 23 Nov '15

23 Nov '15

http://www.protecttheplanet.co.uk/terracycle/denim-messenger-bag.html i look the look of it. made from scrap denim. I’d say looks the part for a laptop bag to sell/go with a eoma-* laptop. I wonder how the sew the scraps together? machine or cheap/slave labour?

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LVDS and HDMI to the same time
by Martin von Kameke 20 Nov '15

20 Nov '15

Hi, It is possible to use lvds and hdmi to the same time? I will display the same picture. Best regards, Martin

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Turris Omnia FLOSS Router
by Alexander Stephen Thomas Ross 16 Nov '15

16 Nov '15

https://omnia.turris.cz/en/ thoughts? there’s one comment on the indiegogo page about the wifi chipsets there looking at using depending on sourcing. not sure that it will be completely free software (inc (ie wifi)firmware & driver). they don’t say what is definition of the "lifetime of the device" is, regarding updates for it? 2 years or 10? ###### I’m looking to get a decent, free software router. come to think of it what about the eome-68 router? When eoma-68 isn’t going to have Ethernet?

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Jetson TX1 Module
by GaCuest 13 Nov '15

13 Nov '15

Maybe this is interesting for EOMA-68... http://www.nvidia.com/object/jetson-tx1-module.html

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The A64-OLinuXino laptop idea
by Paul Boddie 11 Nov '15

11 Nov '15

Hello, I see that Luke's friends/rivals at Olimex are considering the idea of a laptop based on their "64-bit" development board: "A64-OLinuXino OSHW 64-bit ARM DIY Laptop idea update" https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/a64-olinuxino-oshw-64-bit-arm-diy- laptop-idea-update/ Their blog post about the board: "We work on A64-OLinuXino the first Open Source Hardware 64-bit development board" https://olimex.wordpress.com/2015/10/16/we-work-on-a64-olinuxino-the-first- open-source-hardware-64-bit-development-board/ The baffling thing about this "64-bit ARM" stuff, apart from the apparent lack of vendor cooperation for Linux kernel development... "One of the problem is that A64 is quite new and no any Linux-Sunxi support, as nobody have seen A64 development boards yet. SO it may pass several months until A64-OLinuXino run anything else than Android 5.1" ...is that the principal benefit of bringing "64-bit" to ARM - addressing more than 2GB RAM - is absent from this design. Indeed, I've only seen one ARM- based board - and not even a "64-bit" one [1] - which had 4GB RAM, let alone more than that. And I imagine that the 4GB RAM is divided between the cores on that Freescale i.MX6 board. (From what I've heard, Freescale is somewhat better than Allwinner with regard to support and documentation, contrary to claims in comments on the Olimex blog.) Anyway, I thought this was worth a quick perusal. Paul [1] http://solid-run.com/freescale-imx6-family/hummingboard/hummingboard- specifications/

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eoma68-a20 nand
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 11 Nov '15

11 Nov '15

wasn't planned but happened accidentally: confirmed access to nand flash (read and write) with sunxi and u-boot mainline (recent) kernels. bit of additional work to do, will be documented shortly. l.

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adafruit spi lcd hx8357d and arduino uno
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 29 Oct '15

29 Oct '15

.... arrived today, and were up and running, working perfectly, in under 15 minutes: http://git.rhombus-tech.net/?p=eoma-firmware.git;a=tree;f=eoma68/arduino_un… i used a makefile that was easily found with a google search "debian arduino uno makefile", followed the instructions _in_ the makefile, created a blink test, ran it, ran "make upload" and it worked. total time: well under 3 minutes. next was the SPI-based LCD, soldering took a few minutes, copying the library files into the main directory a few more - done. i've now modified the adafruit source code so that it can do 9-bit SPI bit-banging, by setting "IM1=0" (shorting that to ground) and i'm now in a position to begin two-way testing of the adafruit LCD with an STM32F072, and the yunlea HX8357D LCD with the arduino uno. this is a heck of a lot quicker than messing about with both unknown hardware and unknown software. l.

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laptop 15in pcb3
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 27 Oct '15

27 Oct '15

i'm on to assembly of pcb3, now, which is the power / charger board. pcb assembly whilst listening to ozric tentacles is a thoroughly recommended experience btw :) this one is slightly fiddly because it's not a "prototype" PCB, so is not covered with as much solder (on the pads). things aren't properly sticking unless i "pre-tin" them. the LTC4155 QFN i wicked its pads across a soldering iron and that has gone down fine: 0402 resistors however are _really_ acting up. next time i will go round every single pad with a soldering iron, blobbing them before even considering putting components on. regarding PCB2: the SPI interface to the LCD, i've given up on the current approach, because of the two "unknowns" - unknown hardware and unknown software - and have asked the sponsor to obtain an adafruit HX8357D LCD and an arduino. i will then be able to work from two "known-goods", as a way to triage which (or if both) of the two "unknowns" is "not working". there are slight differences between the yunlea LCD and the adafruid LCD, which i will be able to compensate for by: (a) getting the adafruit LCD working with the STM32F072 and (b) getting the arduino to talk to the yunlea LCD. having these successfully cross-talk i will then be in a position to finally put the yunlea LCD onto the STM32F072. that's the plan, anyway. l.

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SPI stress!
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 20 Oct '15

20 Oct '15

RRRRRR :) i'm attempting to get the yunlea spi lcd with an hx8357 up and running. i'm resorting to bit-banging the spi at the moment because it needs 9-bit initial "control" signal followed by 8-bit "parameters".... but once again just like with the I2C i have "unknown hardware" combined with "unknown software". sooo.... i think what i will do is try a loop-back SPI software test. connect SPI1 to SPI2 on the STM32F072, and put SPI2 into slave mode and SPI1 into master.... then see if i can get them to talk to each other. *sigh*... :) l.

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"recycling not the answer"
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 19 Oct '15

19 Oct '15

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/06/embodied-energy-of-digital-technolog… if the energy cost of the plastics injection molding is enough to power a 30 watt laptop for 1,000 days (3 years), then clearly, recycling of the plastic, doing exactly the same thing, is *not* doing the environment any favours. the answer is, (a) instead, to keep that plastic casework in use for as long as possible (for example by allowing the main processor and memory to be continuously upgraded on a rolling basis) and/or (b) develop different casework production techniques that are far more energy-efficient. l.

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stm32f072 usb firmware
by Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton 18 Oct '15

18 Oct '15

hi peter, et al, i managed to find a variant of libopencm3 which has usb support for the stm32f072, i compiled the cdcacm example and it worked. i will write up some notes later but here's a start: https://github.com/kuldeepdhaka/libopencm3/tree/usb-rewrite https://github.com/kuldeepdhaka/libopencm3-examples/tree/usb-rewrite http://hands.com/~lkcl/usb_req_done.patch peter i sent phil the ssh key, please do consider joining the mailing list so that things can be coordinated without cc. the above branch is... well... it's literally one of the first times that libopencm3 has run usb code on an stm32f072 nucleo board. it means that certain things aren't going to be there. with two of us, peter, doing testing and development, the libopencm3 team on irc.freenode.net will have the encouragement they need to move things forward: we are, however, going to have to help them out, they're pretty busy. the similarity to the stm32f1 series is sufficiently strong that i have confidence in their work, which means we can both press ahead with firmware development whilst the usb code is moved mainline and stabilised with unit testing. l.

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