Pi Zero format boards that are supported.

ralphbsz said:
And if you're using any 5V accessories, this will not work.
Click to expand...
That is the kicker. The common power bus also powers the GPIO pins so external power needed for sensors.

I was messing with min-max on Zero 3W and stopped at 10%. I don't see where it does anything for me.
I dont want a second power supply for sensors.

ralphbsz said:
FreeBSD has no WiFi support (that stops any discussion right there), and has dropped 32-bit support going forward. OpenBSD seems to also have no 32 bit support any longer.
Click to expand...
What about NetBSD. They have good support.

After messing with FlipperZero Wireless all I can say is you had better have a password that is not on a word list.
Otherwise it is very easy pickings.

I don't think FreeBSD has announced that Armv7 is going out of Tier2 support. So we still have some 32 Bit Arm support.
 
I would really like to see a test of power consumption of a more modern quad-core Zero factor 64 bit CPU compared to BCM2835.

The Rock Pi S0 really has more of an embedded appeal. Connectors instead of jacks. Ethernet. I like the eMMC option.
Put an OS on eMMC and use microSD for data exfiltration.

Radxa ROCK Pi S0

A Low Cost Tiny SBC
radxa.com radxa.com
Only 512MB DDR3 and only 10/100 ethernet.

They don't come with the needed accessories though. Extras.
I do like they can be bought without 40 pin header attached. I prefer 90-degree header.

The review here says 0.5w at idle and 5 watt at load
www.electronics-lab.com

The RADXA ROCK S0 Is Powered by Rockchip RK3308BS CPU - Electronics-Lab.com

The Radxa ROCK S0 features 64-bit Rockchip RK3308BS SOC with 256MB or 512MB of DDR3 RAM and onboard eMMC with capacities of 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB.
www.electronics-lab.com www.electronics-lab.com


This is a board I would like to see supported on FreeBSD.

Sorry Mario, No video output on this one...
 
With a USB to HDMI Converter you will not have to worry about the lack of an HDMI port in your system. With the USB to HDMI Converter you can run any HDMI device with your USB port. Thus, this universality will add the HDMI support to any existing computer. Setting up the adapter is a breeze.
 
rk3308 is not that far/hard to add. the clock driver is the most complex stuff missing. the rest like usb/gpio are minor stuff iirc
it also has no graphics controller / gpu so no video output
 
Phishfry said:
That all looks correct. Unsure if Pi Zero 2W HDMI works.
Click to expand...
I would assume Pi Zero 2W HDMI works because internally it is basically the same SOC as the Pi 3.

Given how many people like tinkering with SBC, I'm a bit surprised that no FreeBSD-centric tinkerer has gotten all hardware components working on even one of these 65x30mm boards yet -- but I suppose that is because most people are like me and not (yet) writing their own device drivers.
 
covacat said:
it also has no graphics controller / gpu so no video output
Click to expand...

This USB 3.0 adapter to HDMI 1080P Full HD can give the output video to the board...

www.unitek-products.com

USB 3.0 to HDMI 1080P Full HD Adapter

Color: BlackProducts Features: Convert USB to HDMI interface. Support Full HD 1080P resolution. Support mirroring, extension, multi-screen and screen rotation mode. Applicable to most of the monitors and displays. Bus-powered, no need to draw power from power adaptor. Specifications: Product...
www.unitek-products.com www.unitek-products.com
 
ZioMario said:
This USB 3.0 adapter to HDMI 1080P Full HD can give the output video to the board...

www.unitek-products.com

USB 3.0 to HDMI 1080P Full HD Adapter

Color: BlackProducts Features: Convert USB to HDMI interface. Support Full HD 1080P resolution. Support mirroring, extension, multi-screen and screen rotation mode. Applicable to most of the monitors and displays. Bus-powered, no need to draw power from power adaptor. Specifications: Product...
www.unitek-products.com www.unitek-products.com
Click to expand...

This is driverless :

 
ZioMario said:
This is driverless :

Click to expand...
As to my understanding, the board with video output over USB has to do some tricks... First, there is no native output of video over USB from the SoC because vendors prefer to implement HDMI stack in the IC. So, to output video (usually over type-c) over usb the board has to convert HDMI stream into compatible usb protocol... To convert one to other the board has to include something like this: https://www.lontiumsemi.com/uploadfile/202410/27e9683c9b8fbaf.pdf , which is an IC. In this case the kernel MUST be capable of managing both the SoC's HDMI port and converter's IC. So there hardly is such a "driverless USB" option for video.
 
sometimesijustkeeptypin said:
vendors prefer to implement HDMI stack in the IC.
Click to expand...
Absolutly true. I have been researching RK3568 HDMI and why no DT Bindings yet for HDMI and I came across some Linux commits for RK3588 HDMI:
Rockchip RK3588 SoC integrates the Synopsys DesignWare HDMI 2.1
> Quad-Pixel (QP) TX controller IP.
>
> Since this is a new IP block, quite different from those used in the
> previous generations of Rockchip SoCs, add a dedicated binding file.
Click to expand...
I saw elsewhere it is Samsung IP stack and it made me wonder how they get paid. Per chip or blanket license.


+description: |
+ Rockchip RK3588 SoC integrates the Synopsys DesignWare HDMI QP TX controller
+ IP and a HDMI/eDP TX Combo PHY based on a Samsung IP block, providing the
+ following features, among others:
+
+ * Fixed Rate Link (FRL)
+ * Display Stream Compression (DSC)
+ * 4K@120Hz and 8K@60Hz video modes
+ * Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) including Quick Media Switching (QMS)
+ * Fast Vactive (FVA)
+ * SCDC I2C DDC access
+ * Multi-stream audio
+ * Enhanced Audio Return Channel (EARC)
Click to expand...
 
Phishfry said:
The manufacturers do see to be piling on stuff that is not needed from the original cause.
Click to expand...
And it makes sense for them, as the boards with all the extra "stuff" seem to sell pretty well.

Oh but wait lets muddy up the waters more with RISC-V. Like we need to divert developer resources even more...
Click to expand...
There are some great advantages to RISC-V, in particular being royalty free, and allowing for smaller cores. The Arm architecture is getting old (not as bad as Intel obviously), and is not being well managed by Softbank. There are some very good Arm chips around (for example in Apple products, or the high-end Ampere chips), but the low-end stuff that ends up in embedded stuff is not getting enough investment and attention. And personally I don't care at all what architecture my CPU is, as long as it runs my Python or Rust code cheaply and efficiently.

sometimesijustkeeptypin said:
armv6 is obsolete and dead. I think we better keep off that arch.
Click to expand...
If we want to have an OS that serves the desktop market and high-end servers, that statement is correct. If we want to have an OS that also serves the embedded market, the above statement is very untrue. FreeBSD has decided to go the former route. I completely understand why it has abandoned 32-bit platforms, and from the project's viewpoint it makes sense. But it also means that it is useless for roughly half the computers that I might deploy it on. This makes me sad, but not very much so; there are many other good OSes I can use.
 
I've had a silly dream for some time of building myself a miniature server rack full of 65x30mm boards and building a homelab with negligible power draw where I can experiment with things in miniature.

Obviously, I'd love for one of the machines to be a FreeBSD machine where I can play around with ZFS and Bhyve.

The ideal machine for this *might* be the Orange Pi Zero 3W since it has several GB of RAM and an expansion board with allows connecting additional USB mass storage. Unfortunately the H618 SOC still doesn't have mainline support, although I did find the forum post from a year ago where covacat provided patched drivers.

I have several candidate boards and am certainly willing to go the route of manually applying patches.

At the moment the primary things holding me back are:
1. I'd really like a machine I can connect a local console to from time to time, and a lot of these boards don't seem to have their HDMI output supported.
2. I'd rather not by tied to the side of the house that has Ethernet, and none of these boards have their built-in wifi supported.

I suppose I could use USB video and wifi, but having duplicate copies of an interface, only one of which works just makes me sad, and I'm also dubious about USB video output being detected and defaulted to on first boot.

Is there maybe a device of similar but not identical form factor where FreeBSD supports the built-in video and wifi?

For that matter, what *is* the recommended developer board for maximum FreeBSD support? Even the bestselling Raspberry Pis don't have their WiFi chip working.
 
If you are not using GPIO pins I really don't see the allure of ARM64.
There are tons of little amd64 PC's that have Wifi slot and working HDMI.

Sombody is trying to morph maker boards into desktop servers.
8 cores for rk3588.
Notice that price point though. You could buy a descent amd64 miniPC for that much. Power budget not much more.

I do appreciate that many of the Arm maker boards are now pivoting to SBC-like formats.
 
Yes that combination should work. You have USB output which would provide a USB serial device.

These work good any any computer but for an embedded board you could consider TTL GPS modules to take advantage of GPIO pins.
USB plugs are slightly bulkier but making TTL work can be an extra step on ARM boards.
On ARM you want to preserve the serial console for a terminal. So you must "activate" a set of pins for a second UART with an DTC overlay.
Not a huge issue but more work than USB connection.

More:
The reason you do not wan to use "Primary UART" is that is where your console is. You have no HDMI output working on Raxda Zero3E so you need console.
Otherwise your GPS dat spews out onto console making it unusable.
 
You opened a new chapter of oppurtunities in my mind. I was looking for an alternative to the raspberry pi zero 2W,that has very low performances. If FreeBSD works ok on the Radxa Rock Zero 3E,I consider to use this board for my FreeBSD phone,instead of slimming down a raspi 4 or using the very low performances pi zero.

How many USB ports does it have ? my plan is to use only the USB ports to attach devices like display,mouse,keyboard,4G hat.
 
The real killer there is DSI.
You really need "Display Serial Interface" for smaller screens. We dont have that.

Plus for your project Rockchip DRM is a thing. Somebody was/is working on it for FreeBSD. That could be pivitol. Vid Accel on ARM.
 
Phishfry said:
The real killer there is DSI.
You really need "Display Serial Interface" for smaller screens. We dont have that.

Plus for your project Rockchip DRM is a thing. Somebody was/is working on it for FreeBSD. That could be pivitol.
Click to expand...

I don't want to connect the display using DSI,but to the USB port ; I've bought a small 4 inches squared USB display that will work for sure. Please elaborate more the problem that arises with the Rockchip DRM.
 
I wonder what is needed to bring HDMI to RK356x. I would glady throw some money/hardware at that effort. HDMI works good on RK3399.
 
Rockchip DRM will be an asset. Right now all you have is scfb driver for ARM X11 video. Rockchip DRM is like i915drm. It provides drivers to on chip vid accel functions.

So you can use what is built into chip for video driver. More than one video stream possible. Sizes to 4K etc....
 
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