5 ms·

Sad not to be mentioned, despite the update talking about a lot of my independent work last month or so. (discovering the HW issues, suggesting/verifying the fi

by megous 6y ago

Sad not to be mentioned, despite the update talking about a lot of my independent work last month or so. (discovering the HW issues, suggesting/verifying the fix, writing the USB-C/HDMI driver enabling the whole convergence thing) But I'm very glad about the progress PinePhone is making. The momentum is incredible. If anyone is interested in original info from the author of the USB-C/HDMI work, I also put useful information/observations from my work on the kernel and PinePhone here: https://xnux.eu/devices/pine64-pinephone.html https://xnux.eu/devices/pine64-pinephone.html The current thing on my radar is writing a power manager for the modem. :) That will improve the standby from 24h with the modem active to ~90h. EDIT: All is well, btw. There's just a lot of pressure on pine64's small team, and it's hard to keep up with everything.

AsyncAwait 6y ago
Awesome work! Thanks so much, should've definitely been mentioned in the post.
voltagex_ 6y ago
"All the current PP variants (1.0–1.2) have a major issue, that prevents CC pins from working correctly. It's therefore not possible to perform any kind of negotiation and communication over the CC pins. It's not fixable in SW, other than via a manual selection of power and data roles by the user. There's a HW mod that you can do to fix CC pins from being hogged by the VCONN switches by removing the switches." It's a pity this requires tricky surface mount rework.
- megous 6y ago
  Not necesarily. I've read someone just pulled those two switches off the board with a screwdriver stuck in between them and twisting. Thankfully, just removing the switches will fix CC pins and PP will be able to work with many USB-C peripherals after that. I have two pinephones that work nicely with two different USB-C docks and an USB-C 4x USB-A adapter just with this fix. There are probably not that many interesting peripherals/cables that would benefit from supplying power over CC pins. (which just removing the switches makes impossible) A lot of peripherals will make do with VBUS power.
  - tmzt 6y ago
    Thank you for your great work. Is it possible to manually configure the port to work with HDMI or as a host (in sysfs), or is the hardware change required (on preorder/braveheart phone)? Is there a single place with the most up-to-date kernel sources with usb hardware drivers, audio support for modem, etc.?
    - megous 6y ago
      There's no single place. Ideally this question should be answered by "use the mainline kernel", and eventually it will. I'm aware of three maintained kernel trees specifically for PinePhone: Samuel's: https://github.com/smaeul/linux https://github.com/smaeul/linux Mine: https://github.com/megous/linux/ https://github.com/megous/linux/ Pine64: https://gitlab.com/pine64-org/linux/commits/pine64-kernel-5.7.y https://gitlab.com/pine64-org/linux/commits/pine64-kernel-5.... I think at the moment all of those are pretty much equivalent feature-wise, except for some mild differences. It's not possible to workaround (in software) anything that requires CC pins to work properly, that includes setting up display port alternate mode.
glenstein 6y ago
Thank you for your work! I am so glad that you are doing what you are doing, because I personally want something the Pinephone project to succeed and its success makes me think that there are forces for good in the world.
eointierney 6y ago
You are doing our work and I am grateful
ssivark 6y ago
Thank you so much! A lot of us have been tracking the steady progress on the PinePhone with great excitement, so much love from all of us, and thanks to you and everyone else for all the hard work.
blihp 6y ago
Thanks for all of your work! Your blog was one of the first I found after mine arrived and it's been a great resource.
hardwaresofton 6y ago
Just as everyone else has said, I just want you to know that I appreciate your hard and well documented work. As a late-but-early adopter of other phone projects the thankless work that you do is what allows adopters like me to even get started. Thank you.
mkesper 6y ago
Booting to Arch Linux and being accessible on WiFi in ~5 seconds Booting to my custom init process, initializing the system and running my UI app in ~1 second Try that with any other smartphone...
- megous 6y ago
  Yeah, I've improved it a bit with UI in the bootloader (still fits in 32KiB sram, even with GUI) + flickerless/seamless display pipeline passover to the kernel in the meantime too. :) I've also experimented with booting to electron and having the whole phone UI written in it... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce9vZj1r_-E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce9vZj1r_-E
  - black_puppydog 6y ago
    shouldn't electron UI then eat up much of the battery gains made from the modem code?
    - megous 6y ago
      Probably not. Electron just sits there doing not much other than 2-3% CPU load from updating the information in the header each second. https://megous.com/dl/tmp/a1017dd38ca6ce10.png https://megous.com/dl/tmp/a1017dd38ca6ce10.png Batter gains in standby are something else. Main CPU is off, and no processes are thus running, so it doesn't matter what SW you have, for those gains.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
- seba_dos1 6y ago
  "Any other" is rather too strong, as same could be (and was) done on devices like Openmoko phones, Nokia N900, GTA04 and now on the Librem 5 as well. But yeah, this category of smartphones definitely is something special :)
LinuxBender 6y ago
Great work! Some day I might have a smart phone. Still using a $12 flip phone. For power conservation, could there be a hybrid mode, that comes out of sleep once per (user defined) interval to check messages, then go back to standby?
- megous 6y ago
  Even better, the phone can just sleep and modem will wake it up when (SMS) messages/or calls are received. No need for polling. You can also set up RTC to wake up the phone periodically and perform whatever polling you need and put it back to sleep afterwards, all automatically.

by megous 6y ago

AsyncAwait 6y ago

Awesome work! Thanks so much, should've definitely been mentioned in the post.

voltagex_ 6y ago

"All the current PP variants (1.0–1.2) have a major issue, that prevents CC pins from working correctly. It's therefore not possible to perform any kind of negotiation and communication over the CC pins. It's not fixable in SW, other than via a manual selection of power and data roles by the user. There's a HW mod that you can do to fix CC pins from being hogged by the VCONN switches by removing the switches." It's a pity this requires tricky surface mount rework.

megous 6y ago
Not necesarily. I've read someone just pulled those two switches off the board with a screwdriver stuck in between them and twisting. Thankfully, just removing the switches will fix CC pins and PP will be able to work with many USB-C peripherals after that. I have two pinephones that work nicely with two different USB-C docks and an USB-C 4x USB-A adapter just with this fix. There are probably not that many interesting peripherals/cables that would benefit from supplying power over CC pins. (which just removing the switches makes impossible) A lot of peripherals will make do with VBUS power.
- tmzt 6y ago
  Thank you for your great work. Is it possible to manually configure the port to work with HDMI or as a host (in sysfs), or is the hardware change required (on preorder/braveheart phone)? Is there a single place with the most up-to-date kernel sources with usb hardware drivers, audio support for modem, etc.?
  - megous 6y ago
    There's no single place. Ideally this question should be answered by "use the mainline kernel", and eventually it will. I'm aware of three maintained kernel trees specifically for PinePhone: Samuel's: https://github.com/smaeul/linux https://github.com/smaeul/linux Mine: https://github.com/megous/linux/ https://github.com/megous/linux/ Pine64: https://gitlab.com/pine64-org/linux/commits/pine64-kernel-5.7.y https://gitlab.com/pine64-org/linux/commits/pine64-kernel-5.... I think at the moment all of those are pretty much equivalent feature-wise, except for some mild differences. It's not possible to workaround (in software) anything that requires CC pins to work properly, that includes setting up display port alternate mode.

glenstein 6y ago

Thank you for your work! I am so glad that you are doing what you are doing, because I personally want something the Pinephone project to succeed and its success makes me think that there are forces for good in the world.

eointierney 6y ago

You are doing our work and I am grateful

ssivark 6y ago

Thank you so much! A lot of us have been tracking the steady progress on the PinePhone with great excitement, so much love from all of us, and thanks to you and everyone else for all the hard work.

blihp 6y ago

Thanks for all of your work! Your blog was one of the first I found after mine arrived and it's been a great resource.

hardwaresofton 6y ago

Just as everyone else has said, I just want you to know that I appreciate your hard and well documented work. As a late-but-early adopter of other phone projects the thankless work that you do is what allows adopters like me to even get started. Thank you.

mkesper 6y ago

Booting to Arch Linux and being accessible on WiFi in ~5 seconds Booting to my custom init process, initializing the system and running my UI app in ~1 second Try that with any other smartphone...

megous 6y ago
Yeah, I've improved it a bit with UI in the bootloader (still fits in 32KiB sram, even with GUI) + flickerless/seamless display pipeline passover to the kernel in the meantime too. :) I've also experimented with booting to electron and having the whole phone UI written in it... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce9vZj1r_-E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce9vZj1r_-E
- black_puppydog 6y ago
  shouldn't electron UI then eat up much of the battery gains made from the modem code?
  - megous 6y ago
    Probably not. Electron just sits there doing not much other than 2-3% CPU load from updating the information in the header each second. https://megous.com/dl/tmp/a1017dd38ca6ce10.png https://megous.com/dl/tmp/a1017dd38ca6ce10.png Batter gains in standby are something else. Main CPU is off, and no processes are thus running, so it doesn't matter what SW you have, for those gains.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
seba_dos1 6y ago
"Any other" is rather too strong, as same could be (and was) done on devices like Openmoko phones, Nokia N900, GTA04 and now on the Librem 5 as well. But yeah, this category of smartphones definitely is something special :)

LinuxBender 6y ago

Great work! Some day I might have a smart phone. Still using a $12 flip phone. For power conservation, could there be a hybrid mode, that comes out of sleep once per (user defined) interval to check messages, then go back to standby?

megous 6y ago
Even better, the phone can just sleep and modem will wake it up when (SMS) messages/or calls are received. No need for polling. You can also set up RTC to wake up the phone periodically and perform whatever polling you need and put it back to sleep afterwards, all automatically.