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Pine64 March update: making waves
- SMART_failure 3y agoI want Pine64 to work, but I have a shelf of e-waste because I bought in, hoping. It seems they have selectively alienated some of the developers working with their hardware, rather than feeding the community they expect to produce the software ecosystem that sits around their hardware.
- pjmlp 3y agoThe story of most of these projects, see Pandora as well, there were lots of drama on that one. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13985288 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13985288
- nolist_policy 3y agoYes, but the OpenPandora is actually useful for the task. Tons of apps in the repository and not just emulation but original homebrew too. And it just works like a polished product. After 10 years, the Pandora still is one of the best emulation handhelds out there.
- linda4151 3y ago[flagged]
- xrd 3y agoAnyone know if you can repurpose the Mycroft Mark II to use this home assistant bundle? Mine is just a brick right now.
- synesthesiam 3y agoYes, it is possible by installing the Wyoming Satellite software on the Mark II. All the pieces are there, it's just missing some easy-to-install firmware. Source: I worked at Mycroft on the Mark II and am now the voice guy for Nabu Casa (Home Assistant).
- xrd 3y agoI just checked out that project, thank you! But, I don't see any instructions at all for even getting started, even after searching the issues. Is there a good place to find information? When you say "missing some easy-to-install firmware" it sounds like there is a big piece missing, no?
- shadowpho 3y agoWhy didn’t they just buy off the shelf rockhip? Those are affordable, have way better Linux support, similar cpu perf and an actual pcie lane so you can have a real nvme :/
- gnarbarian 3y agothe pine time is one of the greatest electronics purchases I've ever made. it cost me $20 the battery lasts forever and it is the perfect minimalist smartwatch. I think these guys are on the right track aiming for simple hardware. I will be first on the list for their bone conducting headphones
- qwerty456127 3y ago> H.264 video encoding/decoding driver isn’t in the kernel yet. Better do H.265 because H.264 already is obsolete. It seems most of the videos made/streamed today already are either H.265 or AV1. Nevertheless supporting H.264 is also useful because the majority of old videos stored on people's drives probably is in this format.
- megous 3y agoH.264 video decoding is mainline for RK3566. Pretty sure I compiled and tested ffmpeg v4l2-requests branch for my Pinetab 2 recently and it worked (with wayland). Yeah, RK356x has mainline support for VP8/H.264/MPEG2 decoding. https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/drivers/media/platform/verisilicon/rockchip_vpu_hw.c#L220 https://elixir.bootlin.com/linux/latest/source/drivers/media...
- dingi 3y agoInstead of releasing a bunch of half-baked hardware, Pine64 should focus on getting a decent level software support for those devices. OG PinePhone is 2 or 3 years old now, and still has crappy software support. At this point, it is reasonable to assume that Pine64 devices are a scam.
- stavros 3y agoIn what way are they a scam? Are they being unclear on the fact that the software is half-baked? This whole blog post is about how the software isn't ready.
- megous 3y agoOG Pinephone is 4.5 years old. And it definitely has a very different level of SW support than when it was released. There were also several HW revisions based on community feedback. Far from a scam.
- threemux 3y agoI'll echo others here - they need to focus on a core set of products and get better about upstream support. They have a few legitimately good devices like the Pinebook Pro and the Pinecil. Focus on those and maybe a handful of SBCs.
- opan 3y agoAFAIK, they do next to nothing in terms of software support. It tends to come down to the community and the manufacturer of the SoC they use to make this stuff work. They're just getting cheap hardware in the hands of developers and hackers and trying to get people on-board. The RK3399 in the Pinebook Pro is very well-supported by now, though a bit old and low on RAM. I would trust that most RockChip stuff will eventually (maybe 3-5+ years after availability) get good support. The QuartzPro64 should be coming along slowly now, and I imagine once it's better-supported we'll see a Pinebook Pro 2 with the same RK3588. Similar to how we had the RockPro64 before the Pinebook Pro. The PineTab 2 and PineNote base off existing RockChip stuff (RK3566) they're already using in some SBCs (Quartz64), so we should see a lot of their devices improve at the same time. For the same reason I expect the Orange Pi 3B and 5 Plus to mature with the current latest Pine offerings. As long as you stick to stuff with these popular chips, there's a decent chance the devices will become usable eventually. I would avoid anything too new or obscure when getting ARM devices.
- megous 3y agoAll of these devices are already usable quite well for some purposes. Pretty much the level of support follows how long they were available. But neither is particularly unusable.
- pierat 3y agoAh, more badly supported gongkai cramware, using the cheapest and hardest to obtain drivers for anything. Everything is out-of-kernel, and you're making custom kernels IF YOU CAN TRANSLATE CHINESE... And hope its made for your kernel version. And when you say something, you'll be screamed at "these are hackers tools bla bla bla". But they don't even work with reference software. They string hardware together, and slap a PINE logo on it. You're up shit's creek, and you have to MAKE the paddle. Or you get shit like hardware failures like "hardware destroying USB-C on the phone if the keyboard is pluged in on the Pinephone pro". Like, seriously, save your money. After dumping $600 into this "ecosystem" I'll hard pass. And I'll speak up for the pain and suffering you're getting into if you do go this route.
- LanternLight83 3y agoI get some of this (have an unused Pinephone), but I'm still thankful they tried (built up a stir) and, FWIW, the PineTime is OK and the Pinecil is the best soldering iron I've seen anyone use
- DaSHacka 3y ago> I get some of this (have an unused Pinephone), but I'm still thankful they tried (built up a stir) and, FWIW, the PineTime is OK and the Pinecil is the best soldering iron I've seen anyone use Surprised to see someone else echo my thoughts exactly, this is exactly what I've been saying for some years now whenever someone asks about buying Pine products. The PineTime is pretty decent (though the strap included OOTB is atrocious) and the pinecil is honestly awesome. The PinePhone is of course a disappointment, though that's par for the course for most of Pine64's stuff.
- atoav 3y agoHave you seen anyone use a JBC soldering station before?
- stavros 3y agoNo, and I'm sure that, when you use it, the angels themselves come down from heaven and sing hymns to make your board hotter, but there's a reason I've never seen anyone use it: It doesn't cost $35. The Pinecil is great at making things hot, even with challenging ground planes, it's very quick to reach the target temperature, and I can carry it with me in a pocket and power it from USB. There really isn't any soldering iron even an order of magnitude close to its combination of price, power, and versatility.
- wkat4242 3y agoThat PineVox hardware looks great. There's a great lack of smart speakers that aren't bound to some service like Apple, Amazon or Google. Now with LLM proliferation a self hosted voice assistant that actually works will become pretty possible.
- dugite-code 3y agoAnd it's well timed with HomeAssistant's new voice interaction developments. That and the news of how unprofitable Amazon and google home's offerings are.
- Cacti 3y agoaren’t they supposed to lose money? i though they were subsidized by the business specifically to collect data that can be used elsewhere.
- dugite-code 3y agoThe problem is most people only use them to set timers, start spoitfy and maybe turn on a light or two. They lack discoverability and so make poor shopping portals setting a hard cap on what other revenue sources can be found for them. This is why Amazon, Apple and Google have begun canceling or at the very least scaling back some of their smart home products.
- WhatIsDukkha 3y agoWhy don't people just use bluetooth conference mics and most any hardware?
- jauntywundrkind 3y ago> These are a set of bone conduction headphones using the same BES2300 chipset as found in the PineBuds Pro. The plan is to expand OpenPineBuds project with support for these before they enter manufacturing. Currently there is amazing work going on to sort out licencing of the BES2300 codebase; so work to support these is being done carefully to minimise impact on the code base. It'd be cool if something materialized here. I kind of knew not to expect much for hackability with the OpenPineBuds and bit anyways, but wow, uh, was surprised just how little was available to play around and see. Ideally someone would make some hackable Bluetooth hardware run Zephyr and Sound Open Firmware. Different class of devices, but good enough for Intel, AMD, and MediaTek to be using it as the basis for their sound firmware. It'd be great to open some access here!