Difference between revisions of "Archives/Shop 3.0/Slodac"
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=== Raw Comparison To Novena === | === Raw Comparison To Novena === | ||
− | From the Novena Wiki page | + | From the [http://www.kosagi.com/w/index.php?title=Novena_Main_Page#Hardware Novena Wiki] page: |
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* Freescale iMX6 CPU — same footprint can support dual-lite and quad versions: | * Freescale iMX6 CPU — same footprint can support dual-lite and quad versions: | ||
* Quad-core Cortex A9 CPU with NEON FPU @ 1.2 GHz | * Quad-core Cortex A9 CPU with NEON FPU @ 1.2 GHz | ||
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* NDA-free datasheet and programming manual | * NDA-free datasheet and programming manual | ||
− | + | From the official [http://wandboard.org/index.php/about Wandboard site]: | |
* Freescale i.MX6 Quad | * Freescale i.MX6 Quad | ||
* Cortex-A9 Quad core | * Cortex-A9 Quad core |
Revision as of 15:33, 12 June 2014
Creator: |
Contents
[hide]Overview
This is a pet project of ctag's to create a laptop after he was bitten by the venomous "Novena Bug". The laptop will have the following features/requirements/goals:
- Linux, maybe FreeBSD too.
- As open/libre/floss as possible without being expensive.
- Capable of writing C, C++, JAVA on some small scale. Must be better than an Chromebook in this regard, I want a compiler not a notepad extension in chrome.
- Robust.
- Small and/or lightweight.
Name
The board is currently named "SLODAC" for "Somewhat Libre, Open Design, Accessible Components". Read below for earlier revisions of the name.
- BARC stands for either "Basic Application Rechargeable Computer" or "Basically Awesome Rechargeable Computer". I'll decide later. Heck, I might not even name it, I'm sick of HSV and its acronyms :P
- I'm now considering naming the project LLLOADAC (pronounced like Kodac). This would stand for Libre-Linux-Laptop + Open-Arm-Design + Accessible-Components. Just, you know, whatever.
- Seeing as the keyboard/mouse/screen aren't libre, how about SLLLODAC / SL3ODAC? ("Slow-dac"). Somewhat-Libre-Linux-Laptop + Open-Design + Accessible-Components?
Slogans
I've had some fun playing around with a few slogans to laser etch on the alpha series cases.
- Processing at the speed of freedom
- Processing at the speed of 0xDEADBEEF
- Better than a ham sandwich
- The 80s called, and want their car-phone back
- Putting you on the no-fly list since Tuesday last week
- Because checking email while SCUBA diving is a thing
- This box is my personal-space bubble
- Voted best laptop on the market by the designer and his mother
- Think
different
How
Use off the shelf parts with custom connecting and managing hardware in a metal case.
When
This semester. Hopefully before the Novena laptops become available (it's a race). Update 4/10/2014: I lost, novena is for sale :D
The Details
Raw Comparison To Novena
From the Novena Wiki page:
* Freescale iMX6 CPU — same footprint can support dual-lite and quad versions: * Quad-core Cortex A9 CPU with NEON FPU @ 1.2 GHz * Vivante GC2000 OpenGL ES2.0 GPU, 200Mtri/s, 1Gpix/s * NDA-free datasheet and programming manual
From the official Wandboard site:
* Freescale i.MX6 Quad * Cortex-A9 Quad core * Vivante GC 2000 + Vivante GC 355 + Vivante GC 320
Keep in mind that the Novena was put together by people who know what they're doing. I was lucky to get an X screen running.
I learned that only the pre-baked Ubuntu image supports gpu acceleration on the WB and the WB-quad does not support USB 3.0. So we move forward with the hopes that Novena's open video driver comes through and that USB 2.0 is sufficient.
Hardware
Parts Considered
Boards (ranked with favorites first)
- WandBoard - $130
- http://www.wandboard.org/
- Power: 5V - 2A
- 2G RAM, Quad Core, HDMI, gigabit, wireless
- All Wandboard wiki pages
- Wandboard Forum
- Wandboard Archlinux Page
- CubieTruck - $100
- https://store.iotllc.com/product.php?productid=38&cat=0&featured=Y
- Power: 5V - 2.5A
- SATA, Gigabit, wireless, 2G RAM, HDMI, 2 USB
- BeagleBoneBlack - $50
- http://beagleboard.org/Products/BeagleBone%20Black
- Power: 5V - "USB" ~ 600mA
- Has HDMI, only 1 USB, 512MB RAM
- Raspberry Pi - $35
- http://www.newark.com/raspberry-pi/raspbrry-modb-512m/model-b-assembled-board-only/dp/43W5302?COM=raspi-group
- Power: 5V - "USB" ~ 700-800mA
- HDMI, 512MB RAM, 2 USB
- BeagleBoard-xM - $150
- http://beagleboard.org/Products/BeagleBoard-xM
- Power: 5V - "moderate"
- 4 USB ports, 3d graphics, 512Mb RAM
- UDOO - $140
- http://shop.udoo.org/usa/?___from_store=usa&popup=no
- Power: 12V - 7A
- HDMI, has its own screen avail., Quad Core, wireless, gigabit, sata, 2 USB
- (Also has a screen!)
- Link to UDOO power consumption chart
- Somewhat disqualified. I can step up 5V to 12V, but would rather not.
Screen
It's important that we preface this section with a quick discussion of LVDS vs TTL, because before working on this project I had little understanding of them.
In short, LVDS (Low Voltage Differential Signaling) uses two wires and the difference in voltage between them to send a signal, while TTL (Transistor-Transistor Logic) uses multiple wires with voltages relative to a ground wire to send a signal. The wandboard has LVDS output on one of its expansion headers, and appears to be capable of driving a screen directly. This means that we can cut out the hot and power hungry converter board from HDMI to LVDS/TTL and simply wire a LVDS screen to the board. I'm not yet sure of how this will be accomplished in hardware or software, but I view it as my best bet right now.
- CalkboardElec
- Boards may be available after February 2014.
- Company has datasheets and is self-labeled as an open source project!
- http://www.chalk-elec.com/?page_id=1280#!/~/category/id=3094861&offset=0&sort=priceAsc
- GeChic?
- Non-free products as far as I can tell, but very polished (and a little more pricey).
- Newegg store: http://www.newegg.com/store/GeChic-Corporation
- 15.6" Portable Monitor w/ battery - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0V11109033&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-Branding-_-na-_-na&AID=10440554&PID=4897915
- 15.6" - 1366x768 - $249
- 15.6" Portable Monitor - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0V114A8790&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-Branding-_-na-_-na&AID=10440554&PID=4897915
- 15.6" - No resultion stated - $200
- 15.6" Portable Monitor w/ battery - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA0V11109033&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-_-Branding-_-na-_-na&AID=10440554&PID=4897915
- Adafruit
- Clunky 7" HDMI monitor - http://www.adafruit.com/products/1033#Technical_Details
- 7" - 1200x800 - $160
- Pixel Qi display - http://www.adafruit.com/products/1303#Technical_Details
- 10" - 1024x600 - $300
- 5V - 775mA
- Can be used in daylight, and can revert to grayscale.
- Clunky 7" IPS monitor - http://www.adafruit.com/products/1667#Technical_Details
- 7" - 1200x800 - IPS - $170
- Barebones monitor with HDMI - http://www.adafruit.com/products/1666#Technical_Details
- 5.6" - 1200x800 - $140
- 5V - 650mA
- Tiny little HDMI monitor - http://www.adafruit.com/products/1678#Technical_Details
- 5" - 800x480 - $65
- A barebones lcd monitor http://www.adafruit.com/products/1287#Technical_Details
- 10.1" - 1200x800 - $145
- 5V - 980mA
- Clunky 7" HDMI monitor - http://www.adafruit.com/products/1033#Technical_Details
- LVDS board from FutureElec with my existing screen?
- http://www.futureelectronics.com/en/technologies/development-tools/microcontroller-microprocessor/multimedia/Pages/9032471-FWBADAPT-7WVGA-PCAP.aspx?IM=0
- No, this wouldn't work. The adapter board is designed for the Touch Revolution screen which has a different lvds cable.
- LVDS board from Chalk-Elec with the Pixel Qi
- I've just purchased the board, should be here sometime this summer. I plan to test it against the default Adafruit board for power consumption and size/location in the laptop case.
Battery
Comparison of batteries (5V, comparing size/weight):
- http://www.amazon.com/EC-TECHNOLOGY%C2%AE-Ultra-high-Thunderbolt-Incredible/dp/B00FDK2G2C/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1400867180&sr=8-9&keywords=usb+battery
- $50
- 6.29 x 0.86 x 3.14 inch
- 15.8 oz
- 20000mAh
- http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CEZBKTO/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
- $50
- 4.4 x 3.3 x 1 inch
- 10.6 oz
- 12000mAh
- Breakdown:
- 4.16 [$/Ah] (Lower is better)
- 0.73 [oz/in^3] (Higher is better)
- http://smile.amazon.com/15000mAh-Portable-Ultra-High-External-lightning/dp/B00D5VAYRU/ref=sr_1_22?s=mobile&ie=UTF8&qid=1397699016&sr=1-22
- $50
- 4.9 x 3 x 0.9 inch
- 11.2 oz
- 15000mAh
- Breakdown:
- 3.33 [$/Ah] (Lower is better)
- 0.85 [oz/in^3] (Higher is better)
- http://smile.amazon.com/Jackery-High-capacity-Aluminum-Dual-Port-Ultra-fast/dp/B00AANQLRI/ref=sr_1_15?s=mobile&ie=UTF8&qid=1397699016&sr=1-15
- $40
- 4.3 x 3.1 x 0.8 inch
- 10.4 oz
- 10400mAh
- Breakdown:
- 3.85 [$/Ah] (Lower is better)
- 0.98 [oz/in^3] (Higher is better)
- http://smile.amazon.com/RAVPower-PORTABLE-10400mAh-Thunderbolt-Incredible/dp/B009V5X1CE/ref=sr_1_13?s=mobile&ie=UTF8&qid=1397699016&sr=1-13
- $30
- 4.4 x 2.8 x 0.8
- 8 oz
- 10400mAh
- Breakdown:
- 2.88 [$/Ah] (Lower is better)
- 0.81 [oz/in^3] (Higher is better)
- http://smile.amazon.com/Poweradd-trade-Pilot-Anti-explosion-Smartphones/dp/B00F4U49M6/ref=pd_cp_cps_2
- $32
- 6.3 x 2.8 x 0.6
- 10.9 oz
- 12000mAh
- Breakdown:
- 2.66 [$/Ah] (Lower is better)
- 1.03 [oz/in^3] (Higher is better)
- http://smile.amazon.com/Poweradd-trade-Pilot-E2-USB-charged/dp/B00D41CYOW/ref=pd_cp_cps_1
- $30
- 4.3 x 2.8 x 1 inch
- 11.4 oz ?
- 12000mAh
- Breakdown:
- 2.50 [$/Ah] (Lower is better)
- 0.95 [oz/in^3] (Higher is better)
- http://smile.amazon.com/10000mAh-Portable-External-Smartphones-USB-charged/dp/B009USAJCC/ref=sr_1_12?s=mobile&ie=UTF8&qid=1397699016&sr=1-12
- $40
- 5.6 x 2.8 x 0.6 inch
- 8.6 oz
- 10000mAh
- Breakdown:
- 4.00 [$/Ah] (Lower is better)
- 0.91 [oz/in^3] (Higher is better)
- http://smile.amazon.com/EasyAcc%C2%AE-16000mAh-Lighting-Charging-Smartphones/dp/B00H8JYOG2/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1397698690&sr=8-2&keywords=5v+fast+charge+battery
- $50
- 6 x 3 x 0.9 inch
- 13 oz
- 16000mAh
- Breakdown:
- 3.13 [$/Ah] (Lower is better)
- 0.80 [oz/in^3] (Higher is better)
Mouse
Keyboard
ETC
- Volt/Ammeter
Parts Purchased
This is a comprehensive parts list of everything I've purchased to make this project happen. It doesn't serve as an excellent cost-analysis due to the funds I spend having space at Makers Local, etc. I'll do my best to have parts used in the most current iteration of the laptop in bold.
- Board
- Wandboard Quad - $125
- Wireless Antenna
- Wandboard antenna kit - $10
- Store Link
- The antenna cable is called "UFL to SMA" and parts to extend/replace it can be found on Amazon.
- Wandboard antenna kit - $10
- Case Supplies
- Pelican 1170 Hard-Case
- Store Link
- Something to keep the parts in while I nail down what exactly is going on with the hardware.
- Pelican 1170 Hard-Case
- Mouse
- Anker Mouse - $15
- Store Link (Nice mouse, but not the best purchase for a laptop)
- The mouse is excessively bulky, and I'm in the process of designing a 3d-printable shell to re-house the electronics.
- Anker Mouse - $15
- Keyboard
- Perixx Folding Keyboard - $35
- Store Link (Good purchase,so far)
- Massdropped Noppoo Choc Mini 2M Wireless Keyboard - $106
- Totally Rad. I hope.
- Perixx Folding Keyboard - $35
- USB Hub
- Cable Matters 4-port Hub - $13
- Store Link (Poor puchase, Don't need USB 3.0)
- Old Hub I had lying around - Free?
- Cable Matters 4-port Hub - $13
- SSD
- Kingston 64gb - $50
- Samsung EVO 120GB - ?
- Micro SD card
- Sandisk 32Gb - Varies in price
- Batteries
- Anker Astro2 12Ah - $50
- Store Link (product changed)
- I really hate these shake-n-bake batteries
- Anker Astro2 9Ah - $37
- Store Link
- Have had trouble powering the computer with this battery
- Anker Astro2 12Ah - $50
- Electrical Supplies
- Volt / Ammeter - $13
- USB to Barrel Jack - $6 (x4)
- USB to Serial Modem - $10
- Barrel Jack parts - $15
- Silverstone Sata Cable - $10
Software
Right now the laptop primarily runs ArchLinuxArm.
Adjustments for the Pixel Qi
The Pixel-Qi screen works much better with high contrast involving a white background with black text. This requires some manual tweaks to make Arch+i3wm as suitable as possible.
To adjust TTY, set 'setterm -clear all -background white -foreground black -bold -store' in inittab.
Further reading for future edits: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=108613.
Worklog
[23-5-2014]
The Pelican Case and Sata cable arrived yesterday. Will update page with the newest case design. I plan on waiting util I've gotten the better SSD, LVDS board, and custom PCB parts before making the case nice and pretty.
[20-2-2014]
I neglected this section for a few days of playing around with the board. I know I'm going to miss some things, and I hate that, sorry.
Ok, I'm gearing up to re-tool this wiki page and make it a format conducive to software and hardware design rather than a big parts list. This will likely happen sometime late next week.
I've successfully accessed a hard drive through the board's SATA port. The board does appear to support booting from SATA. The wandboard specifically is designed with a hardware switch of sorts to control which device the board will boot from. In order to toggle the switch, you have to unsolder two resistors and then resolder one of them to different pads. Definitely doable, but a little hardcore of an endeavor at the moment. Doing this will also void any warranty I/you may hold, so worth waiting until the board's been broken in first.
Alternately, it may be possible to create a custom u-boot.imx image to write to the sd card which will re-direct the boot to a sata drive. Unfortunately I have yet to find such an image already created, so for the next few days I'm going to see what I can learn about u-boot and attempt my hand at creating this bootloader image.
I also learned that the Wandboard/i.mx6 is "hard-float", which as I understand it means that there is a hardware module available to aid in the calculation of floating point equations. Some boards, such as the Raspberry Pi (I think), are "soft-float" which means that the processor has to emulate the same functionality to replace the hardware unit. This splits our options for an OS into two categories: armhf and armel. In order to squeeze the most performance out of this board, I'm now focusing on armhf images/distros for use with the board.
The Ubuntu 12.04 image provided by Wandboard is armel. There are several people/projects that are creating their own armhf versions though, I hope to cover this in more depth later.
I believe that the ALARM (Arch Linux ARM) project provides an armhf rootfs, but this is merely speculation on my part. I have yet to see conclusive evidence for either case and don't feel quite like having my ass chewed by some of the inhabitants of the archlinux-arm irc channel.
[15-2-2013]
Hold this for later capacitor.
[13-2-2013]
Wifi and Bluetooth work OoB (out-of-box) on Ubuntu 12.04. Archlinux still has nice wifi support from lemoneerlabs, but no bluetooth.
Google Group thread here.
[11-2-2014]
At the shop crashcart and enabrintain were able to get the board running entirely off of a USB battery pack! The hack entailed using some pretty beefy capacitors to get the wandboard through the first second of boot up.
Now that the battery is figured out, I'm looking to source a better USB hub and finally start looking at getting a screen. I'd like to hold out for ChalkElectronic's screen to become available, but I may get something else in the meantime.
[10-2-2014]
It's worth mentioning here that I haven't been able to power the WB off of the usb battery pack. The system will get a second or two into boot, and then crash and reboot.
From the suggestions of other ML members, it looks like the issue is a lack of USB communication. If a device doesn't alert the battery pack to open up 2A of current, then the pack will limit current to ~300mA or something. To workaround this, I'll need to use some resistors and build a bridge to put specific voltages on specific lines of the usb cable. I will not be purchasing the other parts I need from Amazon until after I've done this so that I can bundle another battery pack with the order should they be usable.
[9-2-2014]
Archlinux is running on the wandboard. Setting up the wireless card seems to be the major issue, luckily some brilliant person took care of it for me (lemoneerlabs post to fix wifi).
http://archlinuxarm.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=6692&p=37144&hilit=wandboard#p37144
Images
External Resources
- http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/freescale/wandboard - ArchlinuxArm page for Wandboard.
- https://github.com/archlinuxarm/PKGBUILDs - Official packages for ArchlinuxArm.
- http://eewiki.net/display/linuxonarm/Wandboard - A very helpful wiki page for wandboard Linux installation created by Digikey.
- https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/wandboard - The official Wandboard Google group forum.
- http://blog.lemoneerlabs.com/post/wandboard-wifi - Lemoneerlabs blog post for enabling the wireless on >3.11 kernels.
- https://www.project-insanity.org/blog/2014/02/05/bluetooth-on-the-wandboard-bcm4329/ - Project-Insanity blog post on enabling bluetooth on >3.11 kernels. Has not worked for me.
- http://www.riscos.info/index.php/BeagleBoard-based_Laptop - A sad, lonely wiki page about my project from before my project :(