Firefly New DualBoot Firmware Release（Beta）

isle · June 17, 2016, 6:17am

Firefly team focus on the opensource Technology. In our efforts，the New Firmware has released.
New Function:
New dualboot mode: (thanks to dewet)
we add usb keyboard & the POWER KEY to select OS.

Full VGA&HDMI support:

GPU 3D accelerated:

and more…

Dowdload this firmware from here:
googldriver: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7HO8lbGgAqARTV4c24wQTNhQzA
baidupan: 百度网盘-链接不存在

the username&password of this lubuntu : ubuntu&ubuntu.
the Lubuntu single image :

googledriver : https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7HO8lbGgAqARVZsOTNJVkxrakU
baidupan: http://pan.baidu.com/s/1nu7i9b7

zeno · June 17, 2016, 8:27am

Hi,

this is a good news… one question: was it tested with Kodi? Should we expect to have it working out of the box?

And another question: are you planning to release also the Lubuntu image without dual boot?

Thanks,
zeno

Asuuga · June 17, 2016, 9:12am

This looks cool ! I wiil test it !

isle · June 17, 2016, 9:45am

zeno Posted at 6/17/2016 16:27
Hi,

this is a good news… one question: was it tested with Kodi? Should we expect to have it wor …

Hi zeno:
the kodi can’t work smoothly with this version.the GPU havn’t worked on it’s full-pow,and also with the VPU . so,we have much more work to do .
We have a plan to fix these problems. however，We’re actually a bit short-handed at the moment. The good news is we will build a alliance with some people who are good at it.
so,if everything goes well . It shouldn’t take a very long time to get these problems solved.

yes,the Lubuntu alone image will release very soon.

zeno · June 17, 2016, 12:21pm

isle Posted at 6/17/2016 17:45
Hi zeno:
the kodi can’t work smoothly with this version.the GPU havn’t worked on it’s full-pow,a …

Hi Isle,

yours are great news!

Thanks for continuing the development of the board. I am really looking forward for next single boot lubuntu release.

Cheers,
Zeno

Asuuga · June 17, 2016, 2:10pm

Hello Isle,

Thanks for your hard work !

I’d like to ask you some questions :

In this image, the node /dev/dri/card0 exists whereas in the previous ones, it didn’t.
What driver is responsible for exporting this node ?

You used armsoc for the X11 graphic driver which is, I believe, an open source driver. Wouldn’t the closed source X11 driver from ARM itself work better ?

Also, my screen (hdmi) regularly blacks out, for 1-2 seconds.

isle · June 18, 2016, 1:44am

if somebody get mistake when update the dualboot image . pls try this on windows system.
AndroidTool_Release_v2.3.rar (926 KB)

isle · June 18, 2016, 1:47am

zeno Posted at 6/17/2016 20:21
Hi Isle,

yours are great news!

the Lubuntu single image has arrived.

isle · June 18, 2016, 2:16am

Asuuga Posted at 6/17/2016 22:10
Hello Isle,

Thanks for your hard work !

This image use DRM replaced the rockchip’s framebuffer manager. So.the previous ubuntu havn’t.
and we will open this source code less than two weeks.

Yes,we know,we use armsoc so the gpu(maliT760) can run .

and the hdmi problem,we haven’t this appearance. could you give more informations?

mo123 · June 20, 2016, 7:40am

Hi isle

I send you PM’s.
Please see if it can help

Asuuga · June 20, 2016, 10:50am

So you replaced the userspace DRM library (libdrm) ? Or is it the kernel DRM driver?
Happy that you will open the source code !

I suppose you already tested the ARM driver. Did it work ?

For the HDMI, it is as if the signal was broke for a very small period of time. It is however enough for my screen to lose the signal, and it takes a couple of seconds for the image to get back on the screen. Nothing seems to appear in the kernel logs.

Concerning the VPU, you said that it was not working at full power and that kodi can’t work smoothly. Do you know what is the cause of the problem ? If I can help you, I would be very pleased to do so !

Again, thanks for still sworking on this chip !

ujerry · June 21, 2016, 3:32am

Userspace DRM library and kernel DRM driver are both needed , notice that userspace DRM library need to add KMS support.
As you say the ARM driver , ARM’s driver new only support to mali4xx, so we used opensource armsoc.
For HDMI , maybe you can change another resolution to have a test . or “udevadm monitor” to see if the hdmi connect status changed. it is may caused by clock jitter.

andrewsmithty · June 21, 2016, 8:55pm

some feedback (i have a reload board):
For me the single linux image, has issues with:

the mouse: at some intervalls (couple tens of seconds) the mouse moving freezes for about 1-2 seconds. after the freeze, it works again. it must be some interrupt problem…
it doesn’t recognise my micro SD card, not even, if it is formatted to ext4 on a host machine.

Thanks,
Endre

mac-l1 · June 23, 2016, 5:13am

hi firefly team! just noticed your post. really great!
i had already the gpu running myself with similar performance, and just yesterday started on the vpu service. and i also saw you have audio support built in kernel. great, all ingredient for kodi to work great.
hope you share soon and i will focus on a kodi version.
really great!
cheers – mac-l1

mac-l1 · June 23, 2016, 11:11pm

isle Posted at 6/17/2016 17:45
Hi zeno:
the kodi can’t work smoothly with this version.the GPU havn’t worked on it’s full-pow,a …

Hi guys,

Just made a prelimary kodi release for this ubuntu image. This has GPU working at 60 fps in X11, however no VPU support yet. Audio depends on pulseaudio or alsa settings and support of the image, right now I have only heard sound through audio jack.

Install by typing the following in a terminal/shell:

sudo apt-get install curl
curl -O http://mac-l1.com/v1.0.1/install_mackodi.sh
bash install_mackodi.sh
sudo reboot

If you like my work, please donate..

Cheers – mac-l1

mo123 · June 24, 2016, 6:04am

Hi Mac_L1

Here is Rockchip’s Android Kodi.
https://github.com/JamesLinEngineer/RKMC/commits/Jarvis

I don’t know if it will help with Linux Kodi perhaps?

Asuuga · June 24, 2016, 9:44am

ujerry Posted at 6/21/2016 11:32
Userspace DRM library and kernel DRM driver are both needed , notice that userspace DRM library nee …

Hi uJerry,

I don’t understand why you say that ARM’s driver only support mali4xx. ARM’s x11 driver can support the mali76X according this page : http://malideveloper.arm.com/res … user-space-drivers/ (release r6p0-02rel0 for Firefly). Or I misunderstood ?

I wiil try to monitor udevadm for the HDMI problem and tell you the results.

Also, I experience the same problem than andrewsmithty with the mouse (and also keyboard).

Thanks !

mac-l1 · June 24, 2016, 10:14am

Hi all,

FYI: chromium-browser can now also run with GPU acceleration, see: http://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=112&t=8267

Steps:

Run chromium.

Enter about:flags as URL.

Disable Override software rendering list (1st one).

Close the browser.

Run the chromium with “chromium-browser --use-gl=egl” in a terminal/shell

Enter about:gpu as URL

You can see it is fully hardware accelerated

Youtube.com plays video. Too bad netflix does not play, because widevine is not supported for armhf.

In order to get a feeling of current GPU performance in X11, see: http://seemore.playcanvas.com/. It takes some time loading, bar progresses slowly. Then click on the menu-icon and select render mode “Albedo” and you should see some GPU rendering. Then click on the statistics-icon to show the performance. I get about 30 fps and that seems a bit slow regarding the GPU processor. Wonder what the fps would be in chrome on Android as a reference.

Also strange that on odroid xu3 they reach twice the fps in X11 with similar hardware (t62x). I feel it has to do with the complete graphics stack, and especially the armsoc ddx being the bottleneck. That is why I asked ARM if they plan to release a mali t76x weston/wayland GBM user space driver for firefly / rk3288 like they did for odroid xu3, see https://community.arm.com/message/37177. That way we would not need armsoc anymore, just weston/xwayland that does more effective and efficient compositing.

Cheers – mac-l1

isle · June 27, 2016, 1:24am

Hi guys,
the kernel source code is here : https://github.com/T-Firefly/firefly-3.14-kernel
and the armsoc will come up later.

ujerry · June 27, 2016, 2:00am

Asuuga Posted at 6/24/2016 17:44
Hi uJerry,

I don’t understand why you say that ARM’s driver only support mali4xx. ARM’s x11 dri …

Hi Asuuga,
Yes , the mali’s user space driver can support mali76x, and we certainly used it， It contains a number of dynamic library files，but it is not the x11 display driver.
mali’s x11 display driver in this page
http://malideveloper.arm.com/resources/drivers/open-source-mali-gpus-linux-exadri2-and-x11-display-drivers/
and it is not support mali76x, only support mali4xx, so , x11 display driver we use armsoc.
They are two different parts.
there are a few parts for opengl-es support:
in kernel:

kernel Mali GPU driver
kernel DRM driver
in userspace
x11 display driver(armsoc , for x11 display via drm)
mali’s userspace driver(libmali.so)
5.drm library

for the problem for mouse and keyboard , Can you provide some kernel log? as we can not reproduce the problem.