PineCube

PAGE UNDER CONSTRUCTION, INFO SUBJECT TO CHANGE

Specifications

• Dimensions: 55mm x 51mm x 51.5mm
• Weight: 55g
• Storage:
  • MicroSD slot, bootable
  • 128Mb SPI Nor Flash, bootable
• Cameras: OV5640, 5Mpx
• CPU: Allwinner(Sochip) ARM Cortex-A7 MPCore, 800MHz
• RAM: 128MB DDR3
• I/O:
  • 10/100Mbps Ethernet with passive PoE
  • USB 2.0 A host
  • 26 pins GPIO port
    • 2x 3.3V Ouptut
    • 2x 5V Output
    • 1x I2C
    • 2x UART
    • 2x PWM
    • 1x SPI
    • 1x eMMC/SDIO/SD (8-bit)
    • 6x Interrupts
    • Note: Interfaces are multiplexed, so they can't be all used at same time
  • Internal microphone
• Network:
  • WiFi
• Screen: optional 4.5" RGB LCD screen
• Misc. features:
  • Volume and home buttons
  • Speakers and Microphone
• Power DC in:
  • 5V 1A from MicroUSB Port or GPIO port
  • 4V-18V from Ethernet passive PoE
• Battery: optional 950-1600mAh model: 903048 Lithium Polymer Ion Battery Pack, can be purchase at Amazon.com

PineCube board information, schematics and certifications

• PineCube mainboard schematic:
  • PineCube mainboard Released Schematic ver 1.0
• PineCube faceboard schematic:
  • PineCube faceboard Released Schematic ver 1.0
• PineCube certifications:
  • PineCube FCC Certificate
  • PineCube CE RED Certificate
  • PineCube ROHS Test Report

Datasheets for components and peripherals

• Allwinner (Sochip) S3 SoC information:
  • Sochip S3 SoC Data Sheet V1.1

• X-Powers AXP209 PMU (Power Management Unit) information:
  • AXP209 PMIC datasheet

• CMOS camera module information:
  • PineCube Camera Module Specification
  • OV5640 5MP CMOS Image Sensor SoC datasheet

• LCD touch screen panel information:

• Lithium battery information:

• WiFi/BT module information:
  • RTL8189ES specification

• GPIO Header Pinout: (PDF, HTML)

• Case information:
  • PinePhone 3D file

Operating Systems

Mainlining Efforts

Please note:

• this list is most likely not complete
• no review of functionality is done here, it only serves as a collection of efforts

Linux kernel
Type	Link	Available in version
Devicetree Entry Pinecube	https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/9/22/1241	5.10
Correction for AXP209 driver	https://lkml.org/lkml/2020/9/22/1243	5.9
Additional Fixes for AXP209 driver	https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20201031182137.1879521-8-contact@paulk.fr/	tdb (5.11?)
Device Tree Fixes	https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20201003234842.1121077-1-icenowy@aosc.io/	5.10
U-boot
Type	Link	Available in version
PineCube Board Support	https://patchwork.ozlabs.org/project/uboot/list/?series=210044	expected in v2021.01
Buildroot
No known mainlining efforts yet

NixOS

• danielfullmer's Github

Buildroot

Elimo Engineering integrated support for the PineCube into Buildroot.

This has not been merged into upstream Buildroot yet, but you can find the repo on Elimo's GitHub account and build instructions in the board support directory readme. The most important thing that this provides is support for the S3's DDR3 in u-boot. Unfortunately mainline u-boot does not have that yet, but the u-boot patches from Daniel Fullmer's NixOS repo were easy enough to use on buildroot. This should get you a functional system that boots to a console on UART0. It's pretty fast too, getting there in 1.5 seconds from u-boot to login prompt.

Armbian

Armbian Builds for PineCube are available for download, once again thanks to the work of Icenowy Zheng. Although not officially supported (CSC Status it enables the usage of Debian and Ubuntu.

SDK

Stock Linux

• Direct Download from pine64.org
  • MD5 (7zip file): efac108dc98efa0a1f5e77660ba375f8
  • File Size: 3.50GB

How to compile

You can either setup a machine for the build environment, or use a Vagrant virtual machine provided by Elimo Engineering

On a dedicated machine

Recommended system requirements:

• OS: (L)Ubuntu 16.04
• CPU: 64-bit based
• Memory: 8 GB or higher
• Disk: 15 GB free hard disk space

Install required packages

sudo apt-get install p7zip-full git make u-boot-tools libxml2-utils bison build-essential gcc-arm-linux-gnueabi g++-arm-linux-gnueabi zlib1g-dev gcc-multilib g++-multilib libc6-dev-i386 lib32z1-dev

Install older Make 3.82 and Java JDK 6

pushd /tmp
wget https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/make-3.82.tar.gz
tar xfv make-3.82.tar.gz
cd make-3.82
./configure
make
sudo apt purge -y make
sudo ./make install
cd ..
# Please, download jdk-6u45-linux-x64.bin from https://www.oracle.com/java/technologies/javase-java-archive-javase6-downloads.html (requires free login)
chmod +x jdk-6u45-linux-x64.bin 
./jdk-6u45-linux-x64.bin 
sudo mkdir /opt/java/
sudo mv jdk1.6.0_45/ /opt/java/
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/javac javac /opt/java/jdk1.6.0_45/bin/javac 1
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /opt/java/jdk1.6.0_45/bin/java 1
sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/javaws javaws /opt/java/jdk1.6.0_45/bin/javaws 1
sudo update-alternatives --config javac
sudo update-alternatives --config java
sudo update-alternatives --config javaws
popd

Unpack SDK and then compile and pack the image

7z x 'PineCube Stock BSP-SDK ver1.0.7z'
mv 'PineCube Stock BSP-SDK ver1.0' pinecube-sdk
cd pinecube-sdk/camdroid
source build/envsetup.sh
lunch
mklichee
make -j3
pack

Using Vagrant

You can avoid setting up your machine and just use Vagrant to spin up a development environment in a VM.

Just clone the Elimo Engineering repo and follow the instructions in the readme file

After spinning up the VM, you just need to run the build:

cd pinecube-sdk/camdroid
source build/envsetup.sh
lunch
mklichee
make -j3
pack

Community Projects

Share your project with a PineCube here!