rock64

Pine ROCK64

The Pine ROCK64 is a single board SoC computer based on the Rockchip RK3328 arm64 processor. It has built-in GPIO and I2C interfaces. SPI is most likely not usable (not tested), because in use by the SPI FLASH 128M memory chip.

For more info about the Pine ROCK64, go to https://pine64.org/documentation/ROCK64/.

How to Install

Please refer to the main README.md

Tested OS:

• armbian with Debian

Configuration steps for the OS

System access and configuration basics

Please follow the instructions of the OS provider. A ssh access is used in this guide.

ssh <user>@192.168.1.xxx

Enabling hardware drivers

Not all drivers are enabled by default. You can have a look at the configuration file, to find out what is enabled at your system:

cat /boot/armbianEnv.txt

sudo apt install armbian-config
sudo armbian-config

How to Use

The pin numbering used by your Gobot program should match the way your board is labeled right on the board itself.

r := rock64.NewAdaptor()
led := gpio.NewLedDriver(r, "7")

How to Connect

Compiling

Compile your Gobot program on your workstation like this:

GOARCH=arm64 GOOS=linux go build -o output/ examples/rock64_blink.go

Once you have compiled your code, you can upload your program and execute it on the board from your workstation using the scp and ssh commands like this:

scp rock64_blink <user>@192.168.1.xxx:~
ssh -t <user>@192.168.1.xxx "./rock64_blink"

Troubleshooting

I2C-0 overlay

With the armbian-config sometimes the overlays can not properly applied (different open Bugs). To ensure your overlay is applied have a look into your /boot/boot.cmd and search for the name of the used shell variable(s). This name needs to be used in your /boot/armbianEnv.txt.

for overlay_file in ${overlays}; do
	if load ${devtype} ${devnum}:${distro_bootpart} ${load_addr} ${prefix}dtb/rockchip/overlay/${overlay_prefix}-${overlay_file}.dtbo; then
		echo "Applying kernel provided DT overlay ${overlay_prefix}-${overlay_file}.dtbo"
for overlay_file in ${user_overlays}; do
	if load ${devtype} ${devnum}:${distro_bootpart} ${load_addr} ${prefix}overlay-user/${overlay_file}.dtbo; then
		echo "Applying user provided DT overlay ${overlay_file}.dtbo"

In the example above the variable is named overlays. So your /boot/armbianEnv.txt must contain this variable.

overlay_prefix=rockchip
overlays=rk3328-i2c0

In some buggy versions the variable is named "fdt_overlays", just rename the variable in your "armbianEnv.txt" to match the boot script.

As you can see in the boot script, the real file name is a concatenate of different variables ${overlay_prefix}-${overlay_file}.dtbo. This file must exist in the folder ${prefix}dtb/rockchip/overlay (prefix="/boot/"). So for the i2c-0 overlay:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   218 Nov 25 19:15 rockchip-rk3328-i2c0.dtbo
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   223 Nov 25 19:15 rockchip-rk3568-hk-i2c0.dtbo

...means the entry in the armbianEnv.txt sould be set to "overlays=rk3328-i2c0".

The variable can contain a space separated list.

PWM

There are 3 PWMs on the chip (pwm0, pwm1, pwm2). Unfortunately all pins are shared with the PMIC, so i2c-1 (pwm0, pwm1) can not be deactivated, because it is mandatory for the i2c communication to PMIC address 0x18. Simply an activation of pwm0 or pwm1 with an overlay leads to the Kernel can not be loaded anymore.