New tinkerboard on the way

[Brian Beuken]

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/tinker...-announced

hmmm I really like the Tinkerboard, its a very solid, well made and impressive bit of kit... and about 10 people own one.. user forums are empty and Asus don't even list it in their main website you have to search for it. Its a tumbleweed system if ever I saw one.

Its surprising that Asus even want to bring out a new one, but I guess they feel it will work and thats nice to see. Though you can't even find any content on this new board on their website.. The support just doesn't match the technical skill they have in making them.


But we'll see, all the RK3399 boards I use so far are excellent  graphic system and have great performance for most thigns. This may be too.. Not going to rush out to buy one but will have a tinker (geddit?) at some pont.

[jomoengineer]

Oh, nice!  I like the Tinker Board, however the ASUS website is a bit lacking and the link to the TinkerOS-Debian does not work any more.

The new board seems to be a cross between the Tinker Board S and the Tinker Edge R and could be quite powerful if it is released. 
Looks like there are two options to connect a screen; a HDMI 2.0 port and a DisplayPort 1.2 connectivity via a new USB Type-C taking one of the USB 3.2 ports from the other models. The Wi-Fi / Bluetooth has been moved to a Wi-Fi 5 2T2R and Bluetooth 5.0 on an M.2 module.

We'll see where the price lands before I decide to get one.

Hackster.io picked up on this as well.
https://www.hackster.io/news/asus-announ...3db64b37af

Cheers.

Jon

[Brian Beuken]

They're pretty hard to locate in the EU, and lets be honest, the support from Asus is utterly non exisitent, at least 2 of my posts on their forums dating back 5 months are still waiting for approval from a moderator. there's just no community activity despite the nice webpage on the Asus site, nothing is happening.

But I found one on Ali express for 80euros, (they seem to have a large stock) assuming I don't have too much customs to pay it comes under my 100euro limit so I ordered one... will update you when/if it arrives and if its any use.... I have a bad feeling about it though.

[jomoengineer]

Cool.

Are you referring to the Tinker Board 2 series?
https://tinker-board.asus.com/product/ti...ard-2.html

Looks like they have updates to the Tinker Board and Tinker Board S as well as a Tinker Board Edge R
https://tinker-board.asus.com/series.html

---

For the US at least, there is a company youyeetoo selling the Tinker Board 2S on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/youyeetoo-Rockchi...935&sr=8-3

[Brian Beuken]

yeah, I ordered from ali express

though I have had a notice that it may be delayed..I guess stocks are thin

Asus have a very strange way of supporting thier boards...ie... they actually don't ..just set up a website and run away.

[Brian Beuken]

oh I just checked, its been shipped, should be here may 7th....we'll see

[Brian Beuken]

Arrived safe and sound 4 days ahead of schedule, impressive big passive heat sink, but at least they supplied it.. not as sturdy as the Friendly arm ones on their RK3399's but its got longer fins.. it should work well. No cases available for it yet with that big sink so will have to run it out of the box for a while. i got a power unit with it too, 2amp, 12v. came with a US plug but I have an adapter and its switchable to 240v. So should be good to go

Downloading Debian 10 for it, which was easy enough to find. currently burning a 16GB Kinston SD to get it up and runnings. Reports will follow..


I suspect it will be a competant usable little board like its predecessor, but lacking oomph and support... we'll see.

ok 1st boot...as normal took a little while but the green activity light flickered as needed to let me know something was happening. and then finally... debian and the TB logo pops up. in 720p mode.. fear not theres a display setting which easily let me set it up 1080p
its nippy for sure, very responsive and quick to open windows.
A quick look at the system info and, my worst fears are realised its using llvmpipe to render, ie its software...at the moment, I'll install mesa shortly and see what happens.

As always 1st task/chore is the update/upgrade
which very surprisngly didn't do anything, the build provided is the latest version...yeahhh


On to setting up, I have a new test project that I am sending down, Empires, its pretty big and has a set up script to install libs. the 1st downlaod can be a big indicator of the network speed.. This was rather slow... though it can also indicate a slow SD card.... it did take a while.

But eventually I was able to get everything down an run the script to install mesa,bulllet,glm, freetype etc. Again connection speeds seemed unusually slow.... but we'll investigate more once its fully set up.

There's a fair amount of processing happening with the install, the temp of the heat sink is well within, can touch without going ouch, my usual temp indicator.
Worryingly its reporting a lot of *.so libs as being truncated... ermm thats a problem right?

Project did build though, but it was missing gdb (thought that was part of build-essential), but quite easy to install

And rebuild again, despite its 6 cores it isn't building any faster than a Pi400, but again that can indicate a slow SD, but over 2m30s for a full build compared to 1m20s for a Pi400...hmmm
and the heat sink is starting to get ouchy

But... it runs Empires... not quite as smooth as a Pi400, and at the moment the project is stuck at a menu system i'm working on which isn't showing itself at its best...but it seems to be quite a bit slower than the Pi400.. it does need tinkering though :d

Its using Mali 860 (an mp4 I belive) so we have drivers, performance is just going to depend on making sure its used well. so its a usable board, lacking a bit of oomph but certainly running straight out of the box... nice to see.
Here's the info I got from the GPU.


This SBC supports version 1.4 of EGL
This GPU supplied by :ARM
This GPU supports :OpenGL ES 3.2 v1.r18p0-01rel0.5cb5681058e8e076ff89747c20c32578
This GPU Renders with :Mali-T860
This GPU supports :OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.20
This GPU MaxTexSize is :8192
This GPU supports 16 Texture units
This GPU supports 256 Array Texture Layerss
This GPU supports 4096 Uniform Componets
This GPU supports these extensions :GL_ARM_rgba8 GL_ARM_mali_shader_binary GL_OES_depth24 GL_OES_depth_texture GL_OES_depth_texture_cube_map GL_OES_packed_depth_stencil GL_OES_rgb8_rgba8 GL_EXT_read_format_bgra GL_OES_compressed_paletted_texture GL_OES_compressed_ETC1_RGB8_texture GL_OES_standard_derivatives GL_OES_EGL_image GL_OES_EGL_image_external GL_OES_EGL_image_external_essl3 GL_OES_EGL_sync GL_OES_texture_npot GL_OES_vertex_half_float GL_OES_required_internalformat GL_OES_vertex_array_object GL_OES_mapbuffer GL_EXT_texture_format_BGRA8888 GL_EXT_texture_rg GL_EXT_texture_type_2_10_10_10_REV GL_OES_fbo_render_mipmap GL_OES_element_index_uint GL_EXT_shadow_samplers GL_OES_texture_compression_astc GL_KHR_texture_compression_astc_ldr GL_KHR_texture_compression_astc_hdr GL_KHR_texture_compression_astc_sliced_3d GL_KHR_debug GL_EXT_occlusion_query_boolean GL_EXT_disjoint_timer_query GL_EXT_blend_minmax GL_EXT_discard_framebuffer GL_OES_get_program_binary GL_OES_texture_3D GL_EXT_texture_storage GL_EXT_multisampled_render_to_texture GL_OES_surfaceless_context GL_OES_texture_stencil8 GL_EXT_shader_pixel_local_storage GL_ARM_shader_framebuffer_fetch GL_ARM_shader_framebuffer_fetch_depth_stencil GL_ARM_mali_program_binary GL_EXT_sRGB GL_EXT_sRGB_write_control GL_EXT_texture_sRGB_decode GL_EXT_texture_sRGB_R8 GL_EXT_texture_sRGB_RG8 GL_KHR_blend_equation_advanced GL_KHR_blend_equation_advanced_coherent GL_OES_texture_storage_multisample_2d_array GL_OES_shader_image_atomic GL_EXT_robustness GL_EXT_draw_buffers_indexed GL_OES_draw_buffers_indexed GL_EXT_texture_border_clamp GL_OES_texture_border_clamp GL_EXT_texture_cube_map_array GL_OES_texture_cube_map_array GL_OES_sample_variables GL_OES_sample_shading GL_OES_shader_multisample_interpolation GL_EXT_shader_io_blocks GL_OES_shader_io_blocks GL_EXT_tessellation_shader GL_OES_tessellation_shader GL_EXT_primitive_bounding_box GL_OES_primitive_bounding_box GL_EXT_geometry_shader GL_OES_geometry_shader GL_ANDROID_extension_pack_es31a GL_EXT_gpu_shader5 GL_OES_gpu_shader5 GL_EXT_texture_buffer GL_OES_texture_buffer GL_EXT_copy_image GL_OES_copy_image GL_EXT_color_buffer_half_float GL_EXT_color_buffer_float GL_EXT_YUV_target GL_OVR_multiview GL_OVR_multiview2 GL_OVR_multiview_multisampled_render_to_texture GL_KHR_robustness GL_KHR_robust_buffer_access_behavior GL_EXT_draw_elements_base_vertex GL_OES_draw_elements_base_vertex

OpenGLES3.2 is nice, the official board info says 3.1 but it may be Mesa are emulating some stuff... It does 3.1 though so thats a good start..

I'll continue to tinker with it over the coming days to see what it can and cannot do, once Empires gets over the current Menu code and back into the in game content we'll see how it reall compares with the Pi4./400

[Brian Beuken]

After a reboot, the network download for a fresh build seems a lot faster and it now downloads and builds faster than the Pi400  1m.50s total, thats pretty decent, but it does report a red heat warning,  while its doing it so it may be throttling.. I need to see if I can find the throttle settings.

its a promising board, not sure its offering more than the Pi4 but its doing better than some other pi rivals... GLMark2-es2 tests are considerably lower than the TB1... that maybe due to it being a GLES3.2 system, and not fully using its features in the tests but still... hmmmm, thought it would record better...  as usual the claimed numbers are fantasy, it returns 233 off screen... far below the claimed 797 stated here

in actual use the TB2 is running most of the content on the Empires project about 2x the speed of the TB1, but a little behind a Pi400. So GLMark2-es2 isn't really as reliable a mark for performance as we hope.

Very interestingly though it is capable of handling 4 channel anti alias on a 1080p screen far far better than the Pi4, it has negiligable impact on frame rates, so despite running noticably slower it can run with smoother graphics.

[jomoengineer]

Very cool.

Did you get the Tinker Board 2 or the 2s?

[Brian Beuken]

I got the 2, I would have liked the 2s but it was over my 100euro limit