Rockchip How-tos

With their RK3066 and RK3188 processor, Rockchip has been a clear winner in 2013 at least when it comes with HDMI TV stick, and possibly to a lesser extend with Android STBs. It has not been has popular as AllWinner SoC with development board, with only Radxa board available, due to the company policy with regards to open source software. Yet some documentation, tools and source code have either been leaked, or developed by the developers’ community. I’ll provide links to tutorials and how-tos for RK3066, RK3188, RK3288, RK3328, and RK3399 among others in this page.

Rockchip Android How-tos

This section only refers to Windows based tools provided by Rockchip or third parties.

Some Android apps require root access, so I’ve posted simple how-tos for RK3066 and RK3188 devices.

Firmware upgrade instruction may also be useful.

Both rooting and upgrading firmware require Rockchip USB driver, and in the past people often had issues getting the right ones for their version of Windows, so the company released a USB driver installer tool to simplify the process.

Radxa Rock is the only currently available low cost development board based on Rockchip RK3188. I’ve published instructions to build and flash an Android image for Radxa Rock from a Linux (Ubuntu 13.10) based PC.

Rockchip Linux How-tos

If you’re going to hack the kernel, you’ll need to get access to the serial console if you want to go anywhere. I’ve shown how to hack the board for MK808 (RK3066 mini PC) and MK908 (RK3188 mini PC).

The instructions for getting root access and upgrading firmware in the section above, all use Windows tools, but there are now the instructions in Linux for rooting and firmware upgrade too, although with some limitations.

There are several ways to install Linux on RK3066 or RK3188 devices. The most commonly used might be PicUntu, but I’ve tried and documented another, more customizable, method to install Linux on T428 / MK802 IV mini PCs.

As of January 2014, it is now possible to build and flash an Ubuntu image for Radxa Rock entirely from an Linux PC, as Rockchip has released a binary-only command line tool for Linux called upgrade_tool that does the same as Windows based GUI tool such as RKAndroidTool or RKBatchTool. More recently (tested in July 2018), the open source rkdeveloptool command line utility can be used to flash SD card images directly to internal storage with a male to male USB cable.

If you are interested in Rockchip Linux/Android development, you may want to join Rockchip Linux community, and for Linux specifically, follow Galland’s blog, as well as Ian Morrison (Linuxium) on Google+, who now has a website with his Rockchip Linux work.