Khadas Captain / Edge SBC Review – Part 2: Ubuntu 18.04

Khadas Edge Ubuntu 18.04

I received Khadas Edge Developer Package with Khadas Edge RK3399 module, Khadas Captain carrier board, and several accessories a few weeks ago, and after checking the hardware in the first part of the review, I’ve now taken the time to review software support, specially Ubuntu 18.04 on the board. Khadas Edge / Captain Firmware There are currently four main choices of firmware for Khadas Edge / Khadas Captain: Ubuntu 18.04 OS with LXDE desktop environment @ https://dl.khadas.com/Firmware/Edge/Ubuntu/ Android ROM @ https://dl.khadas.com/Firmware/Edge/Android/ with Android Nougat being a proper release, Android Oreo (available now) a temporary version that will not be supported, and Android P that will be released and supported by Rockchip later on in 2019 Armbian RK3399 for Khadas Edge looks to be work-in-progress right now LibreELEC for playing videos on the platform I decided to focus on Ubuntu 18.04 for this review, and Karl who has his own sample […]

Khadas Edge Developer Package Review – Part 1: Unboxing, Captain and Edge-IO Expansion Boards

Khadas Edge Captain Board

Shenzhen Wesion recently launched an Indiegogo campaign for their Rockchip RK3399/RK3399Pro based Khadas Edge, Edge-1S and Captain boards. The Edge boards have an interesting form factor as they are both standalone boards, and system-on-modules compatible with Captain carrier board, and the smaller Edge-IO board. While the crowdfunding campaign is on-going, the company decided to send me an early version of Khadas Edge Developer Package for evaluation. I’ll start out by checking out the content of the kit, and show how to get started with assembly, before reviewing the board with Linux at a later date. Khadas Edge Developer Package Unboxing I received the developer kit in a blank carton board package, but they’ll likely have a prettier package at launch like they did for heir VIM2 board. Anyway, the important part is the content. From top left to bottom right: An IR remote control, the package for the Edge board […]

Rockchip RK3399Pro EVB and NPU Performance Demos (Video)

Rockchip RK3399Pro EVB

Rockchip RK3399Pro was announced as an updated version of RK3399 processor with an NPU (Neural Processing Unit) capable of delivering 2.4 TOPS for faster A.I. workloads such as face or object recognition. There haf been some delays in the past because of a redesign of the processor that placed the NPU’s RAM on the PCB instead of on-chip for cost reasons. Eventually we got more details about RK3399Pro, and today I also received a 15-page presentation with some more information about the software, and processor itself. But even more interesting, that’s the first time I see Rockchip’s official RK3399Pro EVB (Evaluation Board), and the guys at Khadas uploaded a video to explain a bit more about the board, and showcase the NPU performance measured up to 3.0 TOPS with an object recognition demo, and an “body feature” detection demo – for the lack of a better word – running in […]

Khadas Edge RK3399/RK3399Pro Board Crowdfunding Campaign Launched

Khadas Edge is another upcoming Rockchip RK3399 board that we initially covered this summer, and comes with a particular design in the sense it is both a single board computer with USB and Ethernet port, and a system-on-module through its edge connector. Later on we found out, the company was working on a variant called Khadas Edge-V with the edge connector being replaced by a more standard 40-pin header, as well as Khadas Edge1S powered by Rockchip RK3399Pro for AI applications. The company has now launched the three boards and accessories through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign. I’ve already covered the two RK3399 boards in previous post, and  the RK3399Pro based Khadas Edge-1S (2GB RAM, 2x MIPI-CSI, …) will be similar to Edge board but with , so instead I’ll have a closer look at the specifications for Khadas Captain carrier board for Khadas Edge / Edge-1S: Edge connector – 314-pin […]

Khadas is Working on more RK3399 / RK3399Pro Boards, Projector Development Kit, AR Kit

Khadas Edge-V vs Khadas Edge

Shenzhen Wesion had already unveiled their Khadas Edge board that works both as a system-on-module and a standalone SBC thanks to an MXM3 connector on one side, and traditional HDMI and USB ports on the other. The Rockchip RK3399 board will be launched on Indiegogo a little later. But the company is working on a few more boards and development kits all based on Rockchip RK3399 or the upcoming RK3399Pro processor with neural processing unit (NPU) for AI workloads acceleration. First we have Khadas Edge-V, very similar to Khadas Edge but with a 40-pin IO header replacing the MXM3 connector, and following Khadas VIM form factor and ports, so for example we get an Ethernet port as well as an extra USB 3.0 port instead of USB 2.0 on Edge. As mentioned in Khadas Edge announcement, the company is also working on Khadas Captain carrier board with MXM3 socket. So we […]

Khadas Edge is Both a Standalone Board and a System-on-Module powered by Rockchip RK3399

Khadas Edge

One of the two most common type of Arm boards are single board computers with everything from processor to memory/storage to ports is placed on a single PCB, and system-on-modules with processor, memory and storage, and sometimes some extra chips with for network connectivity, audio and power management that are supposed to be inserted into a baseboard exposing connectors and headers. The upcoming Khadas Edge board is a little different since it combines both categories into one board with USB receptacles and HDMI output as well as 314-pin MXM3 edge connector to connect to Khadas Captain baseboard, or any other custom compatible baseboard. Khadas Edge will come in three variants (Basic/Pro/Max) with the following specifications: SoC – Rockchip RK3399 hexa core processor with 2x Arm Cortex-A72 up to 1.8GHz, 4x Cortex-A53 up to 1.5GHz, Arm Mali T864 GPU with support for OpenGL ES1.1/2.0/3.0/3.1, OpenVG1.1, OpenCL, DX11, VPU with4K VP9 and 4K […]

Linux 4.15 Release – Main Changes, Arm and MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvald has released Linux 4.15 last Sunday: After a release cycle that was unusual in so many (bad) ways, this last week was really pleasant. Quiet and small, and no last-minute panics, just small fixes for various issues. I never got a feeling that I’d need to extend things by yet another week, and 4.15 looks fine to me. Half the changes in the last week were misc driver stuff (gpu, input, networking) with the other half being a mix of networking, core kernel and arch updates (mainly x86). But all of it is tiny. So at least we had one good week. This obviously was not a pleasant release cycle, with the whole meltdown/spectre thing coming in in the middle of the cycle and not really gelling with our normal release cycle. The extra two weeks were obviously mainly due to that whole timing issue. Also, it is […]

How to Use Khadas VIM2 Board with VTV Expansion DTV Board as a Live TV Streaming Server

Khadas-VIM2-Heatsink

Khadas VIM2 is the first and only Amlogic S912 based hobbyist development board on the market, which makes it interesting by itself, but the company also added some interesting features such as an SPI flash for network boot, Wake-on-LAN support, and more. Last month the company sent me a sample of the Khadas VIM2 Basic (2GB RAM/16GB flash) together with VTV Extension DTV Board featuring a DVB-T2/C and DVB-S2 tuner. I’ve already checkout the hardware and shown how to assemble the kit, so for the second part of the review it seemed like a good idea to use the board as a Live TV streaming server broadcasting satellite, cable or terrestrial TV to devices connected to the local network. At first I wanted to use Linux operating system, because I could have run other Linux server services, but SuperDVB, the company that makes and supports the tuner board, only have […]