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ROCK Pi Summer Updates 2019

· 4 min read

Dear ROCK Pi community,

About half an year ago, we introduced the first ROCK Pi 4 and we get a lot of feedback from different customers since then. We appreciate all the suggestions, contribution and criticism from the community. Now we are very excited to announce the recent work from Radxa Team that you might be interested.

1. ROCK PI V1.4​

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We are happy to announce the minor hardware updates for ROCK Pi 4. The updates fixes some outstanding issues from the current ROCK Pi 4 users and also includes some minor improvements.

The major update that many users care about and even the main reason they buy ROCK Pi 4 is the NVMe support. ROCK Pi 4 model A is the lowest cost SBC you can buy with NVMe support on the market. We have now included a 4MB SPI flash on the new v1.4 boards. We have reduced the size of the image so 4MB flash can just include the first stage loader, u-boot and trust image. To support SPI directly boot into NVMe. We ported the RK3399 PCIe driver to u-boot and enabled the boot chain. Android is also supported for NVMe booting, which will come in later release.
Other minor changes includes:

  • 4MB SPI flash soldered by default, on both model A and model B
  • NVMe booting from SPI is supported
  • User led changed from red to blue to avoid blink confusion
  • Wifi/BT adds external antenna support
  • Headphone connector improvement, with through hole legs for strengthened mounting
  • Changes the USB3 OTG label to simple L/H for Host/Device

2. ROCK Pi PoE HAT​

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The ROCK Pi PoE HAT is the accessory many users been waiting long. It takes so long time because we have completed re-designed the it after the first batch of prototypes sent out to some community users for testing. The new ROCK Pi PoE HAT looks cleaner by hiding the big transistor in the bottom. Optimized circuit plus the new added fan helps reducing the temperature, it drops from the peak 100°C to now below 40°C.

  • 802.3 AT up to 23W
  • 5V output on the GPIO power PIN
  • PWM control FAN up to 12000RPM
  • Temperature sensor on HAT for fan control
  • Optional 40PIN GPIO exported with pass through 40PIN header
  • Compatible with ROCK Pi 4 model B and Raspberry Pi 3B+
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    We provide a debian package rockpi4-poe with service for automatically adjust the fan speed by temperature which you can install from Radxa APT.

3. USB3 eMMC reader​

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The eMMC reader is another accessory we designed for ourselves and the developers who need to write images on eMMC module freqently. It's just fast and reduces the image writing time a lot, much more handy than the eMMC to uSD adapter.

  • High speed USB3.1 Gen2 GL3227E controller
  • Support eMMC HS400 mode
  • Dual mount for eMMC module
  • Support ROCK Pi eMMC modules up to 128GB
  • Compatible with Odroid/PINE64 eMMC module
  • Support Linux/Windos/MacOS
  • Support GPT partition table and firmware

Real life usage example:

time  sh -c 'sudo dd if=rockpi4b-ubuntu-bionic-minimal-20190104_2101-gpt.img of=/dev/sdd bs=4M status=progress && sync'

2155872256 bytes (2.2 GB, 2.0 GiB) copied, 6.0156 s, 358 MB/s
544+1 records in
544+1 records out
2282749952 bytes (2.3 GB, 2.1 GiB) copied, 11.966 s, 191 MB/s

real	0m11.989s
user	0m0.008s
sys 	0m2.484s

4. ROCK Pi S​

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ROCK Pi S is the new little board of ROCK Pi family for the IoT and Audio applications. We designed it based on the new Rockchip RK3308 processor. We like the RK3308 very much because it's a low cost 64bit processor capable of running Linux with a lot of potentials. The features for ROCK Pi S includes:

  • RK3308, quad A35 64bits processor with built-in VAD
  • 256/512MB RAM up to 1178Mbps
  • USB 2.0 OTG(type C) + USB 2.0 HOST(type A)
  • 100MB ethernet, optional PoE(additional HAT required)
  • 802.11 b/g/n wifi + BT 4.0(rtl8723DS) with external antenna
  • 26PIN Pi GPIO header + 26PIN voice/audio header
  • uSD card for OS storage media, optional 1/2/4/8Gbit on board NAND storage for cost saving
  • Size: 1.5inch square
  • Starting from 9.9USD with 256M ram
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The first batch of ROCK Pi S are tested and proves working all well. We still have some samples in the office. Debian and buildroot is currently supported on ROCK Pi S. If you are interested in developing on ROCK Pi S or want to evaluate it for your project. You can contact us.