AMLogic Category - Page 9 of 95 - CNX Software

June 6, 2022June 6, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Robot cat girl doll leverages Khadas VIM3 SBC for AI-accelerated object detection/tracking

While Khadas VIM4 board has just been launched, the earlier Khadas VIM3 SBC has the advantage of featuring a 5 TOPS NPU that’s being leveraged by Lilium Robotics for their humanoid robots, notably the Lily Delta V7 robot cat girl doll using the Amlogic A311D board to control motors and provide AI features such as face and object detection and tracking. The Delta V7 is offered as an Android kit running Linux (Android refers to humanoid robot here) with a full motorized body kit, a head with a dual camera and sound system, accessories like a dress, wig, cat ears and tail, and other features that are more geared towards the adult crowd… Content of the Lily Delta V7 full Android kit: Full motorized body kit Motorized arms, legs, and torso with wide movement range Arms can support 0.5 kg payload 100 cm high, weighs about 5 kilograms Inserts: Face, […]

June 3, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Armbian 22.05 release adds support for Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS, Radxa Zero & Rock 3A, DevTerm A06

The latest release of Armbian, version 22.05, is now out with hundreds of Linux kernel and user space-related bug fixes, a focus on stabilizing existing platforms, while still adding four new boards with Orange Pi R1 Plus LTS (RK3328), Radxa Zero (Amlogic S905Y2), Radxa Rock 3A (RK3568), and DevTerm A06 (RK3399). The community also added two new maintainers for ESPRESSObin and Radxa Rock Pi 4 (Model A) SBCs which should mean the images for those boards will be tested more regularly and potential issues fixed more quickly. You may want to read the more detailed changelog to see if any changes may impact the board(s) you are using. The new Armbian 22.05 release succeeds Armbian 22.02 outed on February 28, 2022. If you’d like to upgrade simply run those two commands on your existing installation:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

1 2	sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade

For new installation, browse the list of supported boards, select the Debian/Ubuntu image you’d […]

May 29, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 11 Comments

Khadas VIM4 SBC review – Part 3: Ubuntu 22.04

Here’s the last part of Khadas VIM4 review with Ubuntu 22.04 “Jammy Jellyfish”. You may want to check out our previous parts with the unboxing and first boot, followed by Android 11 if you haven’t already done so. Ubuntu 22.04 installation on Khadas VIM4 I used the same method of installation with OOWOW firmware that can download the image directly from Khadas server, and install it to the eMMC flash. Since I already had Android 11 running on the board, I had to keep pressing the function key (middle), then shortly press the reset button, before releasing the function key and entering OOWOW interface. From there, I selected Ubuntu 22.04 Gnome, and went ahead with the download. The download was fast with the 758.2MB compressed image downloaded in a couple of minutes, then I simply selected “Install” to go further, and replace Android 11… .. and after rebooting the board […]

May 25, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Raspberry Pi CM4 compatible module coming soon with Amlogic A311D CPU

Despite assurances by Eben Upton that there’s no supply shortage of Raspberry Pi CM4 modules for commercial and industrial customers, installations or projects requiring just a few modules may be out of luck. So alternatives are needed, and after seeing Rockchip RK3566-based SoMs compatible with Pi CM4, namely the Pine64 SoPine and Radxa CM3, Banana Pi is working on a Raspberry Pi CM4 compatible module powered by Amlogic A311D hexa-core Arm Cortex-A73/A53 processor. Banana Pi BPI-CM4 specifications: SoC – Amlogic A311D hexa-core processor with 4x Arm Cortex-A73 @ 2.0 GHz and 2x Arm Cortex-A53 @, Arm Mali-G52 MP4 (6EE) GPU, 5 TOPS NPU System Memory – 2GB/4GB LPDDR4 RAM Storage – 16GB eMMC flash (up to 128GB) Networking – Gigabit Ethernet PHY on-module, optional WiFi 5/6 module with on-board PCB antenna and external antenna 2x 100-pin high-density board-to-board connector (mostly) compatible with Raspberry Pi CM4 with 1x HDMI, 1x MIPI […]

May 23, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Linux 5.18 release – Main changes, Arm, RISC-V, and MIPS architectures

Linux 5.18 is out! Linus Torvalds has just announced the release on lkml: No unexpected nasty surprises this last week, so here we go with the 5.18 release right on schedule. That obviously means that the merge window for 5.19 will open tomorrow, and I already have a few pull requests pending. Thank you everybody. I’d still like people to run boring old plain 5.18 just to check, before we start with the excitement of all the new features for the merge window. The full shortlog for the last week is below, and nothing really odd stands out. The diffstat looks a bit funny – unusually we have parsic architecture patches being a big part of it due to some last-minute cache flushing fixes, but that is probably more indicative of everything else being pretty small. So outside of the parisc fixes, there’s random driver updates (mellanox mlx5 stands out, […]

May 22, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Linux hardware video encoding on Amlogic A311D2 processor

amlogic a311d2 h265 hardware video encoding sample

I’ve spent a bit more time with Ubuntu 22.04 on Khadas VIM4 Amogic A311D2 SBC, and while the performance is generally good features like 3D graphics acceleration and hardware video decoding are missing. But I was pleased to see a Linux hardware video encoding section in the Wiki, as it’s not something we often see supported early on. So I’ve given it a try… First, we need to make a video in NV12 pixel format that’s commonly outputted from cameras. I downloaded a 45-second 1080p H.264 sample video from Linaro, and converted it with ffmpeg:

ffmpeg -i big_buck_bunny_1080p_H264_AAC_25fps_7200K.MP4 -pix_fmt nv12 big_buck_bunny_1080p_H264_AAC_25fps_7200K-nv12.yuv

1	ffmpeg -i big_buck_bunny_1080p_H264_AAC_25fps_7200K.MP4 -pix_fmt nv12 big_buck_bunny_1080p_H264_AAC_25fps_7200K-nv12.yuv

I did this on my laptop. As a raw video, it’s pretty big with 3.3GB of storage used for a 45-second video:

ls -lh
total 3.3G
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jaufranc jaufranc  40M Aug  5  2011 big_buck_bunny_1080p_H264_AAC_25fps_7200K.MP4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 jaufranc jaufranc 3.3G May 21 15:03 big_buck_bunny_1080p_H264_AAC_25fps_7200K-nv12.yuv

ls -lh

total 3.3G

-rw-rw-r-- 1 jaufranc jaufranc 40M Aug 5 2011 big_buck_bunny_1080p_H264_AAC_25fps_7200K.MP4

-rw-rw-r-- 1 jaufranc jaufranc 3.3G May 21 15:03 big_buck_bunny_1080p_H264_AAC_25fps_7200K-nv12.yuv

Now let’s try to encode the video to H.264 on Khadas VIM4 board using aml_enc_test hardware video encoding sample:

khadas@Khadas:~$ time aml_enc_test 1080p.nv12 dump.h264 1920 1080 30 25 6000000 1125 1 0 2 4
src_url is	: 1080p.nv12 ;
out_url is	: dump.h264 ;
width   is	: 1920 ;
height  is	: 1080 ;
gop     is	: 30 ;
frmrate is	: 25 ;
bitrate is	: 6000000 ;
frm_num is	: 1125 ;
fmt     is	: 1 ;
buf_type is	: 0 ;
num_planes is	: 2 ;
codec is	: 4 ;
codec is H264
Set log level to 4
[initEncParams:177] enc_feature_opts is 0x0 , GopPresetis 0x0 

[SetupEncoderOpenParam:513] GopPreset GOP format (2) period 30 LongTermRef 0

[vdi_sys_sync_inst_param:618] [VDI] fail to deliver sync instance param inst_idx=0

[AML_MultiEncInitialize:1378] VPU instance param sync with open param failed

[SetSequenceInfo:979] Required buffer fb_num=3, src_num=1, actual src=3 1920x1080

Encode End!width:1920

real	0m26.074s
user	0m1.832s
sys	0m4.883s

khadas@Khadas:~$ time aml_enc_test 1080p.nv12 dump.h264 1920 1080 30 25 6000000 1125 1 0 2 4

src_url is : 1080p.nv12 ;

out_url is : dump.h264 ;

width is : 1920 ;

height is : 1080 ;

gop is : 30 ;

frmrate is : 25 ;

bitrate is : 6000000 ;

frm_num is : 1125 ;

fmt is : 1 ;

buf_type is : 0 ;

num_planes is : 2 ;

codec is : 4 ;

codec is H264

Set log level to 4

[initEncParams:177] enc_feature_opts is 0x0 , GopPresetis 0x0

[SetupEncoderOpenParam:513] GopPreset GOP format (2) period 30 LongTermRef 0

[vdi_sys_sync_inst_param:618] [VDI] fail to deliver sync instance param inst_idx=0

[AML_MultiEncInitialize:1378] VPU instance param sync with open param failed

[SetSequenceInfo:979] Required buffer fb_num=3, src_num=1, actual src=3 1920x1080

Encode End!width:1920

real 0m26.074s

user 0m1.832s

sys 0m4.883s

The output explains the parameters used. There are some error messages, […]

May 10, 2022May 10, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 27 Comments

You can now buy Khadas VIM4 SBC for $199.90

Khadas VIM4 single board computer was first unveiled last October with Amlogic A311D2 octa-core Cortex-A73/A53 processor, 8GB LPDDR4X, but it’s only been launched today, and you can now buy the Khadas VIM4 board for right under $200. It is an upgrade to Khadas VIM3 Pro launched with Amlogiv A311D hexa-core processor a few years ago, and our testing in Android 11 revealed the main benefit may be the upgrade GPU that delivered a 67% boost in 3DMark, but CPU multi-core performance and memory bandwidth will also see some benefits over Amlogic A311D, even against in overclocked systems like ODROID N2+. Here’s a reminder of Khadas VIM4 specifications: SoC – Amlogic A311D2 octa-core processor with 4x Arm Cortex-A73 cores @ up to 2.2 GHz and 4x Cortex A53 cores @ up to 2.0 GHz, Arm Mali-G52 MP(8EE) GPU, (Note: no NPU at this time) System Memory – 8GB LPDDR4X @ 2016 […]

May 7, 2022May 29, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Khadas VIM4 Review – Part 2: Android 11 preview and benchmarks

In the first part of Khadas VIM4 review, I showed off the Amlogic A311D2 SBC and some accessories such as the DIY case and M2X expansion board to add M.2 SSD and modem and tried out OOWOW cloud services to install Ubuntu 20.04 server. I’ve now just gotten Fiber Internet at home, so it’s much more practical to test the system, and in the second part of the review, I’ve installed Android 11 on the VIM4 board, checked out settings and system info, and ran some benchmarks. It will be more like a preview since Android 11 is not a consumer-friendly system at this time, and is more designed for people wanting to build their own applications. Installing Android 11 on Khadas VIM4 with OOWOW system Last time around, I used OOWOW system install in the SPI flash on the board to download and install Ubuntu 20.04 server to the […]