#cubox irc log of Mon 02 Jun 2014

IRC log of #cubox of Mon 02 Jun 2014. All times are in CEST < Back to index

08:09 IanWizard-Cloud Does anyone have some internal pics of the cubox? (i4 preferably). Or know where some reside? Google didn't turn anything up.

08:14 wbx IanWizard-Cloud: i have one on my iphone ;)

08:15 IanWizard-Cloud wbx: I'm in no rush, but if you have the chance, I'd be interested to see it :)

08:15 wbx IanWizard-Cloud: anything special you want to see?

08:16 IanWizard-Cloud wbx: what makes you think I'm not just looking for some pcb pron? :P

08:16 IanWizard-Cloud I'm specifically curious to see the wifi/bt chip

08:17 wbx http://openadk.org/cubox/

08:18 wbx i have not disassembled the three boards.

08:19 wbx IanWizard-Cloud: i think the wifi is in the middle.

08:25 IanWizard-Cloud wbx: do you know if it's on it's own board? (separate from everything else, not from bt)

08:26 wbx http://imx.solid-run.com/wiki/index.php?title=HummingBoard_Hardware

08:26 wbx IanWizard-Cloud: i think it is similar to this one. it is on the microsom

08:29 jnettlet sorry guys late to the party. What do you want to know about the Hummingboard?

09:26 IanWizard-Cloud jnettlet: I was curious how "embedded" the wifi/bt are, or if they're a separate chip.

09:34 jnettlet IanWizard-Cloud, the wifi chip is on the microsom, but not part of the SOC

09:34 jnettlet the iMX6D microsom now comes without wifi on board

11:32 rabeeh IanWizard-Cloud: wifi/bt is based on brcm4330 chip

11:37 cbxbiker61 rabeeh, i haven't been having good luck with usb 300mbit adapters, i really wanted ath9k since there drivers are robust

11:38 cbxbiker61 the rtl 300mbits seem to lockup, although i have an rtl 150mbit that seems rock solid

11:39 cbxbiker61 150mbit is just on the edge of maybe kinda works for high bitrate video, whereas 300mbit handles it fine

11:41 jnettlet cbxbiker61, what sort of real world throughput are you getting?

11:43 cbxbiker61 i haven't really checked too thoroughly, the internal was doing pretty much what i'd expect for it's spec, and the 150 does better, 300 did great but again the realtek 300mbit i have locks up

11:46 cbxbiker61 i have the 150mbit connected now, and it's linked to the router at 150mbit, so it should run close to it's max

11:47 cbxbiker61 the shame is that the 150mbit and the 300mbit use the same driver, but with different results

11:48 rabeeh cbxbiker61: can u run iperf on your setup?

11:48 rabeeh or any other tcp based benchmark?

11:48 cbxbiker61 sure

11:53 cbxbiker61 [ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 45.1 MBytes 37.8 Mbits/sec

11:54 rabeeh that's the 150?

11:54 rabeeh and is it upload or download?

11:55 cbxbiker61 yeah, seems kinda low, that's with the cubox-i as client

11:55 rabeeh ok; so it's uploading then

11:55 cbxbiker61 0.0-10.1 sec 54.2 MBytes 45.2 Mbits/sec

11:55 cbxbiker61 is the opposite direction

11:55 jnettlet cbxbiker61, could you dump the iw info as well?

11:56 rabeeh cbxbiker61: can u send link for the exact model of the 150?

11:57 rabeeh i'm interested in seeing the antenna specs

11:57 cbxbiker61 Edimax Technology Co., Ltd EW-7811Un 802.11n Wireless Adapter [Realtek RTL8188CUS]

11:57 cbxbiker61 that's a micro usb plug, super small

11:57 cbxbiker61 very convenient but not much of an antenna

11:58 jnettlet yeah I have one here. Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188CUS 802.11n WLAN Adapter

11:58 rabeeh and how far are CBi from the AP?

11:58 rabeeh s/are/is

11:59 cbxbiker61 about 15 feet with two walls between

11:59 rabeeh what kind of walls? concrete or wood?

11:59 cbxbiker61 dry-wall

12:00 cbxbiker61 Link Quality=100/100 Signal level=81/100 Noise level=0/100

12:02 cbxbiker61 it's a shame the 300mbit adapter locks up, since that has a dual antenna config

12:02 cbxbiker61 if i get some time i may have to try to debug the 300mbit lockup

12:04 rabeeh which kernel?

12:04 cbxbiker61 3.10.41

12:04 cbxbiker61 yeah some of those adapters are working much better with later kernels

12:05 cbxbiker61 i think 3.11+ was where things started improving

12:07 cbxbiker61 anyone have a guess when we will have a later kernel with hardware video decode support working?

13:04 gabriel did some of you have updates on delievery status?

13:05 gabriel Did you received some orders? Are still on hold?

14:29 rabeeh gabriel: you can post on the forums under customer support

14:29 gabriel :) I did

14:29 rabeeh Elinor can pick it up

14:29 gabriel Would it be possible to have a daily update about the order status?

14:29 gabriel We are currently building order #1234, last order is #1574, we ship around 25 orders per day.

14:30 gabriel something like that.

14:30 gabriel so you don't receive 50 mails per day asking about the delievery status ;)

16:07 rabeeh gabriel: i'm back

20:56 IanWizard-Cloud Twice now, I've gotten boards to be my media center (XBMC) and both times have been sorely disappointed by them. I'm really considering a cubox, but I don't want to put another $100 in only to get something that can't quite deliver, especially if I'm going to end up having to break down and get something x86 (say it isn't so).

20:59 IanWizard-Cloud So, can anyone attest to it's actual capabilities? Specifically, I'm looking at getting the i2ex, and want to run XBMC (standalone) on debian, and be able to A. watch / rip from my BD drive. and B. watch BD isos. Honestly, I rarely actually watch BD, but I don't want to find myself SOL if I ever should want to.

21:00 IanWizard-Cloud Hopefully someone can tell me if that's reaching or not.

21:09 jnettlet IanWizard-Cloud, I have not done it but I know rabeeh has played back BR rips

21:09 jnettlet as far as ripping the media. I can't help you there.

21:10 IanWizard-Cloud jnettlet: well, I'll do that with a nice script over ssh or some such.

21:10 IanWizard-Cloud My only real concern is in it's ability to play it.

21:10 jnettlet IanWizard-Cloud, via a usb player?

21:11 IanWizard-Cloud jnettlet: I have a 2TB drive I keep it all on.

21:11 IanWizard-Cloud as well, a usb BD drive.

21:11 rabeeh IanWizard-Cloud: CuBox is the little computer that can :)

21:11 rabeeh if you want Debian and xbmc then look at Xbian

21:11 IanWizard-Cloud Usually, I'll rip it to ISO on the drive, for later playback. But I may want to watch something from disk on occasion (rentals or what not).

21:13 IanWizard-Cloud rabeeh: yeah, I saw that. I had it on my RPi, and it worked, as long as you didn't want to do anything :P I eventually just used omxplayer over ssh on my RPi.

21:14 jnettlet IanWizard-Cloud, you can't even compare the performance of the CBi to a Rpi. Even the lowest end CBi is way more capable

21:14 IanWizard-Cloud Eventually, I got a Cubieboard2, which actually ran everything quite well. But has it's own set of issues :/

21:14 jnettlet yeah it is an allwinner soc :-)

21:16 dv_ when I tried geexbox with the cubox-i it was running pretty well

21:16 dv_ but xbmc itself was somewhat unstable

21:16 dv_ perhaps I picked the wrong release back then

21:16 IanWizard-Cloud jnettlet: no, I'm not. I made the mistake of getting the RPi (my first of the form factor), without really researching at all. Then I made the mistake of the cubieboard, because people seemed to be running xbmc pretty well, so I chose to get it despite the allwinner stigma. I don't really trust myself at this point.

21:19 jnettlet IanWizard-Cloud, the MX6 has one of the strongest dev communities, and not just a bunch of hobbyists like the Pi. SolidRun has definitely built the core of this community around their products.

21:19 mhoney whats wrong with allwinner? I love my cubietruck as well as my cbi4

22:19 cbxbiker61 just to chime in a bit on how well the cubox-i is working with xbmc, it is working very well...blu-ray rips play flawlessly (keeping in mind you need a data connection that can handle the bitrate)

22:21 cbxbiker61 1080i 60fps currently seems to be weak, it's dropping frames and doing somewhere between 35-45 fps, i'm pretty sure we'll get this fixed

22:23 cbxbiker61 dts-hd and true-hd support is being worked on, and will get fixed

22:27 cbxbiker61 https://github.com/xbmc-imx6/xbmc/issues/68 is a thread on current state of dts-hd and true-hd

22:27 dv_ the cubox-i definitely has the power to show 1080p30

22:28 dv_ its really a software problem

22:28 cbxbiker61 yes, i agree

22:28 cbxbiker61 it's the 60fps that's throwing it off currently

22:28 dv_ 1080i60 might be possible

22:28 dv_ 1080p60 isnt

22:29 dv_ that goes beyond what the VPU can handle in terms of bandwidth

22:29 dv_ but then again, few videos like that exist

22:30 cbxbiker61 some over the air broadcasts in US

22:31 cbxbiker61 for me that mean live streaming OTA for two or three channels

22:32 cbxbiker61 it would be cool if we could get xbmc to send the 1080i signal to the TV and let the TV handle de-interlace

22:32 dv_ the IPU can also deinterlace

22:33 cbxbiker61 yes, but i think we end up with 1080p-60fps which is too much

22:35 dv_ for the VPU it would be

22:35 dv_ but perhaps the rest of the system can handle it

22:37 cbxbiker61 maybe an idea would be to set the default video mode for xbmc to 1080p@30, and use advancedsettings.xml to do an override so it doesn't try to change video mode to 1080p@60

22:40 cbxbiker61 https://community.freescale.com/docs/DOC-93587 a doc on performance testing imx6

22:42 cbxbiker61 it looks as if the vpu is on the ragged edge of supporting 60fps

22:47 cbxbiker61 i think the imx xbmc code needs a bit of improvement in the buffering of video frames, but i've only looked at it briefly, i'll look at it a bit more carefully when i get a chance.

08:09	IanWizard-Cloud	Does anyone have some internal pics of the cubox? (i4 preferably). Or know where some reside? Google didn't turn anything up.
08:14	wbx	IanWizard-Cloud: i have one on my iphone ;)
08:15	IanWizard-Cloud	wbx: I'm in no rush, but if you have the chance, I'd be interested to see it :)
08:15	wbx	IanWizard-Cloud: anything special you want to see?
08:16	IanWizard-Cloud	wbx: what makes you think I'm not just looking for some pcb pron? :P
08:16	IanWizard-Cloud	I'm specifically curious to see the wifi/bt chip
08:17	wbx	http://openadk.org/cubox/
08:18	wbx	i have not disassembled the three boards.
08:19	wbx	IanWizard-Cloud: i think the wifi is in the middle.
08:25	IanWizard-Cloud	wbx: do you know if it's on it's own board? (separate from everything else, not from bt)
08:26	wbx	http://imx.solid-run.com/wiki/index.php?title=HummingBoard_Hardware
08:26	wbx	IanWizard-Cloud: i think it is similar to this one. it is on the microsom
08:29	jnettlet	sorry guys late to the party. What do you want to know about the Hummingboard?
09:26	IanWizard-Cloud	jnettlet: I was curious how "embedded" the wifi/bt are, or if they're a separate chip.
09:34	jnettlet	IanWizard-Cloud, the wifi chip is on the microsom, but not part of the SOC
09:34	jnettlet	the iMX6D microsom now comes without wifi on board
11:32	rabeeh	IanWizard-Cloud: wifi/bt is based on brcm4330 chip
11:37	cbxbiker61	rabeeh, i haven't been having good luck with usb 300mbit adapters, i really wanted ath9k since there drivers are robust
11:38	cbxbiker61	the rtl 300mbits seem to lockup, although i have an rtl 150mbit that seems rock solid
11:39	cbxbiker61	150mbit is just on the edge of maybe kinda works for high bitrate video, whereas 300mbit handles it fine
11:41	jnettlet	cbxbiker61, what sort of real world throughput are you getting?
11:43	cbxbiker61	i haven't really checked too thoroughly, the internal was doing pretty much what i'd expect for it's spec, and the 150 does better, 300 did great but again the realtek 300mbit i have locks up
11:46	cbxbiker61	i have the 150mbit connected now, and it's linked to the router at 150mbit, so it should run close to it's max
11:47	cbxbiker61	the shame is that the 150mbit and the 300mbit use the same driver, but with different results
11:48	rabeeh	cbxbiker61: can u run iperf on your setup?
11:48	rabeeh	or any other tcp based benchmark?
11:48	cbxbiker61	sure
11:53	cbxbiker61	[ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 45.1 MBytes 37.8 Mbits/sec
11:54	rabeeh	that's the 150?
11:54	rabeeh	and is it upload or download?
11:55	cbxbiker61	yeah, seems kinda low, that's with the cubox-i as client
11:55	rabeeh	ok; so it's uploading then
11:55	cbxbiker61	0.0-10.1 sec 54.2 MBytes 45.2 Mbits/sec
11:55	cbxbiker61	is the opposite direction
11:55	jnettlet	cbxbiker61, could you dump the iw info as well?
11:56	rabeeh	cbxbiker61: can u send link for the exact model of the 150?
11:57	rabeeh	i'm interested in seeing the antenna specs
11:57	cbxbiker61	Edimax Technology Co., Ltd EW-7811Un 802.11n Wireless Adapter [Realtek RTL8188CUS]
11:57	cbxbiker61	that's a micro usb plug, super small
11:57	cbxbiker61	very convenient but not much of an antenna
11:58	jnettlet	yeah I have one here. Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188CUS 802.11n WLAN Adapter
11:58	rabeeh	and how far are CBi from the AP?
11:58	rabeeh	s/are/is
11:59	cbxbiker61	about 15 feet with two walls between
11:59	rabeeh	what kind of walls? concrete or wood?
11:59	cbxbiker61	dry-wall
12:00	cbxbiker61	Link Quality=100/100 Signal level=81/100 Noise level=0/100
12:02	cbxbiker61	it's a shame the 300mbit adapter locks up, since that has a dual antenna config
12:02	cbxbiker61	if i get some time i may have to try to debug the 300mbit lockup
12:04	rabeeh	which kernel?
12:04	cbxbiker61	3.10.41
12:04	cbxbiker61	yeah some of those adapters are working much better with later kernels
12:05	cbxbiker61	i think 3.11+ was where things started improving
12:07	cbxbiker61	anyone have a guess when we will have a later kernel with hardware video decode support working?
13:04	gabriel	did some of you have updates on delievery status?
13:05	gabriel	Did you received some orders? Are still on hold?
14:29	rabeeh	gabriel: you can post on the forums under customer support
14:29	gabriel	:) I did
14:29	rabeeh	Elinor can pick it up
14:29	gabriel	Would it be possible to have a daily update about the order status?
14:29	gabriel	We are currently building order #1234, last order is #1574, we ship around 25 orders per day.
14:30	gabriel	something like that.
14:30	gabriel	so you don't receive 50 mails per day asking about the delievery status ;)
16:07	rabeeh	gabriel: i'm back
20:56	IanWizard-Cloud	Twice now, I've gotten boards to be my media center (XBMC) and both times have been sorely disappointed by them. I'm really considering a cubox, but I don't want to put another $100 in only to get something that can't quite deliver, especially if I'm going to end up having to break down and get something x86 (say it isn't so).
20:59	IanWizard-Cloud	So, can anyone attest to it's actual capabilities? Specifically, I'm looking at getting the i2ex, and want to run XBMC (standalone) on debian, and be able to A. watch / rip from my BD drive. and B. watch BD isos. Honestly, I rarely actually watch BD, but I don't want to find myself SOL if I ever should want to.
21:00	IanWizard-Cloud	Hopefully someone can tell me if that's reaching or not.
21:09	jnettlet	IanWizard-Cloud, I have not done it but I know rabeeh has played back BR rips
21:09	jnettlet	as far as ripping the media. I can't help you there.
21:10	IanWizard-Cloud	jnettlet: well, I'll do that with a nice script over ssh or some such.
21:10	IanWizard-Cloud	My only real concern is in it's ability to play it.
21:10	jnettlet	IanWizard-Cloud, via a usb player?
21:11	IanWizard-Cloud	jnettlet: I have a 2TB drive I keep it all on.
21:11	IanWizard-Cloud	as well, a usb BD drive.
21:11	rabeeh	IanWizard-Cloud: CuBox is the little computer that can :)
21:11	rabeeh	if you want Debian and xbmc then look at Xbian
21:11	IanWizard-Cloud	Usually, I'll rip it to ISO on the drive, for later playback. But I may want to watch something from disk on occasion (rentals or what not).
21:13	IanWizard-Cloud	rabeeh: yeah, I saw that. I had it on my RPi, and it worked, as long as you didn't want to do anything :P I eventually just used omxplayer over ssh on my RPi.
21:14	jnettlet	IanWizard-Cloud, you can't even compare the performance of the CBi to a Rpi. Even the lowest end CBi is way more capable
21:14	IanWizard-Cloud	Eventually, I got a Cubieboard2, which actually ran everything quite well. But has it's own set of issues :/
21:14	jnettlet	yeah it is an allwinner soc :-)
21:16	dv_	when I tried geexbox with the cubox-i it was running pretty well
21:16	dv_	but xbmc itself was somewhat unstable
21:16	dv_	perhaps I picked the wrong release back then
21:16	IanWizard-Cloud	jnettlet: no, I'm not. I made the mistake of getting the RPi (my first of the form factor), without really researching at all. Then I made the mistake of the cubieboard, because people seemed to be running xbmc pretty well, so I chose to get it despite the allwinner stigma. I don't really trust myself at this point.
21:19	jnettlet	IanWizard-Cloud, the MX6 has one of the strongest dev communities, and not just a bunch of hobbyists like the Pi. SolidRun has definitely built the core of this community around their products.
21:19	mhoney	whats wrong with allwinner? I love my cubietruck as well as my cbi4
22:19	cbxbiker61	just to chime in a bit on how well the cubox-i is working with xbmc, it is working very well...blu-ray rips play flawlessly (keeping in mind you need a data connection that can handle the bitrate)
22:21	cbxbiker61	1080i 60fps currently seems to be weak, it's dropping frames and doing somewhere between 35-45 fps, i'm pretty sure we'll get this fixed
22:23	cbxbiker61	dts-hd and true-hd support is being worked on, and will get fixed
22:27	cbxbiker61	https://github.com/xbmc-imx6/xbmc/issues/68 is a thread on current state of dts-hd and true-hd
22:27	dv_	the cubox-i definitely has the power to show 1080p30
22:28	dv_	its really a software problem
22:28	cbxbiker61	yes, i agree
22:28	cbxbiker61	it's the 60fps that's throwing it off currently
22:28	dv_	1080i60 might be possible
22:28	dv_	1080p60 isnt
22:29	dv_	that goes beyond what the VPU can handle in terms of bandwidth
22:29	dv_	but then again, few videos like that exist
22:30	cbxbiker61	some over the air broadcasts in US
22:31	cbxbiker61	for me that mean live streaming OTA for two or three channels
22:32	cbxbiker61	it would be cool if we could get xbmc to send the 1080i signal to the TV and let the TV handle de-interlace
22:32	dv_	the IPU can also deinterlace
22:33	cbxbiker61	yes, but i think we end up with 1080p-60fps which is too much
22:35	dv_	for the VPU it would be
22:35	dv_	but perhaps the rest of the system can handle it
22:37	cbxbiker61	maybe an idea would be to set the default video mode for xbmc to 1080p@30, and use advancedsettings.xml to do an override so it doesn't try to change video mode to 1080p@60
22:40	cbxbiker61	https://community.freescale.com/docs/DOC-93587 a doc on performance testing imx6
22:42	cbxbiker61	it looks as if the vpu is on the ragged edge of supporting 60fps
22:47	cbxbiker61	i think the imx xbmc code needs a bit of improvement in the buffering of video frames, but i've only looked at it briefly, i'll look at it a bit more carefully when i get a chance.