Pine64

Introduction

Since 2015 Pine64 has focused on a range of open-source hardware including SBCs (Single-Board Computers), smartphones, and headphones. After a succcessful Kickstarter campaign, which resulted in the Pine A64 SBC released in 2016, Pine64 went on to release Linux laptops Pinebook and Pinebook Pro in 2017 and 2019 respectively, the PinePhone smartphone in 2020, PineTime smartwatch in 2021, and PineTab Linux tablet in 2020, and more. These products are particularly appealing to hobbyists, due to the open-source nature and low cost.

Pine64's official site can be found at:

https://pine64.org/

Read on to learn about the various Pine64 products I have experienced.

Note: the images on this page can be downloaded from the bottom of the page for better viewing.

You can email me at james.boshikoopa@gmail.com

Pine A64

Introduction

You can view an introduction to the Pine A64 by watching the following video:

Note: since the Pine A64 was Pine64's first product some people call the A64 simply Pine64.

The official Pine A64 page can be found at:

https://pine64.org/devices/pine_a64/

Here is a Pine A64 unboxing:

The original Pine A64 SBC, the so-called 'BASIC' version, features 512MB RAM and includes a 10/100Mbps ethernet port, and originally sold for $15 when released in 2016, funded through a Kickstarter, although initially there were shipping delays. It features an Allwinner A64 SoC quad-core ARM Cortex A53 64-bit CPU with floating point running at 1.2Ghz, and a dual-core MALI-400 MP2 GPU running at 500MHz. The intention was that the Pine A64 would compete with the ever popular Raspberry Pi, considering the Raspberry Pi 3 was released in 2016 which had a somewhat similar spec but with more RAM and at a higher launch price the A64 was certainly appealing.

An improved version of the Pine A64, the A64+, followed the original model, the A64+ has either 1GB which sold for $19, or 2GB RAM, which sold for $29, as well as a gigabit ethernet port instead of the 100Mbps ethernet port of the original model, and additionally to the original version a camera port, LCD panel display port, and touch control port. In 2017 a 'Long Term Supply' (LTS) version, the Pine A64/A64+ LTS, was released for $39, guaranteed to be available until the year 2025, and with the added feature of support for an eMMC module (replacing the micro SD card slot location in previous versions, the micro SD card slot now moved to the PCB underside), an improved ethernet gigabit chip (YT8511C), and the micro USB connector has been replaced with a barrel type connector.

The Pine A64 is about twice the size of a regular size Raspberry Pi, measures 127mm x 79mm x 21mm, weighs 46 grams, and has a mounting hole in each corner. The following description is for the original Pine A64+, but will be similar to the original A64 except for the connectors its lacks:

Along one of the short edges you will find full size HDMI, ethernet, and micro USB (for power) connectors, and along the other short edge there is headphone + mic socket, IR (3-way female) connector, x2 unpopulated LED connections (charge and 'system' - general purpose), x2 unpopulated power and reset switch connections, and x2 vertically stacked USB 2 full size connectors (for peripherals). One of the long edges is home to DSI (Display Serial Interface) connector, Euler bus (2x17 male header) for expansion, EXP (2x5 male header) for expansion, micro SD socket (spring loaded) to load the Operating System as well as general purpose storage. As for the other long edge there is RTC Real-Time Clock backup battery (2-pin male connector), VBAT battery pack (3-pin male connector), PI-2- bus (2x20 male header), CSI (Camera Serial Interface) connector, and TP T(ouch Panel) connector.

On the top side of the board there is additionally red power LED, a Wi-Fi/BT expansion connector (consisting of x1 2x7 and x1 2x8 male headers), and BAT/DC 5V headers with shunt.

Near the PI-2-bus it has written on my board:

A64-DB-Rev B

2016-02-24

The writing will vary depending on what version you have.

Near the micro SD socket you will find the Pine64 logo.

Some components of interest:

AXP803 PMIC (Power Management Integrated Circuit)

A64 SoC

X2 K4B4G16460-HYK0 512MB DRAM

RTL8211E 10/100/1000M ETHERNET TRANSCEIVER

On the PCB underside it has written:

Designed in Silicon Valley, California.

Built in Silicon Delta, China.

There's a sticker with the serial number, and a second sticker, which on my board says:

201-A64DB110-01

A64-DB-V1.1 1G

So it's clear the board I have is the Pine A64+ 1GB version, which is useful to run a graphical O/S, which we will look at in the following sections.

To power the Pine A64 you will need a 5V power supply delivering at least 2A but I would recommend to use at least 2.5A, a suitable phone charger and micro USB lead, or a Raspberry Pi power supply that delivers enough current should be suitable.

Of course, to use the board you need to run an operating system, which you can find downloads for the many available at:

https://wiki.pine64.org/index.php/Pine_A64_Software_Release

For the price the Pine A64 packs a lot in with in particular a lot of GPIO and expansion options as well as decent thermals - the board can be run without a heatsink as long as you don’t continually stress it. Understandably, the low price explains the lack of wireless built-in although it’s easy and cheap to add a USB Wi-Fi or BT dongle, or use a wireless add-on module.

You may want to read the following sections to learn more about the O/S's I tried out.

DietPi

Please note that I used a Pine A64+ 1GB model and SanDisk Ultra 32GB class 10 micro SD card.

To test out the Pine A64 further I wanted to run some form of Linux and came across the Pine64 installer, which I thought would make the process easier. There is a video showing how to use the installer:

The GitHub page can be found at:

https://github.com/pine64dev/pine64-installer

I clicked on ‘Latest Version’ under Download, which takes you to the downloads page, the most recent was v2.0.0-beta.3 from Sep 2017. Since I'm on Windows I downloaded pine64-installer-2.0.0-beta.3-win32-x86.exe, which supports Win7 and later. I then ran the downloaded file, which installs the PINE64 Installer and once installed it gives you the option to run the PINE64 Installer.

I clicked on ‘Choose an OS’ button and it pops up with a window to select a board but there were no options. So I closed the app and then went to:

https://github.com/pine64dev/PINE64-Installer/releases

And tried:

v2.0.0-beta.2

You have to expand Assets to get to the files. I uninstalled the v2.0.0-beta.3 Pine64 Installer and then installed the v2.0.0-beta.2 version I had just downloaded. When I ran that version it came up with an error immediately and when I tried to select an OS an error popped up that said it was ‘Unable to fetch data from internet’. So I uninstalled that version. I was using Windows 11 so perhaps there's an issue with 11, however, I also tried v2.0.0-beta.3 on Windows 10 and it had the same issue in not being able to select the board. Running as admin didn't make a difference.

Next, I looked at the software releases on the Pine64 wiki:

https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/PINE_A64_Software_Releases

I clicked on 'Debian 11 Bullseye' under DietPi and then extracted using 7-Zip, which resulted in a .img file. To write the O/S to an SD card I used Raspberry Pi Imager (v1.8.4), for ‘Raspberry pi Device’ I left as ‘NO FILTERING’ (the selection changes was operating systems can be selected but isn't meaningful since I used the downloaded image), for Operating System I chose ‘Use custom’ and then selected the DietPi image file, and for Storage I picked the SD card. Then i clicked the NEXT button and when it asked ‘Would you like to apply OS customisation settings?’ I clicked ‘NO’. Lastly, I confirmed that I was happy for the device to be erased. That took about 2 mins - If Windows asks you to format the SD card ignore it, it’s likely seeing a partition it doesn't recognise.

To power the Pine A64 it is recommended to use a 5V 2A or higher current power supply but from comments online it would appear 2.5A should be the minimum, I used a 3A Xiaomi phone charger, as that was what I happened to have at hand. As soon as the power is applied the red power LED on the A64 lit and after about 13 seconds I saw scrolling text on the screen, as typical for Linux when booting.

At around 50 seconds total the 'Debian GNU/Linux 11 DietPi ttyl' screen appeared, which has the board's IP address displayed and gives the login details as root/dietpi. So I pressed enter, inputted root for login then dietpi for password (you wont see the password as you type).

It then checked for a DietPi update, however, it failed and I was taken to the DietPi-Update screen, giving options to retry, access network settings, etc. I went to Network Settings (you use arrow keys to navigate the menu, enter to select) and it showed Ethernet as ‘available’ and ‘connected’. I went down to the Test option to run an internet connection test, which has a default URL of https://dietpi.com/ but it can be changed. I went on OK and pressed enter, it returned to previous screen automatically and Test showed as ‘Success’ and ‘online’

Looking online it would appear the issue was with IPV6 and the solution was to disable. On the DietPi-Update screen I moved down to the option to Disable IPV6 and pressed enter. It then did the update, which took almost 5 minutes, I was then taken to a number of screens one after the other to select keyboard options, change global software password for DietPi-Software installs (which I declined), disable serial/UART console (I kept it enabled). Next, on the DietPi-Software screen it has options for viewing online guides, DietPi configuration, search software, etc.

Selecting DietPi-Config there are display, audio, performance, advanced options, etc. Selecting Display Resolution under Display option results in ‘This option is not available for PINE A64 (aarch64)’. Moving to Audio options, I pressed enter on 'Enable: Install ALSA to enable audio capabilities'. After it had installed, there were now a number of options including sound card, which was [none], so I pressed enter and it listed usb-dac, hw:0,0 and hw:1,0. I selected the last option since the full name mentions HDMI, so likely that would be sound through the TV.

The Tools option gives benchmarks and stress tests, I went on the benchmarks option and on the next screen selected DietPi-Benchmark, which benchmarks CPU, RAM and I/O. I pressed enter on OK on the following screen, the test took 47 seconds and the results were:

CPU performance: Duration=16.76 seconds (lower is faster)

CPU temps: Idle=35 deg C | Full load=76 deg C

RootFS I/O: Write=8 MiB/s | Read=22 MiB/s

RAM I/O: Write=397 MiB/s | Read=679 MiB/s

A URL is given to compare results:

https://dietpi.com/survey#benchmark

At the time of checking, Pine A64 was 45th place on the CPU tests, but it was above the Raspberry Pi 3, which came out a year after the A64, beating it on average by 5 seconds. Comparing the CPU temperature is a bit tricky as you don't know what cooling (if any) was used. The RAM I/O test showed the A64 at 39th place, beating the Raspberry Pi 4 (released in 2019) on average by 16 MiB/s on write but losing on average by 135 MiB/s on read. As for RootFS I/O test, the A64 was 50th place, tied with the Raspberry Pi 3 on average write, but the A64 was just 1 MiB/s slower on average than the Raspberry Pi 3 for the write. However, we do have to take in account the difference SD card speed can make but it does give a good indication of potential performance.

Back to the DietPi-Software menu I went on Browse Software and selected software to install by using the space bar, I chose the following:

LXDE (ultra lightweight desktop)

Tiger VNC Server (remote connection)

Amiberry (optimised Amiga emulator)

Netdata (real time performance monitoring)

DietPi-Dashboard (DietPi web interface)

MC (Midnight Commander file manager)

Python 3 (development)

Chromium (web browser)

After making selections I pressed enter and selected Install, it took about 14 minutes and then the DietPi-Software screen appeared asking whether to install the Stable or Nightly version of DietPi-Dashboard, I selected Stable, then it asked whether I wanted to install only the backend, I selected No.

After almost 5 minutes of installing the remaining software, I was taken to the DietPi Survey page, I selected to opt out. Then I was taken to the CLI with various information displayed above, including device model, CPU temp (which was 43 deg. C), and LAN IP address. It also listed:

dietPi-launcher All DietPi programs in one place

dietPi-config Configuration tool

htop Resource monitor

cpu shows cpu info and stats

At the root@DietPi prompt I issued the cpu command, which in summary responded with:

Architecture aarch64

Temperature 40 deg C

Governor Schedutil

CPU0 - CPU3 current frequency 960MHz

I then entered dietPi-launcher, which gives a screen with options to install software, configure, etc. I went on DietPi-AutoStart, it was set to Manual login under local terminal, I selected 'LightDM login mask' under Desktops, pressed enter, then exited dietPi-launcher. Back in the CLI I then restarted using:

sudo shutdown -r now

At about 46 seconds from issuing the reboot command the login screen appeared. I entered root as username, dietpi for password. After it had logged in it only took a few seconds for the desktop to appear (I don't know why they used such creepy wallpaper). It's a very minimal interface with large icons. All the programs can be accessed from the icon at the bottom left of the screen, as well as the few shortcuts on the desktop. As I moved about the mouse I did notice some slight flicker of the mouse pointer at times before even opening any programs.

Chromium took 20 seconds to fully load but navigating to Google it loaded almost instantly. Youtube took 22 seconds for the page to fully load. Of course, this kind of performance is expected on an SBC. I searched on Youtube for ‘4K’ and selected a video, it took 20 secondss before the video (well, advert) began to play. Resolution was automatically set to 360p, there were quite a few frames dropped but the video played smoothly. However, when I put the video in full screen the frame rate dropped dramatically with frames dropped much quicker. I didn't try a higher resolution even windowed.

The sound played through the TV speakers, plugging a headset into the Pine A64 didn't automatically play through the headset. I thought I could play the sound through the headset by doing the following:

System Tools->DietPi-Config

Select Audio Options

Select Sound card and change to hw:0,0

However, it wouldn't play through the headset even if closed and reopened Chromium. I did also try to configure Linux to add the volume control icon in case that would let me choose the audio output but it wouldn't add the control.

Even after playing videos the CPU temperature was 56 deg. C, considering there was no cooling involved (heatsink or fan) I'm quite impressed. At idle the temperature was around 40 deg. C.

I found under Preferences->Monitor Settings you can change the resolution, the default for me was 1024x768 (same as when using Kodi so perhaps the setting was to do with the TV I was using), refresh rate 60. I was able to change the resolution to 1920x1080 no problem.

Next, we'll looking at using the DietPi-Dashboard, which lets you interact with the Pine A64 remotely. First, get the A64's IP address, which you can do simply by opening LXTerminal and LAN IP will be displayed. Enter the IP address into a browser (which can be running on different computer on the same network) followed by :5252. E.g.:

192.168.1.57:5252

Enter the password (the default is dietpi):

You will see System diagnostics and stats, which is shown by default:

This gives a helpful overview of how the Pine A64 is performing in real time.

From the left side you can click on what you want to see, including Processes, Services, Software, etc. If you select Terminal you can issue commands by clicking in the Terminal and typing. You can see I have entered Terminal, started Python, and run the print() command:

The management page has information about the board and lets you shutdown/restart the Pine A64. Unfortunately, when I tried clicking on File Browser, it didn't load and wouldn't respond to trying to access anything else. As recommended online, if the dashboard hangs you can use this Terminal command on the A64:

Systemctl restart dietpi-dashboard

With the dashboard responding again, I explored further. On the Software page can view the installed software on the Pine A64 as well as uinstall and install software. The Services page shows running services, some of which can be stopped/restarted.

The File Browser lets you view files and folders (directories), create a new directory/file, upload files, download files, delete, etc. (you need to click on file/folder for more options to appear on the right). In the following screen I have clicked to show hidden files (I clicked the crossed out eye icon on the right which now isn't crossed out to show that hidden files are being displayed):

If a file doesn't appear in the File Browser after uploading, refresh the page and try again, or close and reopen the dashboard.

A serious limitation I found with the File Browser is that you cannot upload a folder nor multiple files at once. But even uploading just one file often resulted in a 0 byte file being placed on the Pine A64, which was possibly due to the dashboard frequently hanging. Speaking of which, the dashboard hanging has been observed by others according to reports online, which is a shame as the dashboard is - when it's working - a very useful feature.

The last thing to add for testing is that I timed that it took 8 seconds for DietPi to shutdown and 1 minute 30 seconds to reach the log in screen from power on, but note that SD card speed will affect these times.

Although the many configuration options during installing may be overwhelming to some, the high level of customisations of DietPi allows users to have the ‘perfect’ version of Linux for their needs, with the option to install additional software at a later date.

LibreELEC/Kodi

Please note that I used a Pine A64+ 1GB model and SanDisk Ultra 32GB class 10 micro SD card.

If you are interested in mainly watching media on your Pine A64 or want to assess playback performance then Kodi, running on the minimal Linux O/S LibreELEC, is a good option.

The download link I used was:

https://test.libreelec.tv/

I navigated to: 13.0->Allwinner->pine64-plus and downloaded the most recent version (2/5/24) and after downloading I extracted the file. Using Win32 Disk Imager I wrote the extracted image to a 32GB SanDisk micro SD card.

I powered the Pine A64 using a 5V 3A Xiaomi phone charger and the red power LED came on immediately. Within 4 seconds the LibreELEC boot screen appeared. It then resized the SD card partition automatically and rebooted. In total it took 1 minute 16 seconds to completely start up (subsequent boots took 30 seconds) and was presented with a Welcome to LibreELEC window. I plugged in a Raspberry Pi keyboard into one of the A64’s full size USB ports and a Pi mouse into the keyboard. I also plugged an ethernet cable from my router into A64, the ethernet socket’s green LED was blinking and the orange LED occasionally lit.

I continued through the welcome screen, when it got to networking it had detected the wired connection, which it said was online. Once I had gone through the welcome, the main Kodi interface appeared.

I went to System->System Info and saw, in summary:

Free memory: 710MB

Screen resolution: 1024x768@60Hz full screen.

Version info: build 21.0

Two SD card partitions, one 511.7M, other 28.6G.

Video: Mali400

Hardware: BogoMips: 48.00. Hardware: Pine64+ Revision: 0x00000001 CPU speed 648MHz

I tried installing the YouTube add-on:

From the main screen: Add-ons, Install from repository (top right).

All repositories->Video add-ons->YouTube.

Click the Install button then OK.

Then go back to main screen and you will see the YouTube add-on. Open YouTube, on first run the Setup wizard will appear asking if you want to configure settings, which I ran through. As part of the config, for Choose device capabilities I selected '1080p/30 fps or 720p/30 fps, H.264 only'.

Once the config was done then you will have a menu for signing in, access subscriptions, etc.. I went to search, then clicked New search, entered text 4K and clicked OK. But I got a forbidden error: The caller does not have permission. This, it turns out, is because you need to create an API key, you can follow a tutorial at:

https://www.firesticktricks.com/create-youtube-api-key.html

When it came to the 'How to Set Up API Key, Client ID, and Secret on Kodi' section, to get to the YouTube settings I did:

Launched YouTube add-on.

Clicked Options bottom-left.

Clicked Add-on settings.

After entering the key, ID and secret I was now able to do searches - note that I wasn't signed into YouTube. However, whenever I tried to load a video I got error: 'Add-on couldn't be loaded. An unknow error has occurred'. Rebooting didn't help.

I gave up on YouTube, although it would have been good to see the performance, which was my primary aim. I installed the Dailymotion add-on, when you launch it there are some settings to configure:

I changed Maximum Resolution to HD.

I then did a search from Dailymotion's main menu, search for 4K returned no results but ulta HD worked (not that I'm expecting to 4K to work). I double clicked one of the results - the video played smoothly at decent resolution (it looked HD) and frame rate, and audio played through HDMI. I couldn't see a way to change the resolution.

Plugging in a headset to the Pine A64 didn't play audio through it. To get it working I went to Settings->System->Audio and clicked 'Audio output device'. I then picked 'ALSA: sun50i-a64-audio'. While not playing a video there was loud 'static' from the headset but when the video was playing the static went away. Overall I was pleased with the video playback using Dailymotion and at least it worked unlike the YouTube add-on. Of course there are lots of other add-ons that can be installed, and media can be played straight from the A64 rather than just over the network.

To shutdown: click the power button top-left of the main screen, then click 'Power off system', which took 12 seconds.

For those interested in media playback rather than a full blown desktop experience, Kodi via LibreELEC transforms the A64 into a very capable media centre and potentially gives the best media playback experience for the hardware.

GPIO

Like many of the other SBCs (Raspberry Pi, etc.), the Pine A64 has lots of GPIO (General-Purpose Input/Output) pins available for general use through the expansion ports, which can be used by add-on modules or for your own circuits, and controlled by software. The main two GPIO connectors are the Pi-2 header, which is compatible with the Raspberry Pi 2 (but of course can be used for general use), and the Euler header which provides additional GPIO.

I thought it would be straightforward to get the GPIO working but that wasn't the case for me. Note that this was done using DietPi - please see the DietPi section for installation, etc.

For accessing GPIO from Python on the Pine A64 I came across RPi.GPIO-PineA64:

https://github.com/swkim01/RPi.GPIO-PineA64

Which, as you can tell from the name, is based on the Raspberry Pi GPIO module.

This is what I did to install:

On Windows I downloaded the ZIP for RPi.GPIO-PineA64 and I also downloaded the recommended scripts from:

https://github.com/JCTRoth/Shell_Script_Utilities/tree/master/Program_Setups/Pine64_GPIO_Setup

Note: the correct way to download each script on GitHub is to click on the script then click on Download raw file, repeat for the other script.

Of course this can be done from within DietPi (or whatever O/S you are using) but I thought it would be convenient to use Windows and then transfer the files using the DietPi dashboard but the dashboard proved too unreliable, so I ended up using a flash drive and copying the scripts and the extracted version of RPi.GPIO-PineA64-Python3-master.

Then I had the issue that the flash drive didn't show up in DietPi despite auto mount drives being enabled in the PCManFM File Manager (System Tools->File Manager PCManFM). So I did the following in LXTerminal:

mkdir /media/usb-drive

mount /dev/sda1 /media/usb-drive/

cp -r /media/usb-drive/RPi.GPIO-PineA64-Python3-master/ ./

Which copies the RPi.GPIO-PineA64-Python3-master folder from the mounted flash drive to the root of the Pine’s file system.

Which mounts the flash drive and copies RPi.GPIO-PineA64-Python3-master from the flash drive to the root of the Pine A64 file system. .

Note that I had already transferred the two scripts to the Pine A64 via the DietPi dashboard File Browser.

Of course if you download the required files within Linux on the Pine A64 you can use unzip or 7zip to extract RPi.GPIO-PineA64-Python3-master.

Now the files have been copied over, in LXTerminal we need to navigate to where setup.py (in RPi.GPIO-PineA64-Python3-master) is stored using cd then do:

sudo python3 setup.py install

Note: since I have python 3 installed I used python3 instead of python.

However, this failed with error: command ‘aarch64-linux-gnu-gcc’ failed: No such file or directory

This is because we need to install gcc:

sudo apt install gcc-aarch64-linux-gnu

After installing, can confirm gcc was installed with:

gcc –version

Then can do:

sudo python3 setup.py install

There were a lot of warnings, which I think is normal.

Then, using cd to move to the test folder in RPi.GPIO-PineA64-Python3-master, we can run test.py:

sudo python3 test.py

However I got error ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘RPi’

Looking at the two scripts it looks like what I should have done was just run Install_GPIO_Libs_Pine64.sh since it calls Prepare_Hardware_Access.sh, and there's no need to run setup.py directly, like we did earlier.

In LXTerminal we can cd to where scripts are stored then do:

bash Install_GPIO_Libs_Pine64.sh

The script actually clones the GitHub page and runs setup.py then test.py, so I now realised I didn't even need to download anything but that one script. However, even after running the script I still got the error saying there was no RPi module error, which is odd as the script installs rpi.gpio-common which from my understanding installs the RPi module.

I tried as an alternative to get the missing module installed:

sudo apt-get install python3-rpi.gpio

But after, when I ran test.py, it complained that it can only be run on a Raspberry Pi. At this point I gave up but will try again in future when I try a ‘fuller’ version of Linux.

Looking online again I came across a GPIO library written in C++:

https://github.com/databit/Pine64-CPP

So I cloned the GitHub using LXTerminal :

git clone https://github.com/databit/Pine64-CPP.git

Then I moved to the downloaded directory:

cd pine64-cpp

Since the C++ code needs to be compiled, I installed g++ using:

sudo apt install g++

And also installed make to automate things:

sudo apt install make

Before running make I connected an LED with series limiting resistor (I used 1.2K), with the anode end connected to GPIO 18 (pin 12 of the PI-2 bus) and cathode end connected to pin 6 of the PI-2 bus. You can see the GPIO at:

https://files.pine64.org/doc/Pine%20A64%20Schematic/Pine%20A64%20Pin%20Assignment%20160119.pdf

After connecting the LED I did:

make

You will then see the example program running:

Turn Led ON

Turn Led OFF

As the LED turns on/off, press ctrl-C to if you want to stop before it turns the LED on/off 20 times.

So while I was not successful using Python to control GPIO at least the C++ code works, of which the test program demonstrates it's working. Of course you can write your own code using the library to do more advanced GPIO control than what the example program provides.