Is there any way to install gapps on stock Android?
Introduce the Radxa Zero
Hi @chewitt
Can you confirm whether or not the USB-3.0 port on this board will be able to function in DEVICE role? I’m mainly interested in this board for GUD https://github.com/notro/gud/wiki
The USB 3.0 can not work in device mode, the USB 2.0(with power) can.
Thanks, that’s too bad. Makes it useless to me since I can get the same performance out of a $5 pi0, which is also easier to acquire.
Actually its likely not as the CPU on a zero is approx < 1:10 of the Radxa, but yeah its such a shame with a cpu such as this dongle mode is limited to usb 2 and a bottleneck.
I guess it had to be one way or the other and whilst not a dongle is power so making the other port usb3 probably does make sense, but a shame for dongle users.
@jack is it possible to have a dongle version that usb3.0 can work in device mode?
For anyone else struggling to get the radxa zero into usb mode (on Windows 10 specifically), make sure you are holding the USB boot button BEFORE you plug it in to your computer. Essentially, you need to be holding that USB boot button as it powers on.
If you try to plug it in, then hold the USB boot button, it won’t work.
Took me a while to figure out what i was doing wrong.
After you get that working, follow all the steps on this page to erase the eMMC: link
One thing to note: on the page above explaining how to erase the eMMC, they left out the final and most important step:
- download the rz-udisk-loader.bin file from here
- Use the RZ USB boot helper program to load that file on to the radxa zero.
- after doing that, your radxa zero will show up as a USB storage device.
- You will also probably need to format the radxa zero’s USB storage device like I did (fat32).
After you’ve successfully erased the eMMC and got it to show up as a USB storage device, simply use Etcher or win32diskimager to flash an image to it.
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Hi! I had the exact same question so I gave it a try. I have TwisterOS installed on the internal eMMC. I inserted a 256GB microSD card and booted it up. When it booted it looked like the kernel hung for a while but then it dropped me into the desktop but the mouse was frozen. So I think the short answer is ‘no,’ it won’t work. I suspect the S005Y2, or some other component involved in addressing attached storage, can only address 128GB, which is why that’s the largest storage option available. I’d love to hear someone from Radxa give us a better explanation, though! 
Oh! And edited just to add the answer to another question I had before ordering the board! If you order the model without headers, it’s more than capable of communicating via wifi without adding a uFL antenna. I ordered a couple uFL antennas when I ordered the board but haven’t even bothered attaching them!
I gave it a try with the Android image, and the 256gb microsd is recognized and seems to be working fine. Perhaps there is something else that causes this freeze?
Hello, dear mr. Jack. Are there any news about the GPIO access? Have you added the libmraa support for Radxa Zero? Best regards, your client Marlon
Given the latest video by Jeff Geerling where he presented a comparison table showing “Pi Zero [2 W] competitors” while stating that they all are “prone to throttling due to heat” (my summary, not exactly his words), I’d very much like to see a proper stress test – including overclocking, if feasible – between the Radxa Zero and, say, its newest competitor with respect to I/O throughput, CPU performance, resulting temperature and power consumption (both with and without active cooling). Any takers? 
Even Jeff is full of BS, he got this right. Under normal conditions it throttles all the time. Ofc you don’t see that, since this is controlled outside Linux. Similar to Raspberry Pi.
DIY
Thanks for the link, both the explanation and results of this benchmark (see Results.md) are a good start, though this does not cover overall temperatures/power consumption.
EDIT: Temperatures are shown as part of the benchmark, they’re just not part of the above table.
They are not like for like as if I remember correctly the S905Y is 12nm whilst the Zero2 is a Pi3 with Ram on the top and presume there is no change from 24nm.
Hence why the Radxa Zero can easily clock 2.0Ghz and with a modest heatsink whilst a Pi3 would never really get above 1.5Ghz.
With the extra heat barrier of the ontop ram chip the Zero2 max is approx 1.3Ghz.
Both will throttle as that is the way Arm chips work by setpoints in the DTS.
I am not really a fan of Armbian but the unofficial unsupported image we have for the Radxa Zero has put them in the spare parts box for me.
I ordered a Zero2 as my fave Raspberry board of the Pi3A+ makes no sense anymore as the difference is negligible and you get that great Zero form factor that does have CSI & DPI.
Its strange as like the Pi4 with the RK3399 is almost as if Raspberry have Radxa in their cross hairs, but because of PiOS and the ecosystem the Radxa Zero doesn’t hold much interest for me at least any more.
Because the $25 Pi3A+ really doesn’t make much sense over the $15 Zero2 I am wondering if there is a Pi4A+ in the making.
As for benchmarks the Radxa Zero @2.0ghz will beat the Zero2 hands down as in benches its nearer a Pi4 than Pi3, the mem speed of the 512mb of the Zero2 is a bit mweh.
The Zero2 with the raspberry eco-system of software and hardware as said for me has Radxa Zero beat apart from the GPU (mem as said) as VC4 I think sucks to what is a better supported more standard Mali G31 MP2 (Wish raspberry would drop them but hey).
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I can’t wait for the once mentioned Radxa Zero Plus, with a CSI connector for a camera.
Could you imagine a Radxa Zero Plus complete with the Amlogic A311D (or A311D2) CPU? Now that would be a dream come true. You might even say it would “ROCK” the industry.
I’ve come up with the name: “Radxa Rock Zero” for it.
I have the 1GB version, how do I flash Android 9 the the SD card so it can boot from it?
The link you posted is broken
Thanks
Hi, where can I get hold of one?
[Buy - Radxa Wiki] (https://wiki.radxa.com/Buy)
RADXA Zero — ameriDroid] (https://ameridroid.com/products/radxa-zero)
I would love to port my AudioOS to it, which is based on Buildroot.
Some reference projects on my GitHub at https://github.com/DatanoiseTV
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