Replaced radxa 5b: little by little

#1

Hi all,
my previous radxa 5b was damaged and was replaced by a new one from mine reseller, by the way I cannot trust even myself, since it may be possible I did something wrong even if this didn’t cause previous board failure.

So what I want is to proceed with new one, little by little, one piece/change at time, to avoid what can bring to another malfunction.

The first step I think I would do is:

  • attach emmc with armbian installed
  • connect monitor to hdmi
  • connect ethernet cable to its port
  • connect the original power supply

So I would start it “naked”, is there any fatal downside in this ?

If it works and I’m able to install in it something without it to reboot I would put it inside original metal case.

By the way I accept any kind of suggestion, for me it is important to start in the right way.

Radxa Rock 5B: reboot, what's the reason?
#2

Looks good, board will work without any cooling.
but I would start with radxa system OS on SD card if You have any available. eMMC is ok, but it’s usually just easier with sd to test few things and burn several images.
Armbian has many advantages and You can customize several features, but on the other hand all images comes with no warranty and support. Many of them are not stable, some will not boot or require specific version of spi. Before You switch to that just make sure everything is fine with basic, recommended image, so You can always have some reference point.

#3

@dominik are you telling me is better sd for practical aspect? I also have emmc usb adapter.

#4

sd cards are slower for sure, but they are very popular so probably You already have some as well as card reader in Your laptop.
it’s just easier to plug them instead of eMMC where You need to apply some force,
if You need to play with several systems then this may be handy,
Of course for final choice use whatever is fastest and usually its: sd < eMMC < NVME

#5

I see @dominik, by the way I tried with sdcard but checksum failed, so I don’t have any usable sdcard.
I wrote original image to emmc, I played a little bit with it, then when doing an apt upgrade, in particular when dealing with module compilation:

Generating locales (this might take a while)...
  en_US.UTF-8... done
Generation complete.
Setting up rockchip-udev (0.3.3) ...
Setting up libdvbv5-0:arm64 (1.20.0-2) ...
Setting up r8125-dkms (9.013.02-1-1) ...
Loading new r8125-9.013.02-1 DKMS files...
Building for 5.10.110-15-rockchip 5.10.110-38-rockchip
Building initial module for 5.10.110-15-rockchip
client_loop: send disconnect: Broken pipe

then I reconnected and I saw uptime was 1 minute, so here we go again, another spontaneous reboot, at this point I think I will give everything back. I may be unlucky with 1 board, not with 2, it maybe my re-seller has a stock of defective products.

#6

Are You still using armbian or what?
Sorry but chances to get another faulty board are almost zero. But chances to get reboot or kernel panic on same broken image is really high.

Start again with different image, kernel, release.
Try to reproduce the problem. What command failed?

#7

Spontaneous reboots usually happen in Rock 5B because of insufficient power.

1 Like
#8

No, I was using official image, like you suggested, is it possible that official image causes kernel panics?

#9

I was using a original power supply named 36W PD + QC Multihead PSU. Listen it’s about a month I’m dealing with radxa rock 5b, I was never being able to make it work, I tried a lot, also following your helpful suggestions, but after a month of struggle, even with a replaced board I decided enough is enough, I don’t care anymore about finding which is the problem, this product, for me is highly unstable. I thank you all for the support you gave me, I whish I could have also official support, but my messages were never answered, the final decision is I want my money back, so I’m proceeding with returning all and get refunded. I know you may thing I’m overreacting, I really don’t know if I would buy something equivalent for the same purpose (ai), but I don’t want to deal with radxa, okdo products anymore and when I will finish with return and refund I will have the sensation that a nightmare ends.

#10

Like any software - yes, this always can happen on any pair of hardware and software. There is no 100% bug free software and hardware.
but usually most bugs are already resolved, and You should not find any of them quickly.
Still You did not post any information what command caused error? Usually if something is wrong about hardware then it’s very very easy to see issue. What are steps to reproduce issue?

Can You please post photo of Your setup? charger?
Still I think like @incognito it’s something related to power and we all know that when there is not enough - board will reboot.
Safe option is to power SBC via fixed/dumb 12V (and usb-c port). If it’s something related to power - then probably this will not reboot board.

#11

This one?

image
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This is not anything original. You mislead me with words “original”,
this is something branded by okdo, but not recommended radxa power PD:

Beside the fact that it claims to have more wattage it may not be fully compliant with power pd standard. It may take too long for this particular brick to switch to higher pd mode to get more wattage for board.

Please try yet again with something better than this. As I said earlier You may get any power adapter with fixed 12V (at least 3A) and connect it to board via barrel to usb-c adapter:

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Please, don’t be silly,
You are dealing with great SBC and it needs plenty of power. Exactly same thing happens on raspberry pi5 - You need special power adapter to be able to use full potential of the board. They need special power mode and therefore special power adapter to get mode they need, most of chargers includion Yours will not work.

Never make assumptions that board is broken at first place, if You already replaced board and have same issue You probably doing something wrong. Is OKDO recommending this charger for Rock5?
If such simple thing is Your nightmare then I have few such nightmares on my desk, some users have more than hundred days of uptime with this board.

#12

Those (cheap) fixed 12v psu are usually not that stable near the nominal power output. Not stable enough for a soc. Just to be on the safe side, get a 6A fixed psu, it will be stable under all conditions.

3 Likes
#13

Agree,
But almost bare board should be still ok on that.