Rock 5B power and recovery buttons

#1

What were the functions of these two buttons? Can I turn ON 5B with power button?

Thanks.

#2

You can turn the 5b on with the power button if it is currently off. When you shutdown a Linux system with ā€˜sudo shutdown 0ā€™ for instance it will shutdown then it will power off the cpu. When the cpu is powered off the green LED will remain green to let you know that the board has power, If you tap the power button then it will turn back on and start booting up.

I imagine that the recovery button is something that is designed for Android OS to help you boot in recovery mode by holding it down when you apply power to the device. If you donā€™t have Android OS installed on your machine then it probably does nothing. On a normal Android device you would hold power and one of the volume buttons, but since the rock5b has no volume buttons it needs some other way to get into recovery mode.

#3

I tried ā€œsudo shutdown 0ā€, 5B would power off and have green led on for around 2-3 seconds. If the green led ON, pressing power button would turn ON 5B. However, after 2-3 seconds after shutdown command, green led would turn OFF, pressing power button would NOT turn 5B ON.

That was my observation.

#4

The recovery button is actually the so called loader mode, also called rockusb mode, similiar to maskrom mode, the device is waiting for the USB commands from the host, the host can use the rkdeveloptool to communicate with the device. The loader mode requires the code in u-boot to run and detect if the recovery key is pressed during the boot.

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#5

Thatā€™s interesting. Thatā€™s not how mine works so it might be a difference in the way some power supplies work. Perhaps some types of power supply shut down completely if they donā€™t have a minimum amount of power draw. If I shut it down on my setup the green led will stay on indefinitely and the device will turn back on whenever I want using the power button.

The power supply Iā€™m using is a Motorola SC-51 18W TurboPower adapter which is not a PD adapter. It has a USB-A to USB-C cable. This came with my Moto G7 Optimo Maxx smart phone. It supports 5V3A, 9V2A, 12V1.5A. It probably doesnā€™t provide enough power if you wanted to connect devices to every port and fully stress your rock5b, so Iā€™m not recommending this adapter to you but that is what Iā€™m using.

#6

Good information, thanks.

I am using the power brick sold by ameriDroid where I got my 5B. On the receipt, it stated this, ā€œUSB-A/USB-C Dual Power Adapter 33W, US Plugā€

I also purchased their cable - ā€œUSB-C (Type-C) to USB-A (Type-A) 3.0 Cable, 5Gbps, 3A, Blackā€