Rock5 does not work on most PD power supplies

As far as I’m aware this branch is the only one under development with DTC for our Rock5b boards.

Interesting, did the PSUs which worked for you had a 12V mode ?
Mine doesn’t just 5,9,15 or 20V.

out of curiosity which model do you have? I’m currently looking for USB-C desktop monitor.

I’m using (or trying to use would be more accurate) a Dell LA65NM170

Ah ok thought you had the screen with it because some of their monitor delivers 65W from USB-C PD port. (was out of topic request, just wondered monitor model cause I thought you mentionned it :slight_smile: )

Just an FYI that I’m having success with the Anker 736 Charger (Nano II 100W) using their Anker 333 USB C to USB C Cables (I bought the 2-pack of cables).


Tried a few PD chargers and they all resulted in endless restarts.
30w of power through the GPIO using a 5v 6a power brick.
I used 2 in-line 3A fuse to prevent potential overcurrent, but it may not be necessary.
This is just proof of concept at the moment, I’m now planning a breakout board eventually.

When I asked, Radxa mentioned that my monitor, Dell U2720Q, should be one of the many that should work out of box, as they are also using Dell USB-C monitors (I think they used U2720QM?) in their own testing; but of course it is not true in my case :sweat_smile:

I’m also trying to boot with the 65W Allnet PD power supply, are you able to boot from an SD card with the latest debug SPI image or does it only fix the nvme boot?

Installing the debug image to the SPI made booting from NVMe work for me in the Debian build, but the device won’t boot from SD card with it installed even if I unplug the NVMe drive. This is just standard booting by turning the machine on, not by trying to run any manual boot options in the u-boot console as I don’t have a working debug cable yet. When it tries to boot the light turns blue and stays blue. It doesn’t ever get into heartbeat mode like it did when I booted from the SD card without the SPI programmed. I can’t connect to the device via SSH so i know it hasn’t properly booted. I don’t have any console output to debug further than this.

I don’t have the 65W Allnet PD power supply so I don’t know if the power supply has anything to do with the SD being unable to boot with the SPI programmed. I use a Motorola SC-51 18W TurboPower adapter that I originally got with my Moto G7 Optimo Maxx smartphone. It is not a PD power supply but a power supply with a USB type A power jack and a type A to type C power cable. It supports 5V3A, 9V2A, 12V1.5A and the literature says it also supports QC3.0.

I made a useless purchase “PD 30W & USB TypeC -> TypeC cable…” and regretted it.They have never been used. Now, using CHUWI LarkBox’s USB TypeC 12v 2A power supply, well gd :slight_smile:

UPDATE:
I told you that I was unable to boot from the SD card once the SPI was programmed. Whatever was causing my SD card not to work with the SPI programmed with the debug u-boot seems to have been resolved somehow. Now it does boot to SD card (Debian) with the SPI update or with the SPI erased. It boots to the NVMe (Debian) only if the SPI is flashed and there is no SD card installed. If an SD card is installed it boots from the SD card first. Its not getting stuck at blue anymore. Maybe I had a dirty contact on my SD card or something. I’m still using the same power supply and its working fine for me in all light use cases. I haven’t done any kind of stress testing.

I realized that I had put the SD card in upside down after I installed the NVMe, but now even if I put the SD card upside down it still doesn’t prevent it from booting off the NVMe, it just doesn’t see the SD unless the contacts are facing the side with the circuit board when I plug it in.

I did have some difficulties with using the Windows rkdevtool while working with the board. I inisially programmed the SPI in Windows but after I erased the SPI using the instructions on the wiki for Windows reprogramming it in Windows didn’t seem to work. It would do a bunch of stuff but not perform the final upload step before it ended. I ended up installing Ubuntu on a flash drive so I could boot my destktop PC with that then use the Linux rkdeveloptool to reprogram the SPI. I had no difficulties using the Linux tool or doing programming of the SPI directly on the Rock5b itself while running.

Hi,
have Rock 5B v1.42 with 16GB mem, 32GB Emmc, 1TB WD Black SN850X with Debian desktop.
Works fine with both my PD power supplies.

  1. Ugreen PD36W dual USB C link
  2. Baseus PD65W dual USB C model CCGAN65CE
  3. Oneplus mobile loader 5v 4Amp only

They both switch to 20V a few seconds in the boot cycle.
@jack can you add to the list please?

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I’ve also seen no issues with either of my two PD supplies. Could it be a non issue with v1.42 boards?

INVZI USB C Charger 67W, GaN III

Looks like the important factor is how fast is your boot device. Linux kernel need to be loaded before pd negotiation timeouts.

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Rock5 working correctly with UPS power bank QB826

Alright, thanks for the answer, very helpful. I’m going to buy an nvme drive and see if it works, I needed one anyway. For now it boots fine from the SD card with a “dumb” 5V 3A power supply, but it’s not an optimal solution.

I have three more PD adapters to add to list as not working under basic conditions: SBC ROCK 5B attached to HDMI only and with 400GB SDXC sandisk UHD-1 100MB/s, C10, U1, A1, Micro SD Card inserted containing latest stable, or latest development release of radxa 5B debian 11.

https://www.oneplus.com/product/oneplus-warp-charge-65-power-adapter
Lenovo YOGA adapter 5a10w86255 (model ADLX65YCC2D)
https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=43670

Results: infinite boot loop.

Got my Radxa 30w psu today and…
…it boot!

I have updated the lates spi image, and used as card for the latest images and used Penta hat to power it on, it keeps rebooting with a splash of cursor on screen, any help regarding this pls?

Any luck mate? I guess I am also struck with a bad board