I’ve received the Zero 3W board yesterday. It’s a nice looking board and perfectly fits my intended development and testing use cases. However, i have spent quite some time getting the official Debian images working, with no luck so far from https://github.com/radxa-build/radxa-zero3/releases/tag/b3
Debian XFCE image: WiFi & Bluetooth are not working
Ubuntu Server images are not recommended by radxa and on the download page it even says “currently broken” (apparantly for over 2 months)
Are there any working Linux images available?
What about an Android image?
One reason for me to buy this board was the advertised Android compatibility on the product page. However, there’s no download (or I can’t find it).
Main download page only links the above mentioned and broken Debian & Ubuntu images: https:// radxa .com/products/zeros/zero3w/#downloads
Documentation link for the how to get started doesn’t work (page not found): https:// radxa .com/products/zeros/zero3w/#documentation
Install OS docs page: “Radxa ZERO 3 currently provides Debian OS system.”. No mention of Android. https:// docs.radxa .com/en/zero/zero3/getting-started/install-os
Finally on the “Other Systems” doc page there’s Android! But, the download links don’t work https:// docs.radxa .com/en/zero/zero3/other-os/android/download
What’s the status of Android on Zero 3W and when can we expect an image?
Sorry about the links, as a new user I can only use 2 links in a post
Hopefully maybe they are thinking of a revision as why they didn’t put the audio codec on gpio is a mystery as has 2x dac 2x adc and already slays the Pi02W but with that would be an absolute killer at price.
That is if Radxa can manage booting images for this SBC though…
I’ll put the Zero 3W aside and wait for the new image.
Feedback about Android support would still be appreciated, then I could start investigating Android for another project.
Radxa was so kind and provided me zero3w sample so i developed test Archlinux boot image for zero3w (aic8800 and ap6212 wifi models).
Image is with mainline 6.7 kernel.
It works well for me (tested by whole night hd live tv playback with h264 hd video decode)
With aic8800 wifi:
2.4G wifi gives me stable 35-35Mb/s, while 5G gives 190-250Mb/s (both with on-board ceramic antenna)
Generally I’m very happy with this board and it is imho great sbc from Radxa
Only thing I have noticed for a tiny board & a55 is the high idle wattage.
Thnx for the image though and wish Radxa could do the same and get working versions of the cli debian & ubuntu images
So far i suspect higher idle power is by aic8800 power consumption.
In my case i see 8-10C at idle temp diffs between ap6212 and aic8800.
Indeed temp design might be issue (so heatsink required) as after few hours of h264 hd playback (with egl dmabuf rendering - so cpu load is 10-15%) board entering cpu/gpu dvfs soft cooling trips (cpu goes to 400MHz) despite cpu ~15% load, (gpu to 200Mhz) - even when nvtop shows 20-30% gpu load.
I need to compare with other 3566 bards - but iirc on others there is no soft cooing at simple hd video playbacks…
It needs a armor case with a backplate as that solves 2 problems in one of heatsink/case. Orange Pi always seem to manage a armour case even though you often have to fix the faults to get them working effectively.
All the govenors are on performance and guess it will just take time as likely finding efficiency will be less work than implementations from scratch.
Currently for a x4 core A55 things are far from efficient as it pulls an idle wattage of over almost x3 what its big brother rk3588 can attain…
I’m started to be a bit confused about thermal (…power consumption) of zero3…
Payback of hd tv (with egl dambuf so cpu is 5-10%) gives me 80-85C cpu temp on zero3.
The same binaries on 3566 based rock3c (only dt + bootloader are different) giving me 55-60C reported temps…
(btw: rock3c is in plastic case - so cooling is worse than free airflow on zero3w).
I started to think there is something strange with hw zero3 design?
Maybe not as via Discord Joshua (Spooky) shared an Ubuntu image with broken networking purely to test Wifi6 but it is already idling at < 50% of your images ilde wattage.
The governors and schedulers of mainline are strange I am thinking.
PS I am assuming a heatsink as I have 2x 15mm copper shim to get above IO so that I can fit a 22x22x18mm heatsink so its runs @ 1.8Ghz gladly without throttling even with yours.
I also ran into the wifi problem when using the official Debian Bullseye image (b3 release) at the time. This is the answer I received from the Radxa support team:
We have upgraded the wireless module on 3W after it was released from Wi-Fi 4 to Wi-Fi 6. This unfortunately means the existing system released before the change does not support this new module.
You can see if you have the new module by checking if there is a sticker on the wireless module. If you remove the sticker there is no engraving on the metal shield of the module. Wi-Fi 4 module does not have a sticker, and the module is engraved with “AP6212” which is the part name.
If you have the new module, you can try out the following RC image:
I’ve received my board. I tested with an old u-boot and re-used my cli (weston) rootfs.
running for some hours without wifi, 55~56C (heatsink), maybe it can easily reach 60C with wifi.
Every 1.0s: cat /sys/devices/virtual/therma... zero3w: Fri Jan 5 19:45:42 2024
55000
Unfortunately, there is no wifi yet, i think i will need a new u-boot or something else:
dmesg|grep wifi
[ 8.224806] [WLAN_RFKILL]: wlan_platdata_parse_dt: Can not read wifi_chip_type, set default to rkRFKILL]: wlan_pl
atdata_parse_dt: wifi_chip_typeata_parse_dt: enable wifi power control.
[ power controled by gpio.
[ 8.224879] [WLAN_RFKILL]: wlan_pl8.224895] [WLAN_RFKILL]: rfkill_set_wifi_bt_power: 1
If someone has instructions to build the latest mainline u-boot that can work with BSP kernel (two partitions or one single partition is fine), please post.
https:// docs.radxa .com/en/zero/zero3/other-os/android/download