[App_rpt-users] Holy schtuff! Just got the CHIP

Sat Jul 9 02:12:02 UTC 2016

You know, that could be quite interesting, a "handheld" with a micro ARM
brain. Sing, dance, make you coffee? Does it all!

Surely the hardware is there. Thats not really the issue, a USB port, or an
SPI breakout is going to behave like the ones on the RPi ,and every other
piece of hardware known to man. The issue is the software, and not even
that really, but the *documentation* for it, allowing one to create various
bits of code to make DIAL work. These Chinese chips are bloody brilliant, *on
paper, *until you realise, there is no way to make them do the fancy stuff,
unless you are fluent in technical Mandarin. That I don't have, but I can
get Russian and Polish translated to English easily... hmmm.

Point in case, I obtained a Orange Pi H3 board (Allwinner H3 64-bit ARM, I
think its a Cortex-A53 of some sort) recently, and the set up was beyond
agonising. I *did* get it going, to my credit, the stupidest thing with it
was, it would not detect *any* of my Arduino serial interfaces, and there
was no instructions to patch the kernel with the correct modules which are
standard on every other modern kernel I ever come across. But it run the
IDE just fine. There was a week I simply could not get the ethernet to
work, no matter what I tried, in the end, it was complete dumb luck by
bruteforcing flashes of different firmware until I hit one that worked.
Once that happened, I took a dd dump of that SD card, let me tell you!

While I'm all for getting our fancy software running on every bit of ARM
hardware out there... sometimes its not that easy.

Further food for thought, I once contacted the fellow who is considered *the
man* when it comes to porting Plan 9 to new hardware platforms. I wanted a
port of Plan 9 to the Dragino (which is now the brains of the Arduino Yun
as well). I low balled him on the contract, he said it wasn't even worth
his time. He said it would be *easy for him* given the Dragino spec
hardware I was getting for him had a serial debug port, but the colour of
my money wasn't quite right. You can tell I shelved that one pretty quickly.

I'm not saying this to be negative, I'm only outlining it to illustrate the
hurdles. As far as I remember, I was the first person on the list to
suggest the original RPi as a development target. Jim Dude told me straight
out, that wasn't going to happen. When Doug come up with the goods, I was
beyond surprised, but I've never looked at his code. Needless to say, I
think the code is genius, and mere mortals like myself can only stand on
the shoulders of such giants. It was also around the time Doug come out
with his initial code packages that I took a backseat from this world, as I
was put on standby for all the work I had been doing up till that point
with voting RoIP networks. The knock on effect is, I haven't seen my good
friends who assist me on that weekend for two years. I only ever see them
once a year, but they remain close friends. I'm wondering if I can make a
comeback this September? I'll pick up Andrews system in a flash, hes made
quite a few changes, dropped the GoIP, all outside links are totally VoIP
over 3G/ 4G, the 700MHz LTE-A network in Australia has come on brilliantly
in the last year or so (I obtained my first 4G mobile six months ago, and I
sit right on top of a good, consistently fast cell).

If you come up with *anything*, you had want to believe, I'll be all ears.
Some of the work I've seen in this group, and ARM app_rpt really is quite
brilliant, and my hats off to everyone who makes this all happen, even if
you're just a guy who uses the software, and sometimes submits bug reports.

Keep up the good work gents! Ignore my $0.02 if needed.

Shane.

On Sat, Jul 9, 2016 at 5:48 AM, Buddy Brannan <buddy at brannan.name> wrote:

> Hi y'all,
>
> Well...this could be fun...
>
> I just got the CHIP from
> http://www.getchip.com
>
> They're finally catching up all these preorders; I orderd way back after
> Thanksgiving when they had $1 off, so you could get the $9 CHIP for $8.
> Well, really, $13, because of $5 shipping. OK fine. If you thought the Pi
> was small, this thing is even smaller. Built-in wifi and bluetooth, 4GB
> onboard storage., 1 USB port, 1 micro USB (which I think can also send
> data, but is mostly for power), one connectory for audio out+video or audio
> out+mic in No SD card slot...I don't think it's big enough for one anyway.
> Oh, and no ethernet. Again, is it even big enough? Now...if I can get a
> version of DIAL rolled together for it. ...or a version of asterisk with
> app_rpt built on its Ubuntu derivative... Heck...the USB audio interface
> might just be bigger than the computer. *Hmm* And interestingly, this is
> slightly more than. bare circuit board, even with no case on it it actually
> has the board mounted in something. I really could just about see a
> handheld All Star node with one of these s
>  trapped to the back of a handheld.
>
> --
> Buddy Brannan, KB5ELV - Erie, PA
> Phone: 814-860-3194
> Mobile: 814-431-0962
> Email: buddy at brannan.name
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> App_rpt-users mailing list
> App_rpt-users at ohnosec.org
> http://ohnosec.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/app_rpt-users
>
> To unsubscribe from this list please visit
> http://ohnosec.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/app_rpt-users and scroll down
> to the bottom of the page. Enter your email address and press the
> "Unsubscribe or edit options button"
> You do not need a password to unsubscribe, you can do it via email
> confirmation. If you have trouble unsubscribing, please send a message to
> the list detailing the problem.
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.keekles.org/pipermail/app_rpt-users/attachments/20160709/616746f1/attachment.html>