Radxa ZERO 3W.... So many mixed feelings, so many hours... wasted?

[@RyanFranklinWilliams]

Got mine last week but haven't had a minute to play with it. Joshua Riek has an Ubuntu image for it. His image for OrangePi 3Bb works nicely (his images work nicely in general) and its the same processor so should be sweet.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Great info, cheers for that!

[@RyanFranklinWilliams]

​​@@PlatimaTinkersyour Armbian image is SOLID, man, really great work, thanks for sharing!

[@PlatimaTinkers]

​@@RyanFranklinWilliams Hey cheers. I think I do need to tweak it a bit - there's still that su/sudo issue I think, and I want to add rsetup, but at least it has GPU support!

[@mranthony1886]

I avoided issues by going with the Zero 3E and going straight to the armbian distro and apt upgrading my way to success through installing NSCDE from source.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Nice one! I'm not such a huge fan of NsCDE though, more of a Gnome2 (RIP), Mate or Xfce person myself!

[@Alain_Du_Bois]

"I wouldn't recommend for anyone who isn't experienced" bro we got it for our uni semester project 💀 but thanks a lot, your video's been a great help man I actually did not expect anyone to be talking about this specific SBC

[@Alain_Du_Bois]

we got doom running.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Hahah god damn you poor bastard. Hopefully the custom images help, or at least the info! Cheers for the kind words!

[@arthurswanson3285]

​@@Alain_Du_Boiswhat kernel did you use?

[@Alain_Du_Bois]

@@arthurswanson3285 5.10.160-26-rk356x aarch64 64 bit ver 10.2.1 with Debian GNU/Linux bullseye honestly just read the radxa docs and followed their suggestions

[@Alain_Du_Bois]

also, project update, we couldn't figure out bluetooth for the life of us (in C) and settled on a webhost, we made basically a pipboy with a magnetic attachment for a multimeter module

[@lucasbrown7338]

This NIO 12L with the Genio 1200 is exactly what I've been looking for! #Maker #SBC Gonna pick one up for my next project for sure! Seems Nio 12L is quite an impressive one..

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Glad to hear! Let me know how it goes, have not tried that range yet!

[@HitAndMissLab]

Watching this excellent video 2nd time ;-) You mentioned that you automated your garden with SBC. When are you going to do a video about that? I'm doing a similar project with lots of I/O and would be interested to see solutions you came up with.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Hah thanks mate. I've been meaning to do a video, or a series, when I get back to it. I let the garden die off over last summer as I've been too busy, and it's actually at a location ~15 mins drive inland, not where I currently live. Hopefully by the end of the year I can move there, and get the garden going again! My main first solutions were turning the feed pumps on and off automatically, monitoring water tank levels and soil moisture, battery (solar) levels, and sending email alerts of pumps running dry or being blocked (current levels). Worked well except the RPi Zero 2W's kept dying randomly (was inside, and in an enclosure - no idea why).

[@kayakMike1000]

Oooh. I want the purple one. I have the older version of the short black ones...

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Then order one :P Limited stock, and limited edition! The 10cm ones are v1.1 now too, and sometimes come in white instead of black!

[@oliversmith7354]

This could be a great option for a home server or tinkering with projects. Very interested in the software support for the NIO

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Yeah very possible! The NIO looks awesome. Sorry for the delay, KZbin didn't send me a notification 😑

[@user-EvgenSpinin]

Thank you, everything works great!!! small question. Did you manage to connect the v1.3 camera on this image? I added it. overlays=radxa-zero3-rpi-camera-v1.3 , but it’s not in the /dev folder

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Hey that's awesome! I don't actually have a camera for it on hand! I have an IMX415, need a 219. I've got one on order! If you applied the overlay, have the FPC connected the right way around, and it's an IMX219 camera, then after a reboot it should appear!

[@benjaminlee3669]

Just booted up my new NIO 12L with Ubuntu and everything feels super snappy with the genio 1200. Can't wait to start tinkering with some AI projects.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

I'd hope so, it's pretty bloody OP! Hah. Do GPU drivers work? It looks like it's a Yotco based image this time (unless you're not using an official one), but also not Rockchip, so not limited by their slow SDK releases.

[@kirishima638]

Just having USB-C in place of those stupid micro USB ports makes it better than the Pi Zero. How compatible is it with Pi hats and pogo-shields?

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Hahah yep. Should be pin for pin with the Pi2 header specification. I've never found a HAT that didn't work on any with the same. You can confirm at least voltage compatibility with those colours. Cheers

[@impuls60]

On Yt it seems slower than the Orange pi 2w 1gb ram on Android/Opera. I would like to see a follow up vid!

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Yeah it was WAY better after enabling the GPU driver. I've reached out to the guy that runs Radxa and we're talking about a few little improvements like this. The OPi 2W is bloody good too TBH.

[@ДмитроЖигалкін]

Hi all, and thanks for review! Cannot find some cpu benchmark info in comparison for radxa zero for that board. Does RK3566 is faster than S905Y2 and how much if it's not a secret :) ?

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Hey thanks, and you're very welcome! So S905Y2 is a quad-core ARM Cortex-A53, the RK3566 is quad-core ARM Cortex-A55. In short: newer instruction set, and higher clock speed. You can search browser.geekbench.com/ for benchmark results, and at a glance comparing to RK3328 (also A53) I'd say the RK3566 is about +50% faster than the S905Y2, but it would depend on the memory, storage, and use case too!

[@PaladinT0]

Using the iperf3 test, the iPhone 14 was only 1 meter away from it and only got a score of 40Mbps. It would take several hours to back up my photos at this speed. I seem to have been deceived by its wifi 6?

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Many things could be causing that my friend. Firstly you need to either attach an external antenna, or make sure that you've used `rconfig` to set it to use the internal antenna. Secondly you'll want to ensure you have the latest image on there. And lastly I think the repo 'radxa-firmware' has update AX210/A8 blobs that resolve some minor issues such as WPA3 and 5GHz connectivity instabilities.

[@dbaiashvili]

I have watched many videos about SBCs and to tell the truth, yours are most completed and detailed than others, well done! also i need your advice, i am going to buy one, for pentesting, which do you prefer: radxa zero 3w or orangepi zero 2w? i just dont want to waste time on hardware bug fixing, just want to make it work.. and one more question: can any of these (radxa zero 3w or orangepi zero 2w) be connected over SSH using USB data port only?🤔 like a rpi zero does..

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Hey mate thank you very kindly for the nice comment! I don't always put a huge amount of effort in though haha. What pentesting software do you want to run? I ask, as you're more likely to get Kali going on an ARM board than a RISC-V one at the moment from what I understand. And yeah a lot of them support RNDIS for that, however, that is going the way of ol' yeller, so it's better to learn to use serial, or pre-configure the image with wifi settings!

[@dbaiashvili]

@@PlatimaTinkers You Welcome :) mostly i want to run dietpi without gui and install pentesting soft manually, i dont need all the stuff kali comes with.. and to communicate with device using android phone over terminal.. Thx for your answer ;)

[@csvke]

@@dbaiashvili yes I can confirm Radxa Zero 3w can configure the usb 2.0 OTG port with g_ether and turn it into a OTG Ethernet gadget. Depending on what Linux distribution you use, the configuration is slightly different. Quite a few guides if you google it. But be careful what USB cable you use. Some type-c to type-c cable don’t have the data pins.

[@dbaiashvili]

@@csvke thx mate.. yes i know about type C )) that was informative info..

[@fabianmathews6461]

I can't seem to find this eraser store mentioned in the video for where to buy them. Where can I get these for a cheap price (I live in Australia)?

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Sorry, Arace**. Here ya go: arace.tech/products/radxa-zero-3w

[@RazielMessiah]

Got the Zero 3W 8GB RAM/64GB eMMC version yestarday. I tried the following OS versions so far: 1.Debian (from their official website), terrible performance, even though it's clocked at 1.4GHz 2. Ubuntu (official website), somewhat better but still feels unstable... 3. Armbian , better than the first 2 images but it's a fire hazard, idle temps between 74-78"C and clocked at 1.8GHz (passive cooling) I'm looking for a DietPI image for it...

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Yeah so I'd say the official images have a thermal governor, so the CPU gets scaled down as it heats up. Definitely need active cooling. The performance would either be that scaling, or the crappy GPU driver I think. Armbian worked well for me besides missing some of the actual Rockchip tools and overlays. Can probably install them from their repo though. If you can't find a DietPi image, you could try Alpine? Personally I'm really happy with Armbian. My repo/image is here: github.com/platima/sbc-images Enjoy!

[@MOOOS-REWFEWETRGTEerTGTRGRHRHR]

Hi, I would like to use the Radxa Zero 3E (not reivewed in this video) to build a POE surveillance camera streaming to a NVR recorder. Can just install your Armbian image in the current Github Repo for the Radxa Zero 3E?

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Yeah mate they're basically identical, except one ethernet, one wifi 😊

[@elclay]

Thanks for sharing, Does it work with WiFi 5Ghz when used with Joshua Riek image?

[@PlatimaTinkers]

No idea about the JR image. It worked with the latest Armbian image, and possibly fixed now by the `radxa-firmware` package with the official build. The fan is not the right one, but it's just one of these I had spare: shop.plati.ma/products/fan-and-heatsink-with-adhesive-for-sbcs

[@elclay]

@@PlatimaTinkers Thank you!

[@PlatimaTinkers]

@@elclay Any time!

[@BFGFF42]

I can't get it to boot from eMMC and also can't get the camera to work, it throws error. Debian image.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

@DarpaProperty Dang. I'd go jump on the forums!

[@JibunnoKage-YouTube-Channel]

The lack of programmatically being able to determine the board revision information is really a bad missing feature. Pi devices has a revision code, that lets you know programmatically what your software is running on... but RADXA apparently has yet, at least on the Zero line, failed to see the benefit of that feature. You literally have no way to know if your Zero is revision 1.4, or 1.5 or 1.51 for example. Not good, because there are key differences between the 1.4 and 1.5x revisions, GPIO pin mapping and functionally assignments ARE different! So if you are expecting design maturity comparable to the Pi devices, not there yet. But the performance of the Zero 3E for example is nice! The newer images are Ubuntu...the official images are really old, and the CLI debian b6 image is CORRUPTED and due to be retired... not replacement per RADXA... NOT good.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Oh did not know that was a thing - I would expect it's somewhere in there? Have you reached out to their support about it? I didn't have any issue with the Debian images, but that was a few months ago. Good to know! Cheers

[@JibunnoKage-YouTube-Channel]

@@PlatimaTinkers Fully documented in the official forum... the feature does not yet exist on any of the Zero board variants, and some of their (nice) rock 5 series does not as well. Which is odd because the Pi devices had a visible revision code from the initial prototype boards, per the Pi wiki.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

@@JibunnoKage-KZbin-Channel That is so very odd, thanks for sharing as it's also good to know! I guess one limiting factor may be that they're using Rockchip processors, where as RPi now make their own. The RK's may not support that functionality, where as the BCM's may have. Just speculating if nothing else, as I really have no idea.

[@JibunnoKage-YouTube-Channel]

@@PlatimaTinkers I am sure if RADXA wanted they could find some comparable method. The revision value is not specific to the processor, where the serial number is. RADXA does expose the serial number of the processor via /proc/cpuinfo basically identical to the Pi devices. The Pi device set this 'revision' value in their respective 'board' designs, not related to the processor, per my understanding, and review of their documentation. The Pi wiki discusses how the board 'revision;' and device 'type' value have always been part of the Pi design from the first released Pi.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

@JibunnoKage-cj2kz Very interesting and good point! I'll raise it with the owner of Radxa when I next chat to him.

[@MichaFita]

Have managed to get any CSI-2 camera to work? I'm interested in CSI-2 drivers for RK3655. Thanks.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Yes - I show how to enable this in the video.

[@MichaFita]

@@PlatimaTinkers you shown some menu, but at any point it's not clear whether you actually did it. That's work on Radaxa's Debian, right? Did you managed to repeat that on Armbian?

[@PlatimaTinkers]

@@MichaFita Yes it works on Radxa's image. Have not tested Armbian.

[@MichaFita]

@@PlatimaTinkers thanks. Looks like I need dig their distro for drivers.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

@@MichaFita A lot of the drivers are in the Linux kernel already, but that specific build may not include them, so you probably need to cut your own. The IMX219 is, which is a great 4K camera. The other issue though is the overlays; even if you cut your own Kernel with the drivers you need (or compile them as DKMS), you'll then need to setup the connections in the device tree. This can be a slight learning curve and require some troubleshooting. Honestly, IMX219 aka Radxa Camera 8M 219 aka Raspberry Pi Camera Module 2 is likely a great way to go!

[@HitAndMissLab]

as I understand GPIO pins don't work on RADXA. would it be possible to make an image where GPIO pins are working?

[@PlatimaTinkers]

I haven't seen any issues with the GPIO pins, nor heard of any problems.

[@HitAndMissLab]

@@PlatimaTinkers Thanks for the feedback. I was watching other video and guy said that drivers for GPIO pins didn't work. Its a big deal for me, because all I want to do is to use GPIOs. Did you actually specifically test if GPIOs work when accessed from OS or from Python?

[@ozgurayik7181]

It works with armbian os, I have not tested with a user space application but Linux/gpio interface works.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

@@ozgurayik7181 Yeah I ended up using Armbian on it - GPU worked a treat too!

[@ozgurayik7181]

​@@PlatimaTinkers Yes same here. Somehow I could not get kernel headers on the images they provide, Maybe their images with GUI seems okay, but definitely the images without gui are problematic. So now I am using arbian with 5.10 kernel. I wish to have at least kernel version 6, but again obtaining kernel headers had issues on that armbian version either. It is a bit pity that these great hardwares are suffering lack of stable OS and software support.

[@enderaltin]

Thank you for your review. I wonder if you could install Android and do a review? Does it support Android 14?

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Hey you're very welcome! And sorry but nah Android is not really my thing, however, Radxa do have Android support listed as "coming soon"!

[@VicariousxD]

The armbian image I built for rock 3c, which seem to have the same chipset doesn't seem to work with hardware encoding and decoding. Can you share how you built the image? Radxa has supported armbian for this board and not the rock 3c which is really annoying.

[@Rushil69420]

Isn't that on Armbian and not Radxa? if anything it's on Radxa to provide a more robust OS image of their own. (I also have a Rock 3C lol)

[@VicariousxD]

@@Rushil69420 i blame radxa too. The community built rock 3c armbian image atleast works well, both the xfce and cli images. The official radxa repo has only the xfce debian image working. The only problem is, while the panfrost drivers work on armbian, hardware decoding doesn't.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Hey damn yeah I just used the Armbian image and enabled the WIP board config I found in their repo. The quick and dirty build script I knocked up which shows the commands is here: github.com/platima/sbc-images/blob/main/Armbian/platimas.sh

[@IonCubekhanz]

Can you please make an image for OrangePi 3b because it has same CPU / GPU ...please please

[@PlatimaTinkers]

I don't have one to dev/test with sorry, but looking quickly at their documentation (drive.google.com/file/d/1i479ucxErqjL0GDakb5Bw85ptgnDf_Sc/view) you can either build an image your self if desired for any reason, else just enable the GPU support if that's all you're after 😊😊

[@kernowgym]

Whats more powerful.this or orange pi zero 3?

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Google it and find out :)

[@JibunnoKage-YouTube-Channel]

Board failed after about 40 hours of testing and use. No matter what power supply, what image, what microSD card I use (tried many different micoSD cards, power supplies, and OS images), the board reports random memory errors and kernel panic results. The board was fine for about 4 hours once I got a working image installed, then issues started. RADXA support is no help, even after I opened support ticket. Original seller is no help, everyone is insists it is the power supply or the microSD card, or the wrong image. Well, sorry, but I have been working with ESP8266s, ESP32s, Adrianos, and just about every model of Pi device available since 2012. This is a hardware failure, per the kernel panic results the on-board memory is faulty. Really disappointed, because I really liked the RADXA line up of SBCs. RMA to RADXA will likely be MORE than the cost of the board, and the original seller is so far refusing to take the board back and send replacement. Not good.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

@JibunnoKage-cj2kz sorry to hear mate. Unfortunately there are bad runs sometimes, I've had my share of failed DFRobot Beetles, Raspberry Pi's, etc, and generally it's not worth the warranty - if there is any. Hence they're so cheap I guess. But they do also die at the drop of a hat - technically you need to be ESD safe, and extra cautious of shorting pads. Given your experience with ESP's and Pi's I expect you'd be familiar with this though, so seems like just bad luck! The only things I'd try are a) diff PSU and SD card as they said, but also b) flash the SPI wish a fresh bootloader in case of corruption as that usually does DDR training right at boot, and c) chuck it in a reflow oven for about 75% of a cycle in case there's a dry joint on one of the BGAs. Good luck!

[@JibunnoKage-YouTube-Channel]

@@PlatimaTinkers Yeah, my 3E is fine, it was the 3W that started showing memory errors after about 20 hours use, but the bootloader worked still, but now the bootloader even fails to trigger. I tried multiple SD cards, power supplies, etc. Typical problem isolation. I have open a ticket with RADXA, and they have said they will send a replacement. So pending receiving that. I don't have the equipment to retry the reflow... but I see your point, agree that would be worth the try if I had the option.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

@@JibunnoKage-KZbin-Channel You could always try a heat gun or hair dryer Just put the board on something flat, and blast it until it's too hot to touch but not singing anything, then repeat 2-3 times. At least they're sending a replacement. Very odd still though, and I'd still put my money on the SPI flash!

[@JibunnoKage-YouTube-Channel]

@@PlatimaTinkers Good idea, I had not thought that would get hot enough... but thinking about it... yes. I will give it a shot once I have the replacement tested. :) Also, I think there might have been a IC failure... looking at the board under thermal image... the small custom IC label RADXA get very hot now. When the board worked, the SBC core temp was never above the low 40s C. Heat sink was barely warm to the touch. Now that single IC, is too hot to touch after a few seconds... this was not the case while the boot-loader still worked... now, the board is completely dead... power LED, but no post of the boot-loader on the serial-debug console. So, as the board continued to have issues, it seemed to be getting worse over time, and that has proved so. The 3E is still going strong. And the cascading failure, kind of makes sense, if there was some type of power level issue on the board... it worked, then became unstable - would random reboot, then memory errors and kernel panics, then failed completely.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

@@JibunnoKage-KZbin-Channel (Sorry been on the road for work) Ah well the Radxa sticker is over the wifi module. That's quite normal for it to get warm, and the further it is from your access point the hotter it will get usually. If it's not even booting and that's getting hot though, it could indicate that the wireless has failed and it's just sinking current. Have you got anything you can measure the power consumption with? Else with most operating systems there is usually a way to see how much power a USB port is drawing. Good luck!

[@Nathan-q6y]

I've had mine since January of this year and yeah your concerns are all valid I've been working with the Radxa dev team through Discord since obtaining my zero 3w. While it doesn't seem that everything is up to snuff ATM it does seem to be getting there and ok improvements for the documentation has slowly been happening. thanks for the video as always great content and keep up the great work. I'll be downloading your Armbian image now to see your improvements at first hand. P.s. I also purchased a Radxa 2XL x86 board and that's where the meat and potatoes are found when using a product from Radxa.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Hey that's great to hear you've been working with them! Personally I cannot stand Discord. I do email Tom any faults I notice though. Thanks for the kind words! Yeah 2XL x86 and the NIO look epic. The Fogwise has also been fun to play with as it's so damn powerful too.

[@mikemcgonegal1616]

I tossed mine in the drawer and won't be using it again. Nice hardware, but the software is too painful.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

I've been using it heaps just without GPU - for the GPIOs mostly. Apparently Rockchip are working on a new BSP though! C'moooon 6.10 🤞

[@IonCubekhanz]

Great work

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Thank you kindly!

[@HiltonT69]

Rad a is well known for both great hardware, and also poor documentation and images. Oh, and poor support with future Linux builds.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Yeah it's a shame - am liaising with them on it a bit now though!

[@filthyfrankblack4067]

It seems like these companies are just throwing things against the wall to see if it sticks. The allwinner h3 was the start but now companies have the rp2040 and rk3566 to just spam and get money without making proper documentation.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

@filthyfrankblack4067 it's just a long-ass development process, and they're all pushing it from different angles. It takes patience, and a team approach!

[@marklewus5468]

Or, you could just get a raspberry pi 2w that isn’t quite as fast, but works right out of the box…

[@RobertLipe]

Yeah , it looks like they shipped an essentially nonfunctional product and rely on others to actually develop and integrate same software. That's just lazy engineering. I don't get the self-flagellation in some crowds.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

You could, but I've found they (Pi Zero 2W) unfortunately fail far too easily - I was replacing them twice/year! Depends what your use case is though; there's a lot of things this does that a Pi Zero 2W cannot.

[@PlatimaTinkers]

@@RobertLipe Yeah I've been whinging to their dev team about this, but to give them credit, they're writing a lot of patches and committing to the Linux kernel, but said they're also still waiting on a) merge approvals, and b) updated SDKs from Rockchip (confirmed)

[@RobertLipe]

@@PlatimaTinkers without too many more unnecessary words, I welcome your attempt to get good, long-term support for ANY OS from ANY board vendor. I've been burned to the tune of many, many hundreds of dollars over the years and sacrificed many root filesystems to poor support of "tiny" computers over time. That's sad. Getting code checked into Linux/BSD/whatever isn't a symbolic gesture to placate nerds with buying power - it's to appease us that our hardware will (probably) be supported by SOMEONE for appreciable time. (I lost a Pi 3 with an extended-wear uSD last week. Bummer. Fool me N times...for a large value of N.) I've been burned by Radxa before, so I appreciate your efforts with them, and hope you can really materially improve the state of the art for those of us that want tiny computes that last more than a few weekends. I don't have valuable stuff on the eMMC of my Vision2 yet, but StarFive at least seems to be getting this really really right and getting everything important upstreamed. I'm tired of the board and the SOC vendors kicking this can at each other and US getting injured. I'm voting with my wallet. I no longer care WHOSE fault it is that it's not mainlined. Keep up with the awesome reviews. Thanx for being awesome! Have some upboats! Get a scoop on Espressif P4, make the shipping costs good (I know that's hard), and you can have my next pile of disposable board income. (It's left as an exercise for English minors to determine whether, in that sentence, "disposable" modified "income" or "board".) Have some upvotes!

[@RobertLipe]

@@PlatimaTinkers I probably nested my comment too deeply. I, too, had 0 2W's self-destruct after dozens of hours of ontimes. Not cool. But I really was dogging this board specifcially in this review. You put up with a lot of crap that a consumer should never have to see. Good for you for holding them to the fire and making them work through these things, but shame on them for shipping them in the state represented in this video. What a mess. I don't care if it's the SOC vendor or the board vendor. I want to trade money for working products unless they're explictly sold as prototypes for early development.

[@avechess]

Like

[@PlatimaTinkers]

Cheers!