PINE64 Pinebook Pro (pine64-pinebookpro)

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PINE64 Pinebook Pro
The Pinebook Pro running Sway
The Pinebook Pro running Sway
Manufacturer PINE64
Name Pinebook Pro
Codename pine64-pinebookpro
Released 2019
Type laptop
Hardware
Chipset Rockchip RK3399
CPU 4x 1.5 GHz Cortex-A53 & 2x 2Ghz Cortex-A72
GPU Mali-T860 MP4
Storage 64GB eMMC (Upgradable)
Memory 4 GB
Architecture aarch64
Software
Original software Linux
Original version 4.4.x
postmarketOS
Category community
Pre-built images yes
postmarketOS kernel 5.14
Unixbench Whet/Dhry score 2742.3
Features
Internal storage
Works
SD card
Works
Battery
Works
Screen
Works
Keyboard
Works
Touchpad
Works
Multimedia
3D Acceleration
Works
Audio
Works
Camera
Works
Connectivity
WiFi
Works
Bluetooth
Works
Miscellaneous
FDE
Works
USB-A
Works
USB OTG
Works
HDMI/DP
Broken


Contributors

Users owning this device


Serial console

The Pinebook Pro has a serial port on the headphone connector, it's enabled by removing the bottom cover of the laptop and setting the UART switch towards the touchpad.

The uart is 1500000n8

The pinout for the serial connector on the laptop side is:

  • Tip: RX
  • Ring: TX
  • Sleeve: GND

The serial connection is 3.3V

You can also buy the debug cable from PINE64 Store.

Storage

The SD card is /dev/mmcblk2 and the eMMC is /dev/mmcblk0

Installation

Note Releases before v23.12 had installer images. We were planning to bring them back with ondev2, but this idea has since changed. See this milestone.

The recommended installation methods are building your own image with pmbootstrap and writing it to an SD card. Or flashing a pre-built image to the SD card, as described in the installation article.

Booting

The Pinebook Pro boots using u-boot. The bootrom in the rk3399 soc will look for u-boot on the SPI flash chip, then the eMMC and then the SD card slot. It will boot the first functioning u-boot image it can find.

There is also a work-in-progress graphical version of u-boot that can show the boot messages on the built-in display and present a menu for choosing which medium to boot. This u-boot build should also be able to boot generic ARM64 UEFI linux installations.

The 3 ways to boot postmarketOS on the Pinebook Pro

Booting from SD

To boot from the SD the SPI bootloader and eMMC bootloader need to be disabled. Then the SoC will fallback to a bootloader on the SD card so postmarketOS can be fully booted from SD.

The Pinebook Pro comes with an empty SPI chip from the factory so that doesn't need anything by default. To temporarily disable the eMMC booting you can open up the back cover and disable the eMMC switch on the main board or remove the eMMC chip from the socket.

Booting from eMMC

To boot it from eMMC you have to overwrite the OS that's on the eMMC already. This is possible to do from an OS booted from SD with the steps above, or by removing the eMMC from the socket and using an pine64 eMMC USB reader to write postmarketOS to it the same way as an SD card.

Booting from SPI

This requires flashing u-boot to the SPI. After u-boot has been flashed the other boot options won't be tried anymore so try at your own risk.

Updating the keyboard and touchpad firmware

The default firmware in the keyboard controller and touchpad controller on the Pinebook Pro is not ideal, not all key combinations are possible (like the super key + arrow keys) and the mouse response is a bit sluggish and imprecise. Some PINE64 community members have made better firmware for the keyboard controller and the touchpad controller which fix these issues.

The upgrade process requires a reboot between the steps and for ANSI models you need an external keyboard to continue the upgrade process (or being able to ssh into the laptop and run the second step).

Should you run into any errors, try switching to a non-graphical tty (ctrl+shift+f3) as some desktop sessions seem to bork USB detection in some way.

1. Identify the model of your Pinebook Pro.

There's an ANSI and an ISO layout variant of the laptop, if your keyboard has the \ button on the left beside the shift key its an ISO, the ANSI model has the key above the Enter key.
You can also check the keyboard layout illustration on wikimedia

2. Download and build the firmware updater 

$ sudo apk add git curl vim alpine-sdk libusb-dev xxd
$ git clone https://github.com/dragan-simic/pinebook-pro-keyboard-updater.git
$ cd pinebook-pro-keyboard-updater
$ make

3. Run the first stage of the updater. Warning: The built-in keyboard might not function correctly after this step, make sure you have an external keyboard 

For ISO layout:
$ sudo ./updater step-1 iso
$ sudo poweroff

For ANSI layout:
$ sudo ./updater step-1 ansi
$ sudo poweroff

4. Turn the laptop back on and go back to the pinebook-pro-keyboard-updater directory. Then run the second stage of the updater 

For ISO layout:
$ sudo ./updater step-2 iso
$ sudo poweroff

For ANSI layout:
$ sudo ./updater step-2 ansi
$ sudo poweroff

5. The touchpad is now fully updated after turning the laptop back on. The firmware on the keyboard controller is still the latest vendor firmware and can now be upgraded to the community version that fixes the key combinations by running stage 3 

For ISO layout:
$ sudo ./updater flash-kb firmware/default_iso.hex

For ANSI layout:
$ sudo ./updater flash-kb firmware/default_ansi.hex

Congratulations, your firmware is now up-to-date.

Flashing u-boot to the SPI

This will write a copy of the u-boot from the OS image to the SPI flash chip in the laptop. Once this has been done it will always boot from the SPI u-boot instead of the u-boot on the eMMC or SD card. This u-boot has the option to select the boot medium you want and also supports booting from USB storage.

Icon WARNING: If this messes up you need a soldering iron to fix booting
Icon WARNING: Booting from this u-boot might be a problem for older kernels
Icon WARNING: Another warning just in case 
$ apk add flashrom
$ sudo flashrom --programmer linux_mtd --write /usr/share/u-boot/pine64-rockpro64/u-boot.spiflash.bin

If you want to use u-boot from eMMC/SD again, erase SPI flash: 

$ sudo flashrom --programmer linux_mtd --erase

MPV settings for smooth playback

Put the following in your ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf: 

profile=sw-fast
hwdec=auto

Video acceleration

Note These instructions recommend using an unmaintained and outdated project. See: https://gitlab.alpinelinux.org/alpine/aports/-/merge_requests/37411#note_254420

The rockchip rk3399 soc in the Pinebook Pro has a hardware video encoder and decoder called hantro, the open implementation supports mpeg2, h264 and h265 but not all profiles are supported on these codecs.

The hardware decoder can be used in any media player that supports libva like vlc or mpv, the extra module that's needed is libva-v4l2-request https://github.com/bootlin/libva-v4l2-request from bootlin. After building and installing v4l2_request_drv_video.so the decoder can be enabled by adding these environment variables: 

$ export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=v4l2_request
$ export LIBVA_V4L2_REQUEST_VIDEO_PATH=/dev/video1
$ mpv --hwdec video-file.mp4

Trobleshooting

No audio on speakers

If you can see the audio devices in pavucontrol/pulsemixer, and see volume meters "jumping" when playing audio, but no sound comes from speakers: launch alsamixer and try to unmute switches called "Left Headphone Mixer Left DAC" and "Right Headphone Mixer Right DAC". Turning these on made both speakers work (despite switches names saying headphones).

Loud whining sound when using speakers

If a loud whining sound comes from inside the laptop while using speakers, try changing the display brightness. The sound goes away with brightness at 50% or 100%. It seems to be a power management issue.

Kconfig

This is just for documentation, the kernel ships configured correctly. 

CONFIG_ROCKCHIP_CDN_DP=n # important, if this is set the display won't come up
CONFIG_BRCMFMAC_SDIO=y   # wifi

# Audio
CONFIG_SND_SOC_SIMPLE_AMPLIFIER=y
CONFIG_SND_SOC_ROCKCHIP=y
CONFIG_SND_SOC_ES8316=y

# Power
CONFIG_CHARGER_GPIO=y
CONFIG_BATTERY_CW2015=y
CONFIG_TYPEC_FUSB302=y
CONFIG_REGULATOR_FAN53555=y

See also

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