Droid box cruncher V9 Quad Core RK3188 1.8Ghz

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Thu Oct 31, 2013 8:36 pm

The droidbox thingy is this little beastie
Doesn't exactly set the heather on fire, but it runs off a 5v hub so cost nothing.
does
skynet in @8-9 hrs
WCG fight aids@home - 8-9 hrs
milkyway 6-7 hrs
albert@home, BRPS @15hrs

all 4 cores run 24/7, no heat issues built in wifi etc. Not going to be a massive boost to credit for sure but interesting little beast. May look into some more as I have 3 free ports on the hub

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Thu Oct 31, 2013 8:37 pm

For the droidbox I have the following results. Really shows how poor paying certain projects are

project--------time/unit/hrs-----points-------points for 4cores/day
Asteroids---------0-------------0---------n/a every unit errored
Albert------------14------------62.5----------- 428.5
Milkyway---------8.33----------106------------1221.6
SkynetPOGS -----9.5-----------175------------1768.4
WCG fight aids----11-----------45--------------392.7

can you guess which 2 projects are now set as no new tasks ?
will probably try Enigma at some time in the next few days.

Janos (retired) · Post by **Janos (retired)** » Fri Nov 01, 2013 7:41 am

Alez wrote:will probably try Enigma at some time in the next few days.

How did Enigma get on?

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Fri Nov 01, 2013 11:45 am

Haven't got round to it. Probably this weekend. Been testing a new app on Yafu instead,which has gone really well and should be ported over to YoYo in the next few days as an android app for OGR

Discussion here http://yafu.dyndns.org/yafu/forum_thread.php?id=143

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Sat Nov 30, 2013 12:26 am

Seems I can now ditch android and google for full on super speedy run everything linux. http://ubuntu.g8.net/index.php/14-sampl ... d-released

Janos (retired) · Post by **Janos (retired)** » Sat Nov 30, 2013 12:40 am

Will be interesting to see BOINC stats on this.

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Sat Nov 30, 2013 12:55 am

Janos wrote:Will be interesting to see BOINC stats on this.

Just got to pluck up the courage to try it without turning droidbox#1 into a plastic brick

Janos (retired) · Post by **Janos (retired)** » Sun Dec 01, 2013 3:39 pm

Is your box any good as a media player?

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Sun Dec 01, 2013 10:53 pm

Only really played with it as a media player a few times. Does streaming ok, plays fine on bbc iplayer etc, but since it's sitting on top of Caro, I use Caro or Orac in the living room. The menu system is a bit cumbersome and the virtual keyboard would really do your head in quickly ( I bought a wireless Ri keyboard/mouse to run it ) really i just bought it to play with and as a Â£60 cruncher as realistically all the desktops or laptops laying around do a better job.

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Mon Dec 02, 2013 11:00 pm

Just bought another one

Holding off on flashing to PicUntu as at the moment I think it would only work on Einstein or Seti ( maybe )

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Wed Dec 04, 2013 2:05 am

Well bought another one from Amazon, then bought another two from china at half the price. Was looking for a cheap dual core A9 to flash so that if i turned it into a plastic brick no big deal, but if ( when ) the one's from china turn up, will put on my 'big boy pants' and see if it works. ( on 1 of them )

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Sat Dec 14, 2013 9:57 pm

Have enabled Enigma on the boxes. Interested to see how they get on.
My two new ones have made it to Singapore.....so far so good

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Thu Dec 19, 2013 1:09 am

2 more arrived and installed , droidbox x 4

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Thu Dec 19, 2013 2:14 pm

Seems the 2 new ones run at 1400Ghz

I sense a reflash in the offing. Just need to find a new kernel rather than going straight to 1900Ghz. On the plus side, they are crunching away like good uns :)

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Mon Dec 23, 2013 1:45 am

Got the kernels I need, 1700 GHZ, 1800 GHZ then a deathly 1920 GHZ in the offing. Going to give this a go tomorrow. Hopefully no melted plastic bricks

Let's see how they stack up to the ordroid when cleaned of all bloat and released to their true designed speed

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Thu Jan 09, 2014 12:44 pm

So flashed one of the boxes to 1756 GHz. Not a painless experience until I finally gave up on the software attempts to get into flash mode and resorted to the old fashioned paper clip method

However..... reported on boinc as 1400 Ghz, after flashing ... 1400 Ghz. Both CPU Z and Antutu report that the cores are all running at 1008 GHz. Checked one of the unflashed boxes which reports as being 1600GHz on boinc, CPU Z and Antutu report......1008 GHz on all cores

Going to try running on a power supply rather than a hub and see what I get. After that will try disabling a core at a time on boinc and see if it reports any higher or maybe the freq is just not reported correctly. CPU load is 100 % and warranty slightly voided by a craft knife to allow for far more cooling. That worked a treat, they run far colder and it's kind of cool to see the internals

Going to flash another to 1820 GHz and see if that makes any difference.
Hopefully another one or two getting on an aeroplane soon :bounce:

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Fri Jan 10, 2014 12:09 am

So far tried two different usb hubs, a normal phone charger, an adapter capable of 2A and a daisy chained USB. Power makes no difference, so not a power management is not the issue directly.
What I get is 4 cores running at 1008 Mhz, 3 cores at1200, 2 cores at 1416 - 1200 and 1 core at 1416 Mhz. The other boxes are the same except that the 1608 Mhz boxes run at that for 1 core, exactly the same for the other cores. It must be built into the architecture of the Cortex A9 to follow this behavior. The flash makes them run faster I think ( less bloat ) but hasn't overclocked them. Going to look into this tonight.
Does the Ordroid display the same behavior ?
I guess I will have to figure out what the best core / units ratio is for points. I have 1 set at 3 cores to test. The others are all running 4 cores, 1008 Mhz.

Janos (retired) · Post by **Janos (retired)** » Fri Jan 10, 2014 10:05 am

What are the CPU core temps? It might be doing some slowdown to prevent overheating.

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Fri Jan 10, 2014 5:57 pm

Can't measure the temp directly as haven't found an app that can read the boxes. Every app is really for a phone. Had opened the boxes up considerably with a stanley knife to increase the cooling, but have now stripped them out of it's case so the board is bare, sitting on a case fan. The heat sink is warm to the touch only, certainly not hot enough I would have thought, for thermal protection to kick in.
All 4 boxes display the same characteristics using 3 different kernels, so I am thinking it is behavior hard coded into the A9 itself. It would appear the listed freq is for 1 core only....

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Sun Jan 12, 2014 2:20 am

All 4 boxes successfully flashed to finless 7 oc. 2 have applied the oc, 2 have not. All still back off as the cpu load rises. Definitely a hard coded response in the cortex a9 chip. My new boxes should be on there way. :bounce:

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Fri Jan 31, 2014 1:10 am

Received my latest two droid boxes and straight away flashed to the awesome finless kernel. These are the new ver 5 boxes and are clocked at only 1.4 Mhz. As they are still sold as RK3188's and not as RK3188 T's I am a bit miffed although when you run boinc on all 4 cores they still all downclock to only 1008 Mhz anyway. There is a big discussion about it on Freaktabs here http://www.freaktab.com/showthread.php? ... RK3188-CPU
Although ultimately it makes no difference, this effectively lying about the product that is being sold has brought me to the conclusion that the next Android devices I purchase will be U3's. This of course has nothing to do with the rate of knots that Silver has just flown past me after his new purchases, it is a moral stance

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Mon Dec 29, 2014 1:58 pm

Will BOINC run on these?

http://www.amazon.com/DIAOTEC-Streaming ... d_sxp_f_pt

Says...Android 4.4 OS. Amlogic S802 Quad Core up to 2.0GHz (Cortex-A9); Octa core ARM Mali-450 GPU up to 600MHz

It says it has 6 GPUs. Will those run WUs?

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Mon Dec 29, 2014 2:14 pm

Yes it will run Boinc. Would use a usb - rj45 adapter to connect to network either through the usb or the otg port. Most of these boxes the wifi is sketchy. Use nativeBoinc from play store as it's better than boinc for android. The GPU's can't be used for Boinc. Mali GPU's are not supported on any projects at the moment. I stripped the cases off mine to allow better cooling as all these boxes are passive cooling only. Plenty of projects to run as well. TSBT is still 2nd in the world on Android crunching. Great little fire up and forget crunchers for constant points and wuprop hours at minimal power usage. I have 12 android devices in my fleet now.

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Mon Dec 29, 2014 2:52 pm

Just saw the RK3288 QuadCore A17 boxes are coming out. Which one?

RK3188 Quad Core A9 for $60
S802 Quad Core A9 for $71
RK3288 Quad Core A17 for $90

And I guess I better ask. What do you have to do to run nativeBoinc on them? Is there a How To?

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Mon Dec 29, 2014 7:45 pm

I have six RK3188's 2 are RK3188, 4 are RK3188T. They are bullet proof and have custom kernels readily available. The RK3288 is the next gen. Haven't looked into them yet as the last Android I bought was a quad intel Baytrail. They are awesome but only supported on SetiBeta and Collatz just now. The RK3188's are tried and mature tech now, maybe go for this as a start into Android as we have lots of experiance on them and all the projects with apps run on them.
Read through this thread as the GHz quoted for all these Android boxes are for only 1 core. As you use more cores they downclock so you have to base your choice on that and value.

nativeBoinc is easy. Go to google play store on your device, search for and download nativeBoinc. It installs automatically. Then just synch it to bam as you would any other Boinc and add your projects etc. It's really easy to use. Me, Paul, Janos and Mega all use it for our androids so if you run into any specific issue we can help you out.

Info on nativeBoinc, forums, etc. here http://www.dunadd.co.uk/seti/forum/view ... 140&t=2128

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Mon Dec 29, 2014 8:03 pm

I'm comfortable with nativeBOINC, but what do you have to do to these boxes in order to be able to install nativeBOINC? Can they be used as is or do they have to be flashed with a new ROM? If flashed, is there a single latest version or does each different make require a different ROM file? Run Android or Ubuntu? I don't mind reading articles or FAQs. Just don't know which ones to follow.

Is this the correct How To? http://www.freaktab.com/showthread.php? ... Batch-Tool

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Tue Dec 30, 2014 1:22 am

The flash tool would probably work but use this forum ( if you get a 3188 ) http://www.freaktab.com/forumdisplay.ph ... 88-Devices and find your model. The finless kernels all have a flash tool included with instructions. That said the box will work as is. I flashed mine to have them all running exactly the same without all the preloaded crap and in an attempt to overclock. ( which didn't really work as the downclock is in the architecture of the cortex chips. Pointless overclocking when running more than 1 core ) There is absolutely no need to do it and in truth not worth the effort. Both tablets I have since the droid boxes have just been run stock.
Each make does require a separate kernel to work correctly ( not strictly true as the main difference is in the wifi chip , if you don't use the wifi you can use generic kernels )
I run all mine under Android. If you want to run them under Linux then use Picunto rather than Ubuntu but for crunching there is no need. Simply to do as a because you can which I have never got round to. Janos did or maybe does have some Ordroids running Ubuntu Linux.
Installing nativeBoinc is as simple as logging onto playstore with your Google account and download / install. That's it.

edit
To flash mine I used the RK batchtool and driver v1.7 Should be easy to find, if not I can email you the zip though as I said not needed to crunch. the batch tool is separate from the kernel to be flashed.

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Tue Dec 30, 2014 2:29 am

I re-read posts and saw the automatic down clocking in the A9 chipset. So 4 cores will only run at 1Ghz each? Saw the comment about the U3s. Guess it's about finding the best deal on RK3188 1Ghz x 4 rig vs U3 1.7 Ghz x 4 rig?

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Tue Dec 30, 2014 2:47 am

Not sure about the 3288's ( as I don't own any , but they will be the same ) but the 3188 downclock depending on the number of cores running. The 3188T's only run at 1.4 GHz anyway and the downclock is not as extreme as it would be on a CPU. They are all designed for low power so the only way to stay within the power usage is to downclock as you push them harder.
U2 / U3's are far better but much more expensive ( I have 4 u2's and I can't remember the last time I had to reboot them ). RK3188's are dirt cheap. Buy a 5V transformer and run them off that and they go forever. The tronsmart boxes I bought, ripped out of their cases and run on top of a computer case with top fan extraction in the infamous toaster rack are still just chugging along.
Neither give huge points etc, but good solid constant crunching for negligible running costs . These devices should be the future and backbone of Boinc if only projects would wake up to their massive potential in their shear numbers.

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Wed Dec 31, 2014 8:31 pm

When in doubt about what to get, it's best to be safe and get both.

Have an U3 and 2 RK3188 Android TV boxes on the way.

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Thu Jan 01, 2015 2:54 am

Welcome to 5V crunching. Will be looking for your progress on the next Android update I do. Think I will be looking for a few as well. Love the Baytrail tablet but so few projects support x86 on Android. A real shame they are missing out on such crunching power.

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Tue Jan 06, 2015 2:10 am

I have NativeBOINC running on a T-RK42 running Android 4.4.2. Had to move it to internal memory else WUProp keeps throwing computation errors. Have Enigma running but it will only download and run 1 WU. Enigma shows it as having 4 processors.

Not sure what I did, but have all 4 cores working now. One more to setup tomorrow.

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Tue Jan 06, 2015 2:20 am

nativeBoinc doesn't like being run from an SDcard. Some devices it works but for most it doesn't.
Under preferences check how many cores it is allowed to use for Boinc. I think the default is one. Boinc on Android is set mainly for phones so the core usage, battery usage, mem usage etc. is set to min levels rather than the levels we are used to on normal computer systems.

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Tue Jan 06, 2015 2:34 am

Have it working, but suffered through using the remote control mouse pointer function to setup most of it before I realized all I had to do was plug in a mouse and keyboard.

Yeah, I'm an IT manager .

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Tue Jan 06, 2015 2:39 am

In my experience, that's why they add ' manager ' to the job title

:bootyshake:

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Tue Jan 06, 2015 3:16 am

I had never used an Android device other than my smartphone until today. I didn't realize it was just a GUI OS that operated the same (mostly) on all devices and if you didn't have a touch screen on the device, all you needed was a mouse and keyboard plugged into the USB ports.

Janos gave input about Linux, but I didn't see anything about Android.

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Tue Jan 06, 2015 3:57 pm

Is it worth getting a box with only 1GB of internal storage? I've seen 2GB. Are there larger units or does it matter?

Silver · Post by **Silver** » Tue Jan 06, 2015 9:39 pm

I'm not sure to be honest. I wonder if some of the boxes Alez has are 1 GB
If they're cheap enough I suppose you could use less cores and crunch whatever possible or maybe just need to pick the right projects.

That's a really long post to say no idea

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Wed Jan 07, 2015 1:45 am

All my rk3188's are 2 GB ram, 8 GB rom. They take SD cards but never needed. I have never run out of memory with 4 cores crunching flat out as the apps are all optimised to run on Android devices ie, low power, low memory use. I though 1 GB boxes were dual core a9's or a13's.

Post by **scole of TSBT** » Thu Jan 08, 2015 12:18 am

I bought a couple K-R42 boxes. Both were supposed to be 2GB, but one was only 1GB. I don't have a tech shed to hide my stuff in, so I have to find places around the house or office to hide them. Don't think I could get away with leaving a bare board out in the open so I had to figure out how to make them look as "normal" as possible and not draw too much attention to them. Still ended up kind of Franken-style. To keep it cool I put a 5v 40mm 3.5 CFM fan on it powered off the USB port. Drilled some holes in the top to vent the air, but the plastic cracked a little. Eh, it works and stays cool.

Alez · Post by **Alez** » Thu Jan 08, 2015 2:46 am

Looks good ... in a frankenstein sort of way

Put tape over the plastic then drill it should stop it cracking, of course that is only a temporary measure. The only real solution is a tech shed

Post by **Dirk Broer** » Tue Sep 01, 2015 1:25 am

Found a new source for RK3188-based tablets: the kiddy toys shop! Intertoys over here sells "Archos tablet 10.1 inch Neon 8GB", and the things runs a 1.4 GHz RK3188! That's a quad-core Cortex-A9 and that for 115 Euro's, including touch screen...