Review of LeMaker Guitar- Kindly Thanks Stephane Guerreau

MKT

Since we sent the samples to  LeMaker Guitar fans we have received review and reply gradually. The results will publish here .

Thanks Stephane Guerreau's comprehensive testing  for LeMaker Guitar.

For more review details, Plz check the following link:

http://hardware-libre.fr/2015/08/review-lemakers-guitar-board/

hnsncxy

tkaiser replied at Wed Aug 19, 2015 00:29
That's perfectly ok to not release all informations while a product is still in development. But u ...

Hi，Tkaiser
We are gradually improving information,and you can get more information by visiting the wiki at http://wiki.lemaker.org/LeMaker_Guitar .
At present, even though the information is not very perfect, we have been in the effort to do it well. Meanwhile, we hope you can help us to improve material quickly.

Althogh the EMMC startup has a higher priority than SD card in the Soc. However, we have modified related software, the SD card startup have a higher priority.The system will boot from the SD Card when you plugin the SD card which has a effective system image. Otherwise, start from the EMMC. The Actions Semiconductor provide adfu(actions device firmware upgrade) mode, and we can use the function to burn the system firmware to EMMC. Meanwhile,  we will provide tutorial which will tell user how to make SD card/EMMC system image and how to burn the image to SD card/Emmc in the wiki later.
You provide some good requirements about booting process depend and power requirements, and we will edit related documents in the wiki.

Although the SDK from the Actions Semiconductor，it has been optimized by our team. Of course, we also get much help from the Actions. we plan to release the stable SDK in the next month, and share with all.

welcome much more advice from you. Thanks

cxy

Unfortunately the only real/new information there could be found in a screenshot: Seems the guitar base board is using the RTL8723BS variant for Wi-Fi/BT (SDIO and not USB).

The Guitar use the RTL8723BS (WIFI+BT) module, and wifi support up to 150 Mbps PHY rates. and it has a higher PHY rates than ap6181/ap6210 wifi module which only  support 72.2Mbps. i think that you can visit the below website to view more information about Guitar
http://www.lemaker.org/article-46-1.html

actkk2000

Thanks!

tkaiser

Unfortunately the only real/new information there could be found in a screenshot: Seems the guitar base board is using the RTL8723BS variant for Wi-Fi/BT (SDIO and not USB).

tkaiser

cxy replied at Tue Aug 18, 2015 08:00
The Guitar use the RTL8723BS (WIFI+BT) module, and wifi support up to 150 Mbps PHY rates. and it has ...

You recommend reading the product page on http://www.lemaker.org/article-46-1.html where these informations still are missing? Why?
Since I looked carefully at Stephane's screenshots I already know that you're using RTL8723BS (due to the name of the loaded kernel driver) and looked up its specs. Regarding Ethernet: Stephane said: "the final revision of the Base board should have GigaBit ethernet instead of the actual 10/100Mb/s" while Tony said in another post a while ago that you will prepare not one but 4 base boards. And he said that the GBit Ethernet adapter will have to rely on USB (of course since the S500 lacks native GBit Ethernet capabilities). I asked about the chipset of the USB-to-Ethernet-bridge you want to use and the supported kernel version (very important for a load of different stuff, eg. the ability to use UASP over USB).


Still no answers, still no informations available: http://www.lemaker.org/forum.php ... 83451&fromuid=33332

Stephane's "review" is just copy&paste from your specs pages... with some adjustments/changes: eg. he speaks of 12V@2A PSU requirements -- that's a whopping 24W! -- while on your specifications page "5-12V@2A" can be read what I interpret as "max. 10W and included step down converter to deal with any input voltage between 5V and 12V". So what's true? 24W or 10W?

Sorry folks, where are exact specs for this board and important boundary conditions like kernel support? If you recommend reviews like the one mentioned in this thread do you say that the 'informations' provided there are also true?

hnsncxy

tkaiser replied at Tue Aug 18, 2015 09:00
You recommend reading the product page on http://www.lemaker.org/article-46-1.html where these info ...

Hi,Tkaiser
The Guitar is still beta stage, and the review using the Guitar Base Board Rev.B without the GMAC, and we will release the Rev.C which support the GMAC later.
The SDK for the Guitar use the kernel version 3.10 and uboot version 2015.04.
The Guitar can support the power supply from the 5v/2a to 12v/2a, and more power to drive greater load. If you want to driver more load,  suggest you to use 12v/2a power adapter.
With the improvement of the Guitar, we will constantly improve the product information.
The Rev.B use RTL8723BS wifi module. Thanks for your feedback

tkaiser

hnsncxy replied at Tue Aug 18, 2015 22:26
Hi,Tkaiser
The Guitar is still beta stage, and the review using the Guitar Base Board Rev.B without ...

That's perfectly ok to not release all informations while a product is still in development. But until now there were almost zero valuable informations available.

Some things like the boot process depend only on the SoC used so why don't you publish informations how booting is possible (which precedence have NAND -- when available -- and a TF card -- when available? How do you recover from a broken NAND installation? Is there something like FEL mode where you can boot the whole board from a connected PC via USB? And so on)

Or some words about typical consumption and power supply. With the base boards you plan... can I use any voltage between 5V and 12V? How does consumption differ when I feed the device with 5V and 12V (efficiency of the step-down converter)?

Speaking about the kernel. If the 'SDK' is based on kernel 3.10 and you don't say a single word about mainline then everything's clear now: The situation will be far worse than with Allwinner now where we have many things ready in mainline.

BTW: Please stop using the term GMAC when you mean Gbit Ethernet. GMAC is an Allwinner term (SoCs containing either EMAC or GMAC or both like the A20, and always relying on an external PHY like RTL8211) and this will never apply to an Actions Semi SoC since it contains neither Gigabit MAC nor PHY. If you use an external Gbit capable USB-to-Ethernet bridge it's simply that.

HWL_Stouf

Hi tkaiser,
I'm the original writer of the blog article.I agree with you, we are missing many details about guitad board and base board. So I wrote what I think are the "safe" values, from everything I learned about it so far. For an example, before we really know what is the board real consumption, the "12v2w" seems safe considering peripherals.
You're right, my blog article is 50% copy/paste from wiki/website, because I dont have more details, and if you read the other forum post, provided software is still very limited and I could not do much more than start the board, and check almost everything works...
The gigabit edit come from a reddit member who talked about it on skype with someone at lemaker. The proof he sent to me seemed legit enough to edit the article. Technicaly, the s500 has no gigabit. So I believe the base board will provide it with a usb3-gigabit converter. I believe the base board I have is still a beta, so I don't exactly know what will be part of the final product. I've seen pictures of the same board with a IR receiver while i dont have any.
However, feel free to send me corrections, I could make mikstakes, and I would be happy to know more about this board. So far, it seems to be a really good product to me..
About nand recovery... well, I'm now on this boat. My partition resized failed and I now have a non-booting board. I didn't go too far in it right now (holidays in a remote location, I have the board but limited internet), but I can tell board is recognized by windows 7 when plugged in the usb3 mini-usb, with a regular micro usb cable, as an android device. Maybe a linux computer will let me mount and repair the partitions, i don't know. I had ubuntu installed in the nand before the disaster, I dont have any backup or image, and I'm not very interested in installing the provided android image.

sghazagh

Hi Guys,
Thanks for all your reviews and posts.
I am totally agree with you guys with regard to lake of information at the moment.
But to be honest, we shouldn't be this harsh. LeMaker made a product which is not in public yet. So they know it has too many issues.
They generously sent us a trial board for review. Something that normally does not happen with other makers.
I think the best is writing the step-by-step guides and posts when we discover something and request for explanation when we need some information.

I am in contact with LeMaker team and have found that they are quite supportive and of course busy with improving the board.

We should expect much improvement if we collaborate as we voluntary wanted to participate on this review.

Once again, please write a step-by-step guide and share it with others when you found things that worth to share.

Thanks for all your useful posts.

Thanks (A user...)