Unboxing & Project Sharing — upcommunity

What up-board to use as firewall (as second life)

PackElend — Thu, 08 Jul 2021 20:12:35 +0000

Hi there,
we are getting some up boards for testing. As usual, it is not likely that they will any productive life soon, so I'm wondering if I could abuse it as a firewall in the IoT-lab being upgraded currently, giving them a second life.

I came across some old topics on pfSense but they are a couple of years old.
Could anyone advise me which board is the right choice using it as IoT-middleware (data collection, pre-processing and forwarding to cloud) and as a strong hardware firewall in its second life?

thank you

stefan

My UP Squared has arrived - and thanks

Andy Nicholson — Thu, 25 May 2017 11:56:40 +0000

Just a quick note to say my UP2 has arrived

And also to say thank you to the whole UP team, I had some serious concerns after the delivery troubles of the first board and was in two minds to support the kickstarter a second time, but I am happy to be proved wrong. Looking forward to getting stuck in with it!

newhotcontent

mereja9074 — Thu, 17 Aug 2023 07:42:11 +0000

The dishes are all from true home-made mystery recipes, cautiously cooked with proper Southeast Asian elements and seasonings, and the quantities are full, such as Malay satay skewers, signature tender boneless Hainanese chook, single-bone hen wings with lemongrass and honey, and pineapple fowl cubes Fried rice with meat floss, etc., is a ought to-devour signature delicacy!

[Up extreme Series] Case for laser-cutting

tobi_b — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 10:00:12 +0000

Dear all

I created a case

Feel free to use, created in FreeCad 0.202

Debian Bullseye and the up squared.

Retro_Hacker — Wed, 26 Apr 2023 11:25:36 +0000

Has anybody here used Debian on an Up Squared. It’s installs fine at the moment Firefox brings up anythig graphic, and the system crashes and resets with nothing in the error log. I’m trying to build a compact SDR system and I need something with a bit more grunt than a raspberry pi.

And would someone at Up be kind enough to send me a couple of sata power cables. It comes from the tiny connector next to the SATA port.

I’ve got these for free and I’m on a low income. Unless It’s just a few bucks. 😊😊😊

Regards, John Telek.

which Board for USB OTG/device mode + 4k30 live encoding?

gaxie — Sat, 21 Jan 2023 13:31:22 +0000

Hi all,

I'm looking for a Board to serve as a NAS and remote KVM. So it should have:

4k30Hz live encoding capability (precise codec doesn't matter that much, there are also no huge quality requirements) - Can't find when 4K became available with intel quicksync?
USB3.0 in device mode (also known as OTG, but that technically isn't a thing with USB-C, there it would be an upstream facing port UFP or dual role data DRD). At least 5Gb/s / Superspeed should be supproted. Every connector is fine, but I'd favor USB-C.
it should support one NVMe SSD with at least PCIe2x1 and two SATA disks. The disks could be attached through a Sata controller board (second PCIe2x1 device)
designing a relatively simple board would be OK.
should be at most 105x105 mm²

I can't find info whether USB device mode works with superspeed - can someone confirm that, for specific devices?

aside of the USB device mode support, cadidates are:

up squared (original - second SATA broken auf from mSATA)
up4000 is short one SATA or PCIe port (why are there two SATA clock signals but only one set of data lines on the extension header?) - otherwise it would
up squared 6000 (sata controller on M2 2230)

are there others?
Thanks in advance!

Help needed selecting the right UP...

julianleker — Mon, 29 Jun 2020 17:34:36 +0000

Hi There.
Im looking to find a solution for a small device that runs windows10 and can run this software
Dashlight4 which is a lighting design software..

Dashlight4
Recommended computer requirements:

Computer working under Windows 7 or higher, or MAC OSx 10.10 or higher
2 Ghz speed processor, dual core
4 Gb Memory (RAM)
Video card with 1GB video memory
1920*1080 pixel screen
OpenGL 3.1 (for 3D)

All the best
Julian

UP Squared Experience so far

Duane Goodman — Sat, 16 Sep 2017 09:36:29 +0000

Hey everyone

So I've had my UP^2 for a few days now and wanted to share my experiences so far. Overall I've got a few issues I still need to fix before I can use it as a media center. Will also be using it as a web server and perhaps some minor gaming, but primarily as the media center.

Installation (Ubuntu): Had a little issue with my keyboard not being recognized in the installer, but found a workaround forcing the board into the boot menu (F7) then it works.

Kodi Media Center: Installed fairly easy and the board handles 4K media without breaking a sweat.

UP^2 Fan: Saw a video on Youtube claiming it was virtually silent, but mine is pretty noisy. I think I will have to look for some way to lower the speed or only run the fan when the CPU is getting hot. If not I will probably switch it back to the heatsink.

Audio: Sound is only working directly to the TV. HDMI ARC to our surround sound turns off the moment I power on the board. All other devices work fine (Raspberry Pi, Playstation 4 etc.). As soon as I power off the board, ARC enables itself again. Haven't found any resolution for this yet.

HDMI CEC: Not working, no solution as of yet.

Rasptop - 3D printed laptop with an Up board!

Morganlowe — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 05:20:28 +0000

https://www.thingiverse.com/make:623008

There's the specific one, I have been using this for quite a while and love it. Long battery life, plenty of power for most of what I need and just a great all around experience!

I really like the board, but recently the board has really be struggling to boot, anyone have a tip for this? It will sit for 10-15 minutes before showing the splash screen.

Thanks!

Private on-premises cloud and home gateway: all on UP Squared

mark_81 — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 22:49:50 +0000

hi folks,
I finally found time to share an easy project I have developed in the past weeks and finally concluded.
I wanted to have a local and private cloud-like solution to store documents and other personal files I do not want to place on a 3rd party cloud; moreover I also needed to centralize IoT devices I have spreaded across my house, self-made (based on NodeMCU or Arduino) or off the shelf like smart thermostats.
Here below the main picture I will describe all the parts of the project I had to take care, including the list of parts used and tips&tricks to setup the environment.

DATA SECURITY: RAID-1
For sure one of the first concerns was about the data mirroring: to solve the problem I have bought a Minicard to SATA adapter (https://www.startech.com/HDD/Adapters/SATA-to-mSATA-Adapter~MSAT2SAT3) and a couple of SATA power & data cables.
Power for the two 2.5" hard disks has been taken from 40pin connector, which is more reliable for the current drained by the two mechanical disks.
Once closed the interfacing step, I could setup the software RAID-1 under the operating system, using mdadm command.

THE CASE: PRINTED? NO, PRINTER
I wanted to merge one of my other passions: recycling. I had a broken Canon Selphy printer and its case turned out to be the perfect fitting solution, well, with some carpentry modification.
It is not super fancy but good looking, compact, fine for the dissipation and connections accessibility.

SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION

Operating System: Besides the usage of latest bios version, I installed Lubuntu, which is much more lightweight than its bigger brother.
RAID configuration: I did follow the guide linked below with a modification. RAID was created on partitions instead of volumes, to avoid to have RAID inactive at every reboot.
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-raid-arrays-with-mdadm-on-ubuntu-16-04
Software management: I am using Docker and Portainer for easier handling and http interface
Wiki: I selected WiKi.Js with a Postegres database, both running as containers
Picture Management: I am using Photoprism, on docker
Provate Cloud storage environment: I am using OwnCloud as container
Remote access: SSH and TightVNC as backup
Domotics Software: Home Assistant under implementation. It should be straight away installation, but I want to enable HAssio Addon repo.

UP Squared with N3350 and 4GB of RAM carrying out its job perfectly.
Power consumption as headless NAS is around 4.8W on average.

A missing feature is the Wake on Lan, for which I hope a feedback will be given on its enablement.
That's all.
thanks

Will A Raspberry Pi Display Work With The Original Up Board?

NickThaNoodle — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 06:57:56 +0000

I have a question about a display that says its made for the raspberry pi, it uses the GPIO Pins for power and hdmi for video, since the upboard is almost identical in size and board layout to the pi, would it work? i have a feeling it would but i wanted to ask just incase anyone has tried this.
also would the active cooler with a fan be compatible with this dispaly? or would the gpio pin dispaly be in the way of it and would it have enough room that little air would pass

here is a link to the display i have bought

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Raspberry-Pi-3-5-inch-HDMI-LCD-touchscreen-3-5inch-display-60-fps-1920-1080-IPS/332223007022?_trkparms=aid=111001&algo=REC.SEED&ao=1&asc=20160908105057&meid=64b52d14cbde4d429f52d343dc5f7fbc&pid=100675&rk=1&rkt=15&mehot=none&sd=332223007022&itm=332223007022&pmt=0&noa=1&pg=2380057&_trksid=p2380057.c100675.m4236&_trkparms=pageci:482c9bec-718a-11ea-8454-74dbd180f09e|parentrq:2512f5d11710aa18f1578567fffa62fa|iid:1

Connect iPad Retina Displays Via eDP

BigCorvus — Thu, 06 Jun 2019 14:33:40 +0000

Dear community,
I'd like to share a DIY adapter system I developed recently, which enables the use of iPad retina screens with the UP board or UP core. It can be connected to CN31 directly. The connector counterpart is made by the OSH Park flex service. The backlight driver is based on Adafruit Qualia.

Check out https://github.com/BigCorvus/Retina-Display-eDP-Adapter-For-UP-Board

How to Build a Deep Learning Classification System for Less than $1000 USD

Aling — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 11:20:46 +0000

Introduction
Deep learning is set to alter the machine vision landscape in a big way. It is enabling new applications and disrupting established markets. As a product manager with FLIR, I have the privilege of visiting companies across a diverse range of industries; every company I visited this year is working on deep learning. It’s never been easier to get started, but where do you begin? This article will provide an easy-to-follow guide to building a deep learning inference system for less than $1000.

For more....check here.
I do believe we can replace AI Core (Myriad 2 ) to AI Core X (Myriad X). :-)

Moved: Up Xterme roadmap

DCleri — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 11:11:17 +0000

This discussion has been moved.

Up Board 3D printed laptop

Morganlowe — Fri, 15 Mar 2019 13:58:21 +0000

I designed a 3D printed laptop meant to be as few parts and simple to make as possible. It's very chunky but stylish still! It was deigned around the Raspberry Pi so any matching form factor board will fit. I always wanted a Windows version and I found the UP board a perfect fit!

It uses a 2S LiPo power system with 2 x 10,000MAH batteries and an inexpensive buck converter with constant voltage output for power. The screen is 7" at 1024x800 with 10 point multi-touch support via USB. There's USB audio and USB WiFi plus Bluetooth via a small adapter. Overall size is 8 inches by 6 inches and little over 2 inches thick with the lid closed.

I did have to modify the base design for the Up board some. I moved it back from the front since there is no SD card to worry about to make room for the USB 2.0 header. I used the header to panel mount dual USB accessory for the laptop since it had the space for the dual panel mount already. For the USB 3.0 OTG I used the Up adapter and some 3M VHB tape to secure it in place in the case with rear access. There's also a small USB 2.0 hub inside with the Keybord, WiFi and BT, and Touchscreen on that. I used a 256GB USB flash stick for additional storage in the OS, mostly for my work and cloud files. I added 3mm height to the base to allow space for the bottom heatsink on the Up board plus added the Up active cooler and plenty of vents.

The keyboard is a mini Rf wireless unit that snaps into the palm rest once removed from it's casing. I used the 3.3v pins from the Up board connected to the LiPo battery in on the keyboard to power it. This works out great and is super simple. It draws less than 30ma.

Overall the unit is a bit over 2 inches thick when closed. It's 8 inches wide and 6 inches deep approximately and weighs just about 2.5 pounds. There's a lot of battery and I didn't want any crazy soldering or modding going on so it uses pretty much off the shelf parts.

The Up board with 4GB RAM and 64Gb Strorage powers this, it's got power too. I did play Crysis on it just to prove the point. So far I have gotten about 12 hours of battery life out of it playing Youtube videos and looking up stuff on the web. It's being used daily now and it's handy, fun and a good conversation starter!

You can see the project here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2859679

The Up Board build is here: https://www.thingiverse.com/make:623008

Raspberry Pi Build: https://www.thingiverse.com/make:600799

Asus Tinkerboard build: https://www.thingiverse.com/make:606520

Thank you!

Industrial MIPI camera for UP Boards

GeTCameras — Thu, 18 Oct 2018 07:45:45 +0000

Hi all,

We have started with the development of our own embedded MIPI camera module suitable for UP Boards (UP, UP2, and UP Core) and Raspberry Pi with an industrial image sensor. The poll says it is only suitable for the Raspberry Pi, but it also for UP boards. Currently, we are in the specification phase and are interested in your preferences concerning form factor and image sensor. We would like to develop a product that fits the interests of the majority of the people . Please fill out this short, 4 question poll, it would really help us.

AI Performance Benchmark for UP products

TimoK93 — Thu, 08 Nov 2018 13:28:23 +0000

Hi makers and up-developers,

this discussion treats the performance of UP products for AI applications, especially running neural nets for inference. The goal would be a benchmark between some well known maker-boards and the UP products.

Why do I open this discussion?

Currently I am developing an application which core component is a neural network that predicts objects in images (a pretty normal application ). Currently i'm using the Jetson TX2 and it works well. Using the internal GPU with Tensorflow is very intuitively. Now I want to try some other (maybe cheaper) boards for inferring neural nets.
The biggest problem: Converting nets with OpenVINO is much work... Often my Nets are not running or couldn't be converted. An example problem i had is THIS.
I don't want to be sad after hard investigating and work on my models to make them running on UP products to realize that the Up products are at least very slow...

I discussed this topic with an AAEON collaborator on VISION trade fair in Stuttgart and he agreed my opinion, that it would be very usefull to have a kind of benchmark.

What to do?

To get meaningful results, one needs to run the same model on UP products with OpenVINO and some other boards. It would be very interesting to see a direct comparison between some boards inferring the same neural net.
Interesting categories would be:

Up Board GPU
Up Squared GPU
Up AI core (MYRIAD)
Up AI core X (after release!)

A widespread board is the Jetson TX2, so i think thats a interesting adversary for a comparison (Just my opinion!)

Is there anybody that made some experiences? It would be nice to share them!

My first experiences!

Ok, let me open this discussion with my experiences:
I converted a Mask-RCNN with Resnet101 as backend. You can find it in here. I inferred a Full HD video (1920x1080)

On Jetson TX2 inferring was done within 1-2 seconds
On Up Squared GPU it was done in ~40 Seconds.
On Up AI core (MYRIAD) i was not able to test it, because the IR-model was not loadable...

Thanks for your interest!
Greetings,
Timo

What kind of vision softwares are managed by the Up-boards ?

mlengele — Thu, 20 Dec 2018 07:55:28 +0000

Hi everybody,
I am working on a big project to integrate vision with AI for an aeronautic industry.
We could use a "big" industrial PC equiped with a GPU but it is not an exciting way and we prefer explore a more disruptive way in using UP boards.

I began to read a lot of documentation about UP-board but I'm wondering if someone has tried to use Cognex Designer and Cognex ViDi (A.I.) on it ?

These softwares are working on Windows and usefull for deploying solutions for the industry.
You spend your time to use the application, not to develop and code.

Please feel free to comment your analyse ;-)

Regards,

Marc

Retro Emulation On the Up Board - My Video links

jaymin — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 02:40:11 +0000

Hey, guys, It's ETAPRIME I make a lot of Retro emulation Videos Using different SBC's

I just received my up board a few days ago and I love it! Here are some videos I've posted so far.

Up board CyanogenMod 13.0 Android X86 Benchmarks- https://youtu.be/dzSFqIGmJXs

UP BOARD Unboxing And Benchmarks - https://youtu.be/3eyI27ppDSo

Nintendo Gamecube Test - https://youtu.be/SKUudCSUFn0

CAN IT RUN CRYSIS? - https://youtu.be/-ah8yv4G1Fk

Running World Of Warcraft - https://youtu.be/fFEy3avZYzI

Nintendo 64 Test- https://youtu.be/YM8NSLJdD9g

PlayStation 2 Test- https://youtu.be/HNDcdTnvaOI

Snes And Genesis / Mega drive - https://youtu.be/YGEtwSA-3zc

Mythtv

tsb2 — Sat, 03 Mar 2018 19:10:35 +0000

I am using the 4G/64G UpBoard for Mythtv (0.28) Backend/Frontend with excellent results. For storage, I use a 256G USB3 Mushkin thumb drive. OS is Ubuntu. At idle, machine draws about 6W. During LiveTV, about 8W. UpBoard proving to be a superb low-power Mythtv machine.

What does the Up2 package include?

machinekoder — Sun, 16 Sep 2018 13:54:30 +0000

I want to buy an Up2 https://up-shop.org/up-boards/106-up-squared-pentium-quad-core-8gb-memory128gb-emmc.html

However, I'm somewhat confused if the package already includes the passive cooling duct and a power cord.

Does anyone know what the base package include?

electronic music setup

Rob — Thu, 19 Jul 2018 12:57:57 +0000

An electronic music instrument I've been working for about a year now. So far up2 has worked like a charm. I still need to do most of the software for audio processing, so its exciting to see how up2 will able to handle everything.
Running on upsquared in combination with a teensy board, up2 does all the audio processing and controls lighting via spi and i2c, midi-out via uart, teensy does all the input which is send to up2 via usb-serial. software in c++ and puredata.

[AI] UP Detector Demo

prubio — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 10:26:16 +0000

Intel® Apollo Lake in UPSquared + Intel® dev tools look a pretty interesting combination to create deep learning applications that can run on live video.

To demonstrate some of the capabilities, we thought that instead of using the typical pretrained neural network models, it would be fun to train a custom one and 'teach' the UP Squared to detect itself as well as a few of its sisters, classifying a few types of boards and devices (UP, UP Squared and Movidius NCS devices) from live cam video.
At the same time allowed us to get a feeling on the expected performance using GPU vs CPU.

The setup

To run the app you need:

an UP Squared (with Ubuntu 16.04.3).
USB camera (in our case USB 1080p camera, model AD-BHC7350U, others could work without problems).
Intel® System Studio software (included in UP Squared AI Vision Development Kit).
OpenVINO software (included in UP Squared AI Vision Development Kit).

How we do it

We trained a MobileNet SSD V1 neural network, pretrained with coco dataset (available here: https://github.com/tensorflow/models/blob/master/research/object_detection/g3doc/detection_model_zoo.md), to detect up squared, up board and Movidius NCS with over 5000 pictures. The model runs on Tensorflow-gpu 1.4 and supports acceleration by the GPU Intel® Gen 9 HD in the UPSquared.
Once the model was trained, we obtained the inference graph and with model optimizer tools we obtained the xml and bin model.

Attached is the build recipe plus the Intel® System Studio (OpenVINO) packages and source code as well as the network model.

Enjoy!

Link to our video here:
https://youtu.be/dksmGcO0mAI

AI Vision IoT

Aling — Fri, 06 Jul 2018 13:18:37 +0000

Using AI to detect and monitor objects, then to connect and record it on the IoT platform.

Check here.

Clean Water AI

Aling — Tue, 26 Jun 2018 13:32:58 +0000

Using AI to detect dangerous bacteria and harmful particles in the water.
Check out how you can build it with UP Squared Grove IoT kit and NCS( AI Core).

https://www.hackster.io/Nyceane/clean-water-ai-e40806?utm_campaign=new_projects&utm_content=0&utm_medium=email&utm_source=hackster&utm_term=project_image

Connecting UP Squaered to Amazon Web Service ( AWS) Greengrass

Aling — Tue, 08 May 2018 07:46:36 +0000

Thanks to Intel software team, now it is easy to connect UP Squared to Greengrasas.

https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/setting-up-a-time-series-for-sensor-data-using-amazon-web-services-aws-greengrass-and-the-up-squared-board

Invasive Ductal Carcinoma Classification Using AI & IoT

Aling — Thu, 03 May 2018 08:49:11 +0000

Made by Adam Milton-BarkerPublished in Intel, IoT JumpWay, Raspberry Pi, Seeed, UP, and Ubuntu

**Check this super cool project based on UP Squared, Movidius, Grove sensors!
**

Plex Media Server: Which UP board for low idle power consumption?

TOMillr — Mon, 26 Mar 2018 20:03:15 +0000

I'm trying to setup a very low-powered Plex media server and have been looking at the various UP boards as a good basis.

Which of the available CPUs features Intel Quick Sync for hardware video transcoding, yet has the lowest idle power consumption?

Pioneer3AT Mobile Robot with UP Board and ROS

Aling — Tue, 13 Mar 2018 16:04:14 +0000

About this project
It's a short project about the teleoperation of mobile robots using UP-board via ROS teleoperation node.

Hardware components:
UP board
pioneer3AT Robot

https://www.hackster.io/slaahuddin/pioneer3at-mobile-robot-with-up-board-and-ros-c1b43e

AI Face Recognition Lock

Aling — Tue, 13 Mar 2018 16:00:50 +0000

Cool stuff!
About this project
Using AI to train face recognition through Nvidia Jetson and Walabot add extra security.

Hardware components:
Nvidia Jetson TX1
Walabot
UP² Grove IoT Development Kit
Intel Movidius Neural Compute Stick

https://www.hackster.io/Nyceane/ai-face-recognition-lock-7a3e43

Should I switch boards before I'm in to deep?

TooBarFoo — Fri, 02 Feb 2018 18:17:36 +0000

I know there is a banner saying migration in progress but this has been the case for a number of months and boards like the UP without community support are next to worthless. I have yet to find a link THAT appears to be from a Up source pointing to the latest BIOS that works (link not BIOS) ! It leaves me wondering whether we are better off binning the up boards we have before we start and looking for a better supported development kit. What are thoughts of other users, do you wish you had taken a different route or are you getting to most out of your boards?

Using Up² as a micro file server

Hadmut Danisch — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 10:00:26 +0000

One thing I was planning to use an Up² for is a micro file server, i.e. put it in a case together with an SSD and three 2.5 inch hard disks with 4TB each, to get a cached 8TB redundant ZFS file system.

Originally I thought I'd have two problems, but both are gone:

- I've bought a mini pcie board with two SATA ports , which just fits into the slot, but i was afraid that this could be too unfirm, since the Up² has only one mounting hole on the right side, while the board has the SATA ports on the left side, but I was happy to see that the hole has moved to the left on the board I got. I nevertheless would favour for two holes if at all possible.

- I was disappointed about the mSATA port beeing too short for an SSD (needed as a cache). But I just found a half size mSATA SSD, which should fit.

So both problems are gone, all I still need to find is a suitable power supply and some case design (maybe for 3D-Printer) for one UP² and three fat 2.5 inch hard disks.

Got my UP Squared today

WereCatf — Tue, 05 Sep 2017 18:51:08 +0000

I am happy to report that I finally received my UP2 today and it seems to be running happily. I thought I was supposed to receive the 5V 6A power-supply, only received a 5V 4A-one, but maybe I had just misunderstood something. I was a bit disappointed in receiving just one WiFi-antenna instead of two. The ABS-case is... well, it's okay, if you only want to use the board as a standalone-box, but as it prevents access to the GPIO-header and doesn't sport room for any 2.5" SATA-drives I just don't see much use for it. The board itself was bigger and much heavier than I had expected, but that in and of itself is a non-issue -- it just surprised me at first how big and heavy the heatsink was.

As for software, that Ubilinux 4.0 beta is quite rough around the edges, what with a couple of bugs here and there. I can't say I like Debian, its stupidities and the outdated packages in its repos -- I'd much rather have Ubuntu. LXQT is quite terrible, too; may just replace it with something better, like e.g. Cinnamon. Ditched that ugly monstrosity of Connman and installed NetworkManager instead (nmtui is so convenient to use from the console, either over SSH or serial!)

Anyways, there isn't much of point to this thread. Just felt like prattling about my first experiences with the board. Cheerio!

AdaFruit 3.5" TFT HAT and HDMI out working independently from each other.

Ken — Sat, 15 Apr 2017 00:26:56 +0000

While it's still a work in progress, I thought I'd share my progress on getting an AdaFruit 3.5" TFT HAT working independently from the HDMI output. I am using a multi-seat configuration to get the UP Board to have a regular keyboard-mouse-monitor setup working while independently having an Rii mini wireless keyboard (candy bar sized remote type with touchpad) work with the 3.5" display. The Mini-Keyboard controls keyboard and mouse functions for a session started on the 3.5" display, and a regular keyboard and mouse controls the HDMI homed session connected to a monitor. If and when kernel overlays are available, a variation of this would also allow independent touch control of the TFT while still having a full regular session on the HDMI. I think this would be useful for a media center application where the small display could be used as a status screen while say, Kodi runs on the main HDMI. Keyboard and mouse can be replaced by a remote and IR receiver, or anything X can use as an input device... in either case, TFT Session -or- HDMI Session. What I do not have working at the moment is hot-plugging of USB input devices, but I am working on that. Note that this is *not* a multi screen desktop, but 2 independent desktops running on the same Up Board, and they can be 'owned' independently, one can prompt for a login, one can auto login,

It's a fairly complicated setup, but really is just a few files and there is no compiling involved, just configuration. If this is something of interest to a broader audience I'll post it in the wiki once I have it all completely working. It's bits and bobs culled from a lot of different sources as multi-seat is supported by LXDE, KDE and several other environments, it's just not very well documented and takes a lot of trial and error to get it to work right, and every HOWTO seems to approach it differently and no one source seems to actually document a fully working configuration.

Quick Image copy for IoT-Projects

Markus — Mon, 13 Feb 2017 11:19:35 +0000

Is there a option to clone die MMC directly?

I Can't find a tutorial or something.

up board web monitor

netlhx — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 03:01:56 +0000

hi guys, i wrote a piece of code showing up's running status, just for fun!

with node.js, showing up's cpu information etc. here's demo images, in pc & mobile phone.

github: https://github.com/netlhx/node_up

Optical Projector

Evan Sellers — Tue, 17 Jan 2017 20:41:43 +0000

I am making an all in one projector with the UP Board, I have not decided what UP board I should use yet. There may be a specific one I need to use for this project.

The basic concept is that there will be a pico (small hand held) projector connected to an Upboard. My hope is that there is just an optical lens and the power is connected directly to the board, so it will act like an embedded display on a laptop. The computer is on the projector is on to that display, the computer is asleep the projector is asleep, and the computer is off the projector is off. It gets turned on and the projector turns on right up into the input. I was thinking the best way to do this was through a eDP or a DSI, but I am not sure how to connect it or if it would work. Also is there like a projector optical lens built for this type of work.

- Thanks for your time, Evan Sellers

OpenBVE Train Simulator on the UP Board [video]

Sahaj Sarup — Tue, 01 Nov 2016 12:00:50 +0000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h5aSI2NKh8

Project BrainGear

Marcello — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 18:42:26 +0000

This project follows the logic that “dad built a unique computer especially for me” feels so much better than “dad bought me a pc”…
The original idea was born around the Raspberry PI, however I quickly realised that I would need a much powerful engine… and the UP Board came about.
It is made of laser-cut Plexiglas (bent with the air gun of my soldering station), a 13 inch full HD screen+controller board off ebay, a home made Li-ion battery pack, a difficult-to-find Li-ion charging controller that allows simultaneously charging and using the battery, a self-designed power board to handle startup/shutdown logic and the 5V/12V needs. The spare space was intended for an SSD but as USB3 has issues I gave up for the moment..
Software is a Mac-flavoured Ubuntu with UP kernel and loads of cool software including Snap4Arduino and a home built wifi connected board with plenty of sensors for experiments on IoT.
The design is rather pleasant and I personally don’t think the pictures do justice as the transparency is difficult to capture.
My son loves it so I thought of sharing… should anyone be interested in the details, feel free to drop me a message.

My experiments with linux based OSes on the upboard

Sahaj Sarup — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 22:32:43 +0000

The Story Of Linux On the Up Board
https://youtu.be/lcsDllVoFZI

My Reviews--UP board

Sahaj Sarup — Fri, 07 Oct 2016 20:46:03 +0000

Hey,
I have created this thread to link in my reviews of the up board that i will be doing over the next few months..
here is the 1st one:
1)Up Board Unboxing and Quick Review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeoiB7t-s74

Out of the box experience ...

J M E — Sat, 24 Sep 2016 13:20:02 +0000

Ordered a 4/32 version which shipped to the UK 9 days later. At the time the store had 3 week delivery times. Nice to have early fulfilment.

First sight of the board itself pretty positive, looks very well made, sensible heat-sinking etc. Power supply might be an issue for some, I was lucky to have a 5v4a PSU for an ARM board with the right sized barrel connector. I used the UP with one of those tiny 7" TFT monitors connected directly via HDMI which gave me a very basic BIOS setup on first boot. All good so far.

Next step: Install Windows 10 ... At which point the problems kicked in. I used Rufus to transfer the ISO image to a USB drive. Once the UP booted it kept dropping me into a UEFI shell. All attempts to mount the USB drive failed, with the shell claiming no file system existed. After verifying the USB drive wouid boot on an Intel equipped Asrock mini-ITX board I gave up on Windows 10.

On then to Ubilinux. Same routine, used Rufus to transfer the ISO image to the same USB stick. This time the board did boot into the Ubilinux setup as expected. Sadly though the installation itself failed, claiming it could not detect any network hardware ... consternation. No network hardware ??? I had noted some comments in the forum about boot capabilities and had seen the announcement of a new BIOS which supported PXE boot. Excellent, I thought. I'll try that out and see if it improves matters.

Given the issues so far with installing from USB sticks I was very happy to see the BIOS upgrade work without a hitch. Oddly it took 3 or 4 reboots before the BIOS was itself convinced it had been set up correctly but eventually I was able to retry UbiLinux installation (once I had discovered F7 was the key to selecting the boot media). UbiLinux promptly failed at the 'cannot detected network hardware' stage. Bah. Singularly unimpressed by this stage. What to do?

Now I could continue to bore you to death with this steadily sorrier story. Or I could just explain that at some later point in time I discovered the network interfaces were disabled in the BIOS - the settings are hidden away in the 'Advanced >> Network Stack Configuration' options. Why on earth would this be the default on such a device? Madness. Inexplicable. Let's retry Ubilinux. No dice. It fails at the same point. My bah has now turned to grrr.

Time for a vanilla Ubuntu Mate 16.01 x64 distribution. Loaded it onto the USB stick, you'll never guess how! Select the USB stick via the F7 boot options menu and hey, presto, voila! The installation begins, continues, then completes. Reboot and up comes the desktop. Just as you'd expect it to. Right from the start.

TL;DR:

1. Make sure you've got a decent (2A+ 5V) PSU with the correct jack.
2. Flash the latest BIOS before you do anything else. I opted for the 64 bit version.
3. Verify the network stack is enabled!
4. Install a stock* 64bit Ubuntu if you've got 4GB of RAM, probably use the 32bit release on 2GB.

* I realize this means you cannot access the GPIO module etc but that it is a really simple kernel modules, easily built and installed once the right tooling is on-board.

At some point I will retry the Windows 10 installation and will post if I get different results.

Up Board Expirence [PL]

Korneliusz — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 01:53:41 +0000

Hi,

Some tests - sorry only Polish language for now

Windows : http://www.jarzebski.pl/blog/2016/09/13/up-board-sbc-z-procesorem-intel-atom-x5-z8350.html
Linux: http://www.jarzebski.pl/blog/2016/09/26/jak-sprawuje-sie-up-board-pod-linuksem.html

Gaming capabilities and general performance.

Spike Atkinson — Sat, 17 Sep 2016 20:36:05 +0000

Edit: TL;DR check the list at the bottom for all tested games and their frame rates.

I had trouble finding any information about people testing games on the UP board, so I thought I'd share what I've found so far.

I have a 4/32 UP board and have installed Windows 10 Pro and the basic things I need for regular use, leaving me with about 8GB storage remaining.

For expansion, I am currently using an external HDD connected to the the USB 3.0 port, I experience hitching in most games and put this down to the transfer speed of the HDD. I will be replacing this with an SSD and expect this to solve the problem.
Edit: the SSD did solve the hitching problem and I now experience no difficulties at all

I'm also using a small fan on top of the otherwise passive heatsink (edit: currently connected to a 5v and ground gp-bus pins on the board. If anyone knows where I can get a small header for the USB pins where the heatsink fan is supposed to go. Please let me know. It's fine where it is, but the fan stays on even when shutdown, until unplugged.) , this has dropped temps from a toasty 53-Celsius while idling to a somewhat more palatable 42c. this doesn't seem to fluctuate much even while gaming, so it may not be required, but I do like the temp reduction anyway so mine is staying.

(Edit: One problem I did have during set up was a lack of HDMI sound output, this was fixed by downloading the win10 drivers from the downloads section on this site.)

Note: I will update this as I test more games:
Diablo 3, runs at 15-20fps.
Hearthstone runs fine on max settings. Edit: after using Fraps, I see that it runs at a consistent 30 fps on max settings, while this may seem low for such a basic game, there is no movement on screen most of the time, and it is turn-based so it would be difficult to tell between this and higher frame rates. I believe it may actually be capped at 30 fps.

Bioshock plays at a very palatable 40-70fps on low settings and texture resolution turned up high, if you don't mind playing at 30fps you can turn on some of the other effects like lighting/shadows/anti-aliasing, although, with all of them on, you'll be in the 20fps range.

Some games that played flawlessly on any settings, FTL, Hotline Miami, Half-Life, Half-Life: Source, Half-Life 2.
Although untested, I imagine any pixel art indie games will run fine on high settings, and the old source engine games like CS:GO and Portal 1/2.

Torchlight plays at 20-30 FPS on full settings, but if you just turn Antialiasing off then it goes up to 30-40 Fps, and you can easily hit 60fps and beyond if you continued turning down.

Reassembly, one of my favorite games of all time runs smoothly at default settings, around 30-45 fps, but it can go down to around 25 when there is a lot going on. However, even when this happens, reassembly seems to go into slow motion to compensate, rather than dropping frames, which can be annoying as it takes a long time to do everything, but it is cool that it still looks nice, even at low fps.

Borderlands is just about playable at 25-35fps, 1024X600 resolution, not the smoothest experience, but definitely worth it for the gameplay if you can put up with it.

PS1 emulator "epsxe" runs at solid 60fps. This is presumably true for emulators for all consoles of that era and previous.

I will continue to add to this list but hopefully this gives you a pretty accurate idea of what to expect in terms of gaming performance.

Here is a list of games and their frame rates, which I will keep updated. Let me know if you get different numbers.
I tested a lot of these in high, medium and low settings. Unlike above, all that will be listed here is the best overall experience according to my tastes, for example, if a game played at 60 fps on medium texture resolution, but I preferred how it looked at 45fps with high texture resolution, then it will be listed here as "45 fps high settings". If I personally preferred it with the higher frame rate, it will be listed as "60fps medium settings", this will take into account things like the amount of image movement.
Also, most of these games were tested on a 1080p monitor at the game's native resolution.

Anarchy Arcade: 60 fps
BioShock: 50fps on medium settings
Borderlands: 30 Fps low settings
Diablo 3: 15-20fps on lowest settings
FTL: High FPS, max settings
Half life: 60fps max
Half life: Source: 100+fps max settimgs
Half life 2: 45-60 fps max settings
Hearthstone: capped at 30fps and reaches this on max settings
Hotline Miami: High fps max
Limbo: 25-30fps
Mark of the Ninja: 60 fps max
Punch Club: 60 fps max
Reassembly: 30-40fps on medium/high settings
Torchlight: 30-40 fps on high settings

Retro Gaming with UP

Mark Burkley — Thu, 30 Jun 2016 16:15:30 +0000

Hey guys, check out this retro gaming cabinet I made based on the UP board ...

http://www.emutexlabs.com/project/243-retro-gaming-cabinet-using-the-up-board