I will not do it,but,if I will be able to create a working FreeBSD "tablet" with a professional look and feel, can I start selling the product as is or should I ask some kind of electrical certification to ensure that the tablet created are safe ?
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| System Name | Brightworks Systems BWS-6 E-IV |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Core i5-6600 @ 3.9GHz |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3 Rev 1.0 |
| Cooling | Quality case, 2 x Fractal Design 140mm fans, stock CPU HSF |
| Memory | 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR4 3000 Corsair Vengeance |
| Video Card(s) | EVGA GEForce GTX 1050Ti 4Gb GDDR5 |
| Storage | Samsung 850 Pro 256GB SSD, Samsung 860 Evo 500GB SSD |
| Display(s) | Samsung S24E650BW LED x 2 |
| Case | Fractal Design Define R4 |
| Power Supply | EVGA Supernova 550W G2 Gold |
| Mouse | Logitech M190 |
| Keyboard | Microsoft Wireless Comfort 5050 |
| Software | W10 Pro 64-bit |
I don't know the laws there, or the expectations of the public, but here, if you are selling to another a product you made, it better be safe or you will get the pants sued off you by ambulance chasers/shysters in a heartbeat. So at the very least, you should get liability insurance - if not your own lawyer.
So here is another link, this time for bare board and you can connect the batteries yourself - might require spot welder:
With regard to certification, in EU you definitely need "CE" mark that assures everyone your device does not emit radio interference. There is also a requirement to be lead free. There could be other laws. Note that the rules are likely a bit different for "kits" rather than complete devices. With the kit the customer is expected to assemble it themselves. Do some research and talk to a lawyer.
With regard to certification, in EU you definitely need "CE" mark that assures everyone your device does not emit radio interference. There is also a requirement to be lead free. There could be other laws. Note that the rules are likely a bit different for "kits" rather than complete devices. With the kit the customer is expected to assemble it themselves. Do some research and talk to a lawyer.
There are plenty of "kit" products on Amazon where everything is soldered already and you just need to connect or screw pieces together. But I am in USA and really don't know the situation in Europe - read websites, talk to a lawyer. Also, at least in USA the FCC emissions check costs several thousands from the lab - not a big deal if you make enough to pay yourself salary and can do most of the verification yourself, but might be tricky if you are just starting from 0.
The lab uses professional equipment that is expensive, but there are substitutes - all you need is a sensitive spectrum analyzer, some antennas and relatively EMI quiet place to do the test. This way you can be prepared and not pay the EMI lab for several tests.
Antennas can be had cheaply:
There are also inexpensive spectrum analyzers like TinySA - do your own research to get the best one, as some of the clones might not have the best performance. I don't know what the sensitivity of TinySA type analyzers is, if it is not enough you can get an amplifier like the link below or even a bare board.
In the USA these parts can be cheaper on eBay, and also you might find more variety. Amazon often ships faster, but this varies as well.
I also suspect one can use RTL-SDR module to do scans of frequency as a spectrum analyzer, but I am not sure how easy it is to calibrate it to find out how much power you really have.
The way you do the test is that you position the probe where you want and do a background scan with device off. If you find any particularly loud peaks you need to deal with it either by finding what other equipment is producing those, or by using a box that shield and/or absorbs outside interference like radio stations. After you have done background scan you save the trace as reference, turn the device on and do another scan. This time around you plot new scan minus reference and look for any excess. If nothing obvious is found, move the probe around until you find excess and then repeat the procedure with background scan, as your background has probably changed.
Since you are using commercially made components you don't have a luxury of redesign if you find EMI problems and you would need to mitigate. Metal enclosure suppresses EMI, but if you don't have that you can augment it with adhesive metal foil (copper preferably). There is also EMI absorbing foam that works at high frequencies. Cable position can have great effect on EMI, especially if there are sharp turns - avoid them. Note that both metal foil and foam will affect cooling.
---> There are plenty of "kit" products on Amazon where everything is soldered already and you just need to connect or screw pieces together...
If you find a kit made of electronic hardware components that promises to boot and run FreeBSD,let me know and share it with me ;D
If you find a kit made of electronic hardware components that promises to boot and run FreeBSD,let me know and share it with me ;D
Heh
How about Rapsberry pi ?Just add a microSD card with preinstalled OS and there you go
Add touchscreen and keyboard if you feel like it.What's the difference with what I'm doing ? only the soc. But the Rockpro RK399 is better than the Raspberry Pi. If you look further you will find a version of FreeBSD for the Rockpro. I can also swap the Rockpro with the Raspberry Pi if I want. The problem are the drivers. FreeBSD is not a mature multimedia OS,it is tailored to run on servers. I will be lucky if it will be able to turn on the display. For sure it is not able to enable the touch screen without a driver. LInux is full of drivers for everything,but not FreeBSD. And I'm not a developer. I'm not able to write drivers for this os.
Well you asked for a kit that can FreeBSD and I suggested Raspberry Pi, as it has a lot of addons just like you need, including batteries. If you look at the link above, it appears that Raspberry PI2 has all the essential components supported with FreeBSD. The newer Raspberry Pi4 is missing audio and Wifi.
if you want to try x86 rather than arm there is a list of laptops and their compatibility with FreeBSD:
Essential components.,ok,but it's not enough to have the essential components working to have a full satisfaction when you see that the product where you have invested time and money,works very partially. FreeBSD does not support most of the displays and the touch screen panels due to missing drivers. A lot of multimedia devices lacks of the drivers. I'm not interested to try X86,but give a look at the table,how many features are missing and broken. I'm trying to create some kind of tablet. At the moment I never found a device that looks like a tablet where FreeBSD runs decently. I'm sorry but there aren't kits where everything works enough good to be able to create a mature product neither to sell it in a market place. Everything is in experimental stage. More luck with very old device,but choose a very old device is a big compromise,for me not acceptable.
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I guess I am missing something - if you are not using XFree86 how are you going to use the display ? Console only ?
Also the table I am looking at lists all Raspberry PI 2 devices as supported, including audio, display, camera, ethernet and USB. It's the newer Rapsberry PI 4 that has audio, camera and WiFI listed as unsupported, probably because the driver for the broadcom chip is not ready yet.
Raspy 2 is old and not powerful. And even on this old board,I have the same problems that I have using the soc that I've chosen,missing drivers for display and touchscreen and for example,for this :
if I want to give to my "tablet" the ability to place and receive phone calls.
I have some hope that the display will work because mine that can be powered via USB. Not sure,anyway that I will not find some bug and even this kind of display will not work.
Please don't forget to draw the diagram for me thanks...
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if I want to give to my "tablet" the ability to place and receive phone calls.
I have some hope that the display will work because mine that can be powered via USB. Not sure,anyway that I will not find some bug and even this kind of display will not work.
Please don't forget to draw the diagram for me
thanks...Oh, I agree that newer Raspberry Pi's are faster, but I was just showing proof that boards exist. Depending on your application RPI2 can be enough for now and then you can replace it RPI 4 when support improves.Raspy 2 is old and not powerful. And even on this old board,I have the same problems that I have using the soc that I've chosen,missing drivers for display and touchscreen and for example,for this :
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if I want to give to my "tablet" the ability to place and receive phone calls.
Phone calls - interesting ! Looking at this Raspberry Pi hat it looks like A7670E is partially controlled through a serial port - I would have expected that to work. You might have some luck porting Linux drivers from Raspberry Pi - USB ports are really easy to interface with.
A7670E Cat-1 HAT - Waveshare Wiki
Powered via USB - is it USB-C or something else ?
I'm not so experienced and skilled because I'm not a programmer. I can't do this.
The display that I've bought can be turned on attaching it to the USB-C port of any model of Raspberry. I hope that it supports also the board that I've chosen.
I know that it exists. But if it slow and I can't run only light and few applications,why should I use it ? I want to create something that I can use everyday,not only a proof of concept. And anyway,even if I choose it,I will have the same problems that I have now with the board that I've got : missing drivers. So,if the driver missing problem is the same,I can as well use a most powerful soc. Remember that the raspy 2 and a lot of other socs have basic functionalities running,just like the soc that I've chosen,nothing more.
I think that the camera,display,wifi can work attaching to the board an hat. But the soc + the hat makes the tablet very thick. More than a tablet I would build a brick thicker than mine !
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It could be fun
I usually first use scripting language (like Tcl/Tk or Python) to prototype talking to USB device and then rewrite the code in C if necessary. You will pick up skills much faster if you are doing it for yourself rather than as a class assignment.I think the way that this works is by using some differential pairs of USB-C to transmit DisplayPort or HDMI signals. Not every USB-C port supports this. Btw when you are experimenting make sure to try the cable in all orientations by flipping USB-C plug - on some devices this makes a difference.
The original question was "If you find a kit made of electronic hardware components that promises to boot and run FreeBSD,let me know and share it with me ;D", so I checked and, naturally, RPI2 is a kit that answers this question. Now if you want more performance that's ok, but that was not in the original question.
A hat is just a convenient way to attach things. You can just as well use a cable. So I would expect the display and camera to work via ribbon cables. As for Wifi, if I remember it correctly RPI2 does not have one onboard and you have to use a USB adaptor - just find one that FreeBSD has drivers for.
I'd thought that you knew a kit,sold on internet,where every hardware component was already mounted and assembled,certified to work correctly on FreeBSD.
An hat makes the device too thick,without a good look and feel. I will not use it.
Elaborate more here. Post some screen to help me to understand what to do.
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This sounds like a laptop or tablet, here is a list:
There is also a webpage with user-submitted dmesg output which shows what people are running on:
This only shows how the kernel booted, but you can see which devices initialized successfully. I looked through a couple of pages and found someone trying to run FreeBSD on Lenovo T14s G6 with Snapdragon ARM cpu:
This boot went less smoothly than others I looked at because the notebook very new. But even though there were errors parsing ACPI table I see quite a few devices initialized.
My suggestion was that if you find a hat where everything works, you can then make the same electrical connections and use the same parts that the hat used to get a working system.
Take a look at Wikipedia page on USB-C
USB-C - Wikipedia
There a picture there of USB-C pinout. The power and USB 2.0 connections are connected on both A and B sides so it does not matter how you plug the connection is still the same. The high speed differential pairs however are not symmetric. For example, in one position you will be connecting TX1 to TX1, but in the other position you will connect TX2 to TX1. I think it is expected that the receiver chip will properly demux these. But I have a USB enclosure on my desk that in one position only gives me USB 2.0 and in the other position I get several gigabits. So clearly it does not work smoothly for all the devices.
I'm interested in building a tablet,so I gave a look at the tablet list : I see only 2 tablets where even the ETH does not work. My tablet will work better
Snapdragon ARM,interesting. I think you want to give a look at this post :
The BlackBerry Passport secure boot has been exploited : let's talk about the chance to install FreeBSD there.
Hello to everyone. Finally the BlackBerry Passport secure boot has been exploited,so a developer has found the way to install Android on top of it instead of QNX. Anyway the conversion is not easy,because a chip should be removed and some soldering are needed. But it is doable. There are...
I know,but not using an hat. I want to get close to the look of a tablet. Using an hat I will go very far away from that.
That's the spirit !... I see only 2 tablets where even the ETH does not work. My tablet will work better
If I was doing this, I would first get a system to work and boot with a hat and whatever else easy to get and it would not look like a tablet, but be simply a pile of parts on the table. And then I would focus on reducing the size by replacing parts with slimmer alternatives one at a time, while keeping the system working until the pile of parts fits into the tablet.
That's actually not that different from what you would do in the industry - you would get developer boards which are just like a hat, test that some functionality works and then design and make a pcb that does all the connections that you had in a pile of parts. Easy way to slim things down.