Garbage M2 distros

Dear Rab,

As we don’t have enough resource, we only can improve M2 video first, if you would like to help to improve M3 that will be welcome!

Below demo for M2 video HW decode and GPU improvement:

BPI M2 A31S runs ubuntu 14.04.3 at 1080p by video HW decode

BPI M2 GPU demo:

P.S.: Above video HW decode and GPU images will be released this week.

Nora

sorry for this , i am lionwang. i just want to do a good project ,thank you for you good suggest.

you can contact me with :[email protected] ,

“As we don’t have enough resource”

Well, there ya go folks. This might have done better as a kickstarter project.

As it stands now, the best thing is to do is bury the Banana Pi project and move on. No good leadership and no real backing. Sad, but there are better boards on the horizon to invest our resources and time on.

That is all just sad. :frowning:

But why don’t you do it then? It seems you only focus on quantity and not quality. Why do you release so many OS images if none of them works as customers would expect? What’s the reason behind?

Given you advertised the M2 being able to use HW acceleration to play video over half a year ago I don’t understand this sentence. Are you able to help me understand how it’s possible to start now with HW acceleration when you demonstrated months ago that it already works?

And thus why we are adding a “-1” to our rating system, indicating “Call The Police” (or a good attorney specializing in class action lawsuits).

There are a lot of laws regarding “knowingly selling and advertising defective products”. While I doubt those laws stretch to China, they can cover 3rd party resellers, making it (in theory) possible to block products from being marketed or sold in a region :stuck_out_tongue:

Joe

I bought my M2 here: https://www.conrad.de/de/banana-pi-2-1-gb-ohne-betriebssystem-1317452.html

There they describe the M2 as being able to provide composite video output (RCA) like M1. I talked to them already and informed them that this is not true, since the M2 can only output through HDMI or LVDS: http://linux-sunxi.org/Banana_Pi_M2 (well, and I also had to learn that this volunteer linux-sunxi project seems to be the only realible information source for the various Bananas)

They told me they got this wrong information from the manufacturer as well as the distributor: http://bananapiwarehouse.com/banana-pi-m2/

So it’s an easy one to return the product :smile: (and since a lot of people are returning M2/M3 these days they’re already thinking about stopping to sell the newer models).

The M3 is sold in Germany as being equipped with the same DC barrel connector as the M2 but by reading through the forums and http://linux-sunxi.org/Banana_Pi_M3#Sudden_shut_offs_.2F_maximum_consumption_.2F_cooling_vs._consumption it’s obvious that the DC barrel has been replaced by micro USB causing all sorts of problems. Lucky customers since they don’t have to discuss and can return their boards with full refund if they didn’t start to try to fix this on their own.

Thanks for the links.

Yes, I got the version with the silly micro USB power input. I’m thinking about replacing it. I am supplying “good power” (4 amps with a very high quality “known to be excellent” short wire - I actually ordered bunches of cables and cut them up to do a compare of the “better” cables sold and what’s really inside).

I can’t see how they would sell a board like the M3 without a good heatsink (and fan). Every other board anywhere close does. I did try heatsinking everything, and to be really fair, I even “chambered” the unit, and fed it super cool nitrogen with no result - it still bootlooped and crashed, so while there may be heat issues, there are still other problems (power) and distro (it does not like a lot of our displays).

I would return the M2 and M3, but after giving so much promotion for Banana (I actually bought and give away boards to other Podcasters to encourage the project), I smell quite a story going on here, and am planning quite a write up about it. This story is a story that will get told (and it should).

If anyone is interested in talking about it, please let me know. I’m all ears.

I will drive tomorrow to the shop and return the M2. No problems since advertised using wrong specifications :smile:

In the meantime I got in touch with a computer enthusiast who founded a ‘Banana club’ through email. He wrote me just a few minutes ago that here in Germany many enthusiasts love the original Banana Pi for its features and level of mature software and support. The M2 without SATA wasn’t a big deal for most of them but now they started ordering the M3 (octa-core, SATA) just to discover that there’s no SATA (according to linux-sunxi they chose the slowest USB-to-SATA bridge available. WTF?!) and that nearly everyone experiences the problems you ran into: Reboots/power-off and no way to use the full power since the CPU clocks down when overheating.

It seems experiences made with the ‘original’ Banana Pi have no relevance for M2/M3? I also read that someone here calls them wholly incompatible and I tend to agree in the meantime. It’s good to spread the word since the vendor doesn’t seem to change anything (it was a bit painful to read through comments here where two guys constantly tried to persuade the vendor to improve his software but they ignored it… and the two disappeared since then)

Yes, it is a sad state with the M2 and M3.

I assume much of the work is volunteer (and of so, I’m sorry), but it’s so hard to tell.

It sure appears like it’s someones job to post promotional stuff for the project, and I can’t imagine someone manufacturing boards without investing into folks to do both promotion and development. If that’s not the case, it should be.

And if we are gunning at some volunteers, and all manufacture has is volunteers, the volunteers neeed to walk, and find a better project, or the manufacture needs to “Man up” and fund the thing.

I also see a lot of fragmentation for the name and product “Banana”.

Are we dealing with “Banana”, “Leemaker”, “sinovoip”?

An “org”, a “com”, or what?

I don’t get it (and I don’t want to “get it” either). Somewhere, one of these pages starts out trying to explain some sort of lawsuit. That’s just bad news.

In fact, that all I see is “bad news”. Boards that don’t work, huge numbers of posts indicating vast support that does not exist, and customers left holding the bag.

Sorry, but either Banana (who ever that is), is going to “say sorry”, and buckle down and produce one good distro, or the whole thing needs to be shut down.

I’m holding paperweights. I’m very sure what I write gets read. Has anyone contacted me to make things right? No.

I am reminded of Nvidia contacting me, telling me I might have a board with slight defect, and how they want to express me a new board in advance. It came overnight.

Here, the best contact I can hope for is to see yet another post: “Banana Pi M3 does fantastic new feature”, and just cry when I waist my time to go look or try it.

I would much rather read “Banana Pi Facks Up - Says Sorry - No More Posts Till We Make It Right”. I could deal with that!

Joe

Dear Mentos,

I updated ubuntu 14.04.3 right version to do correction about I listed wrong version ubuntu v15.10 on youtube. As I don’t want to fool people!

Nora

Dear Rab,

BPI M3 GPU is improved.

@noralee where I can find a link to this improved video decoding version of ubuntu 14.04 for BPi M2? I would like to test.

Dear Tony,

You can seek below info from forum next time.

BPI-M2 kernel 3.3 username & password: pi/bananapi , root/bananapi , bananapi/bananapi support GMAC support WIFI support xrdp support arduino IDE support scratch / S4A / S4A(motoduino) support GPU PowerVR SGX544MP2 with glmark2 gpu demo Google Drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_YnvHgh2rwjREFOeEVBelZMR1U/view?usp=sharing44

Baidu Cloud: http://pan.baidu.com/s/1qXuQXXE7

MD5: 7aa60a1d0bae3ffa27feec21bd35e262

Banana Pi BPI-M2 A31S runs Ubuntu 14.04 xfce desktop , play video and GPU glmark2 test

Nora

Thanks, burning the image now. Later I’ll post my impressions.

This image does not boot up on my bpi-m2

Hello from Germany

I am a very unhappy M2 Owner too. I have buy a DS3231 Modul-Clock and it dont work on most M2 distros, because most found not that i2C-something.

I am a Linux Beginner and it was not fun to try and try and try and it not work. Now i know why.

I have give up and try to sell that rubish to someone. It was a very big time waste and nothing work. Too hard for linux beginner.

If this thread is still alive, and these many people are still listening, are you developers or users? As a user why would you expect linux to run on lightweight hardware? as developers, are you software developers or hardware developers? as software developers you all should be contributing. Sooo many script kitties in the linux community. Hardware developers, I guess I feel your pain but your budget should allow for a $50 dollar loss on a half ass working board.

Hi, I am unfortunately a user. The reason why I thought it could run linux is because they (noralee) said it could.

Dear Nokkies,

Can you try other linux images as below websites? http://www.banana-pi.org/m2-download.html http://forum.banana-pi.org/c/bpi-m2

Nora