Took a wile to get started.

May 18, 2019 - 5:06 AM

  • Got this Atomic Pi board just the board. Very hard to know what pins are the power pins. Could find no good pin out on line to show it. I took a test beeper to see what was ground and 5 volts and just solder wires to 2 of them pins but it has like 6 or so for each ground and 5 volts. I used a Smart power 2 on it for power.

    Plugged it in and seems like nothing I did not smell no smoke smell so guess I got it right. Took a wile for the HDMI screen to show any thing. There is no LED lights on the board to show it's is on.

    It rebooted another time.

    I could not find the password. Nothing works. I press the ctrl alt F2 and was trying a lot of passwords on there but after about 3 times it showed the password. One with lower and upper case. I put it down on paper and made a root log in.

    It don't auto get a IP with Ethernet. I have one plug in. No LED lights on the Ethernet to make sure it's connected.I just connected with WiFi and edit the /ect/ssh/ssh_config something like that to say yes to log in SSH. Then started a update upgrade command. It has a lot to install.

    The 1st thing I install was apt install nano It don't even come with that.

    For 35 seems like a nice computer. Have to test it out more. Just wanted to say what it took to get started.

    -Raymond Day

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  • Few things... if you bought it from Amazon, one of the images they included clearly shows the header and spells out which pins to use and how they are numbered. I don't think you took the time to review the documentation either, as the same pdf document is supplied on their website showing the exact same thing as the image on Amazon.

    Secondly, there for sure are LED lights on the ethernet port and if you have a cable plugged in to it and plugged into a switch/hub then you should see the LEDs turn on when the board is powered. The only case they wouldn't be on after boot would be if you used an image that for some reason doesn't include the ethernet drivers, leaving ethernet disabled. The default Ubuntu18.04 that is pre-loaded on the eMMc for sure has ethernet support, some of the minimal images, maybe not.

    This is supposed to be a developers device, so yeah, its not going to come with all the bells and whistles installed for you, they expect you to install what you need and develop the platform for your own use. If you want something pre-loaded with all the bells and whistles, go buy a TV box or a pre-loaded computer which includes the software you need.

    The password of the default image should be shown on screen next to login prompt on first boot, again, the documentation, had you read it, outlines this as well.

    I think if you would have simply taken the time to fully read the documentation at the start you wouldn't have had all the issues you described.

    my 2 cents.

    Cheers!

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  • Looks like it was a bad Ethernet cable. I plug another one in and they do light up.

    The documentation shows a photo of the power pins on the female header but it's way to small to see just were the wires plug in and what it the 5 volts or ground. Even on the PDF on Amazon were I did get it zooming it can't see it. I looked on Google images wanted to find a pin-out and could not. I put down on paper what the numbing should look like.from 2 numbers on the board to fill out the rest. When I did it it starts with 0 ends with 25. I thought that's the little numbers on the header at the start and end. But looking at the documentation it says 1 to 26 pins.

    It's hard to know just were the number of the pins are. I know it says if you put 5 volts on ground or the other way can mess the board up so wanted to get it right.

    I used a tested to test what is ground and looked for 5 volts too. A lot of pins on there are ground and 5 volts. I did see that documentation telling 6 numbers for each but still hard to know were they go on the header.

    Just solder on wires to 2 of the pins for both 5 volts and ground.

    Seen this on YouTube and order it maybe 2 weeks ago now. It was out of stock when I did. So had to wait. The YouTube video I ask if can install Plex and see if can play a 4K over the LAN. Never did it. But I did.

    Put a 128GB stick on it and copied a 4K movie to that. I only had it on WiFi I put 2 antenna's on it. Used my nvidia shield on a 4K TV and it was playing that movie! I did click use hardware acceleration on Plex. Then I paused it to type a comment on YouTube that it works. Then went to play it and it was playing about 7 sec. then stop about 2 sec. then over and over like that. I plug in the Ethernet and it works with out pausing then.

    Can steam a 4K movie from it. I am impressed with that.

    -Raymond Day

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  • O yes later I did see it said the password on the desktop but I don't think it showed it back when I 1st booted it and rebooted it about 3 times back then. Only after a wile it should it after I log in. I had to set the Ethernet up in the terminal as root. Because on the desktop it said don't have wright permissions.

    What got mine working was editing /etc/network/interfaces.d/lo file to have this in it:

    auto lo
    iface lo inet loopback

    auto enp1s0
    allow-hotplug enp1s0
    iface enp1s0 inet dhcp

    Then it Ethernet worked on it.

    -Raymond Day

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  • A note regarding the default password. I have my APi connected to my TV's HDMI. I was losing my cool after numerous login errors. Finally, I decided to log out of the GUI and into the terminal screen. 'VOILA.... I discovered I was mistaking the first character in the password as an L (lower case). Most likely an issue with my screen and my lack of brain cells. Once at the terminal screen, there appeared a notation that the first character is an i. Typing that in was the solution and I was greeted with a desktop. Just something to look at if you're having a login issue.

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  • Yea, I hear ya bout the while to get started. The installed OS was so buggy, I thought the APi was bad. Nothing seemed to work, no Wifi, no login, no update, blank screen if I left it alone for a few minutes (it would then freeze up everything and need a hard power down) etc... Then I managed to get it to stay on the net long enough to download and create a bootable thumb dive (with raspbian stretch (Debian x86). Been working flawlessly from it since.

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