NanoPi 2 - Debian image issues

Hi All,

I've just received my NanoPi 2 board - 7" LCD bundle (black frame) a few
days ago but I still cannot get it to properly boot into the Debian image
downloadable from the wiki page.

Most of the time I get to the FRIENDLY ARM logo and see the blue light
flashing. Then the logo disappears and blue light stops flashing for a few
seconds. Then back to seeing the logo. It's like there is a problem with
the Linux LCD driver and Linux reboots itself.

First I thought I improperly connected the LCD or the SD card but I have
been able to get into the Debian desktop a couple of times...
Unfortunately I could not connect to the Wifi when I was able to get into
the desktop so I could not ssh onto the system.
Then when I was able to boot the second time with a keyboard somehow and
before I could launch a terminal to check /var/log/messages or dmesg the
LCD went black :-(

I'm going to try the Android image but it seems like there is a problem
with the downloadable Linux image and the new LCD screen...

Unfortunately I only have access to a Windows and a Mac machine at the
moment so I cannot rebuild the image from github so if you could help me
out it would be great.

Well the Android image passed the NEXELL boot screen with the ripple effect
then showed me a blue screen that disappeared in about 10 seconds. 

The second boot showed up the clock for 10 seconds but just like the first
time I can see the backlight of the LCD is on and the blue LED is flashing
but nothing on the screen. It's doing this for more than 10+ minutes now. 

I have a 16GB Class 10 Lexar Micro SDHC card by the way.

I suggest you get a UART to PC adapter so that you can watch the bootup
messages.  SSH is handy when the board boots properly :)

Possibly you need to modify the boot args for your specific LCD ... just
guessing!

Thank you davef!
Ok I have managed to find an FTDI USB adapter in my cabinet that I was
suppose to use for the arduino pro boar I bought a while back.
So I connected up to UART0 (115200 baud in case someone wants to debug) and
I was able to log in via putty console. I have to check the logs thoroughly
but for first look I saw some problems already:

[    9.260000] systemd[1]: systemd-modules-load.service: main process
exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
[    9.320000] systemd[1]: Failed to start Load Kernel Modules.

Another note: I was able to boot it once when I hooked up tx and rx the
wrong way :-o and got the following error message on the debian desktop:
Could not connect wicd's D-Bus interface. Check the wicd log for error
messages.

So I have some debugging to do :-)

An example from the GeeeTech Wiki for the NanoPC.  Try a printenv after
step two and adjust for your lcd.


Step 1: connect the NanoPC to a PC via a TTL2RS232 board

Step 2: power on the board from “SD” and as soon as the board is powered on
press any key to enter the bootloader’s commandline mode

Step 3: run the command below to change the parameter

    set bootargs root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext4
console=ttySAC0,115200n8 lcd=S70 skipcali=y ctp=2
video=HDMI-A-1:1280x720M@60

Step 4: run “ saveenv” to save the change

Good luck!

Thanks again davef. I will change the boot params and report back.

Though I just checked out the sources from github and peeked into the
bootloader binary file and see that the available options for the lcd param
might be HD101, HD700, S70, S702, S70D ... etc.
Looking up on Google the black framed LCD I got at home (I need to confirm)
suppose to be an SD701.
http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_i...

I can see I might have to play with the arguments and check S70 S70D and
S702. Or I might have a problem and there is no available driver for this
new LCD yet?

Sorry I meant S701 above

Hello ,
     If you want to use NanoPi 2 with LCD ,you can use the lcd of
FriendlyARM company . 
   
     NanoPi 2 now supports HD101 、 S702、 S701 、 HD700
of FriendlyARM ,and NanoPi 2 also supports HDMI. Debian and Android5.1 can
automatic identity type of  LCD , you can download the images in wiki    
http://wiki.friendlyarm.com/wiki/index.php/NanoPi_2 .

Hi davef,

So I managed to get into the boot menu and printenv gave me the following
output:

console=ttyAMA0,115200n8 root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootfstype=ext4
init=/sbin/init lcd=S70,128dpi

I've tried S70D that gave me sync problems with the LCD. After the another
reboot the boot parameters were back to S70 and since then I'm successfully
booting into the Debian desktop!
I don't understand it because apart from hooking up the debugging console I
didn't do anything to the system apart from setting up Wifi.

Now onto trying to fix WiFi that gives me 2 connections with the same SSID
and connects to the awful 12% signal strength one. I wonder if my problems
were always with the WiFi and not the LCD?

Anyway thanks for your help

Thanks jjm it all seems to be sorted now. LCD seems to be compatible with
S70

Another funny thing, while I was typing my Wifi dropped out and reconnected
to the good signal strength one :-)

[  453.672000] link down if wlan0 may call cfg80211_disconnected. event :
6, reason=7 from MYMACADDRESS
[  453.684000] CFG80211-ERROR) wl_is_linkdown :
[  453.684000] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain
[  453.696000] Link down Reason : WLC_E_DEAUTH
[  453.700000] CFG80211-ERROR) wl_is_linkdown :
[  453.700000] cfg80211: World regulatory domain updated:
[  453.700000] cfg80211:   (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth),
(max_antenna_gain, max_eirp)
[  453.700000] cfg80211:   (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A,
2000 mBm)
[  453.700000] cfg80211:   (2457000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A,
2000 mBm)
[  453.700000] cfg80211:   (2474000 KHz - 2494000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (N/A,
2000 mBm)
[  453.700000] cfg80211:   (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 80000 KHz), (N/A,
2000 mBm)
[  453.700000] cfg80211:   (5250000 KHz - 5330000 KHz @ 80000 KHz), (N/A,
2000 mBm)
[  453.700000] cfg80211:   (5490000 KHz - 5730000 KHz @ 160000 KHz), (N/A,
2000 mBm)
[  453.700000] cfg80211:   (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 80000 KHz), (N/A,
2000 mBm)
[  453.700000] cfg80211:   (57240000 KHz - 63720000 KHz @ 2160000 KHz),
(N/A, 0 mBm)
[  453.776000] Link down Reason : WLC_E_LINK
[  454.872000] netdev_ifidx(5), chan_type(0) target channel(1)
[  454.884000] Connectting with MYMACADDRESS channel (1) ssid "MYSSID", len
(8)
[  454.884000]
[  454.912000] wl_bss_connect_done succeeded with MYMACADDRESS
[  455.000000] wl_bss_connect_done succeeded with MYMACADDRESS

Did you do step 4 after changing the LCD parameters?

Step 4: run “ saveenv” to save the change

... or maybe an issue saving changes to an SD card?  Do a sync after the
saveenv