uConsole R-01 First Impressions

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Finally managed to get my hands on one second hand for a reasonable price after hounding eBay for months. Although I have the CM4 kit on order, it will be a long while until it arrives still, so I am very happy to have something to play around with in the meanwhile.

The R-01 is… surprisingly usable! Basic web browsing works fine - though some Javascript rich websites don’t run so well. Have tried getting some more mainstream browsers working, but they’re not on apt, though I am sure Firefox ought to have a RISC-V build out there somewhere.

So far I am very impressed by the battery life. It’s reporting 66% after four hours of uptime - though I’m not sure how accurate that percentage is as I haven’t calibrated the system yet. The backplate doesn’t get particularly hot even when the core is working hard.

I have a couple expansion boards already (uEther & USB expansion boards) but I haven’t messed around with those yet as I have some Pis arriving tomorrow: a CM3, to use for now, and a CM4 if I can get it working with the Waveshare adapter.

Yes, the Waveshare adapter, the one that everyone knows doesn’t work with the uConsole. I want to see if I can either bodge it in hardware or adapt the software to get it to play well. Will report back if I come up with something useful.

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There is also a CM4S module which uses the SODIMM from factor. I don’t know whether it works with the uconsole, but it should be using the same interface as the CM3. Cooling may be a problem though.

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I’ve heard not-so-good things about it so far, so I steered clear. Would rather try and get the Waveshare up and running as there’s always the back-up of the official adapter.

Or maybe even the PCIE adapter the people at hackergadgets.com are working on! (Thanks Rex for letting me know about that)

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This is the thread where I got my info about CM3 / CM4S. There may be more up-to-date information since. Hope you receive your CM4 kit soon anyway.

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