Krux on Maix Cube K210

[Tommiller0515]

Has anyone looked into possibility of running krux on a Maix Cube K210?

[odudex]

I set up a custom firmware for one once, but I don't have one with me to maintain it. The issue with Cube is its price is very close to Amigo's, and Amigo has many advantages over Cube. Amigo's larger touch screen has a much better UX.
Do you already have a Cube with you?

[Tommiller0515]

I agree, the Amigo's are great. I don't have a cube and have never tried one but thought it might be similar to UX of the DIY ones but with a battery. The lowest price I could find the Amigo for on AliExpress now is $57 and $36 for the Cube. Both have higher prices but those were the lowest I could find there. Anyway, nice to have options and alternatives.

[odudex]

Last time I checked it was close to $50. For $36 it starts to get interesting!

[odudex]

Ok, I bought one. Let's see how it goes.

[odudex]

Hi Sergio,
My Cube is on the way, and I'm confident it will be possible to port Krux to it.
And the good news is Krux was already ported to your second device, Yaboom AIMOTION, it is available to test on beta, and will be available on stable release soon.

[Tommiller0515]

Looking forward to hearing the results. Hopefully Chinese holiday doesn't slow down delivery too much

[odudex]

Firmware for Cube available to test here:
https://github.com/odudex/krux_binaries

[Tommiller0515]

That looks great! Unfortunately I tried flashing to the cube I recently received and while it appeared to be flashing it, it never booted up - stayed on the welcome screen. When I power-cycled it, it just stayed blank. I flashed the factory default firmware from Speed wiki and it loaded back to the Welcome to MaixPy screen, so I think the cube I have is OK.

[odudex]

Sorry to hear that. I'll try to find other devices to experiment with. In Amigo we had hardware variations that needed to be addressed, it's not the case for Cube.
Some things you could try:

• Please make sure you flashed Cube's firmware, not Amigo's or Bit's. (They share the same USB ID, so that would be possible)
  ./ktool-linux -B goE -b 1500000 maixpy_cube/kboot.kfpkg
• Debug serial output, it has two ports, you must try both, press reset button while connected and check boot message. You could use Screen on Linux screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200 or screen /dev/ttyUSB1 115200. Or Putty if you are on Windows (try 2 COMx ports at 115200 baud rate)
• You could also try a full flash erase before flashing Krux firmware:
  ./ktool-linux -B goE -b 1500000 -E

[Tommiller0515]

Tried erasing and flashing. Ends with rebooting... but cube doesn't reboot. Power-cycled cube and screen just blank. Here's printout of erase and flash:

C:\Krux\krux_binaries>ktool-win.exe -B goE -b 1500000 -E
[INFO] COM Port Auto Detected, Selected COM4
[INFO] Default baudrate is 115200 , later it may be changed to the value you set.
[INFO] Trying to Enter K210 ROM ISP Mode...
*
[INFO] ROM ISP detected, loading 2nd stage ISP
[INFO] ISP loaded in 0.914s
[INFO] Starting 2nd stage ISP at 0x805e0000
[INFO] Wait For 0.1 second for ISP to Boot
[INFO] 2nd stage ISP ok
[INFO] Selected Baudrate: 1500000
[INFO] Baudrate changed, greeting with ISP again ...
[INFO] 2nd stage ISP ok
[INFO] Initialize K210 SPI Flash
[INFO] Flash initialized successfully
[INFO] Flash ID: 0xEF6018, unique ID: EB00005104400220, size: 16 MB
[INFO] Erasing the whole SPI Flash.
[INFO] SPI Flash erased.

C:\Krux\krux_binaries>ktool-win.exe -B goE -b 1500000 maixpy_cube\kboot.kfpkg
[INFO] COM Port Auto Detected, Selected COM4
[INFO] Default baudrate is 115200 , later it may be changed to the value you set.
[INFO] Trying to Enter K210 ROM ISP Mode...
*
[INFO] ROM ISP detected, loading 2nd stage ISP
[INFO] ISP loaded in 0.923s
[INFO] Starting 2nd stage ISP at 0x805e0000
[INFO] Wait For 0.1 second for ISP to Boot
[INFO] 2nd stage ISP ok
[INFO] Selected Baudrate: 1500000
[INFO] Baudrate changed, greeting with ISP again ...
[INFO] 2nd stage ISP ok
[INFO] Initialize K210 SPI Flash
[INFO] Flash initialized successfully
[INFO] Flash ID: 0xEF6018, unique ID: EB00005104400220, size: 16 MB
[INFO] Flashing firmware block with SHA suffix
Programming BIN: |=====================================================================================| 100.0% 77kiB/s
[INFO] Flashed 147704 B [3 chunks of 65536B] (00000000~0002FFFF) in 2.490s
[INFO] Rebooting...

C:\Krux\krux_binaries>

[tadeubas]

Can you install MaixPy IDE to help debugging?

Tools > Open Terminal > New Terminal > Connect to serial port > Select a COM port available (if didn't work, try another COM port)

It will show the terminal and some messages

[Tommiller0515]

Default firmware and krux firmware for Maix Cube.

[odudex]

Ops, sorry 🙃

[tadeubas]

So you have a problem with your device's battery. And did Krux work well? Did it read QR codes and display information on the screen correctly?

[Tommiller0515]

Yes. It works fine as long as it's plugged in. Reads QR codes perfectly fine, displays correctly on screen. Will this Cube work with thermal printer like Amigo. Schematic doesn't show rx/tx pins assigned to grove connector.

[tadeubas]

Yes, it has the Grove connector as shown on the photo below. You will need to connect ground and a pin to use as TX in Krux and as RX on the printer, the TX pin is configurable in Krux settings, more info here: #312

[Tommiller0515]

OK. It looks like grove pin 2 is IO 25 for the cube and IO 7 for Amigo. That being the case, would need to set thermal printer tx to 25 for the cube. That link you provided was actually you helping me. It worked like a charm on the Amigo. Thank you! However, the way the cube case is designed covering all the way around the grove connector, it blocks mating with the grove plug. The Amigo doesn't have that problem, so I'll probably just use it. Thanks again!

[jdlcdl]

Reason: fuck the chip is dead!
interesting, something's wrong, boot failed with exit code 666, go to find your vendor.

Leaving a comment here so I can find this again. Above is an interesting console error message for a K210 MAIX CUBE BRICK.
I don't remember seeing the first-32-registers dumped in the past.

I do see a similar on Amigo after a full-chip erase via ktool:
"interesting, something's wrong, boot failed with exit code 233, go to find your vendor."

It's great that this is resolved for yet another device.