Khadas VIM 4: Powerful ARM SBC with HDMI Input 

Greetings Jeff -- and I totally agree!

Being $200 rather than $20 makes it all the worse when one tosses the board into a pile of junk.

Agree

Sadly by the time you get a stable platform getting close to using the onboard feature set to its full, the next generation of the platform has come along with all new hardware to optimise drivers and distracts those who would be tweaking and edging out that 1% more, shift to the new stuff as for the same effort they can get that extra 10% more as early days to shine. Besides, people like new things. Rinse repeat. A ZX81 would be running power stations today if we stuck with it. :)

@@PaulGrayUK why go so advanced as a zx81 you can run a power station on an AGC with with about a cubic foot or two of LOL Memory, or you take that zx81 and try training a confrontational bidirectional recurrent neural network on several petabytes of video, good luck living to see the output. Old != Better no matter how much you wish it was, there's only so much that something can do no matter how optimised.

Thanks. :)

Indeed. This is what keeps me coming back for more :) Sadly, there are a lot of people who don't have patience for this style of video, but I love how it's quite methodical and always answers the little questions I have about a particular board. Often better than the manufacturer's own documentation.

@@JeffGeerling Don't worry Jeff, you're not too shabby yourself ;-)

I like how Mr Barnatt treats things with respect. Don’t you hate it when RU-vidrs throwing things (probably from sponsors) on the table during unboxing videos to try to look cool?

@@JeffGeerling Fully agree!

Reminds me of Chockablock. An early BBC computer :)

Go go gadget scissors 😅

😂

Thanks. :) I did some online lectures recently here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-shW8MIbNyuM.html

I agree. I do hope that other SBC makers will copy the firmware idea.

Doesn’t the Raspberry Pi already do something similar?

This is kind of "Pixie boot from the Cloud" - making OS installs as effortless as installing an app from the Linux command line.

@@karimjordan9461 if you mean NOOBS, that's just a tiny operating system that does more or less what Oowow does. The point is that NOOBS has to be written to an SD card, just like any other Pi OS. It isn't firmware and, more importantly, it doesn't include Tetris!

@@johnm2012 No, there is beta firmware that downloads rpi-installer, (not NOOBS). This can write the OS to any attached storage. Unfortunately the RPi4 doesn't include eMMC so an SD card or use storage is needed.

Thanks. :)

Thanks, will do!

It's the first ARM SBC I've looked at that really feels like using a desktop computer.

I can't wait to get one of these.

Greetings Perry.

Thanks 👍

Thanks Keith. :)

Thanks for this -- and a great video idea. Noted! :)

Welcome back! :)

My pleasure!

Greetings! Have a great breakfast, and a great week.

Thanks for this. The ending was a spur-of-the-moment thing! I intended to point the camera at the SBC. But then I realized that a static shot would not prove anything about the HDMI input! :) So I pointed it at me, and then decided during the take to roll into the ending.

Thanks for this. I will indeed return to this board when (if!) there is software support for the HDMI input in Linux, and/or better software support in Android. Lots of possibilities for video capture, streaming, etc.

Greetings! The utility is indeed excellent, and something it would be great to see on other SBCs.

@@ExplainingComputers For sure, let alone desktops and workstations, right from the Firmware! is very easy to see the benefits for big deployments.

Thanks for your support, most appreciated. :)

Good luck with it. This is a very nice SBC.

Thank you! Cheers!

Thanks for this. And an interesting video idea -- noted! :)

Thanks. :)

Agreed. :)

Robert ... Exactly. I'd like to build some type of HDMI recorder with one of these one day. Just something simple like the old VCR where I can record video content without thought.

@@PoeLemic Yes! I've got a device which I bought for recording TV and it makes a garbled mess after just a year of use. With something open I could actually record stuff that isn't made available on the network's website and watch it at my schedule.

@@anon_y_mousse Exactly. I wish someone would cobble together a simple SBC solution to this problem. See, I've got a lot of crap on my Xfinity DVR that I'd like to save into MP3. But, I'm not the best at knowing all of the steps to do it. I bought a screen capture card for PC, but it's not simple & easy. So, I'd like to find something that can just record 720p / 1080p @ 24 / 30 fps. That's all and convert into MP3 / MP4.

Agreed.

The problem is that the download sites also have to be configured in such a way that they can be added to the list.

As a bonus you can play Tetris while you wait for a download. So it's double awesome.

Thanks 👍

@@ExplainingComputers Thank you so much

:)

Thanks for this. Do keep on eye out for the Rock 5 model B, due out soon now (hopefully), which will be a major competitor to this board.

@@ExplainingComputers Thanks - already looking forward to your review 🤓

you totally right , oowow also have this possibility to install os like fedora ubuntu armbian debian etc from official sources , but at this moment linux kernel form official distros not ready, hope will be soon too

For 5 of the past 6 years I had been using an RPi3 and then an RPi4 as my only computer. With YT-DL I was able to watch most things that wouldn't even run in the browser or at the same resolution that I wanted. I was even able to get Doom3 and Half-Life running natively, though only within the last year or two of using them. Most old game systems emulated fairly well. It's only been since this past year when I got a decent desktop that I've only been using the RPi as a media viewer for the big screen, but it's still capable of being a desktop PC, just not a great one.

Thanks. I will follow the software situation with great interest.

This.

Learn how to recompile a kernel. SBCs are prototyping boards, after all.

I think that people kinda miss the point of SBCs. If you want a server go buy old desktops, mini PCs or an actual server. They're cheaper faster and some of them use less power. The thing with SBCs are that they're embedded Linux. To do the coolest stuff you absolutely 100% have to get comfortable with kernel stuff. SBCs are also good for talking to low level devices over SPI and I2C. However, back in the day I had to cross compile a custom Kernel and write a device tree overlay just to get an I2c device to show up as a standard keyboard under Linux. It's not hard especially these days with all of the documentation but it isn't for the faint of heart. The point I'm getting at is this. I'm frustrated that so many people go out and buy SBCs to run as a media server, pi hole or wasteful K8s cluster. There soooo many more options out there that do that job way better. People buy these things by the crate load and they all end up in a drawer somewhere because people just don't understand what these things are designed for. Now the prices are sky high and they're out of stock everywhere. It'd be really cool to release an open source midi controller based on the pi4 or cm4 but with prices this high what's the point!? Anyway, if you've come this far here's the embedded Linux secret: do it from scratch. Build your own kernel and software turn it into an image and you're good to go!!! There's tools that help you do that. I used Yocto back in the day but I'm sure there's better stuff out there. Also, not having play store is a huge plus. Hopefully there's none of the other Google crap to. I like this thing a lot. I just which it was cheaper. Anyway for what it's worth base images are just a starting point. You should really rebuild them to do what you want.

@@cprogrck thanks for this. Didn't even know I could do that without having to spend years learning.

Oh, can we put Winblows 11 on it? /s

this feature already exist, during download stage , but on installation/writing stage is locked for HDMI display , same time web gui menu don't have this limitation and can open it any time and works simultaneously

Greetings! I've glad the laptop worked out. :)