What is Rock Pi?
Rock Pi is a series of single-board computers (SBCs) developed by the company Radxa. These SBCs are similar in concept to the Raspberry Pi but offer more powerful hardware configurations and additional features. Rock Pi boards are designed for various applications, including DIY projects, IoT (Internet of Things) development, media centers, and small-scale computing tasks.
The Rock Pi boards typically feature a variety of ports for connectivity, including USB ports, Ethernet, HDMI, audio, and GPIO (General Purpose Input/Output) pins for interfacing with external devices and sensors. They also support various operating systems, including Linux distributions like Debian and Ubuntu, as well as Android.
One notable feature of Rock Pi boards is their support for AI (Artificial Intelligence) and machine learning applications, thanks to their powerful CPUs and GPUs. This makes them suitable for tasks such as computer vision, robotics, and edge computing.
Overall, Rock Pi offers a versatile platform for hobbyists, developers, and enthusiasts looking to build and experiment with a wide range of projects requiring a compact and capable computing device.
How to Install Rockchip flashing tools
ROCK 5 includes a feature called maskrom mode, a unique setting where the CPU waits for instructions from the USB OTG port. To communicate with ROCK 5 in this mode, users employ specific tools depending on their operating system. On Linux and macOS PCs, the tool is called rkdeveloptool, while on Windows PCs, it’s known as RKDevTool. These tools facilitate seamless interaction with ROCK 5 in maskrom mode, enabling users to perform various operations effectively.
Option one: RKDevTool on Windows
Step 1：Install RKDevTool
The tool is provided in a compressed package. Please download the compressed package of this tool and extract files.
- RKDevTool_v2.81
- RKDevTool_v2.92
- RKDevTool_v2.96 (including ROCK 5B eMMC/SPI flash configuration files. Recommended.)
Installation step is completed.
Step 2：Install driver
Using the RK driver assistant tool to install the driver.
There’s no need to connect your Rockchip device during this procedure just download and extract RKDriverAssistant.zip
Then double click on DriverInstall.exe in the RKDriverAssistant directory to start the utility. If you installed the Rockchip USB drivers for any other Rockchip devices already, make sure you click “Uninstall Driver” first.
Then click “Install Driver”to install the driver. And restart PC.
Option two: rkdeveloptool on Linux (X86 or ARM)
For Linux, we build the latest rkdeveloptool (version >=1.32), from source code.
To build rkdeveloptool on a Debian based Linux distribution, follow the instruction below:
Install build dependency:
sudo apt-get install libudev-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev dh-autoreconf
Clone the source code and build:
git clone https://github.com/radxa/rkdeveloptool.git cd rkdeveloptool autoreconf -i ./configure make
If you encounter compile error like below
./configure: line 4269: syntax error near unexpected token `LIBUSB1,libusb-1.0' ./configure: line 4269: `PKG_CHECK_MODULES(LIBUSB1,libusb-1.0)'
You should install pkg-config libusb-1.0
sudo apt-get install pkg-config libusb-1.0
Then re-run
autoreconf -i ./configure make
Now you have rkdeveloptool executable at the current directory.
sudo cp rkdeveloptool /usr/local/bin/ sudo ldconfig
Make sure that its version is 1.32.or later
rkdeveloptool -v rkdeveloptool ver 1.32
Option three: rkdeveloptool on macOS(Intel & Apple Silicon)
To build rkdeveloptool on macOS, you need homebrew(or similar package manager) to install required packages.
Install build dependency:
brew install automake autoconf libusb
Clone the source code and build:
git clone https://github.com/radxa/rkdeveloptool.git cd rkdeveloptool autoreconf -i ./configure make
If you encounter compile error like below
./configure: line 5384: syntax error near unexpected token `LIBUSB1,libusb-1.0' ./configure: line 5384: `PKG_CHECK_MODULES(LIBUSB1,libusb-1.0)'
You should install pkg-config libusb-1.0
brew install pkg-config
Then re-run
autoreconf -i ./configure make
Now you have rkdeveloptool executable at the current directory.
sudo cp rkdeveloptool /opt/homebrew/bin/
Make sure that its version is 1.32 or later.
rkdeveloptool -v rkdeveloptool ver 1.32
Reference: https://wiki.radxa.com/Rock5/install/rockchip-flash-tools
Anshul Pal