The New IndieDroid Nova Is Hands Down One Of The Best Arm ABC's We've Ever Tested #SBC #arm #linux #gaming #emulation @ameridroidSBC https://t.co/iMSkWnqNlw pic.twitter.com/rVGCJpkuYD

— Etaprime (@theetaprime) April 13, 2023

$60 value included
(Full-body heatsink, fan, swappable eMMC)

For any items marked with the "Preorder now" badge: Preorder Policy - Click here to read

• See LATEST NEWS section below for the latest news!

The Indiedroid Nova is the same form factor as Raspberry Pi 4B, but 3+ times faster and supports 16GB RAM, plus 8K video!

The uber-efficient RK3588S SoC uses less energy, generates less heat, and processes more data than less-advanced SoC units used in most other SBCs.

Check out the Indiedroid.us website if you haven't already!

ameriDroid.com has been tapped to become the worldwide distributor of a new SBC based on the powerful and efficient Rockchip RK3588S SoC, under the Indiedroid brand.

Indiedroid's goal is to create an active and welcoming community that rewards community members who add value to the ecosystem. Our vision is for these awards to be given as bounties, achievement awards, and in other forms, based on open voting of the community. A portion of every sale will go towards these awards.

KEY FEATURES

• Amazing 8-core performance
• Outstanding video and GPU performance
• Able to stream 4K/30 video on web browsers
• Able to stream 4K/60 video (and up to 8K/60) with video players
• Heavily accelerated WebGL performance
• Great retrogaming emulation performance
• Dual-monitor output (microHDMI and USB-C Display Port)
• MIPI DSI and CSI connectors (up to 2 cameras)
• Gigabit Ethernet
• Built in WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5
• On-board antenna, plus external antenna connector for demanding wireless applications
• 2x USB 3.0 Type-A ports
• 2x USB 2.0 Type-A ports
• 1x USB 3.0 Type-C port
• 1x 4-pin serial connector
• Up to 16GB De0645DR4
• Swappable eMMC
  

SPECIFICATIONS

• SoC – Rockchip RK3588S
  • CPU – Octa-core processor with 4x Cortex-A76 cores @ up to 2.2-2.4 GHz, 4x Cortex-A55 cores @ up to 1.8 GHz
  • GPU –  Arm Mali-G610 GPU with OpenGL ES 3.2,  OpenCL 2.2, and Vulkan 1.2 support
  • VPU – 8Kp60 video decoder for H.265/AVS2/VP9/H.264/AV1 codecs, 8Kp30 video encoder H.265/H.264
    
  • AI accelerator – 6 TOPS NPU
• System Memory – 1GB*, 2GB*, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB LPDDR4x, or 32GB* LPDDR5x (* Possible future variants)
  
• Storage – H.265/H.264, eMMC 5.1 flash module connector to add 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB module
• Video Output
  • 1x micro HDMI 2.1 port
  • DisplayPort via USB Type-C port (TBC)
  • 4-lane MIPI DSI connector
• Camera I/F – MIPI CSI connector (4-lane or 2x 2-lane)
• Audio – 3.5mm earphone jack
• Networking
  • Gigabit Ethernet RJ45
  • Realtek RTL8821CS dual-band WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0 module
• USB – 2x USB 3.0 Type-A ports, 2x USB 2.0 Type-A ports, 1x USB Type-C port
• Expansion – 40-pin Raspberry Pi form-factor GPIO header
• Debugging – 4-pin debug connector (serial console)
• Misc
  • Power, Recovery, Reset, and Boot buttons
  • Power LED, user LED
  • RTC battery connector
• Power Supply – 5V/3A via USB Type-C port
• Dimensions – 85 x 56mm (Raspberry Pi 4 form-factor)

NOTES

• eMMCs pre-flashed for another board should work if re-flashed with an Indiedroid Nova compatible image.
  
• Units purchased with an included eMMC will come preloaded with a compatible operating system image so it will work out of the box.
• We've been informed by some users that their Raspberry Pi USB-C power adapters don't work for the Nova. But others do. Your mileage may vary.
  

LINKS

• Official Indiedroid site: https://indiedroid.us
• Official Indiedroid wiki: https://wiki.indiedroid.us
• Recommended OS image: https://indiedroid.us/software
• CNX Software article on RK3588S - https://www.cnx-software.com/2022/01/12/rockchip-rk3588s-cost-optimized-cortex-a76-a55-processor/
• Geekbench comparison to Raspberry Pi 4B - https://browser.geekbench.com/v4/cpu/compare/16406733?baseline=16426661

VIDEOS

Batocera -  Mario Kart 64

Batocera - Super Smash Bros. Brawl Wii

Flashing IndieDroid Nova eMMC

How-To: Removing eMMC from Indiedroid Nova

OLDER NEWS

Jun 12, 2023:

(Community member names are denoted by boldface text)

• macroalpha is continuing upstreaming mainline Linux changes for the Nova - currently missing is the USB and Ethernet (but expects these to be working by kernel 6.5), and the GPU/Display is missing as well - currently working is serial, wifi, Bluetooth, audio, eMMC and microSD.
• macroalpha announced the initial Indiedroid Nova devicetree has been accepted for mainline for the 6.5 kernel.
• Bo wrote an article https://wiki.indiedroid.us/how-to/install-maliordroid-armbian on getting malior-droid Android layer running on Linux.
• macroalpha contributed step-by-step instructions on how to compile the Linux kernel on the Nova.
• jtremblant and dangeruss26 released their OS image of TwisterOS Beta.
• NicoD released his armbian-gaming script for adding useful software to the Nova running Armbian and Ubuntu (and probably Debian and Devuan as well).
• monkaBlyat released an updated version of Armbian
• Spooky and macroalpha added the Nova to the Armbian rkr4 kernel which was then merged.
• Audio over HDMI was fixed on the Android tablet-style factory build.
• lanefu built Collabora kernel (based on mainline 6.4.0-rc1) in Armbian with Indiedroid Nova DTB patches.
• lanefu expects the Nova will be formally added as a .csc board to Armbian soon.
• slaminger released Retro Arena for the Nova.
• The Indiedroid Wiki is growing in the number of submitted articles and has been receiving updates to existing articles.
• The Nova Downloads page is now up to 30 installable images including Linux, Android and Windows.

May 23, 2023:

(Community member names are denoted by boldface text)

• macroalpha is upstreaming his mainline Linux changes for the Nova, which include support for serial, Wifi, Bluetooth, audio, eMMC and microSD. Not yet ready for mainline is USB, PCIe (Ethernet) and GPU/display. The non-mainline BSP versions support all these features, but don't have full mainline compatibility.
  
• macroalpha expects the USB and PCIe (Ethernet) support for the Nova will be mainlined with kernel 6.5.
• The Kernel is working on DSI support in Linux.
• CSI support is working in Linux.
• monkaBlyat released a community release of Armbian preloaded with a bunch of great things such as Box86/64, Wine, Widevine, emulators, etc. However, the DTS may be causing stability issues.
• stvhay is working on rebasing the DTS.
• Great progress has been made on the Indiedroid Nova wiki at https://wiki.indiedroid.us thanks to several people including Pandaa.
• Bo made a how-to for Mattermost Team Server on the Nova (see the wiki).
• NikoD released nicod-armbian-gaming for the Armbian distros to allow setting up things like box86, Wine, etc. really easily.
• BaldNerd released NEMS Linux 1.6 for the Nova.
• stvhay released a number of updated OS distributions for the Nova with the help of other community members

Apr 26, 2023:

Nova units have been flying out of the warehouse! We are working on the second production batch now.

• Development on OS variants continues at a rapid pace
• We've published articles on PWM fan control and free games for Batocera
• Community member BaldNerd let us know NEMS Linux 1.6 for the Nova is in final testing
• Community members stvhay and slaminger have been collaborating and stvhay has released quite a few distros for the Nova based on this collaboration at https://indiedroid.us/software
• Community member macroalpha has largely completed work on GPIO support and documentation for the Nova
• We've been shipping the Nova with Armbian Gnome
• Additional work has been completed by macroalpha and others regarding mainlining the Nova in the Linux kernel

Apr 18, 2023:

We've been shipping the Nova for several days using the factory Android image. We are in the process of switching the default shipped image to Armbian Gnome as it is the most mature Linux-based OS currently developed for the Nova.

Apr 11, 2023:

Our first batch of Nova units has arrived in our warehouse. Although the units have presumably been tested at the factory, we will spend the next few days spot-checking the units before updating the site marking them as ready for immediate shipment.

indiedroid.com and indiedroid.net are now also active and pointing to the same site as indiedroid.us.

Regarding development:

• @macroalpha is working on full GPIO support.
• @macroalpha and some community members are working on getting the device mainlined.
• We've been running a couple of Nova units through torture tests over the past week, and they have passed with flying colors. At normal room temperature and no fan, we haven't been able to get the SoC core over 67C (the SoC starts to throttle at 80C). Armbian Gnome has been rock-stable the whole time.
• Bluetooth is working on the Linux kernel mainline.
• Collabora is merging pancsf support into their public gitlab.
• @slaminger has voiced interest in adding widevine for DRM support into his Armbian image.
• @mariob has Windows ARM running on the Nova, but still has hardware driver work to do for full functionality with all hardware and ports.
• @RobbieF has completed much of the work to release NEMS Linux 1.6 (Enterprise-Monitoring) for the Nova.
• @RobbieF and others are working on software MAC-address generation solutions.

Mar 29, 2023:

Indiedroid.us website is now live.

We received our first production sample from the factory today. We've updated the product images to reflect the new board changes. We are still expecting to receive the production boards around mid-April.

Temperature tests performed at room temperature 20C (10 minute test).

TL;DR

• Running the Indiedroid Nova at full capacity does not get hot enough to throttle the processor even under passive cooling at 20C room temperature.

Method of testing:

sysbench cpu --threads=8 --time=600 run

Heatsink only: Max 57C
+ 40mm quiet fan: Max 55C

Running the same sysbench command while decoding and playing full-screen local 4k/60 h264 stream (10 minute test):

Heatsink only: Max 75C
+ 40mm quiet fan: Max 65C

Mar 27, 2023:

Mar 18, 2023:

Mar 9, 2023:

We heard today that our inventory units won't be shipping until the end of March, so we will likely receive them in mid-April.

There are a number of units that did pass testing from the first manufacturing run, and we are working on getting those units in earlier than mid-April, but we have no confirmation yet.

Mar 8, 2023:

Mid-March 2023 is looking less likely due to an issue caught by quality control at the factory. Due to this issue, the factory is going to have to re-make a number of the boards and test the changes before shipping them on to us.

Thanks to stvhay, pyavitz and others, we now have a working build of Ubuntu Minimal working on the Nova. Several desktop environments have been added to this image and tested. Optimizations and improvements are in the works.

Stvhay also has provided us a working Batocera image.

We are working on a product website for the Indiedroid Nova to be released soon.

Feb 10, 2023:

We expect the first batch to arrive from the factory in mid to late March 2023.

JELOS (JustEnoughLinuxOS) is working on the Nova - optimizations are being made: https://github.com/JustEnoughLinuxOS/distribution/releases (Select the download package starting with "JELOS-RK3588.aarch64-*")