Published August 3, 2021 © MIT

SiPEED MAIX-II Dock - Getting Started!

Machine Learning, AI and neural networks, all in a small package. The V831 brings new possibilities to AI projects. Updated 05-05-22.

IntermediateWork in progress1 hour3,885

Things used in this project

Hardware components

SIPEED MAIX-II Dock

Flash Memory Card, SD Card

Software apps and online services

MobaXterm

balenaEtcher

Story

Special Thanks to fellow Hackster.io Dmitry Maslov for his excellent introduction of this wonderful SoC I have decided to write this "Getting Started" project to encourage others to try this out for themselves. The V831 is a very powerful SoC and in this iteration, the "MAIX-II" has a lot to offer. The next generation "MAIX-III" (MAIX-II-S) likely will use the Allwinner V833 (or rumour has it, potentially a RockChip) SoC which will add more memory capacity and a faster main clock. These are of the images was found online?? Notable the MAIX-II-S & M2S DOCK as found on twitter.

1 / 3 • V833 ver

What you will need for this project will be the MAIX-II DOCK and a micro SD card of at least 1 GB. I will be using the Windows 10/11 environment to setup the device and get it running. Please NOTE: you must have a working knowledge of Linux, or at least the willingness to try!

First thing to do is to download the most current release of the system image from SiPEED website ( caution: slow!! ) or use the link "here" below from Google Drive. Select the latest file. Once downloaded, unzip the image to your V831-MAIX-II work folder. This latest image does not contain a boot partition and will require using PhoenixCard to install.

UPDATE: I am maintaining a SiPEED Image archive here on Google Drive.

Note: the latest releases are not bootable and will require PhoenixCard to install.

MAY 2022 UPDATE:

Using PhoenixCard to burn system image, download the latest release and unzip. Set Write mode to Startup! Then "Burn". Once complete you will get this...

select the Startup option

With your V831 OTG port is plugged into your PC, you can burn directly to your device or you can also use a card reader with your PC with PhoenixCard.

You can find burn instructions wiki here.

You may need to locate the correct port using Device Manager, it may show two new COM ports, select the first one. Start MobaXterm and open that COM port to the device and reset your dock. And if you look at your device you will see the boot process and that /root/main.py has done its thing by showing the SiPEED logo then the colour QR code.

Now connect to the UART port of the MAIX-II Dock to your PC. Using device manager you will see 2 new ports, select the first port (whatever COMx it may be) with MobaXterm configure the port to 115200 baud 8 bits no parity and one stop bit. You now have a Linux OS with Python3.8!

1 / 2 • com port tab

Next is to configure the WiFi - set your network name and password. IMPORTANT: Make sure you are editing the wpa_supplicant.conf in the root directory!

Start with the network settings. Enter at root@sipeed:/ "vim root/wpa_supplicant.conf" to setup your own network credentials. If "vim" is new to you please google its usage first (please note that there are going to be small differences between the two). It is a very simple editor. (Type "R" to enter insert mode.(indicated by "I" in bottom-left corner) Use the insert and delete keys to edit and to exit & save - "esc" key then ":" will move the cursor to the bottom-left on screen, then type "x" and enter. To exit without saving, "esc" then ":", the cursor will drop to the bottom left then type "q")

I will use MobaXterm to access the filesystem via SSH.

UPDATE: default user - root, password - root.

NOTE: I have archived all versions of SiPEED images(in zip format) and PhoenixCard on Google Drive for anyone to dl here.

1 / 4 • SiPEED image - 08-25-21 - tina

Next Steps:

The most current image 0.4.7 has preloaded NN files located in the /home/model/ directory.

Mobaxterm SSH

First replace the contents of /root/main.py with the startup.py file contents. This will test the ip interface and show your connected IP.

I added extra fonts, sounds and images to the res folder to help with UI and app development.

Try some of the examples from the repo. Also the SiPEED bbs has some examples and some programming pointers. It is in Chinese so you may have to use google translate to make it understandable.

I have created a GITHUB repo for some of the previous SiPEED examples using facial detect .

Wiki Inf

main.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

from PIL import Image, ImageFont, ImageDraw
import asyncio
import time
import os
import socket

time.sleep(10)

try:
  import shutil
  from PIL import ImageShow
  # use fbviewer on linux
  # os.system('ln -s /usr/sbin/fbviewer /usr/sbin/display')
  if shutil.which("fbviewer"):
    class fbViewer(ImageShow.UnixViewer):
      def get_command_ex(self, file, **options):
        command = executable = "fbviewer"
        return command, executable
    ImageShow.register(fbViewer, 0)
except ModuleNotFoundError as e:
  pass

def get_host_ip():
    try:
        s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
        s.connect(('8.8.8.8', 80))
        ip = "IP: " + s.getsockname()[0]
    except Exception as e:
        ip = "IP does not exist"
    finally:
        s.close()
    return ip


font = ImageFont.truetype("/home/res/sans.ttf", 22, encoding="unic")

canvas = Image.new("RGB", (240, 240), "#2c3e50")
with Image.open('/home/res/logo.png') as logo:
    canvas.paste(logo, (50, 40, 50 + logo.size[0], 40 + logo.size[1]), logo)

draw = ImageDraw.Draw(canvas)
draw.text((45, 195), get_host_ip(), "#ffffff", font)
canvas.show()