NanoPi R6S [YSDPNANOR6SA]

1.1 Essentials You Need

Before starting to use your NanoPi-R6S get the following items ready

• NanoPi-R6S
• MicroSD Card/TF Card: Class 10 or Above, minimum 8GB SDHC
• USB C PD Charger (10W & above)
• If you need to develop and compile,you need a computer that can connect to the Internet. It is recommended to install Ubuntu 18.04 64-bit system and use the following script to initialize the development environment:
• How to setup the Compiling Environment on Ubuntu bionic

1.2 TF Cards We Tested

Refer to： TFCardsWeTested

1.3 PD Power Adapters We Tested

Refer to： PD Power Adapters We Tested

1.4 Configure parameters for serial port

Use the following serial parameters:

1.5 Install OS

1.5.1 Flash to TF

Visit download linkto download image files (in the "01_Official images/01_SD card images" directory) and utilities (in the "05_Tools" directory)：

The detailed steps are as follows:

• Get an 8G SDHC card and backup its data if necessary;
• Download and extract the xxx.img.gz and win32diskimager;
• Run the win32diskimager utility under Windows as administrator. On the utility's main window select your SD card's drive, the wanted image file and click on "write" to start flashing the SD card. Under Linux run "dd" to flash the rkXXXX-sd-OSNAME-YYYYMMDD.img file to your SD card;
• Take out the SD and insert it to NanoPi-R6S's microSD card slot;
• Power on NanoPi-R6S and it will be booted from your TF card;

1.5.2 Install OS to eMMC

1.5.2.1 Option 1: Install OS on Web Page

Get a TF card which has been installed with FriendlyWrt, log in FriendlyWrt on the web page, click on “System” ->”eMMC Tools”. Click on “Select file” to select your wanted image file, either an official image (the name might start with “rk3588-sd”) or a third party image. The file should be a “.gz” or “.img” file.
After a file is selected, click on “Upload and Write” to start installing an OS.

After installation is done, eject the SD card, the system will automatically reboot and load the OS from eMMC. After the OS begins to load, if the system LED is flashing and the network LED is on, it means the the OS has loaded successfully. If the OS is FriendlyWrt, you can click on “Go to Homepage” to enter the homepage.
Note that if you are burning the FriendlyElec firmware, you need to use an image file with the "-sd-" file name, similar to the one below:

If the file is in 7z, zip or rar format, you will need to extract it first. If the file is too large to write, you can compress it into .gz format and try again.

1.5.2.2 Option 2: Install OS via TF Card

1.5.2.2.1 Install OS to eMMC

• This method firstly boots a mini Linux from a TF card and then automatically runs an EFlasher utility to install the OS to eMMC.
• You can connect your system to an HDMI monitor and watch its progress. This is optional. You can watch its progress by observing its LEDs as well.

Visit download link to download the needed utilities and image file:

Here are the steps:

• Get an SDHC card with a minimum capacity of 8G
• Download a rk3588-eflasher-OSNAME-YYYYMMDD.img.gz image file and a win32diskimager;
• Under Windows, run win32diskimager as administrator, select your SD card and extracted EFlasher image file, and click on “Write” to write image file on the SD card; or under Linux, you use the dd command to write the rk3588-eflasher-OSNAME-YYYYMMDD.img file to the SD card.
• Eject your SD card and insert it to NanoPi-R6S’s microSD card slot.
• Turn on NanoPi-R6S, it will boot from the SD card and automatically run EFlasher to install the OS to the board’s eMMC. You connect your board to an HDMI monitor or observer the board’s LEDs to watch its installation progress

• After installation is done, power off the board, eject the SD card from NanoPi-R6S, power on the board again, NanoPi-R6S will load the OS from its eMMC

1.5.2.2.2 Install Flash Image File to eMMC

• Auto Install (Default Behavior)

1) Download an “eflasher” firmware from network drive, extract it and install it to a TF card ;
2) Eject and insert the TF card to your PC, after a “FriendlyARM” device shows up(Under Linux, it is a “FriendlyARM” directory), copy an .img or .gz file to the TF card.
3) Open the eflasher.conf file on the TF card, set “autoStart=” to the name of your image file, such as:

autoStart=openwrt-rockchip-armv8_nanopi-ext4-sysupgrade.img.gz

Anyone of the files that contain “-sd-” will work. Here is a list:

4) Eject the TF card, insert the TF card to NanoPi-R6S, power it on it will automatically install your firmware. You can watch the installation progress by observing the LEDs’ status.

• Disable Auto Installation

If you want to disable auto installation, please open the eflasher.conf file, set “autoStart=” to empty:

autoStart=

In this case, after the system boots, it will stay at the step where you are expected to select an image file. You need to connect an HDMI monitor and a USB mouse to your board and install a firmware on its UI;

1.5.2.3 Option 3: Install OS via USB

1.5.2.3.1 Step 1: Install USB Driver and Tools/Utilities

Download a driver file DriverAssitant_v5.1.1.zip under the “tools” directory from network drive, extract and install it.
Under the same directory, download a utility RKDevTool_Release_v2.84.zip and extract it.

1.5.2.3.2 Step 2: Connect NanoPi-R6S to PC and Enter Installation Mode

1) Disconnect the connected USB cable and the power cord from NanoPi-R6S, eject the TF card;
2) Press and hold the “Mask” key, power on the board. After the status LED has been on for at least 3 seconds, release the Mask key.
3) Use a USB A-to-A cable, connect NanoPi-R6S to a PC as follows. Note: please pay attention to the USB port the USB cable is connected to in the screenshot.

1.5.2.3.3 Step 3: Install image to eMMC

A firmware in general is packaged in either of the two options: the first is an whole image (ie, update.img) which is often offered by third party developers, the second is that an image is packaged and placed in multiple partition images. FriendlyElec offers an image in the latter option.

• Option 1: Install whole image (ie, update.img)

On a PC which has the extracted RKDevTool_Release_v2.84 utility, go to the RKDevTool_Release_v2.84 directory, run the RKDevTool.exe file. If everything works, you will see a “Found a new Maskrom device” message on the utility;
Go to “Upgrade Firmware”, click on “Firmware”, select your wanted image file, and click on “Upgrade” to install. After installation is done, your board will reboot automatically and load the system from eMMC;

• Option 2: Install OS that is packaged & placed in multiple partition images

Go to network drive to download your needed package and extract it.

After it is extracted, you will see some utilities and a configuration file under the directory. double click on RKDevTool.exe, you will see a “Found a new Maskrom device” message on the utility. Click on the “Execute”, wait a moment and it will be installed. After installation is done your system will automatically reboot and load the system from eMMC.

1.6 The Boot order between eMMC and SD card

By default, the system will be booted from the TF card first, but this is not the case under all conditions. This section will explain all situations in detail;
Refer to rockchip official document, there are two types of loader program:
1) U-Boot TPL/SPL (i.e. upsream U-Boot, also called mainline U-Boot)
2) Rockchip MiniLoader
Things to note:
1) FriendlyELEC's image uses Rockchip MiniLoader
2) The third-party image usually uses U-Boot TPL/SPL
The following situations will always start from eMMC:
If the system in the eMMC, or the system in the TF card uses the first Loader type U-Boot TPL/SPL, it will always boot from the eMMC;
If you want to boot from the TF card, there are the following methods:
Method 1: Clear the Loader on the eMMC, the clearing method is as follows, after starting from the eMMC, enter the following command on the command line to clear the Loader on the eMMC:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk2 bs=8M count=1

Method 2: Insert the TF card, Press Maskrom Key (or short-circuit the Maskrom contacts) and then power on (need to keep the short-circuit for about 3 seconds), it will start from the TF card
The summary is as follows: