Hello,
I just got my devices today. It’s great.
I got this with prebuilt Android, I tried to connect all add-ins that I purchase as peripheral.
Ones is RTC Battery.
When I perform reboot, seems this RTC isn’t supported by the current preinstall system.
Time (clock) will be reset when boot or reboot.
Do you know which OSs are supported this feature (RTC Battery)?
Thank you
Thanks for your question! The OS distributions are maintained by independent developers, so we’re not sure which ones have looked into the RTC support yet. But we’ve brought that up to them. We’ll post more information here as we get answers from them.
macroalpha on the Discord server has verified that RTC is working on mainline, but we don’t believe that any of the current OS images for the Nova are using the mainline kernel yet as there is more work to be done before they are fully functional.
So… AmeriDroid is completely hands off on OS images? You NEVER qualified that in your sales or other related information… I mean just saying… these OSes are available… is pretty weak. Frankly, the support for the Nova is really lagging compared to other SBCs. I am not expecting Pi OS level commitment… But at least AmeriDroid should push some of the key bugs and issues to resolution… HOW is not doing this NOT hurting your sales? Many of the recent videos on YouTube all say basically the same thing… OS support for the IndieDroid Nova is hit and miss, or words to that effect. So, maybe you should invest some time and effort into improving the situation? Basically you have one OS image that works… I have tried and tested at least 10 different variants available and most have significant issues. One can’t run any GUI quite right… Debian 12 that is. Ubuntu images at times can’t see Wi-Fi, etc., etc. It seems Armbian works… but it is not consistently updated? 23.11 has been out for 6 months but not even on radar of the community for Nova? And even Armbian still has a key issue… you have to issue a HALT to power down the device, really? That has been a known issue for over a year! Please support your hardware, you sell, better, with a strong support for getting issues fixed. Frankly, the Nova is nice hardware, but it is REALLY HARD to recommend it to anyone, given the OS images support is on no official standing from the vendor. I trust you can see the issues I noted above, and see that they should be addressed.
Thanks for your feedback, and we do take it seriously.
Many people misunderstand the resources that we have at our disposal, and part of that is our fault. I hope the following helps explain:
Our margins are razor-thin when one considers that we are hit with a 25% import tariff on every shipment coming to our US warehouse, a 5% document and handling fee, and between 5-10% in shipping charges. While many companies may skirt around this by their sheer lobbying power (i.e. Amazon) or by breaking import law by misrepresenting the value of their shipments, we legitimately pay 35-40% of the cost of every single product just to land it on our warehouse dock. That means if we pay $71 to produce or procure an item, $29 will get added on before we even receive it. And then we have to sell it for $110 just to have a chance of keeping the lights on. This leaves us in the best case scenario with around 10% margin on each item sold, which in turn is completely wiped out if 1 in every 10 items is refunded due to a defect, fraud, or loss claim. And this is before we even start to pay our staff, rent, utilities, taxes, supplies, etc.
Our margins are so slim that marketing companies that are eager to work with us shake their heads and walk away when they find out.
The only way to survive on margins this thin is by running a very efficient organization and minimizing expenses. Increasing our prices is not an option as this market is too competitive to support higher prices.
On our Indiedroid Nova page, it states:
"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."
We have no developers on staff as we cannot afford to have developers on staff. This is a catch-22 issue that most SBC companies face. They need more income to afford full-time developers, but they need full-time developers to (hopefully) generate more sales, and hence, income. However, we’ve sent out tens of thousands of dollars of free hardware to developers to encourage them for their hard work. And these tens of thousands of dollars comes from our meager margins after paying all our bills.
With that said, there has been and continues to be ongoing work by our awesome community of developers to improve existing distributions and to develop mainline Linux support for the Indiedroid Nova, and much progress has been made in that regard.
There’s an old saying that in many organizations, 10% of the people do 90% of the work. This is true of our community of developers as well. We’re very thankful for the 10% who are doing 90% of the work!
Thank for taking the time and effort to respond. Not exactly the answers I and I suspect others hoped for. But truly understand, the difficultly as noted. The key positive, I would say, ameriDroid responded, that is more than some other vendors do or have done in the past. As for the future, hope amerDroid will be in a position over time, to help drive issues to resolution, in whatever form that takes over time. I continue to enjoying using my IndieDroid Nova, even though, as I noted, there is a few things I hope get fixed sooner than later, from the software side, as the case may be.
Thanks for your understanding. We’ll keep working toward the best future possible.