Hello all!
I bought the Nexbox z68 box 6 months ago mainly to play with a cheap arm64 "computer", like we can do with the more expensive GeekBox (I bought my Nexbox for 30€).
But to play with this box one important thing was missing: a serial connection! After some quick investigation, I found that the serial port of the rk3368 shared some wires with the SD card reader (you can see this in the GeekBox schematics). So, I searched on the PCB how to connect it and it's easily possible!
On the first picture you can see the pre-defined test points to access the serial console.
The test points are small, so I soldered small wires on bigger connectors to be able to connect my USB serial convert.
I wasn’t able to solder wires directly on the test points (why?), so I used an electrical glue to connect the wires.
But for the GND I used an USB ground connection.
To make more robust my connections, and also to isolate, I used on hot glue gun (I don’t known if it’s the correct name in english) to glue RXD and TXD together.
And voilà! I now can access the serial console and play with it! Just remember that you cannot access serial console and SD card together (it’s a Rockchip limitation as wires are shared between the two).
I bought the Nexbox z68 box 6 months ago mainly to play with a cheap arm64 "computer", like we can do with the more expensive GeekBox (I bought my Nexbox for 30€).
But to play with this box one important thing was missing: a serial connection! After some quick investigation, I found that the serial port of the rk3368 shared some wires with the SD card reader (you can see this in the GeekBox schematics). So, I searched on the PCB how to connect it and it's easily possible!
On the first picture you can see the pre-defined test points to access the serial console.
The test points are small, so I soldered small wires on bigger connectors to be able to connect my USB serial convert.
I wasn’t able to solder wires directly on the test points (why?), so I used an electrical glue to connect the wires.
But for the GND I used an USB ground connection.
To make more robust my connections, and also to isolate, I used on hot glue gun (I don’t known if it’s the correct name in english) to glue RXD and TXD together.
And voilà! I now can access the serial console and play with it! Just remember that you cannot access serial console and SD card together (it’s a Rockchip limitation as wires are shared between the two).