VIM3/VIM3L

Introduction

VIM3 has an Amlogic A311D SoC and is made by Khadas. It’s available on: Khadas

VIM3L has an Amlogic S905D3 SoC and is made by Khadas. It’s available on: Khadas

Note

Wiki from Khadas docs give all documentation needed for VIM3 and VIM3L.

Initial flashing procedure

For best results, VIM3 should be directly connect to host PC. Please avoid using USB hubs as they usually do not provide enough power to the board.

First time flashing method:

Flashing is done using the prebuild pyamlboot tool.

  • Install pyamlboot via pip:

    pip3 install pyamlboot

Or look at the github page for other methods.

  • Put Board in USB Upgrade MODE:

    1- Power-on VIM3

    2- Quickly press the F button 3 times in 2 seconds, then release the button.

You will see the Power-LED (Blue) blink for about 3 seconds. After the Power-LED (Blue) turns OFF, this indicates that the board is in Upgrade Mode .

  • Flash Android Bootloader

# For VIM3
export BOOTLOADER_NAME=u-boot_kvim3_ab.bin
# For VIM3L
export BOOTLOADER_NAME=u-boot_kvim3l_ab.bin

cd ~/src/khadas-aosp-16/out/target/product/yukawa/
boot-g12.py ${BOOTLOADER_NAME}

Note

If you encounter permission issues, refer to the udev rules section to add the appropriate USB rules.

U-Boot should boot and run fastboot, then

fastboot oem format
fastboot flash bootloader ${BOOTLOADER_NAME}
fastboot erase bootenv
fastboot reboot bootloader

Press the R (reset) button. After this, the board should boot into the just-flashed u-boot and enter fastboot mode.

  • Reset U-Boot environment to default values:

Interrupt the U-Boot autoboot by pressing any key, then run the following commands to reset the environment:

env default -a
saveenv
reset

After the board resets, interrupt U-Boot again and enter fastboot mode:

fastboot 0

  • Flash Android Images using the automated script:

cd ~/src/khadas-aosp-16/out/target/product/yukawa
./flash.sh

Note

The flash.sh script automatically handles:

  • Formatting the device with fastboot oem format

  • Flashing all required partitions (boot, super, dtbo, vbmeta, vendor_boot, init_boot, etc.)

  • Erasing misc and frp partitions

  • Formatting metadata partition

  • Rebooting the device

The script will reboot the device automatically when complete.