Quick Start

K5C can be powered by both Android and Linux. when Linux is in use, Like most Pi products, K5C can work in headless mode( no display connected, access via ssh ) and desktop mode( Ubuntu, Armbian, Debian desktop).

To start using K5C as a Linux interactive computer , you need to prepare the following items:

• Power Supply
• **Display and Display Cable **
• Boot Media
• KeyBoard and Mouse

Note

If you want to use K5C as a headless device accessed via network, please refer to SSH Connection.

Power Supply

The K5C supports multiple power supply methods. Please check if your hardware version supports them.

Power Method	Supply Voltage	Board Version
DC	12V	>= V1.0
Type-C	5V	>= V1.2
POE	12V	>= V1.0
BAT	> 3.4V	>= V1.2

The K5C supports multiple power supply input. Here, only the DC 12V power supply is demonstrated.

Display

K5C supports MIPI_LVDS display output.

Interface	Maximum Resolution Support
MIPI	1920x1200@60Hz
LVDS	1920 x 1080@60fps

MIPI_LVDS

The peripheral information of the MIPI_LVDS interface screen is as follows:

Model	Size	Resolution
AT101DS40I	10.1-inch	800x1280
MX101BA1340	10.1-inch	800x1280
MX080B2140	8.0-inch	800x1280
F050008M01	5.0-inch	720x1280

Boot Media

K5C comes with eMMC (embedded Multi Media Card) on-board by default, and has Android 14 AOSP operating system pre-installed. External boot media is not required. However, for subsequent use, if you want to change the operating system or sideload another OS from SD card, you need to prepare a SD card with ≥ 16GB storage capacity.

KeyBoard and Mouse

K5C has 2 USB 2.0 ports. You can use any one of them to connect a keyboard or mouse.

Buttons

K5C has 3 physical buttons on-board, each one has unique function, here are their usage description:

• POWER: Tap to turn the screen off/on. Press and hold for about 1.5 seconds to bring up the selection menu, and press and hold for about 10 seconds to force shutdown.
• RST: ** Short press to hot reset** device once.
• FEL: ** Located on the bottom side of the board. It is used in the scenario of installing OS Image to on-board eMMC,when pressed and hold with a power-on action, SoC's Init code will put device into MASKROM mode, cooperate with flashing tool to install Image into eMMC / NAND. MASKROM mode** means cheating SoC init code into thinking eMMC has nothing programmed, even without U-boot or U-boot is corrupted and unable to work correctly. It give people a chance to reprogram eMMC/NAND after bricking it.

System Startup

User and Password

For any Linux distro Image we released, Default user and password for different distros are as follows:

System	Username	Password
Ubuntu16.04	kickpi	kickpi
Ubuntu16.04	root	root

Hardware Installation

In below installation diagram, we have installed the power supply, MIPI display, mouse, and keyboard to KickPi K5C (If in you scenario , K5C works as a headless device and without display, here is a way to tell how the device's working and trouble shoot issues via on-board LED).

Note

FPC Antenna has bare metal surface, should avoid direct contact with board. Antenna may also generate electromagnetic interference , harm DDR's signals, please place antenna spatially away from DDR and SoC.

LED Status Indicator

You can tell the system working status via the LED indicators.

• K5C board has two LED indicators. green LED is the power indicator, and blue LED is the heartbeat indicator.

Success

Green LED is steady on, blue LED is blinking.

Failure

If green LED is off when device is powered on, please check power supply or short circuit issue. green LED sucks current directly from DC power without any external control. If the blue LED is off or steady on(no blinking), kernel panic or died. Blinking is controlled by a kernel driver. All our released OS Image work this way: Android, Ubuntu,Debian,Armbian.

System Desktop

K5C supports Android, Ubuntu operating systems. When our released OS images been installed, each one use different desktop wallpaper.

Android

Ubuntu

Installing Operating System

Obtaining Image

Note

Image Naming Specification: update-a133-kickpi-k5c-android10-mipi-10-800-1280-v1-2026010818.img
update: Indicates a complete image package.
a133-kickpi-k5c: Main control chip model A133, hardware board type Kickpi-K5C.
android10: Android operating system for the file system.
mipi-10-800-1280: 10-inch LVDS display with a resolution of 800*1280.
2026010818.img: Image release date (timestamp).

Obtain Kickpi K5C image files from OneDrive.

├── 2-Image
│   ├── K5C
│   │   ├── Android10.0
│   │      ├── update-a133-kickpi-k5c-android10-mipi-10-800-1280-v2-2026010818.img
│   │   └── Ubuntu1604

SD Card Installation

K5C has a SD card slot ( microSD aka. TransFlash or TF ) which can also serves as a bootable device. In K5C's boot sequence, SD card has higher priority, so K5C always try to boot from SD card first, when no one mounted, K5C then boot from on-board eMMC. Since SoC vendor's official Tools use terminology SD(microSD) instead of TF, so we use SD card in this context, TF and SD means the same thing.

With SoC vendor's tool, we can make 2 types of booting card. SD Boot Card works like a portable edition OS, e.g. windows PE. We use SD Boot Card to power device for some maintain and fix purpose. also can be used to verify your own customization. the second type is SD installation card. you create this kind of booting card when you try to use it to install new Image into on-board eMMC. it contains a specific script to create partition, format FS, copy files to eMMC. Make sure you understand what you need and create the right SD card.

Preparation

Note

Supported SD card filesystem formats: exfat, NTFS
SD Boot Card (SD Boot): Contains bootloader and complete system image, supports device booting directly from microSD card, used in scenarios like eMMC, dev debugging.
SD Installation Card (Upgrade Firmware): Stores firmware image and installation script, used to install or upgrade firmware to the device's on-board storage (e.g., eMMC).

• Hardware: Windows PC/laptop, USB TYPE-C cable(some cheap TYPE-C cable only provide current, make sure use the one capable of data exchange). some users reported when using double male TYPE-C to TYPE-C cable, installation failed sometimes, when switch to double male USB TYPE-A to TYPE-C, it's ok.

• Software: Installing tool PhoenixCard, image.

SD Boot Card

1. Navigate to the PhoenixCard extracted folder and launch PhoenixCard.

2. Follow the steps shown in the diagram to flash the downloaded image onto the SD card.

Note

During the operation, if PhoenixCard prompts to format the SD card, confirm the formatting.
The display must be used with the corresponding image. If you have equipped K5C with a 10-inch MIPI/LVDS display, please select the image named update-a113-kickpi-k5c-***-EMMC-mipi-10-800-1280-v2-202*.img.

3. The SD boot card is created successfully.

4. Power off the board, insert the SD Boot Card into the TF card slot on the board, reconnect the power supply, wait patiently and check if it boots into the desktop normally.

Success

The green LED remains lit, and the blue LED blinks continuously (the blue LED will not light up immediately, please wait patiently).

SD Installation Card

1. Navigate to the PhoenixCard extracted folder and launch PhoenixCard.

2. Follow the steps shown in the diagram to flash the downloaded image onto the SD card.

Note

During the operation, if PhoenixCard prompts to format the SD card, confirm the formatting.

3. The SD installation card is created successfully.

4.Power off the board, insert the SD Installation Card into the TF card slot on the board, and power it on again.

Success

A progress bar will be displayed on the monitor during installation. When the installation is complete, the green LED and blue LED will turn off simultaneously. Power off the motherboard, remove the SD card, power the motherboard on again, and wait for the system to restart and boot into the desktop.

USB Installation

Preparation

• Hardware: USB A-to-C cable.

• Software: Installing tool PhoenixSuit, image.

Steps

1. Connect the computer using a USB A-to-C flashing cable. The board enters the Installation Mode,the green LED stays on.

Note

Installation Mode:
When the motherboard is powered on, connect it to a Windows computer, press and hold the FEL button (do not release it), then press the RST button briefly. Once the flashing tool detects the device, release the FEL button.

2. Install driver, connect the computer via a USB A - to - C cable, open the computer's Device Manager, and follow the operations shown in the diagram.

Tip

Driver folder path: PhoenixSuit/Drivers/AW_Driver/

3. Open PhoenixSuit from the extracted folder in Administrator mode.

4. In the installing software, click "firmware" to select the image to be install (do not click "Upgrade").

5. Re-enter the installing mode on the development board, connect the USB, and when the software displays the screen as shown below, click "Yes" to start installing. Simply wait for the installing to complete successfully.

Note

Installation Mode:
When the motherboard is powered on, connect it to a Windows computer, press and hold the FEL button (do not release it), then press the RST button briefly. Once the flashing tool detects the device, release the FEL button.

6. Once the image is installed successfully, the board will restart automatically.

Success

The green LED is steady on, and the blue LED is flashing continuously. (Note: The blue LED will not light up immediately; please wait patiently.)

System Configuration

In this chapter, you will use Mobaxterm for serial debugging, ADB for Android debugging, and SSH for remote connection.

Account and Password

Default usernames and passwords for different systems are as follows:

System	Username	Password
Ubuntu16.04	kickpi	kickpi
Ubuntu16.04	root	root

Mobaxterm

Using Serial Port debugging tool connect K5C to get a console. please check pinout to find UART pins as shown in below diagram.

K5C DEBUG UART Pins

• 2D Pin Diagram

• Physical Image

Tool Preparation

• Software: Mobaxterm
• Hardware: Serial Debug Cable aka. USB-TTL debug cable

Note

Red: VCC (no need to connect); Green: TX; White: RX; Black: GND. If you can't get Serial Port output in Mobaxterm, just switch Green and White wire and try again.

Hardware Installation

• Diagram

Mobaxterm Configuration

1. Click session to create a new session window.

2. Select the session window type as serial.

3. Select the serial COM port number (Check COM number by opening Windows Device Manager -> Ports interface).

4. Set Speed(bps) to 115200.

5. Start the session window.

As shown, after clicking OK, you will enter the command-line input window.

When the board is powered on and connected to the computer, Mobaxterm will display the information output of the development board during startup.

Connection successful. Press Enter in the command-line interface to input commands, successfully logging into the mainboard console.

ADB

Android system supports ADB functionality. ADB (Android Debug Bridge) is an Android system debugging bridge tool. It supports connecting to devices via USB or network, enabling device management and debugging operations such as app installation, file transfer, command execution, etc. ABD is a utility inside Google's Android platform-tools. you can download platform-tools from Google's developer site also.

Tool Preparation

• Hardware: USB Type-C Data Cable
• Software: download ADB_Tool

Hardware Installation

Connect one end of the USB TYPE-C data cable to the mainboard, the other end to the personal host.

ADB Installation

1. Extract the compressed package, e.g., to Windows path D:\ADB\adb-tools.

2. Open cmd window, switch to the extraction directory.

cd D:\ADB\adb-tools

3. Run the command. Successful run indicates installation success.

adb --version

4. Start ADB debugging.

.\adb.exe shell

SSH

SSH stands for Secure Shell, an encrypted network transmission protocol. Its core function is to securely remotely log into servers, execute commands, or transfer files in insecure network environments.

Account and Password

Default usernames and passwords for different systems are as follows:

System	Username	Password
Ubuntu2204	kickpi	kickpi
Ubuntu2204	root	root

IP Address Acquisition

DHCP automatically assigns IP addresses; no settings are needed. Device IP can be obtained in multiple ways.

• via serial port: Enter ifconfig eth0 in the serial terminal to get IP address (Serial connection refer to Mobaxterm chapter above).

SSH Connection

Enter the command in the command line to perform SSH connection:

ssh <username>@<IP>

Example:

PS C:\Users\16708> ssh kickpi@192.168.77.186
The authenticity of host '192.168.77.186 (192.168.77.186)' can't be established.
ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:635IZrLQdeYlWWl3SCdLxu9fxLEPmStBapj4APCjzZE.
This key is not known by any other names.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes
Warning: Permanently added '192.168.77.186' (ED25519) to the list of known hosts.
kickpi@192.168.77.186's password:
Welcome to Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS (GNU/Linux 6.1.75 aarch64)

 * Documentation:  https://help.ubuntu.com
 * Management:     https://landscape.canonical.com
 * Support:        https://ubuntu.com/pro

This system has been minimized by removing packages and content that are
not required on a system that users do not log into.

To restore this content, you can run the 'unminimize' command.
To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>".
See "man sudo_root" for details.

kickpi@kickpi:~$

Q&A

• ROOT User Login Failed ?

1. Check if configuration was successful

Run the following commands. If the output is PermitRootLogin yes, it indicates configuration success:

console$ cat /etc/ssh/ssh_config | grep PermitRootLogin
PermitRootLogin yes
console$ cat /etc/ssh/sshd_config | grep PermitRootLogin
PermitRootLogin yes

2. Root user login configuration

Modify SSH configuration files:

console$ vim /etc/ssh/ssh_config
+ PermitRootLogin yes
console$ vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config
+ PermitRootLogin yes
console$ sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart