meta-luckfox with blob-free video pipeline for RV1106

Contribution welcome

If you able to add more hardware and test it - PR welcome

WARNING

1. This layer created mostly by AI
2. This layer not tested for production
3. Developer tested only for luckfox pico pro max with MIS5001
4. Ethernet fixed at 10M - in my setup 100M was very unstable

What is it

This layers provides support for Luckfox Pico Pro Max.
The aim - ability to load system, capture and encode video without outdated Luckfox SDK.

What is inside

1. u-boot - next-dev branch from rockchip-linux repository;
2. kernel - develop-6.6 branch from rockchip-linux repository;
3. librga - linux-rga-multi branch from JeffyCN mirrors repository;
4. mpp - develop branch from rockchip-linux repository;
5. rkaiq - rkaiq-2025_08_11 version from JeffyCN mirrors repository;
6. gstreamer-rockchip - from JeffyCN mirrors repository;
7. dts - from luckfox SDK
8. rootfs-resize to grow the rootfs partition to fill the SD/eMMC on first boot, and misc systemd tweaks.

How it even possible

RV1106 has the same encoder IP as RK3528. This layer carries patches to the kernel and rockchip-mpp that enable using the RV1106 encoder the same way it's used on RK3528.
Also for mainline yocto gstrestreamer some patches also mandatory and provided.

Ready to test image

https://github.com/buldo/meta-luckfox/releases/tag/v1.0.0
You have to understand that this is fixed image without possibility to install other packages.
user: root
empty password

How to build image

1. Prepare workspace

mkdir lfbuild
cd lfbuild
git clone https://github.com/buldo/meta-luckfox.git
git clone -b yocto-6.0.2 https://git.openembedded.org/bitbake 
git clone -b yocto-6.0.2 https://git.openembedded.org/openembedded-core
git clone -b wrynose https://github.com/openembedded/meta-openembedded.git
source ./openembedded-core/oe-init-build-env build
bitbake-layers add-layer ./meta-luckfox/
bitbake-layers add-layer ./meta-openembedded/meta-oe

2. Edit build/conf/local.conf

MACHINE = "luckfox-pico-pro-max"
IMAGE_INSTALL:append = " \
    rockchip-mpp \
    rockchip-mpp-demos \
    rockchip-mpp-vpu \
    luckfox-iqfiles \
    rockchip-librga \
    rockchip-rkaiq \
    rockchip-rkaiq-dev \
    rockchip-rkaiq-server \
    rockchip-camera-init \
    gstreamer1.0 \
    gstreamer1.0-plugins-base-videoconvertscale \
    gstreamer1.0-plugins-good-video4linux2 \
    gstreamer1.0-plugins-good-rtp \
    gstreamer1.0-plugins-good-udp \
    gstreamer1.0-plugins-good-isomp4 \
    gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad-videoparsersbad \
    gstreamer1.0-rockchip-rockchipmpp \
    i2c-tools \
    v4l-utils \
    systemd-networkd \
    systemd-conf \
    systemd-resolved-enable \
    openssh-sftp-server \
    "

# Upstream default PACKAGECONFIGs for gst-plugins-base/good/bad pull in a
# large, mostly-unused dependency tree (flac, gdk-pixbuf, cairo, pango,
# jpeg, lame, mpg123, speex, taglib, theora, vorbis, ogg, ...). None of it
# is needed for a "v4l2src ! mpph264enc ! rtph264pay ! udpsink" pipeline,
# so trim these down to just orc (SIMD JIT) + v4l2.
PACKAGECONFIG:pn-gstreamer1.0-plugins-base = "${GSTREAMER_ORC}"
PACKAGECONFIG:pn-gstreamer1.0-plugins-good = "${GSTREAMER_ORC} v4l2"
PACKAGECONFIG:pn-gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad = "${GSTREAMER_ORC}"

DISTRO_FEATURES:remove = "sysvinit x11 wayland opengl vulkan directfb"
DISTRO_FEATURES:append = " systemd"
VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_init_manager = "systemd"
VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_initscripts = "systemd-compat-units"
VIRTUAL-RUNTIME_login_manager = "shadow-base"
TCLIBC = "glibc"
EXTRA_IMAGE_FEATURES += "allow-empty-password empty-root-password allow-root-login ssh-server-openssh"

3. Build system

bitbake core-image-minimal        # or core-image-minimal-dev

Get image from build/tmp/deploy/images/luckfox-pico-pro-max/**.wic.
You can write image with rpi imager, balenaEtcher, etc.

How to test gstreamer

gst-launch-1.0 -e \
  v4l2src device=/dev/video11 num-buffers=300 ! \
  video/x-raw,format=NV12,width=1920,height=1080,framerate=25/1 ! \
  mpph264enc ! h264parse ! mp4mux ! filesink location=nv12.mp4

Dev notes

One-time host setup

AppArmor's unprivileged user namespace restriction breaks some build tasks; disable it:

sudo nano /etc/sysctl.d/60-apparmor-namespace.conf

Add:

kernel.apparmor_restrict_unprivileged_userns=0

How to test the encoder

mpi_enc_test -w 1280 -h 720 -t 7 -n 100 -o /tmp/out.h264

Idea by: Roman Buldygin Written by: GitHub Copilot