OrangePi-PC experience

Hi folks !
I’ve ordered new toys recently, some OrangePi-PC boards, US$15 + shipping, http://www.orangepi.org/orangepipc/, and I’ve received them yesterday.
Even if Time is missing-ingredient, I’ve took time to play with then, installing some Linux image, and even today compiling new Linux kernel.
I’m really amazed of what can this kind of board can do with this pricing ! It is RaspberryPi killer !
I will try to play with GPIO,I2C and SPI in the following days …

martinayotte wrote:Hi folks !
I’ve ordered new toys recently, some OrangePi-PC boards, US$15 + shipping, http://www.orangepi.org/orangepipc/, and I’ve received them yesterday.
Even if Time is missing-ingredient, I’ve took time to play with then, installing some Linux image, and even today compiling new Linux kernel.
I’m really amazed of what can this kind of board can do with this pricing ! It is RaspberryPi killer !
I will try to play with GPIO,I2C and SPI in the following days …

I got one too. Still waiting.

I bought the Orange Pi plus, then the Orange pi 2 mini when they came out a while back. I hated them at first. There was no documentation for the All winner H3 at the time or the boards themselves. I spent hours trying to get them to work. Android was easier to get going than a Linux flavor. But still took forever. I wish All winner would release the files for lollipop already.

About a month ago, I found on their forum a user that got Linux working. I did as well with his images. At least to some degree. It is still buggy.

That being said, I think if the community would grow, it could be a good choice over the pi. The OPi plus has onboard SATA, WIFI, and flash memory. This is what attracted me to the OPI boards to begin with.

The community is the success key of these boards like RaspberryPI and Arduino. There are other boards that are better, much better but they lack community.

I cross my fingers.

I saw those boards as well when I was looking to upgrade from my RPi 1 (which I hardly ever use)

OrangePi looks OK, but as far as I can tell is not as powerful as the RPi 2 (but probably better than the RPi 1 and better value)

OrangePi 2 looks very good, but is priced higher than the RPi 2.

So I couldn’t make my mind up and didn’t buy either ;-(

Just to let you know, I’ve took time to try GPIO and I2C on my new OrangePi-PC using i2c-tools but also with python library, and it seems to work well.

BTW, since many are talking about those many flavours, BananaPi, even recently the new NanoPi, I’ve look also at most of them, but I feel that most of them have inadequate pricing, (BTW, I have already an RasberryPi and a BeagleBoardBlack, but I was searching something cheaper)
But in the case of OrangePi-PC, I’ve so surprised about the price that I’ve purchased 2 boards.

Thanks Martin

Sounds like something I need to put on my shopping list.

Can you post a link to the board you bought

I had quite some problems to get ethernet going, because most distros seemed to lack drivers. Gentoo was the only image, that got network + dhcp going. So I compiled from there but had to add 1 GB swap to have enough ram for some gcc instances (wanted to use all 4 cores).

Martin

I just looked up the “Orange-Pi PC”

http://www.orangepi.org/orangepipc/

Why did you choose this, as opposed to the Orange Pi 2 or the Orange Pi Plus etc etc etc

Was it a cost vs performance thing ?

I can see them for $15 US on AliExpress http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Orange-P … eb201560_9

But prices on eBay are expensive.. Mainly because they want $15 + $15 postage.

Hi Roger,

Yes, the main concern was pricing point of view !

Of course, the OrangePi-PC doesn’t have SATA and Wifi, like some other of their boards, but the pricing difference is not justified, since we can add Wifi for $3-4 with a USB dongle. SATA is a bit more problematic, but I can live without it and again, when really needed, USB-SATA cost $5.

Buying those OrangePi-PC boards via AliExpress cost me $15+shipping, total=$19 (it was my first plunge with AliExpress ).

BTW, question of performance, it is quite good, even faster than my Olimex-A20-Micro, which still cost around $55.

Of course, there is the question of support, but after spending few hours, I don’t think there is bottleneck there, and even googling around seems to point that the H3 in general will come soon in the Linux mainstream, as the A20 did last year.

Thanks Martin

I presume the normal external USB disk’s work fine. And for most embedded stuff, you could probably just plug in a 16Gb or larger memory stick.

After all, I’m not sure if this is really supposed to replace someone’s main PC.

RogerClark wrote:Thanks Martin

I presume the normal external USB disk’s work fine. And for most embedded stuff, you could probably just plug in a 16Gb or larger memory stick.

After all, I’m not sure if this is really supposed to replace someone’s main PC.

stevech wrote:RogerClark wrote:Thanks Martin

I presume the normal external USB disk’s work fine. And for most embedded stuff, you could probably just plug in a 16Gb or larger memory stick.

After all, I’m not sure if this is really supposed to replace someone’s main PC.

Just to some kind of recap :
With IoT, yes there are the nodes, such STM32 or ESP, but we still need some kind of Major Node, it can be RaspberryPi, OrangePi, BeagleBoard or Olimex-A20, or anything else …
Those higher power board can become full fledge Linux environment, Apache,Samba, MySql, etc.
We don’t need to dedicate a high cost PC for that !
That’s why I see this OrangePi-PC at $15 an amazing solution !

martinayotte wrote:Just to some kind of recap :
With IoT, yes there are the nodes, such STM32 or ESP, but we still need some kind of Major Node, it can be RaspberryPi, OrangePi, BeagleBoard or Olimex-A20, or anything else …
Those higher power board can become full fledge Linux environment, Apache,Samba, MySql, etc.
We don’t need to dedicate a high cost PC for that !
That’s why I see this OrangePi-PC at $15 an amazing solution !

after spending 10 minutes reading the buyer’s comments, factoring in that most happy buyers don’t post, my conclusion was to take a pass on this China-vendor.

Here’s one quote, understating
Good article. Linux software is a little faulty. For example, there is no video driver. Other things are correct.

Which vendor was that.

can you post the link?

I looked and thought it was all positive 5 stars, but perhaps I was looking at something else

The site http://www.orangepi.org provide forums, docs, downloads.
The manufacturer is Shenzhen Xunlong Software CO.,Limited, the CEO is Steve Zhao.
Their store on AliExpress is http://aliexpress.com/store/1553371

stevech wrote:after spending 10 minutes reading the buyer’s comments, factoring in that most happy buyers don’t post, my conclusion was to take a pass on this China-vendor.

Here’s one quote, understating
Good article. Linux software is a little faulty. For example, there is no video driver. Other things are correct.

I looked into the OrangePi a while back and decided it wasn’t worth it. The Allwin H3 chip is used in a lot of the Andriod TV boxes that the Chinese retailers sell. I’m guessing the Android distros have the h.265 driver. Several of the boxes are a bit more powerful for not much more $.

It sounds great on paper, but the lack of a community and a fully working Linux (at the time I looked) meant it wasn’t much good. Looks like things are starting to get a little better though.

I have two Orange Pi PC since a month, as well as some Raspberry Pi 2 boards.

While I have not used them too much, I found them great for projects where you need a more powerfull brain to act as a master. Compared to a PC, the are cheaper, smaller, completly silent and use much less power. They are now covered in dust (along with the stm32) because I’m more focused learning CPLD/FPGA, but i’m sure im going to use them in the near future.

The price of the Orange Pi PC is great, but community size is a big advantange for the RPi 2. The support is far better in the RPi community, Orange Pi is still too young.

The best example is the SO images download list in the Orange Pi main page, at least for the orange Pi, all the links are broken (or were broken by several days when my boards arrieved and i was trying to test them). Someone mentieoned that in the forum, and he received new links, but the response was not kind at all, making him feel guilty because he “didnt search well by he’s own”. If that is the support they bring, they will never reach RPi, even with cheaper and more powerfull boards.

In other considerations, while they claim Orange Pi PC is far cheaper, is not that good as it sounds. First, there is only one supplier and they don’t send with free shipping. Second, they board uses a specific chasis which only the same supplier makes (so more expensive, less availability and again it does not have free shipping). Third, it cannot be powered by micro USB, so you cannot use yopur cellphone charger, you need a different (yet standard) power supply.

In the end, I think I can give an overall 7/10 to Orange Pi PC and 9/10 to Rpi2 (just because OPi Pc proved that hardware can be even cheaper).

RPi started to grow a community many months before the RPI was selled. Maybe it was easy since at that time there was no competitor.

It’s the community that got me into the RPi. that along with Rasbian. Back in the old days, my first taste of Linux was installing Debian on a Pentium 300MHz laptop, Pretty sure it took like 24hrs to recompile the kernel once it was all set up.Familiarity is nice.

Of course, as soon as I got the Rpi B+, the Pi2 came out, so I have been toying with getting one or an Orange Pi. Big problem is that as soon as I plug it in, my kid wants to either play Minecraft or mess with Scratch. That and I’ll probably just build a RetroPie game station if I get another Pi to relive the old days of computing…. It’s a lot cheaper than maintaining a Commodore 64 and an Amiga, not to mention the various came systems.

mrbwa1 wrote:
Of course, as soon as I got the Rpi B+, the Pi2 came out, so I have been toying with getting one or an Orange Pi. Big problem is that as soon as I plug it in, my kid wants to either play Minecraft or mess with Scratch. That and I’ll probably just build a RetroPie game station if I get another Pi to relive the old days of computing….

RogerClark wrote:mrbwa1 wrote:
Of course, as soon as I got the Rpi B+, the Pi2 came out, so I have been toying with getting one or an Orange Pi. Big problem is that as soon as I plug it in, my kid wants to either play Minecraft or mess with Scratch. That and I’ll probably just build a RetroPie game station if I get another Pi to relive the old days of computing….

mrbwa1 wrote:
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It’s always the great trade-offs in life: Easy of use vs time to tinker and get things to do what you really want.