Xunlong Orange Pi Plus

Orange Pi Plus is H3 based development board produced by Xunlong.

= Identification = The PCB has the following silkscreened on it: Orange Pi Plus

= Sunxi support =

Current status

 * support is included is mainline u-boot 2016.01
 * a 3.4-lichee-based kernel can be found in https://github.com/O-Computers/linux-sunxi, based on work by ssvb and loboris
 * yocto support can be found in https://github.com/O-Computers/meta-sunxi, which glues together all the required parts to get this kernel to work with mainline u-boot, as well as accelerated X11/GLES support

Manual build

 * The .fex file can be found in sunxi-boards as orange_pi_plus.fex

Mainline kernel
As yet there is no support for the orange pi plus in the mainline kernel

= Tips, Tricks, Caveats =

FEL mode
The button marked SW3, located between the HDMI and SATA, triggers FEL mode when pressed during boot. (SW3 pulls the H3 BOOTSEL pin to low level.)

To verify you have successfully entered FEL mode, check the output of. For the Orange Pi Plus, it should look like: AWUSBFEX soc=00001680(unknown) 00000001 ver=0001 44 08 scratchpad=00007e00 00000000 00000000

LEDs
For those with a transparent case (or no case at all) the Orange Pi Plus's LED activity is good. The red power LED (D7) can be turned off.

SATA
Be aware that the H3 SoC used on the Orange Pi Plus isn't SATA capable and therefore the SATA port is provided by a slow USB-to-SATA-bridge (especially write speeds are substandard and do not exceed 15 MB/s). This means you can neither expect SATA performance nor full SATA functionality. While the used GL830 bridge supports S.M.A.R.T. attributes it does not support S.M.A.R.T. status notification (overall health indicator of the disk – instead of PASSED or FAILED you will only get SMART Status not supported: Incomplete response, ATA output registers missing).

If you wish to connect a SATA drive (2.5" mobile harddisk or SSD) to the Orange Pi Plus: Make sure your power supply is connected to the "DC-IN" port, and can deliver sufficient current (e.g. 5V/2000mA). Using the OTG port or an inadequate power supply might result in your board not being working. You should also note that the board's SATA-power connector uses the same polarity as other Orange or Banana Pis. Therefore cable kits from CubieTech and LinkSprite that use the same jack are incompatible due to inverted polarity.

Expansion Port
The Orange Pi Plus has a 40-pin, 0.1" connector with several low-speed interfaces.

DRAM clock speed limit
DRAM is clocked at 672 MHz by the hardware vendor. But the reliability still needs to be verified. One of the ways of doing reliability tests may be https://github.com/ssvb/lima-memtester/releases/tag/20151207-orange-pi-pc-fel-test (it checks the Orange Pi PC DRAM setup in the current mainline U-Boot v2016.01-rc2 + a bugfix).

NOTE: While this test image was made for the Orange Pi PC, it also runs on the Orange Pi Plus.

See the Orange Pi PC DRAM clock speed limit for how to perform an analysis of these results.

= Adding a serial port =

While the GPIO pinout of the Orange Pi Plus is designed to be compatible to the Raspberry Pi, it's important to notice subtle differences in the serial ports. The Orange Pi Plus has some additional pins that already provide two more serial ports.

The default serial port /dev/ttyS0, used for (bootstrap) debugging and the serial console, is located at J11 - refer to the picture and instructions below. The Raspberry's "original" serial port on GPIO 14 and 15 (CON3, pins 8 and 10) can usually be accessed as /dev/ttyS2 on the Orange Pi Plus. J12 also provides another serial port on pins 4 (RX) and 6 (TX), which should map to /dev/ttyS3.

Note: The actual mapping between physical pins, UART numbers and/or device names may depend on the specific kernel and configuration used. If in doubt, check the boot messages:



Locating the UART
The UART pins are located between MIC and audio input of the board. They are marked as TX, RX and GND on the PCB. Just attach some leads according to our UART Howto.

= Pictures =

= Variants =


 * The original Orange Pi was released in November 2014. The orange pi features a standard TF card slot and a 26 pin GPIO connector (similar to the Raspberry Pi A/B).
 * The Orange Pi Mini was released in November 2014, too. It has two TF card slots and only has 2 USB Host.
 * The Orange Pi Plus was presented in February 2015. It's a new board, and it uses the AllWinner H3 SoC. It Has a 8GB EMMC Flash, Onboard Network(10/100/1000M Ethernet RJ45), Onboard WIFI(Realtek RTL8189ETV, IEEE 802.11 b/g/n), Video Outputs(Supports HDMI CEC, Supports HDMI 3D function, Integrated CVBS, Supports simultaneous output of HDMI and CVBS) and a 40 pin GPIO header (that mimics the Raspberry Pi A+/B+ models).
 * Now Orange Pi 2 and Orange Pi Mini 2 are released in March 2015. They are both based on a quad-core H3 CPU, and offer TF card slot, onboard Network(10/100M Ethernet RJ45), 40 pin GPIO and 4 USB type A connectors. They are difference in onboard wifi. Orange Pi 2 has wifi module, while Orange Pi Mini 2 does not have. However, the two kinds of devices do not have SATA any more.

= Also known as =

= See also = There are several websites about Orange Pi Plus and claiming to support it. It has to be clarified, what is "official" and who is behind this sites.


 * Xunlong Orange Pi site
 * "Official" Github Repository.
 * "Official" Orange Pi Form.
 * H3_Manual_build_howto

Manufacturer images
A various amount of prebuilt images is provided via OrangePi's Website.