Xunlong Orange Pi Zero Plus

The Xunlong Orange Pi Zero Plus is a small form factor board produced by Xunlong. It bears resemblance to Xunlong Orange Pi Zero. The Plus version differs from the original by having the H5 SoC instead of H3, gigabit ethernet support (Realtek RTL8211E), and WiFi 802.11 b/g/n provided with RTL8189FTV instead of XR819. The memory options are limited to 512MB of DDR3.

= Identification = The PCB has the following silkscreened on it: Orange Pi Zero plus V1.1

= Expansion Port =

The Orange Pi Zero Plus has the usual 26-pin, 0.1" unpopulated connector with several low-speed interfaces.

The board has another 13-pin, 0.1" header with several low-speed interfaces.

A cheap 'Expansion board' for this connector is available exposing all interfaces (2 x USB, CIR receiver, microphone and combined AV TRRS jack) and can be ordered together with the board on Aliexpress. Attention: Expect problems when using the Expansion board to connect more USB devices when you want to power the board through the Micro USB connector (known to cause all sorts of troubles). Voltage drops affecting stability are likely to happen so better think about providing power through 5V/GND pins on the 26 pin header in this case.

The NAS Expansion board is also a great companion transforming the 2 USB2 ports on the 13 pin header into either SATA ports or exposing them to the outside just like the above Expansion board is doing. For full USB/UAS performance you might need to upgrade the firmware of the used JMS578 SATA bridges.

= Tips, Tricks, Caveats =

FEL Mode
The Orange Pi Zero Plus runs the standard Allwinner BootROM when the SoC starts up. There are no buttons or connectors to select FEL mode so the BootROM will only enter FEL mode if a special SD card is present or if there are no valid boot options. For example if there is no boot option on the SPI NOR chip and no SD card is present then plugging the board's micro-USB port into a USB port on a PC will show up as a FEL device. Using Sunxi tools and issuing:

$ sunxi-fel ver

shows:

AWUSBFEX soc=00001680(H3) 00000001 ver=0001 44 08 scratchpad=00007e00 00000000 00000000

LEDs
The board has two LEDs next to DRAM:
 * A red LED, connected to the PA17 pin.
 * A green LED, connected to the PL10 pin.

Voltage regulators
There's a SY8113B voltage regulator on the board able to switch VDD_CPUX between 1.1V and 1.3V and toggled by PL06 pin. This allows stable operation at 816MHz @ 1.1V (based on Allwinner BSP comments and most probably a little bit higher) and 1200 MHz @ 1.3V.

DRAM
The vendor OS images clock the DRAM more or less by accident with 624 MHz (/sys/devices/1c62000.dramfreq/devfreq/dramfreq/cur_freq reads 624000) but these images seem to use settings for Orange Pi PC2 without any adjustments for the device in question (16-bit single bank DRAM config) so it can be expected that this device when settings are submitted upstream will get the usual CONFIG_DRAM_CLK=672 to repeat the usual instability mess we all love so much.

As a reference some tinymembench numbers all with 1008 MHz cpufreq:
 * BSP u-boot and dramfreq driver, DRAM clocked with 624 MHz since BSP default (not 672 MHz as can be read in the .dtb!)
 * Mainline u-boot 2017.09 and CONFIG_DRAM_CLK=624
 * Mainline u-boot 2017.09 and CONFIG_DRAM_CLK=408

USB
The one USB host port exposed as type A receptacle is usb1. Both usb2 and usb3 are available via solder holes. USB OTG available through Micro USB.

= Adding a serial port =

Locating the UART
The UART pins are located next to Ethernet jack on the board. They are marked as TX, RX and GND on the PCB. Just attach some leads according to our UART Howto.

= Pictures =

= See also =


 * Xunlong Orange Pi site
 * Official Github Repository.
 * Official Orange Pi Forums.
 * Orange Pi Zero Plus Schematic 1.0

Manufacturer images

 * Official OS images

= References =