dhlii

@going Thanks for the DT information. I did get my nanopi-r1s-h3 working with a nanopi-r1 armbian build. I am not sure why but it did not work the first time I tried. Regardless it is now. That reduces my motivation to start modifying things. But I will look into getting the Device Tree correct later and your directions will be useful. The nanopi-r1 is an H3 device so what I would have to address is the differences between the r1 and the r1s.

@going The short answer is yes, I have used buildroot, but no, not in a long time. In 2003 I ported Linux to the Pico E12 - this is an embedded system on a CF card - I wrote an article in Linux Journal about that project. Linux on the E12 was so tiny that Buildroot which I do not think existed at the time would have been a nuclear weapon. I had a very rudimentary installation - beyond the kernel. I beleive that I used Busybox at the time. I have used Buildroot - and similar tools in the past. Over the last 20 years my embedded linux work gets less embedded each year. That is not my choice, that is determined by the demands of my clients. Most recent embedded Linux projects are something like - We have a custom board that is basically a Beagle Bone Black - or some similar common reference design. with a couple of additional sensors. So pretty much all I end up doing is writing and testing an app - usually on a laptop, that then runs on their "embedded" device. Plus some device tree mods for their hardware differences and MAYBE modifying a device driver to support custom hardware. I have not needed to use buildroot in years. I am doing less and less embedded linux work and more and more deeply embedded work - that is not a choice - though I have no problem with it. It is driven by the market. People hire me more frequently for IoT work on STM32's or ESP32's or similar devices. That work more closely resembles the Linux work I did for the E12 in 2003 - except that the E12 was far more difficult, there were no debuggers, and getting the transition to virtual memory working totally blind as pretty difficult. My resurgent interest in Armbian is less driven by Customers - I have used Armbian on products for Clients. And more as a tool for IoT development. I have several concurrent projects and increasingly I am using some BBB or Hummingboard or OPI as the computer that it connected to the embedded IoT device I am working on. So I write software on my desktop or laptop. SSH into an OrangePiOne that is connected to a IoT device, used the OPI1 to flash the IoT device as well as to lot serial output and in some cases to simulate inputs. Sometimes when I do not care about build times - I will even build the software on the Armbian host. I have a post install script that I run that sets up very similar environments on most of my linux devices - so that If I move from my laptop to my desktop to my router, to my servers, to the array of embedded linux devices - I have the same environment. I use Debian on all my large systems - and that means Armbian is suitable for the embeded linux devices. I develop almost entirely from the command line - because that process is the nearly same everywhere. So I am here asking questions about my nanopi-r1s-h3, Because I am re-purposing a device bought for a forgotten project into a host for an ESP32 project I am currently working on. It is either that or add another Dell R415 into my Rack - and that uses far more power, and cant be directly connected to a device that is in the ceiling or behind a wall.

It appears that the nanopi-r1 image is working. I am an embdded linux developer. I am not expert in Armbian building. But I have built kernels from scratch, written drivers, and created complete linux installs from scratch - i.e. manually done what the Armbian build script does automatically. But I am not looking to do a huge amount of work to get a bunch of embedded linux systems up to use for other purposes. I have a very large collection of SBC's - probably half can run linux. I like Armbian, and it is pretty uptodate - though frankly I am just using these as network conneced devices to manage other systems I am developing on. Regardless they are laying arround collecting dust, they do not require much power and I do not need lots of horsepower. The bad news is that I am an embdded linux developer - so I have one or two of lots of different boards - not 10 BBB's. My 2nd question was if I choose a similar H3 device to the nanopi-r1s-h3 and I either find a nonopi-r1s-h3 device tree or I modify an H3 device tree to match the nanopi-r1s-h3 hardware and then substite that device tree in a different H3 image - that should work ? Though the question appears to be moot and the nanopi-r1 image appears to work for me.

Would I be correct in assuming that the biggest difference between images for the same architecture would be the device tree ?

I am trying to build an armbian image for a nanopi R1S-H3 this used to be possible in the past. Now when I build and select the extended board list the R1S-H5 is present but not the R1S-H3. Should I build using another H3 board, or is the R1S-H5 close enought o get it to boot.