OrangePi Zero2 - Allwinner H616

[NicoD]

53 minutes ago, XFer012 said:

At a certain point, I'll have to surrender

You've been brave, but surrender, never
A bit a pity there's not more interest in this board. And I've not seen any other H616 SBCs coming. 
Their Orange(Armbian) images do seem ok. I wonder if we could not learn anything from their script/builds.
https://github.com/orangepi-xunlong/OrangePi_Build
They've copied Armbian, maybe Armbian should copy them now  
I don't know. Maybe this one should be a pass. Is the effort supporting it worth it? Tho the board is good for some use cases. 

[XFer012]

The board is very good. IMHO, one of the best out there! And I have so many SBCs... maybe 10 or more.

Let me summarize:

 

Small and cheap

Draws little power, thanks to the 28nm SOC

Does not run hot, at all, not even with the (quite bad) Orange kernel (which loads one core at 100% all the time), not even at 1.5 GHz

Has onboard audio

MicroSD is quite fast, among the fastest actually

 

I see it as the best SBC for battery-powered projects, or whenever heat dissipation is an issue

 

[Werner]

21 minutes ago, NicoD said:

They've copied Armbian, maybe Armbian should copy them now

There has been an attempt to do that: https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/2620

[NicoD]

@XFer012Do you need HDMI? Otherwise the RockPiS is way more power efficient. Runs at 0.1A idle. Most of my power banks shut down because the load is too low. Tho it's a bit less powerful.
It indeed is a nice board and great price. But also a lot of work to support it. 
I keep my thumbs up for it.

32 minutes ago, Werner said:

There has been an attempt to do that: https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/2620

Haha
"this stuff is really ugly"
I didn't expect different. 

[XFer012]

13 minutes ago, NicoD said:

@XFer012Do you need HDMI? Otherwise the RockPiS is way more power efficient. Runs at 0.1A idle

 

 

I have the RockPiS, too; quite nice, but very difficult to find here (Italy) and it's quite slower. Power efficiency is not much higher, by the way.

 

In absolute terms, using "7zr b" as benchmark, RockPi-S gives 2327, OrangePiZero2 3739 (1.6x)

Using "7zr b" MIPS / MHz as an IPC figure, the RockPi-S gives 1.78, while the OPIzero2 gives 2.54.

Using "7zr b" MIPS / W as an efficiency figure, RockPi-S gives 1450, OPIZero2 1246

Also, microSD speed is almost 2x on the OPI02.

 

A very nice board (at 20 Eur!), if only we could iron out USB support.

[NicoD]

2 hours ago, XFer012 said:

In absolute terms, using "7zr b" as benchmark, RockPi-S gives 2327, OrangePiZero2 3739 (1.6x)

 

This is what I've got from benchmarks. 
 

OPiZero2
--------

S/C = Single Small core        B/C = Single Big core     A/C = All cores    

OPiZero2           | Clock S/C    | B/C         | Blender   | 7z S/C    | 7Z B/C  | 7z A/C | CPUMiner  | SBCBench  
OPi Focal 4.9.170   1.5Ghz                        35m34s      1320                  4800     4.65        http://ix.io/2SAn
OPi Focal 4.9.170   1.5Ghz                        35m40s

Odroid HC4         | Clock S/C    | B/C         | Blender   | 7z S/C    | 7Z B/C  | 7z A/C | CPUMiner  | SBCBench  
Ubuntu Mate 4.9      2.02Ghz                      22m29s      1881                  7400     7.5 kH/s    http://ix.io/2Lbl     No HDD 

Raspberry Pi 4     | Clock S/C    | B/C         | Blender   | 7z S/C    | 7Z B/C  | 7z A/C | CPUMiner  | SBCBench  
Manjaro                             1.5 Ghz       15m59s                  1575      6093           	    
                                    2 Ghz         13m18s                  2082      8009            

Station P1         | Clock S/C    | B/C         | Blender   | 7z S/C    | 7Z B/C  | 7z A/C | CPUMiner  | SBCBench  
Armbian bionic       1.5Ghz         2Ghz          14m31s      1341        2054               10          http://ix.io/2Ikl               
M4V2 Bionic 4.9      1.4Ghz         1.8Ghz        15m38s      1241        1813      7681

M4V2               | Clock S/C    | B/C         | Blender   | 7z S/C    | 7Z B/C  | 7z A/C | CPUMiner  | SBCBench  
TwisterOS V2         1.5Ghz         2Ghz          13m39       1345        2046      8283     11          http://ix.io/2TYt

RockPiS            | Clock S/C    | B/C         | Blender   | 7z S/C    | 7Z B/C  | 7z A/C | CPUMiner  | SBCBench  
Armbian Focal 4.4    1.29Ghz                      46m57s      868                   3500     2.7         http://ix.io/2TcN

OdroidGoSuper      | Clock S/C    | B/C         | Blender   | 7z S/C    | 7Z B/C  | 7z A/C | CPUMiner  | SBCBench  
DebianBuster 4.4     1.3Ghz                       51m49s      896                   3568     2.7         http://ix.io/2UEX

Blender 2.82 NicoD benchmark in console

Temperature
-----------
No fan   no heatsink idle          58c
No fan   no heatsink maxed         +89C No throttling ( stopped, can go higher )
3.3V Fan no heatsink idle          43C
3.3V Fan no heatsink maxed         67C
No fan   Heatsink idle             57C
No fan   Heatsink maxed            +91C No throttling ( stopped )  
3.3V Fan Heatsink idle             39C
3.3V Fan Heatsink maxed            59C
    
Power Consumption
-----------------
Idle      no fan      0.4 A
Maxed out no fan      0.7 A

Do know that the Radxa images throttle the RockPiS to 1Ghz at 50C what makes it a lot less powerful. I've no clue why. RockPiS only goes up to 71C
My OPiZero2 goes over 90C with the OPi images. Even when using a heatsink.

[XFer012]

Not the same results.. maybe different revisions?

 

 

and my OrangePiZero2 never got past 61 degrees, and that's without an heatsink.

I added a tiny heatsink, and it stayed below 52 degrees even after repeating 7zr benchmarks

 

[XFer012]

Partial success.

 

I was able to boot @hexdump 's precompiled kernel (using Armbian "unstable" image).

 

This kernel indeed has USB working!
I am not able to rebuild this kernel by myself, but at least we have a mainline-ish kernel with working USB!

 

More details later, have to go now.

 

[XFer012]

Ok, so let's see the steps I followed.

 

1. Installed Armbian Unstable for OrangePi Zero2:

https://imola.armbian.com/dl/orangepizero2/nightly/Armbian_21.05.0-trunk.77_Orangepizero2_hirsute_edge_5.11.11.img.xz

 

2. Forced ethernet at 100 mbit/s, otherwise it did not work: added in /etc/rc.local

ethtool -s eth0 speed 100 duplex full autoneg off

 

3. Downloaded hexdump's precompiled kernel (derived from jernej's 5.11.0rc1 kernel):

https://github.com/hexdump0815/linux-mainline-and-mali-allwinner-h6-kernel/releases/download/5.11.0-rc1-stb-616%2B/5.11.0-rc1-stb-616+.tar.gz

 

4. Extracted the various parts and fixed the symlinks:

Image -> Image-5.11.0-rc1-stb-616+

uInitrd -> uInitrd-5.11.0-rc1-stb-616+

dtb -> dtb-5.11.0-rc1-stb-616+

 

5. Inside dtb-5.11.0-rc1-stb-616+, created a new folder "allwinner" and moved the 3 .dtb there; otherwise, initramfs would not find them

 

6. Rebooted. Voilà, we now have a working mainline-ish kernel (patched 5.11.0rc1) with USB support!

[   57.289791] usb 2-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using ehci-platform
[   57.454110] usb-storage 2-1:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[   57.454976] scsi host0: usb-storage 2-1:1.0
[   59.122397] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Lexar    USB Flash Drive  1100 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[   59.124408] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 125038592 512-byte logical blocks: (64.0 GB/59.6 GiB)
[   59.125522] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[   59.125549] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 43 00 00 00
[   59.126563] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: enabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[   59.163290]  sda: sda1 sda2
[   59.168389] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI removable disk

 

[XFer012]

This sounds like good news!!

Maybe poor little H616 is going to get some love by mainline kernel? Fingers crossed!!

 

Arm updates in Linux 5.12

Removal of several obsolete 32-bit Arm platforms – efm32, picoxcell, prima2, tango, u300, zx, and c6x, as well as associated device drivers.

Allwinner

Allwinner H616 and H616-R – Initial support including pin controllers, clocks

Allwinner/sunxi power management

Various DTS changes

...

 

[Werner]

This is the same stuff that we incorporate via patches at the moment.

However building may become easier and we can get rid of a few of those.

[Gabor5745737]

"reboot" is not turning on the board, just off, requires manual power cycling.

Anyone else noticed it?

[XFer012]

Confirmed.

At some point, rebuilding the latest mainline kernel from the Unstable branch, I managed to have the board rebooting properly; but it was in the middle of many tests and never managed to succeed again.

[HansD]

I selected this board to start an adventure with Home Assistant. The board arrived two hours ago and is already running Home Assistant, using Ubuntu-Server (download from OrangePI site), with Docker (machine = OdroidN2 (als H616)).

 

For the record I'm a Linux no-no. Havent checked much so far. Reboot works. LAN and Wifi working. Will try to look into multi-cpu usage and USB.

 

So why not trying to copy some of this Ubuntu stuff into PiZero2 Armbian?

 

[Gabor5745737]

A stupid question, but how is the armbian implementation different from the changes the manufacturer made to the kernel?

https://github.com/orangepi-xunlong/orangepi-build

 

Isn't this only a case of rebasing the changes and reviewing them to Western standard?

Cheers

[Werner]

8 hours ago, HansD said:

So why not trying to copy some of this Ubuntu stuff into PiZero2 Armbian?

There was an attempt to implement the outdated vendor kernel but was not continued due to lacking of hardware: https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/2620

 

7 hours ago, Gabor5745737 said:

but how is the armbian implementation different from the changes the manufacturer made to the kernel?

Armbian is mostly built on top of mainline kernel rather than using outdated sources.

[lampra]

I tried to enable onwire both with stable, edge and factory images, but none worked using overlays. So it seems we are not there yet.

[    5.576315] sun50i-h616-pinctrl 300b000.pinctrl: pin PC9 already requested by onewire@0; cannot claim for 300b000.pinctrl:73
[    5.587658] sun50i-h616-pinctrl 300b000.pinctrl: pin-73 (300b000.pinctrl:73) status -22
[    5.595732] w1-gpio onewire@0: gpio_request (pin) failed

For anyone who needs to work with onewire on this board until proper support enabled you could use w1-gpio-cl.

Just download the headers and build it. Using onewire is then just as easy as:

modprobe w1-gpio-cl m1="gdt:73"

 

If @hexdump could provide headers for his kernel, then we could have the edge image with his kernel and support for usb, reboot and onewire until proper support is enabled.

PS: Seems that ATF has moved to v4

[Werner]

1 hour ago, lampra said:

PS: Seems that ATF has moved to v4

Yeah and I think it was upstreamed. Could not make it to boot though so I did not further investigate:https://github.com/armbian/build/tree/push_ATF_H616

[HansD]

On 4/29/2021 at 10:00 PM, HansD said:

I selected this board to start an adventure with Home Assistant. The board arrived two hours ago and is already running Home Assistant, using Ubuntu-Server (download from OrangePI site), with Docker (machine = OdroidN2 (als H616)).

 

For the record I'm a Linux no-no. Havent checked much so far. Reboot works. LAN and Wifi working. Will try to look into multi-cpu usage and USB.

 

So why not trying to copy some of this Ubuntu stuff into PiZero2 Armbian?

 

hmm, is using an older kernel (4.x.x.x...)

[maigonis]

On 4/28/2021 at 9:22 PM, Gabor5745737 said:

"reboot" is not turning on the board, just off, requires manual power cycling.

Anyone else noticed it?

Change SD card, I had similar issue. opi have stated in manual that good quality (Sandisk) card is required, this was their replay on git under this issue. Good quality is a broad term, but that Kingston I had what buggy on this board, worked fine on other SBCs.  Other the same model and capacity card works fine thou.

[XFer012]

I think he was referring to Armbian, which does not reboot even with genuine Sandisk cards.

 

I seem to remember that at a certain point, amid various kernel reconfig/rebuilds, I had it rebooting properly by disabling "Enable suspend to disk" and disabling "Enable hibernate" in kernel Power Management section. But I'm not 100% sure.

[XFer012]

On 4/30/2021 at 1:54 PM, lampra said:

If @hexdump could provide headers for his kernel, then we could have the edge image with his kernel and support for usb, reboot and onewire until proper support is enabled.

 

 

I think hexdump added some DTS patches to:

https://github.com/jernejsk/linux-1/tree/h616-hdmi

 

Me, I was unable to "integrate" that kernel into mainline. But I'm a newbie.

[lampra]

It seems that there is some dev movement for H616 on kernel 5.12 and also a fresh wip branch with many goodies

Anyone available for building a test image?

[Werner]

If somebody finds time to bump sunxi-edge to 5.12 or 5.13-rc then we could probably retry.

[Igor]

On 5/11/2021 at 5:26 AM, Werner said:

If somebody finds time to bump sunxi-edge to 5.12 or 5.13-rc then we could probably retry.

I started https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/2825 - i hope someone will be able to take it over. I will be very slow.

[Werner]

@martinayotte maybe?

[martinayotte]

15 hours ago, Werner said:

@martinayotte maybe?

I will try, but daily job take most of my time these days ...

[Igor]

Another afternoon and all kernels for 5.12.y are done at build stage.

 

- cleaning

- do we need to archive 5.11.y. I would say no since its not LTS

- testing

[XFer012]

I would test it gladly.

Is it OK to install it on an Armbian Unstable? It's what I have now.

If you advice against it, no problem, will reinstall.

[Igor]

8 minutes ago, XFer012 said:

I would test it gladly.

 

Nothing to test, because packaging is broken, more details here https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/2825 

 

If you want to help, better proceed here https://forum.armbian.com/forum/54-help-wanted/