Allwinner H3 audio codec on OrangePi Zero Plus2 H3

[HenkK]

When searching the forum on this topic I find a number of hits saying the mainline kernel does not have support for the SOC codec, but these topics are kind of old and I find it hard to find the current status.

 

In the past I have been able to use the onboard audio codec. However, I have been forced to upgrade and I now find that with the kernel I get from Armbian, I do not see the audio (ALSA) device nodes for the codec, only for HDMI. When looking at the kernel configuration, it should be in (SUN8I_CODEC and SUN8I_CODEC_ANALOG are both 'y'), but alas. Does anyone know if and how I can enable the audio codec so I can have analog audio output?

 

I built Armbian myself, using:

 

This (last) commit:

commit 5f2e23e9081104653093633f34ce716a46ac46f7
Author: Piotr Szczepanik <piter75@gmail.com>
Date:   Wed Sep 8 09:54:06 2021 +0200

    Disabled hs400 on Helios64 (hopefully only temporarily) (#3126)

 

This command line:

./compile.sh BOARD=orangepizeroplus2-h3 RELEASE=buster KERNEL_ONLY=no KERNEL_CONFIGURE=no BUILD_MINIMAL=no BRANCH=current

 

This resulting /etc/armbian-release:

# PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE
BOARD=orangepizeroplus2-h3
BOARD_NAME="Orange Pi Zero Plus 2"
BOARDFAMILY=sun8i
BUILD_REPOSITORY_URL=https://github.com/armbian/build
BUILD_REPOSITORY_COMMIT=5f2e23e90
DISTRIBUTION_CODENAME=buster
DISTRIBUTION_STATUS=supported
VERSION=21.11.0-trunk
LINUXFAMILY=sunxi
ARCH=arm
IMAGE_TYPE=user-built
BOARD_TYPE=conf
INITRD_ARCH=arm
KERNEL_IMAGE_TYPE=Image
DESKTOP=xfce
BRANCH=current

[HenkK]

It seems I did not look properly when looking up which versions (bullseye, buster, etc) are supported for this one. I may have ended up on the wrong page and concluded 'buster' was the safest one. Now, browsing on armbian.com I see that 'focal' is the first choice and 'buster' is not even mentioned. I am going to build focal now. This will not give me a different kernel, though.

[HenkK]

OK, I come from a time when 1.3.17 was the stable kernel version and Slackware was the distribution of choice. I have done my share of kernel hacking over the years, but... device trees and overlays are still magic to me. It turns out I had to seek my answer in that corner: audio-codec had to be enabled in armbian-config (which changes the overlays in armbianEnv.txt).

[Igor]

47 minutes ago, HenkK said:

I come from a time when 1.3.17 was the stable kernel version and Slackware was the distribution of choice

 

Likewise  

My distribution of choice was also Slackware - IIRC v1.0 / there was not much choices at that time - in my case, Linux kernel has not even 1.0 

 

A lot has change since.

 

47 minutes ago, HenkK said:

It turns out I had to seek my answer in that corner: audio-codec had to be enabled in armbian-config (which changes the overlays in armbianEnv.txt).

With totally limited resources we are trying to make this very complicated, purpose driven and diverse ecosystem as simple as possible.

 

On 9/10/2021 at 9:27 AM, HenkK said:

Now, browsing on armbian.com I see

https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_FAQ/

https://docs.armbian.com/#what-is-armbian

[HenkK]

On 9/13/2021 at 3:13 PM, Igor said:

 

With totally limited resources we are trying to make this very complicated, purpose driven and diverse ecosystem as simple as possible.
 

And I think you are doing a wonderful job.

 

For the purpose I am using the OPi0+2, a debian-like setup is too bloated, so my rootfs comes from buildroot. However, it is my experience that the kernel and uboot I get from Armbian are much more stable, so I use those. Also when I want to figure out how something works (for instance, analog audio ) I immediately revert to Armbian.