Orange Pi Zero 3

[ag123]

this is somewhat 'off-topic' but still relevant to 'orange pi zero 3'

 

If Orange Pi Zero 3 is operated in warm climates (e.g. room temperature 30 deg C etc) , it can at times run up to like 60 deg C.
this is in open still air 

 

adding a fan blowing at it reduce that by some 20 deg C to 40 deg C !

And this is my ghetto fan setup, no fancy case, no heatsink nothing, just a single long machine screw that lifts it up

 

checking temperatures is easy

> armbianmonitor -m
Stop monitoring using [ctrl]-[c]
Time        CPU    load %cpu %sys %usr %nice %io %irq   Tcpu  C.St.

18:03:39   480 MHz  0.00   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%   0%  40.8 °C  0/7^C

strictly speaking, 60 deg C is 'nothing to scream about' , I've a Rpi 4 hitting up 80 deg C and it throttles.
similarly use a fan blowing at it + a heat sink over the cpu, drastically reduce running temperatures.

for 'occasional' use, I don't think it is necessary to have a fan blowing at the Orange Pi Zero 3.

I think it is feasible to run at lower temperatures if I disable and unclock the GPU and HDMI, but for now I'm not sure how to go about doing that.
Initially, I'm thinking maybe the wifi is causing it, but now I don't think so, it is moderately likely the gpu is heating it up a bit.
And still air don't seem to dissipate heat very well.

 

[ag123]

just like to say that the recent images

works just well

    _             _    _                                         _ _        
   /_\  _ _ _ __ | |__(_)__ _ _ _    __ ___ _ __  _ __ _  _ _ _ (_) |_ _  _ 
  / _ \| '_| '  \| '_ \ / _` | ' \  / _/ _ \ '  \| '  \ || | ' \| |  _| || |
 /_/ \_\_| |_|_|_|_.__/_\__,_|_||_|_\__\___/_|_|_|_|_|_\_,_|_||_|_|\__|\_, |
                                 |___|                                 |__/ 
 v25.8 rolling for Orange Pi Zero3 running Armbian Linux 6.12.35-current-sunxi64

 Packages:     Debian stable (bookworm)
 Support:      for advanced users (rolling release)
 IPv4:         (LAN) xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (WAN) yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy
 IPv6:         fd00:xxxx:xxxx::xxxx:xxxx (WAN) xxxx:xxxx::yyyy:yyyy
 WiFi AP:      SSID: (ssid), 

 Performance:  

 Load:         2%                Uptime:       3:50
 Memory usage: 4% of 3.83G  
 CPU temp:     41°C              Usage of /:   3% of 58G    
 RX today:     7 MiB        
 Commands: 

 Configuration : armbian-config
 Monitoring    : htop

 

[ag123]

thread about video in case anyone is looking for it

 

and a recent 'success story'

 

 

[TRay]

On 6/29/2025 at 7:59 AM, TRay said:

Will armbian-config be fixed for OZPI v3 etc. problem using overlay-prefix in device tree? https://github.com/armbian/configng/issues/592

 

@Igor thank you for fixing overlay-prefix problem in current armbin-config now on OZPI V1 and V3 overlays in armbianEnv.txt are without prefix

[robertoj]

On 7/12/2025 at 3:27 AM, ag123 said:

and a recent 'success story'

 

My story is definitely NOT a success story

I see the media.patches in the cache folder, I compile armbian edge, but the image didn't contain the cedrus+v4l2 kernel modules I need for decoding acceleration

[ag123]

Quote

* mpv plays most mp4s VERY SMOOTHLY  BUT WITH 100% CPU

oops, I missed reading that 100% cpu, but it is ok it is a a53 after all 😅

 

videos I'd guess is still 'difficult' on z3, accordingly there is some support for gpu vector graphics but I'd guess mostly just triangles.

video decoding can be done with just neon (vector computation) , but i'd guess there is still limited access to video decoding hardware.

using neon is likely to give that 100% cpu reading as the cpu is busy literally, using real video hardware would be 'invisible' in a sense, the cpu usage may look low but that one won't see that the video hardware itself may after all be reading 100%.