NanoPi Duo (plus Mini Shield)

[tkaiser]

 

At a first glance NanoPi Duo looks like a combination of Lichee Pi Zero (form, idea) and Orange Pi Zero (ingredients: H2+ and XR819 Wi-Fi). But once combined with the Mini Shield (RPi form factor -- connector and mounting hole positions), USB hub to provide 4 USB2 ports, Fast Ethernet exposed and a short mSATA slot behind a JMS567 USB-to-SATA bridge) it starts to get interesting.

 

More information in FriendlyELEC's wiki/Github:

• http://wiki.friendlyarm.com/wiki/index.php/NanoPi_Duo
• http://wiki.friendlyarm.com/wiki/index.php/Mini_Shield_for_NanoPi_Duo
• Device tree file

[chwe]

Seems that powering is through micro USB? Powering could get interesting as soon as everything is connected to this board... Do you know something about heat dissipation of the NanoPi Duo? It's a really tiny board and I'm interested how/if they solved this properly.

[tkaiser]

22 hours ago, chwe said:

Seems that powering is through micro USB? Powering could get interesting as soon as everything is connected to this board...

 

All FriendlyELEC boards can be powered through 'debug UART' and GPIO header:

 

 

I usually use the Xunlong PSUs (4.4/1.7mm barrel plug) together with FriendlyELEC's little PSU-ONECOM add-on (same power barrel as on Orange and Banana Pis):

 

 

 

 

If you check the wiki pages or schematic (searching for VDD_5V) you'll also see that in addition to the 4 pin 'UART debug header' powering through RPi style GPIO header is possible (pins 2/4 = 5V, pin 6 GND as usual) so you could combine this even with those expensive Raspberry Pi UPS HATs with battery and powering through exactly these pins.

 

Wrt heat dissipation: No idea but they use DVFS settings from NanoPi NEO so the board is allowed to clock up to 1.2GHz @ 1.3V by default. It's always possible to limit this to eg. 912 MHz and 1.1V which helps somewhat with generated heat.

[zador.blood.stained]

Hm, only Fast Ethernet?

I think it would be more interesting to have a gigabit PHY on the shield board and have different pluggable base boards - H2+, H3 and maybe H5 based, assuming H2+ can use RGMII in 100MBit mode. But even then I'm not sure if H2+ would be much cheaper than H3 so it would be worth chosing a 100MBit capable board over 1GBit one.

[tkaiser]

10 hours ago, chwe said:

Do you know something about heat dissipation of the NanoPi Duo?

 

They provide a large heatsink as with the NEO boards and everything can be ordered in a kit for an IMO competitive price: http://www.friendlyarm.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=198

[PoV]

Well I'm sold. Really hoping for Armbian support on these. Finally something at the "high end" you can plug in to a breadboard. 

[TonyMac32]

I would have designed my recent test equipment around these had they been around, well, we'll see about the next round of devices.  ;-)

 

In all seriousness, after designing around the nanopi NEO, this will be a nice piece of hardware for simplicity and flexibility, I don't need the Ethernet 90% of the time with mobile test equipment.  

[tkaiser]

Today I looked around which options are available to populate the mSATA slot on this board. To my surprise I get just 5 mSATA cards following the 'MO-300 (half-size)' standard and only 3 of them with acceptable performance values: https://geizhals.de/?cat=hdssd&xf=4836_10 (no, I don't buy SSDs on Aliexpress, Gearbest or the other usual suspects and I only buy reasonable brands).

 

So let's check how it would look like with MO-300 full-size (requiring a custom enclosure of course):

All the SSDs I checked use both PCB sides so one would have to desolder the stand-offs marked in red on the PCB. In other words: the best option for normal mSATA (MO-300 full-size) combined with a cheap SBC is still Xunlong's NAS Expansion board combined with an Orange Pi Zero of choice (with OPi Zero Plus we can even make use of Gigabit Ethernet now... or soon when mainline kernel support is done)

[tkaiser]

Since I'm playing around with a M.2/2242 SSD currently (overheating badly when operating at 'native speeds' connected to a SATA or USB3 port) I just checked in Photoshop whether another 'Mini Shield' could provide the ability to use M.2 instead of mSATA:

2242 seems to fit, with 2230 it shouldn't be a problem at all. I added also a little DS1307 based RTC module on the pin header.  

[TonyMac32]

I'll have to pick one of these up.  I'm currently using a Cypress PSoC 5 to run the show on a tester, but it has some limitation on the driver/flexibility side, I'd like to have the Linux environment available.  Any power consumption information on just the (should we call it SoM?)

 

It would be the first time a FriendlyArm board got into a tester by my hand since the Mini2440.

[tkaiser]

3 hours ago, TonyMac32 said:

Any power consumption information on just the (should we call it SoM?)

 

Depends on the settings you use (given power design is as efficient as Xunlong's for the OPi Zero, ingredients -- H2+ and XR819 Wi-Fi and using H2+'s internal Ethernet PHY -- are the same): 

 

[mindee]

For the M.2-2242 SSD socket, It will be NanoPi NEO Core.

[tkaiser]

2 hours ago, mindee said:

For the M.2-2242 SSD socket, It will be NanoPi NEO Core.

 

Thanks for 'announcing' NEO Core/Core2 now somewhat officially (my scripts monitoring this and that here and there spotted them already some time ago since fortunately you develop in the open).

 

So with Core/Core2 we get a H3/H5 base module that exposes RGMII and all 3 USB host ports on GPIO headers to be combined with this 'Mini shield' providing Gigabit Ethernet, an M.2 SATA 2242 slot behind a JMS567 or JMS578, two USB2 receptacles that do not have to share bandwidth with full mechanical RPi compatibility so RPi enclosures will fit and even many/most RPi HATs relying on the original 26 pin GPIO header. Very well done

[FergusL]

That page says Neo Core is H2+, though both are very similar! http://wiki.friendlyarm.com/wiki/index.php/NanoPi_NEO_Core/zh

I'd have loved to get I2S available on that one but heh, still an awesome idea to produce modules !

 

Oh wait, that's Nanopi Duo thread!

Form factor is also similar to Chip Pro, though Chip has 4 time less processor cores  (and so far makers like us are still forced to either request a sale to get ONE of the advertised $16 board or accept to pay $50 for the devboard)

Also very similar to Seeed's Linkit Smart though also again much more power in the same physical size.

[tkaiser]

6 hours ago, FergusL said:

That page says Neo Core is H2+, though both are very similar! http://wiki.friendlyarm.com/wiki/index.php/NanoPi_NEO_Core/zh

 

That page is obviously wrong (copy&paste from another page and a first round search&replace done). Before device pages aren't referenced from here I wouldn't trust that much in contents. Searching here for commits with 'core' in their name seem currently more sufficient (and confusing: Core is said to use 'phy-handle = <&int_mii_phy>;' while Core2 is said to use GbE: 'phy-handle = <&ext_rgmii_phy>;')

 

Anyway... it seems both don't use Wi-Fi so there's some hope they get FCC/CE certifications and can be used in industrial and DIN Rail enclosures providing internal reliable storage (booting from SPI NOR flash and then switching over to rootfs on M.2 SSD).

 

 

[TarableCode]

This looks soo tempting to pick up but I've heard bad things about the XR819 WiFi, is that going to be a dealbreaker running this in a WiFi->Ethernet bridge setup?

I mean, I might still pick one up to eff around with otherwise.

 

[tkaiser]

3 hours ago, TarableCode said:

I've heard bad things about the XR819 WiFi

 

There were a lot of insanely stupid complaints about this but besides that there are/were also real issues like dropped frames and no way to cure this back then (due to lack of documentation and software). Since this NanoPi Duo image will run on every H2+/H3 board around I simply booted it and had a look.

root@NanoPi-M1:/lib/firmware/xr819# ls -la
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   2308 Aug 29 06:37 boot_xr819.bin
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    975 Aug 29 06:37 device-xradio.mk
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 126416 Aug 29 06:37 fw_xr819.bin
-rw-r--r--  1 root root    744 Aug 29 06:37 sdd_xr819.bin
root@NanoPi-M1:/lib/firmware/xr819# md5sum *
049abcb4768e92490f9fcafff114d1eb  boot_xr819.bin
01a5e63ddf60e2a4af5b073cec783bb7  device-xradio.mk
7a313e6957e635d9c1cd0d6902739d14  fw_xr819.bin
e5d4afaf1a8c24f79f6764c289f1102f  sdd_xr819.bin

That's at least no new firmware (contents identical as what ships with Armbian's firmware package). Let's look at the driver:

root@NanoPi-M1:~# modinfo xradio_wlan
filename:       /lib/modules/4.11.2/extra/xradio_wlan.ko
alias:          xradio_core
license:        GPL
description:    XRadioTech WLAN driver core
author:         XRadioTech
alias:          sdio:c*v0020d2281*
depends:        
vermagic:       4.11.2 SMP mod_unload ARMv7 p2v8 

Interested OPi Zero users could simply give the nanopi-duo_ubuntu-core-xenial_4.11.2_20170829.img a try and on the other hand NanoPi Duo is that inexpensive that interested persons simply should order one and try it out themselve (reporting back of course).

[frottier]

Duo's Wiki page lists some tested USB Wifi-Dongles you can use instead of XR819.

 

http://wiki.friendlyarm.com/wiki/index.php/NanoPi_Duo#Wireless_Connection

 

I think that's telling.

 

Also, quite fair.

 

[guidol]

Today I did get my NanoPi Duo Starter-Kit. Now it is assembled and running
with  OS nanopi-duo_ubuntu-core-xenial_4.11.2_20170908.img.zip

So Kernel 4.11.2 - Linux NanoPiDuo 4.11.2 #1 SMP Mon Jul 10 11:06:36 CST 2017 armv7l armv7l armv7l GNU/Linux

 

Is that because of
 

Quote

FriendlyELEC learned from a conversation with open source community that with mainline kernel they could make use of DVFS (dynamic voltage frequency scaling), something that still seems not possible with Allwinner's BSP. As a consequenze they dropped Allwinner's software offerings, rely on mainline u-boot/kernel now, have DVFS working and even re-designed a few H5 boards to implement better voltage regulation (eg NanoPi M1 Plus 2, NEO Plus2 or the new NEO Core2 which are both equipped with an I2C accessible voltage regulator).

 

from 

 

Does the NanoPi use DVFS?

It doesnt get as hot as the OrangePi Zero 1.4.

Here 50 Degree Celsius at the Starter-Kit-Case.

[tkaiser]

2 hours ago, guidol said:

Does the NanoPi use DVFS?

 

According to their OS image and schematic the board should switch between 1.1V/1.3V. Please be aware that for whatever reasons the thermal readouts on OPi PCB rev 1.4 are somewhat off (still no idea why).

 

Are you able to somehow precisely measure consumption of the board (without the shield if possible)? I would be really interested in idle consumption and temp when telling the CPU to clock at either 240 MHz or 1200 MHz.

 

 

[guidol]

3 minutes ago, tkaiser said:

Are you able to somehow precisely measure consumption of the board (without the shield if possible)?

I would be really interested in idle consumption and temp when telling the CPU to clock at either 240 MHz or 1200 MHz.

No - sorry I didnt got the right tools here for that

BTW: Its nice here to have 5 different boards with blinking heartbeat 

[TarableCode]

Mine just hit customs and I can't wait to play with it a bit, I didn't order the mini shield though.

 

In theory I should just be able to hook the ethernet pins up to an rj45 breakout module, right?

There wasn't a schematic for the mini shield so I don't know if they do anything fancy.

[TonyMac32]

52 minutes ago, TarableCode said:

Mine just hit customs and I can't wait to play with it a bit, I didn't order the mini shield though.

 

In theory I should just be able to hook the ethernet pins up to an rj45 breakout module, right?

There wasn't a schematic for the mini shield so I don't know if they do anything fancy.

 

I bought one a couple weeks ago, it cleared customs yesterday so I hope to have it in a few days.  I saw the price of extra memory and the shield separately and got the kit.

 

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13021

 

One like that with the built-in transformer should do it.  Anyone knowing better correct me, it's just been my go-to and has worked out so far. (not tried with this particular SoC/board)

[TarableCode]

Some quick and dirty power measurements:

idle wifi connected: 160-220mA
idle iperf3 client: up to 330mA
iperf3 server: up to 260mA
sysbench --num-threads=4 --test=cpu --cpu-max-prime=20000 run: 440mA up to 470mA
sysbench and iperf3 client: 630mA
idle with only 1 core active: 160mA to 180mA
halt: 130mA

 

This came up during iperf tests but didn't seem to happen again.

[  169.630039] sunxi-mmc 1c10000.mmc: data error, sending stop command

 

e:

WiFi Seems okayish but seems to top out at ~25MBit/s, pings range from 30 to 190ms with no pattern I can see.

I didn't get a chance to do more thorough tests and I had the meter set to 10A range so take these with a grain of salt.

 

e2:

Throttling seems to happen at 65c:

pi@NanoPi-Duo:~$ sudo cpu_freq
INFO: HARDWARE=sun8i
CPU0 online=1 temp=65298 governor=ondemand cur_freq=816000
CPU1 online=1 temp=65298 governor=ondemand cur_freq=816000
CPU2 online=1 temp=65298 governor=ondemand cur_freq=816000
CPU3 online=1 temp=62027 governor=ondemand cur_freq=1008000

 

Idle:

pi@NanoPi-Duo:~$ sudo cpu_freq
INFO: HARDWARE=sun8i
CPU0 online=1 temp=34643 governor=ondemand cur_freq=120000
CPU1 online=1 temp=34643 governor=ondemand cur_freq=120000
CPU2 online=1 temp=35127 governor=ondemand cur_freq=120000
CPU3 online=1 temp=35127 governor=ondemand cur_freq=120000

 

[TonyMac32]

3 hours ago, TarableCode said:

Some quick and dirty power measurements:

 

Were these on the carrier board or just the module?

 

Remembered you answered this already.

[TarableCode]

On 9/16/2017 at 9:07 PM, TonyMac32 said:

 

One like that with the built-in transformer should do it.  Anyone knowing better correct me, it's just been my go-to and has worked out so far. (not tried with this particular SoC/board)

 

Did you need to hook up all pins or cross over the RXD/TXD lines?

I have the 4 RX and TX pairs hooked up 1:1 and I'm not seeing a link on my computer.

 

It looks like I got the older version of the MagJack breakout though so it might be a bit different.

 

Breakout P1->Nano TXP

Breakout P2->Nano TXN

Breakout P3->Nano RXP

Breakout P6->Nano RXN

 

Ethernet pin diagram I used here:

[TonyMac32]

Well, I did give the disclaimer I hadn't tried this board.  Let me look into it now that I have it.  You did mirror the pinout for the fact it's a jack, right?

[TarableCode]

2 hours ago, TonyMac32 said:

Well, I did give the disclaimer I hadn't tried this board.  Let me look into it now that I have it.  You did mirror the pinout for the fact it's a jack, right?

 

Take your time, I was just a bit flustered and will look at it more tomorrow under better light and brain thingy.

I didn't mirror the pinout, that would definitely be a possible reason and I'll give that a shot as well.

 

e:
Got it working thanks to https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/mbed-starter-kit-experiment-guide/experiment-5-internet-clock

It has a diagram that shows what pins go to which lines.

 

In the end:

Breakout pin 1->Nano TD+

Breakout pin 2->Nano TD-

Breakout pin 7->Nano RD+

Breakout pin 8->Nano RD-

 

[TarableCode]

You can actually squeeze a NanoPi Duo, RJ45 MagJack (LED,GND pins off), a USB port, and tiny buck converter on a half-size breadboard.

 

Seems to be working fine with a user built stretch image for the Orange Pi Zero target, at least initially.

Max current @12vDC I saw was under 400mA with sysbench and WiFi running but more tests are needed.

[tkaiser]

On 2.9.2017 at 9:45 PM, mindee said:

For the M.2-2242 SSD socket, It will be NanoPi NEO Core.

 

I just compared the GPIO pinouts of the Core with NEO / Air and it seems you designed the Shield for Core / Core2 in a way that even NanoPi Air can be used with it (though no Ethernet of course since pins not connected but M.2, the externally available USB ports and Microphone and audio out seem to be usable):