Orange pi zero 3 enable pwm?

[Marco Cettina]

Hello! PWM seems to work without any configuration on the factory images with the gpio command, but I cant seem to get it to work on armbian.

There doesn't seem to be any dtbs related to pwm, and /sys/class/pwm is empty on armbian. Anyone got this to work?

 

EDIT: Forgot to add, doesnt seem to be any pwm overlays present on armbian install

Edited April 4 by Marco Cettina

[Werner]

Check if there are pwm overlays available in /boot/dtb/allwinner/overlay. If so try enable via armbian-config or manually with overlays= in /boot/armbianEnv.txt

[Marco Cettina]

Whoops forgot to add that, there are no pwm related overlays on armbian install.

[Werner]

Sometimes armbian-config is unreliable when adding overlays, therefore I suggested to check manually as well.

[Marco Cettina]

The only two dtbs that mention PWM have a different prefix so i assume thats why they dont work when i try to enable them?

sun50i-h5-pwn.dtbo and sun50i-h6-pwn.dtbo

Edited April 4 by Marco Cettina

[going]

  On 4/3/2025 at 8:58 PM, Marco Cettina said:

doesnt seem to be any pwm overlays present

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Which pin requires an overlay?
Which core are you using?

[Marco Cettina]

So Im not entirely sure if I need to figure out the overlays or something else. On the factory debian image there are two overlays pwm12 and pwm34, i didnt enable them and it seems to work just fine with the gpio command.
 

I should have been more specific, on armbian there are two pwm overlays but they have the prefix of sun50i-h5 and sun50i-h6, i tried enabling them anyway but didnt make a difference and still no pwmchip showing up in /sys/class/pwm.

It also is giving me "val pwmWrite 0 <= X <= 1024, Or you can set new range by yourself by pwmSetRange(range)" when i set the pwm value even though I already did set a range and ram the same commands that worked perfectly on the factory image.

Im not sure exactly what you mean by core.

Edited April 5 by Marco Cettina

[going]

  On 4/5/2025 at 4:03 PM, Marco Cettina said:

Im not sure exactly what you mean by core.

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uname -r command.

 

Two types of PWM can be available. Software and hardware.

The hardware for h616-h618 processors is only available for these pins:

PG19 - pwm1
PH0  - pwm3
PH1  - pwm4
PH2  - pwm2
PH3  - pwm1
PI11 - pwm1
PI12 - pwm2
PI13 - pwm3
PI14 - pwm4

 

Which pin do you want to use PWM for?

[Marco Cettina]

uname -r: 6.6.75-current-sunxi64

I am wired to PH3 right now, that's what i have been testing with and was functional in hardware mode on the factory supplied Debian image.

[going]

  On 4/5/2025 at 9:33 PM, Marco Cettina said:

uname -r: 6.6.75-current-sunxi64

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This is an outdated core and will no longer be supported after this pull request.

Try switching to the EDGE core (6.13).

 

I will add the ability to apply overlays for PWM to the EDGE core.
And we will check it together.

 

[Marco Cettina]

Ill do that and get back to you! Thank you!

[Marco Cettina]

Alright im updated to 6.13.7-edge-sunxi64.

[Marco Cettina]

So do you need to push an update to the EDGE build to allow PWM?

[going]

  On 4/7/2025 at 2:36 AM, Marco Cettina said:

So do you need to push an update to the EDGE build to allow PWM?

Expand  

The pwm driver is present there.
It is necessary to add the overlay correctly.

 

Is your device an orange-pi-zero-3?

[Marco Cettina]

Got it, Yes that is correct.

[Marco Cettina]

Hey any update on this? No rush, just checking in. Not sure what has to be done on your end.