$35 Orange Pi 4 Pro – An Allwinner A733 Edge AI SBC with up to 16GB LPDDR5, WiFi 6, NPU

[ag123]

https://www.cnx-software.com/2025/10/25/35-orange-pi-4-pro-an-allwinner-a733-edge-ai-sbc-with-up-to-16gb-lpddr5-wifi-6/

https://www.cnx-software.com/2025/07/07/allwinner-a527-t527-and-a733-datasheets-user-manuals-and-linux-sdk-released/

http://www.orangepi.org/html/hardWare/computerAndMicrocontrollers/details/Orange-Pi-4-Pro.html

 

Another Allwinner board dropped

 

figuring out the wifi chip is always hard, seem to be

https://www.taobao.com/list/item/931793873067.htm

https://pine64.sfo3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/doc/datasheet/oz64/AIC8800DC Datasheet v1.0.pdf

as usual, it is uncertain if drivers and firmware is after all available.

 

Ethernet according to CNX seemed to be YT8531CA 
Ethernet seemed to be same as that in OrangePi Zero 3

https://www.cnx-software.com/2023/07/03/orange-pi-zero-3-allwinner-h618-sbc-ships-with-up-to-4gb-ram/

 

WiFi is 'more critical' these days, if it is closed sourced and no firmware, then it is good as just a door stop.

Then that thare are other stuff the figure out especially the :

- DRAM controller,

- and various DRAM timing and configuration aspects

- many other low level specific stuff to even have u-boot to boot it up to the linux prompt.

- then the other devices e.g. uart etc. 

- then HDMI

- then gpu acceleration (or at least display video, not playing media yet)

- then media 

- and finally NPU, don't seemed documented yet

- many more known or unknown unknowns, audio etc

 

 

 

[eli]

It seems the Ethernet dirver is already in mainline, and oss wifi driver are available:
https://github.com/lynxlikenation/aic8800 

[Sembius]

I really hope that Armbian will be released soon for this board. I have it, but the official ISO has an old kernel and no RT capability.

 

[Ivan Habl]

I also hope Armbian will support this board, as it offers a very good price-to-performance ratio.

[Werner]

We don't have intention to support this board without funding. However anyone from the community can step up and add support for it.

[robertoj]

I really hope that Orange Pi engineers learn to make Armbian patches, enter the community and give funding accordingly

[Werner]

11 hours ago, robertoj said:

I really hope that Orange Pi engineers learn to make Armbian patches, enter the community and give funding accordingly

I like your kind of humor

 

[ag123]

psst, I ordered a board, hopefully I've time and may get it going

it takes a lot of *work* to even get it working and with more often than not , no (scant) documentation (e.g. missing dram controller docs ) / codes to even get it working.

btw it is good for those who wish to have board support to donate in support of armbian in support of it, it is probably the only sustainable way to do so.

[thanh_tan]

On 1/19/2026 at 11:53 AM, Werner said:

We don't have intention to support this board without funding. However anyone from the community can step up and add support for it.

I wonder how to sponsor or funding to this board?

[Werner]

3 hours ago, thanh_tan said:

I wonder how to sponsor or funding to this board?

Feel free to reach out and become a partner: https://www.armbian.com/partners/

[mrdeathjr]

Hi if anyone have interested, this is dtb files and orangepienv file

 

🙂

 

 

allwinner.zip

[bob17]

I tried several Armbian images, but none of them booted successfully, so I ended up compiling a custom kernel for this Orange Pi 4 Pro. The Ubuntu and Debian images hosted on the Orange Pi website were also missing too many features.

https://github.com/blippu/orangepi4pro

with this new kernel, you can properly use docker, tailscale and samba/ cifs

 

Edited February 5 by bob17

[ag123]

some things are happening at the bleeding edge

https://lore.kernel.org/u-boot/?q=a733

pay attention to u-boot, the most important thing are dram controller, pmic, mmc/sd etc

then of course kernel as well

https://lore.kernel.org/linux-sunxi/?q=a733

 

[spaceship]

@ag123 what does that mean exactly?

 

I can't stand custom GNU/Linux builds from Orange Pi's company. 

 

I have a OPi Zero 3 and few OPi zero 2w, they're awesome with armbian, no issues at all.

 

But now using the OPi Zero 3 as an hostap, i'm noticing that the throughput regarding network io seems to be a bottleneck, i was looking for something cheap and came accross this OPi 4 Pro. 

 

Thank you for doing this research.

[ag123]

hi @spaceship

we 'need to start working on it', what that means is that if you search around sufficiently, it is likely u-boot (the bootloader) and linux already supported A733.
the task is 'system integration' to build that into Armbian.

But as with all things, it means work, to spend hours / days figuring out how to do that and to do so and send a pull request for Armbian to include it.
The challenges in life is such that most of us (including me) has very little fragmented time / energy to work on it.
Perhaps that if more users 'request' it and support Armbian by way of donations, maybe they'd try to put it together and complete this work.

The initial integration is one thing, the trouble is that linux keeps moving and linux 7.0 is about to be real.
Hence, say you take what is there now integrate it, and no sooner 7.0 is out, you need to keep maintaining it.
Hence, for a more sustainable setup, perhaps is for the community to fund Armbian to do so with donations, and efforts from the side.
it is good for the community to support this effort both finanically and efforts from the side, this is to ensure that there is no "influence from a controlling (3rd) party" (possibly including a govt) i.e. no conflict of interest, e.g. to try to embed exploits in it for the govt's or 3rd party purpose, as in that the project is truly open source and inspected to prevent such exploits.

but for what is worth, what it takes is a 'project' to get from here to integration e.g. in an 'edge' 7.0 kernel.