Shenzhen Xunlong has made yet another Allwinner H3 board. It’s called Orange Pi Plus 2 with basically the same specifications as Orange Pi Plus, but the layout has been modified with a slightly wider board, and the RAM upgraded from 1GB to 2GB.
Orange Pi Plus 2 specifications:
- SoC – Allwinner H3 quad core Cortex A7 @ 1.2 GHz with ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU up to 600 MHz
- System Memory – 2GB DDR3
- Storage – 8GB eMMC, micro SD card slot, SATA interface (via a USB to SATA chip),
- Video Output – HDMI, AV port
- Audio I/O – HDMI, AV port, on-board microphone
- Connectivity – 10/100/1000M Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi (Realtek RTL8189ETV)
- USB – 4x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB OTG port
- Camera – CSI Interface
- Expansions – 40-pin Raspberry Pi Model A+/B+ (mostly) compatible header
- Debugging – 3-pin UART header for serial console
- Misc – IR receiver; Power, recovery, and upgrade buttons
- Power Supply – 5V/2A via barrel jack or micro USB OTG; Power and status LEDs
- Dimensions – 108 x 67 mm (Pi Plus is 108 x 60 mm)
- Weight – 52 grams
Orange Pi Plus 2 and Plus 3 were first mentioned on Orange Pi forums, with Orange Pi Plus 3 being an upcoming Allwinner H64 quad core Cortex A53 board, so Allwinner H64 is not dead finally, despite Nobel64 board never making it to market. Nevertheless, the new boards were not exactly welcomed by the community that complained about the lack of properly working software and documentation, and instead was seeing new boards being churned out by the company. I thought about showing a picture of a brick for the new board, but finally decided against it :).
So that means we now have 5 Orange Pi boards powered by Allwinner H3 processor. One website did a comparison table, which I translated and reproduced here, adding a row for price (without shipping).
| Orange Pi Plus | Orange Pi Plus 2 | Orange Pi 2 | Orange Pi mini 2 | Orange Pi PC | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU | Allwinner H3(4x Cortex-A7 @ 1.2 GHz) | ||||
| RAM | 1GB | 2GB | 1GB | ||
| Flash | eMMC 8GB | No | |||
| microSD slot | Yes | ||||
| SATA port | Yes | No | |||
| LAN | 10/100/1000M | 10/100M | |||
| Wireless LAN | Yes (RTL8189ETV) | No | |||
| USB | 4 ports + 1x micro USB OTG | 3 ports + 1 micro USB OTG | |||
| Buttons | Power, Recovery, Uboot | Power | |||
| IR receiver | Yes | ||||
| Microphone | Yes | ||||
| Dimensions (mm) | 108×60 | 108×67 | 93×60 | 85×55 | |
| Weight (g) | 50g | 52g | 46g | 45g | 38g |
| Price (USD) | $39 | $49 | $30 | $25 | $15 |
So while software support and documentation is far from optimal, if you can get the board working for your applications, it’s hard to beat the price for the features set offered n Orange Pi boards. Orange Pi Plus 2 is available now for $49 plus shipping ($3.26 to my location).
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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If only Allwinner had decent Open Source driver support for their CedarX VPU then this would be great.
Sadly, unlike Raspberry Pis and AMLogic, they don’t have decent Linux driver support, so any hope of using this as a decent Linux-based media player are misplaced. There’s a reason the Allwinner has lousy-to-non-existent Kodi support.
@Steve
Do you think all Develepmentboards are have to be Mediaplayers? Just buy one of the Mediaplayers out there…
@Chris
It is not only the media player sw.
It is also the fact that Allwinner continues knowingly to violate the GPL!
Allwinner makes money by selling the chips but let’s the sunxi community do the hard work on software.
” I thought about showing a picture of a brick for the new board, but finally decided against it 🙂 ”
Nice humor!
🙂
As mentioned already, it is a shame these don’t have better software / support…Because from a hardware perspective quad-core CPU + 2gb RAM + 8gb eMMC + Gigabit ethernet for $49 is definitely a good price.
They have sold out, but they only had 33 units for sale. My guess is they were getting rid of sample/test units.
The 2gigs of ram is very helpful at the moment as it stops excessive swapping which the 1gig units are prone to, or so I have read in the forums. Its supposed to be caused by a bug in linux.
@Chris
Not at all Chris – but there are always people who see the Pi name and think it offers similar functionality. As the Raspberry Pi 2 is a popular media player, people often assume that other “Pi” boards are too.
There are frequent questions on the Kodi forums about Allwinner support in Kodi from people who have bought, or are about to buy, boards like the Orange Pi…
And absolutely there are many other options for using these boards – though the fact that they have HDMI connectors and Android suggests that they are including media playback as a target market at least in part.
@miniNodes
I dont get it, why they dont get it… The success of the RPI has a lot to do with the effort to provide decent support. I would happily pay 100% more for a SBC, if such support would be guarantied.
@cnx-soft H3 board have finished Mali gpu driver. Next is VPU hardware acceleration. Orange Pi PC/Plus/Pi2/mini2 have more than fifteen Linux distribution through orange pi community contribution. Thank loboris,jacer,magicse,whitewind,fritz and so on.
its not about mediaplayers
it;s about compatibility and support – they continue to sell product that not work in some situations, so it’s partially broken.
i want to use mediaplayer features from time to time only, and i dont want another box in my room. so i still waiting for box that fullfill my needs.
currently own bananapi which share the same compatibility issue.
@Steven
Is that so??
Then, can you tell me why you have so many dissatisfied clients???
I have a board from you that never worked…
Thank you!!!
I’m running Pubuntu on my opi+2 – I just got it installed last night and it was technically challenging but very cool. It supposedly has all the drivers and acceleration software to take advantage of the little computer board. i haven’t been able to test it yet. I do know the wifi, hdmi to our t.v. and usb ports with standard mouse and keyboard worked fine. At first i couldn’t get the USB ports to work and then I tried some other linux flavors…oh it was a tricky thing.
@pThomas
Hi,
How is your testing coming along?
TIA
Ruben
How do I get the orange pi plus 2 to boot from sd card. I burned the raspian image but no luck.
Seems they are back in stock
http://www.orangepi.org/orangepibbsen/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=3246#lastpost
Wow for $52.51 i’d rather go for ROCK64 or wait for H6 dev boards to come out.
I have tested now, to find a good choice for Octopi/Octoprint application – RPi-3, the Asus TinkerPi the OrangePi 2e and the OrangePi 2 Plus. Critical this application are handling of graphics, Wifi control, remote webcam support and control of the 3D Printer. The RPi3 and the TinkerPi both have solid distro of all varieties available both play stream video over Wifi quite well, although I would say the TinkerPi edges out the RPi3 The both handle external HDs for storage, via the USB ports adequately. So far the Asus TinkerPi is the best of all of these. The OrangePi, both versions tested, are flakey to say the least. I returned the 2E, because of this and purchased a 2 Plus, with SATA support, I had high hopes for this. It two is flakey, the distro are flakey and the powering of the board is an issue. It’s average current is about .7Amps. but it has very large peaks in current, The original Power Adapter was 2A, moved to a 3A unit – it was better but I still boot problems and when it did make it through the boot it had graphic problem. Using a bench supply (20A capability) and 2200 mfd Capacitor on pins 4-6 made a great improvement and show that this is a real design issue. This is not acceptable for my application. I find now – that others have noted and gone down a similar path chasing a solution. At this point Asus TinkerPi is the best choice.
@Richard Stuart
Orange Pi Lite has been tested successfully with Octoprint @ https://www.cnx-software.com/2017/07/11/how-to-use-octoprint-on-orange-pi-lite-board-amlogic-s905x-and-s912-tv-boxes/
As mentioned in your other similar comments, your power cable is the likely culprit.