Shenzhen Xunlong Software must already have over a dozen of Orange Pi boards, but this is not stopping them from launching more, and the company has just introduced Orange Pi Win, powered by Allwinner A64 processor, and beside supporting Linux and Android like other models, it’s rumored to run Windows 10 IoT too.
Orange Pi Win specifications:
- SoC – Allwinner A64 quad core ARM Cortex A53 processor @ 1.2 GHz with Mali-400MP2 GPU
- System Memory – 1 GB DDR3
- Storage – 2MB SPI flash, micro SD slot up to 64 GB, footprint for optional eMMC flash
- Video Output / Display interface – HDMI 1.4 up to 4K @ 30 Hz with CEC 3D and HDCP support,, MIPI LCD interface
- Audio – HDMI, 3.5 mm headphone jack, built-in microphone
- Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet + 802.11 b/g/n WiFi & Bluetooth 4.2 (AP6212)
- USB – 4x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB OTG port
- Camera – MIPI CSI interface up to 5MP camera, up to 1080p@30 fps video capture
- Expansion – 40-pin Raspberry Pi somewhat-compatible header
- Debugging – 3-pin UART header
- Misc – IR receiver; reset and power buttons; power and status LEDs;
- Power
- 5V via power barrel or micro USB port
- Lithium battery header
- Power selection jumper (4-pin header)
- AXP803 PMIC
- Dimensions – 93 x 60 mm
- Weight – 48 grams
Supported operating systems includes “Android 4.4, Ubuntu, Debian, Raspberry Pi image, and Banana Pi image”. The latter is possible since Orange Pi Win is quite similar to Banana Pi M64, except it has less RAM. “Raspberry Pi image” likely means Raspbian with Linux + Uboot for Allwinner A64 processor, and Raspbian image for Raspberry Pi won’t work. Linux support should now be relatively good due to the work done on other Allwinner A64 boards such as Pine A64 and Banana Pi M64, and I suspect Armbian builds should come soon enough.
Windows 10 IoT is not part of that list, but should eventually be supported according to a forum post, and Shenzhen Xunlong confirmed it by email. Not really surprising considering Windows 10 IoT has been ported to Pine A64 and Banana Pi M64 boards. You can check officially supported Allwinner boards directly on Microsoft Azure IoT device catalog, and Orange Pi Win is not there yet.
The board has just started to sell for $25 + shipping on Aliexpress.
Thanks to Tomaz, Aleksey, and tkaiser for the tip.
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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Well some guys just don’t get it. It’s not quantity of models, but the quality ! Instead of fixing existing boards, they have a new one to create newer issues 🙂 Another “(z)ero” model. Why not just buy a very hackable $25 Android V88 TV box with Amlogic S905/X fully made and quality assured with free shipping? Yes V88 likes don’t have gigabit Ethernet or BT, but look at all those other features. In fact this new board will likely cost $40-45 plus shipping with onboard 8GB flash plus box, battery, remote and misc included ! And assuming the software… Read more »
29 dollars buys you a 2GB Pine A64, which has several OS already available. As Athar points out, Orange Pi build and dump, nothing but pain and problems.
I agree with Athar.
If you want a board with good docs, get a Khadas Vim
http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/11/17/khadas-vim-amlogic-s905x-android-and-linux-development-board-sells-for-50-and-up/
@Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft): The list of OS images this new board supports is obviously just ‘copy&paste gone wrong’. There was never Android 4.4 for A64, instead Allwinner provided Pine Inc and the Banana folks with Android 5.1 and 6.0, so Xunlong will most probably also provide Android 5.1/6.0. The way better alternative are ayufan’s Android ports for A64 (already at 7.0/7.1) and since the OPi board is pretty close to BPi M64 maybe it’s already fully supported by the Android community build. If not only minor tweaks are needed to get the best Android image support this device. Whether Armbian… Read more »
Sure, there exist only 2 boards in this world and just a single use case for devices like this 😉
BTW: S905X on the VIM doesn’t support RGMII so you end up with Fast Ethernet here so if your use case is about ‘fast network’ then this is clearly not the best choice.
@tkaiser
With all your testing and many boards, have you any results for Ethernet to Sata solutions or reasons not too.
@Theguyuk ‘Ethernet to Sata solutions’?! Huh? The principle is known since decades (just google for ‘diskless workstation’, back then on the TFTP/NFS servers SCSI or FC instead of SATA would’ve been used) and not limited to slow SATA on the other end. In Armbian we (the developers) use this all day long since a year since it would be a stupid waste of time always writing new images to SD card just to test through ‘first boot’ behaviour (where Armbian does a lot of optimizations unlike the usual vendor supplied OS images): https://docs.armbian.com/Developer-Guide_FEL-boot/ If I test through a new Armbian… Read more »
Allwinner == stay away!
@aaa Thank you for your valuable insights! 😛 For everyone else thinking about software support situation with this A64 based Orange Pi or also BPi M64 now: all OS images available for Pine64+ only need slight modifications to work on the latter two boards. @lex with some help by Jon Smirl and others was able to collect the necessary differences for BPi M64 (SinoVoip shipped in the beginning only with OS images that used all settings directly from Pine64+ so many of the onboard peripherals were not working properly or at all): https://github.com/avafinger/bpi-m64-firmware And Xunlong documented their hardware settings months… Read more »
@aaa
I think you meant Amlogic.
What? Amlogic actually has vaguely competent kernel developers.
I think by now People have realized that there is near to zero future support from them and from AllWinner. All they do is releasing new models with somewhat different SOCs (h3/h5, and now A64).
Windows support? Meh, I don’t believe them.
Let’s not buy until they realize support is important.
@parrotgeek1
As evidenced by what? I’ve heard some very negative comments about their kernel code from people who have to deal with it.
Also, they completely lied about the clock speed of their chips by a large margin.
With Allwinner, at least we have a strong OSS effort from the sunxi-linux developers. Is there any such group for Amlogic? I know Free Electrons are being paid by an Amlogic customer to get mainline working for the S905, but Amlogic doesn’t deserve the credit for that.
@willmore
Have read this?
http://www.cnx-software.com/2017/03/06/mainline-linux-on-64-bit-arm-amlogic-socs-and-tv-boxes-such-as-wetek-hub-player-2-nexbox-a1-a95x-etc/
http://linux-meson.com
Isn’t it Neil Armstrong AKA Baylibre instead? See baylibre.com/blog/
I see footprint for optional eMMC in the specs. Does this mean a custom order? Or are they going to have a connector for eMMC like the HardKernel ODROID boards? I’m looking for a 64 bit ARM system with 2 GB or greater RAM, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3 and 32GB or more of eMMC. Why don’t any of the recent ARM 64 chips support USB 3?
@Ray Knight
If ARMv8 isn’t a requirement then it’s ODROID-XU4, if USB3 isn’t a requirement look at SoPine64, if you’re fine replacing the eMMC requirement with a better SATA SSD instead take ESPRESSOBin (optional 4GB eMMC but why?), if you’ve a bit too much money choose the MACCHIATOBin (AKA ARMADA 8040 community board).
@tkaiser
I have an ESPRESSOBin on order, I was hoping to find something with an earlier delivery date. I also already have an ODROID-XU4 running Armbian, but it doesn’t fit the need for this project as I require 64 bit support with extremely fast access to storage. I can do without the USB 3.0 if I can have another method of accessing fast storage with 64GB or greater capacity. Trying to keep total cost below $500 for a 4 node cluster with 64GB or greater storage on each node.
@Ray Knight Well, Xunlong uses pretty fast eMMC on at least OPi PC Plus and Plus 2E (though not that fast as the way more expensive eMMC Hardkernel uses with their boards) so maybe just ask them for quotes with 64GB eMMC populated? But be prepared that it might need a lot of patience regarding answers (at least my experience but it started with some very rude/unfair public comments from my side so I was already surprised to get any feedback at all later). Can’t help though with your setup so just out of curiosity: why a 4 nodes cluster… Read more »
@tkaiser
Yeah, I think you’re right. Sorry for the confusion.
@anon
I was in their IRC channel for a few months and it was pretty quiet in there. I don’t know how busy their mailing list is. The linux-sunxi mailing list is way more active.
yiyayo : Windows support? Meh, I don’t believe them. You know the difference between ‘Windows’ and ‘Windows 10 IoT Core’? It’s about the latter, it’s about pushing UWP (‘Universal Windows Platform’) applications to ARM boards. Nothing else. While I have not the slightest idea why anyone right in his mind would want to do this (maybe people that know only Windows and nothing else? I heard rumours that such people exist…) it’s not a problem to run Win 10 IoT on any A64 device since the whole ‘OS support’ is just adding the necessary drivers for the SoC (that’s A64)… Read more »
tkaiser : yiyayo : Windows support? Meh, I don’t believe them. You know the difference between ‘Windows’ and ‘Windows 10 IoT Core’? It’s about the latter, it’s about pushing UWP (‘Universal Windows Platform’) applications to ARM boards. Nothing else. yes I understand the difference. What I don’t trust is Xunlong and AllWinner’s ability provide future support. Xunlong will probably release a snapshot dump of Windows 10 IOT then forgets about it. If there is bug (like all software), they don’t want to know and you are probably on your own. You want a new update of new Windows 10 IOT?… Read more »
@yiyayo I don’t believe Xunlong will be involved in Win 10 IoT stuff at all. There seems to be a business unit at Allwinner trying to enter IoT market and for whatever reasons they partnered with Microsoft for this while another BU of them throws something called tinalinux at potential customers (an insane mixture of outdated u-boot, Linux kernel, Android and OpenWRT stuff no one right in his mind outside of Allwinner will ever touch). The first BU seems to focus on a single SoC which kinda makes some sense since all board specific support later is essentially a small… Read more »
And for 5 bucks more you get another GB of DRAM: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Orange-Pi-Win-Plus-Development-Board-A64-Quad-core-Support-linux-and-android-Beyond-Raspberry-Pi/32803012893.html
Microsoft is paying Allwinner to do the Win 10 IoT ports.
I have no clue why someone would use Win 10 IoT when Linux is available.
Jom Smirl. Clue here. All UWP apps which already runs on mobile, tabs, and PCs run as it is on Win 10 IoT Core on Raspberry Pi 3. That is one code base to develop which runs on all machines.
Also we are waiting for x86 emulation on ARM which is around the corner. That means this device running a full Win10 in-turn running all our enterprise applications out of the box. Win10 x86 emulation on ARM will make all native Windows apps to run on ARM and the purpose of Store will benefit.
I don’t think anyone is waiting for x86 emulation on ARM since it would be magnitudes too slow (especially on such low performance SoCs like Allwinner A64 we’re talking here about).
I would recommend watching channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2017/P4171 if it’s about to understand how executing 32-bit x86 Windows apps on Snapdragon ARM SoCs will work (no emulation anywhere, it’s binary translation, WoW — Windows on Windows –, native ARM DLLs and so on). BTW: they’re talking about Windows 10 and not the ‘IoT core’ variant there…
Grasshopper, you have much to learn about the myth of write once and run anywhere.