Accelerated 3D Graphics, Hardware Video Decoding, and Network Performance on Orange Pi One Board (Video)

I’ve just written Getting Started Guide for Orange Pi One, a $10 development board based on Allwinner H3 quad core Cortex A7 processor, where I explain how to install and configure Armbian distribution on the board. As promised, I’ve also tested 3D graphics acceleration, and hardware video decoding, and also included some Ethernet benchmarks. Since ARM Mali-400 GPU found in Allwinner H3 is only capable of OpenGL ES, as in most ARM SoCs, you can test 3D graphics acceleration by using es2gears (and not glxgears as I’ve seen some other do in the past):

The log shows the utility is using Linux-r3p0 Mali driver, and the gears are display at a high frame rate close to 300 fps. If I switch to full screen, the frame rate drops to about 43 fps, which should still be acceptable. CedarX is the infamous closed source and GPL violating media library released […]

Orange Pi One Board Quick Start Guide with Armbian Debian based Linux Distribution

Orange Pi One board is the most cost-effective development board available on the market today, so I decided to purchase one sample on Aliexpress to try out the firmware, which has not always been perfect simply because Shenzhen Xunlong focuses on hardware design and manufacturing, and spends little time on software development to keep costs low, so the latter mostly relies on the community. Recently, armbian has become popular operating systems for Linux ARM platform in recent months, so I’ve decided to write a getting started guide for Orange Pi One using a Debian Desktop image released by armbian community. Orange Pi One Unboxing But let’s start by checking out what I received. The Orange Pi One board is kept in an anti-static bag, and comes with a Regulatory Compliance and Safety Information sheet, but no guide, as instead the company simply asks users to visit www.orangepi.org to access information […]

Received Your Orange Pi One Board? You’ll Need to Tweak Your FEX File / script.bin

[Update: I’ve been informed that for some unknown reasons the voltage regulator outputs 1.3 and 1.5V instead of 1.1 and 1.3V on Orange Pi One with the settings and FEX file below, which could lead to overheating, and possibly damage the board under heavy load. A workaround is available here] [Update2: And the temperatures reported by the kernel are wrong (too low), so it’s better not to use the higher voltage at all. More details and tests @ http://forum.armbian.com/index.php/topic/617-wip-support-for-the-upcoming-orange-pi-one/page-4#entry5261] Orange Pi One is arguably the cheapest ARM Linux development board with networking available today for $9.99 plus shipping. It is very similar to Orange Pi PC with an Allwinner H3 quad core Cortex A7 processor, Ethernet, and HDMI, but has less memory as it comes with 512MB RAM instead of 1GB, and comes with a few less features too. The bad news is that Shenzhen Xunlong did not release any […]

Orange Pi One Quad Core ARM Linux Development Board Launched for $9.99

Orange Pi One board was unveiled at the end of last year as a cheaper alternative to Orange Pi PC with Allwinner H3 quad core processor, 512 MB RAM, an Ethernet Port and HDMI output. I’ve already compared it to C.H.I.P and Raspberry Pi Zero, and found that it was both much more powerful and cheaper to use as an Internet connected board with HDMI output than the two more well-known competitors. The good news is that Orange Pi One is now selling for $9.99 + shipping on Aliexpress, which in my case would be $13.38 in total. Orange Pi One technical specifications: SoC – Allwinner H3 quad core Cortex A7 @ 1.2 GHz with an ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU up to 600 MHz System Memory – 512 MB DDR3 Storage – micro SD card slot Video & Audio Output – HDMI with CEC support Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet USB -1x […]

Raspberry Pi Zero, C.H.I.P, and Orange Pi One Boards’ Features and Price Comparisons

With Raspberry Pi Zero, Next Thing C.H.I.P, and Orange Pi One, we now have have three ARM Linux development boards selling (now or soon) for less than $10 excluding shipping and taxes. So I’d think it would be interesting to compare the features of the boards, and prices for different use cases. The comparison table below shows the three boards features side-by-side with items highlighted in green for the best or extra features, and in red for the weakest. Some cells will have to be filled later as data is currently not available (marked TBD). Raspberry Pi Zero C.H.I.P Orange Pi One Processor Broadcom BCM2835 single core ARM11 processor @ 1GHz (~1250 DMIPS) Allwinner R8 Cortex A8 processor @ 1 GHz (2000 DMIPS) Allwinner H3 quad core Cortex A7 processor @ 1.2 GHz (4x 2280 DMIPS) GPU VideoCore IV ARM Mali-400 ARM Mali-400MP2 Video Decoding 1080p30 for H.264, MPEG2* and […]

Orange Pi One is a $10 Quad Core Board with Ethernet and HDMI

Until recently, Orange Pi PC was probably the most cost efficient ARM hardware, but with the launch of Raspberry Pi Zero, and to some extent C.H.I.P computer, they had some competitors in the ultra low cost space, so Shenzhen Xunlong Software developed two more cost effective Orange Pi boards, with Orange Pi One selling for $9.99 with Ethernet, and Orange Pi Lite for $12 with WiFi, also referred to as versions B and A. Orange Pi One & Lite (preliminary) Specifications: SoC – Allwinner H3 quad core Cortex A7 @ 1.2 GHz with an ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU up to 600 MHz System Memory – 512 MB DDR3 Storage – micro SD card slot Video & Audio Output – HDMI Connectivity Orange Pi One – 10/100M Ethernet Orange Pi Lite – WiFi USB Orange Pi One – 1x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x micro USB OTG port Orange Pi Lite – […]

Ten Most Popular Posts of 2015 and Statistics on CNX Software

In the second part of 2014, we saw a big jump in performance thanks to Cortex A15 and A17 based SoCs, and higher clocked Cortex A9 processors such as Rockchip RK3288 and Amlogic S812, but in 2015, TV box companies have focused on lowering the price and adding features such as HDMI 2.0, instead of looking for higher and higher CPU and GPU performance, and they’ve also moved to 64-bit ARM platform. Intel also continued its foray into low cost HDMI sticks and mini PCbased on Bay Trail, and later on Cherry Trail based devices.  The development boards story was also very much about lower cosst with the $15 Orange Pi PC, follow a few months later by the $5 Raspberry Pi Zero, although people looking for performance at any price still saw the release of Nvidia Jetson TX1 board. It’s was also a big year for IoT with the […]

DietPi is Lightweight, Easy to Use Debian Based Distribution for Raspberry Pi, ODROID, and Orange Pi Boards

Raspberry Pi, Hardkernel ODROID, and Orange Pi are some of the most popular and cost effective development boards on the market today, and one British developer, going under Fourdee nickname, has released a lightweight distribution called DietPi working for all Rasbperry Pi boards, ODROID-C1(+), ODROID-XU3/XU4, and Orange Pi PC, with Orange Pi 2 and Orange Pi Plus support coming soon, as well as a VMWare virtual machine also available for evaluation. The compressed downloads are about 80 to 100MB depending on the target, the image that can be dump with dd or Win32DiskImager requires a 1GB or greater micro SD card as the image itself is about 500MB large, Internet access (Ethernet or Wifi), and optionally a USB Drive to allow installation on a USB drive for better performance, which of course does not apply if you have an eMMC module with your ODROID board. The image also contains some […]

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