Orange Pi PC or PINE A64+

[vanjo9800]

Sadly, that way of powering does not work...

The two LAN lights on the Orange Pi PC are on and the red light is on. The monitor says that a device is connected. However, nothing happens. If I place the Raspberry Pi directly on the Orange Pi PC and move a little in order there the pins to touch it boots. However, that is very inconvenient because I need to hold the Raspberry Pi on the Orange Pi PC and my hand should not move.

Am I doing something wrong, or just the current I supply is very low?

[ssvb]

If I place the Raspberry Pi directly on the Orange Pi PC and move a little in order there the pins to touch it boots. However, that is very inconvenient because I need to hold the Raspberry Pi on the Orange Pi PC and my hand should not move.

Ugh! What kind of ugly p0rn was that? You are really lucky if none of these boards got permanently damaged after such abuse So much for asking to be careful, confirming everything with a multimeter, etc.

Here is a picture of a Raspberry Pi board and an Orange Pi PC board sharing the same 2.5A PSU via the use of two jumper wires (both up and running and accessible via ssh, also having combined ~550mA current draw when idle). The red jumper wire connects +5V pins, and the yellow jumper wire connects the GND pins.

[vanjo9800]

The problem was in the cable.

I changed the cable and now it works perfectly. Thank you very much for your help ssvb.

Now as it is working, I want to ask you what distribution would you recommend. Now I have Raspbian installed, but the resolution is bad and there are some errors.

Thank you again very much for the help.

P.S. Just to say that the Raspberry is Pi Zero, so it was a lot easier to place them one above the other.

[vanjo9800]

Hello ssvb, can you tell me which distribution are you using in order to be able to connect via SSH. I tried Raspbian (booted 2 times successfully), Debian Jessie, Ubuntu and Android. None of them works now... The red light is on, but there is nothing on the monitor, sadly.

Thank you in advance!!!

[ssvb]

Hello ssvb, can you tell me which distribution are you using in order to be able to connect via SSH. I tried Raspbian (booted 2 times successfully), Debian Jessie, Ubuntu and Android. None of them works now... The red light is on, but there is nothing on the monitor, sadly.

Thank you in advance!!!

What happened to your Raspbian, which used to boot successfully earlier? Anyway, for the Orange Pi PC board, maybe try armbian: http://www.armbian.com/orange-pi-pc/

For the Pine64 board, maybe look around in this forum and try: http://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=376 (the A64 support is still relatively new, but will improve over time).

I myself normally use NFS booted Gentoo Linux with the kernels that I compile myself from sources. I don't use any pre-built SD card images, so can't advice much.

[vanjo9800]

I would not say that the Raspbian used to boot successfully. It booted once or twice up to login screen by magic and with the same SD card and power supply it just did not boot right. The common errors that are displayed are bad sectors in the SD card, however the SD card is working right because I use it for my Raspberry.

Sometimes, when the bad sector message is not displayed it just stops after a certain command and it remains like that forever...

I will try Armbian now and tell you the results.

[vanjo9800]

Ok Armbian works perfect. There are some moments, for example when I watch a Youtube Video on Fullscreen when the Orange Pi just turns off, but I suppose that is because of the low amount of current which I give to the board.

Now I have a little but very annoying problem. The resolution is bad, like I do not see the last 1 cm of my screen from the left and from the top.

Here is how it looks like:


Do you know how can I fix that?

Thank you in advance!!!

[ssvb]

I don't mean to be rude, but this forum is not the best place to discuss the Orange Pi PC board and the armbian sd card images. You will probably get a much better support in the armbian forum. And as I mentioned earlier, I don't even use armbian myself.

As for the sporadic board power-offs, having a good power supply is indeed very important. Hopefully you will obtain the appropriate power cable soon.

[vanjo9800]

Ok, thank you very much ssvb for the whole help for setting up the Orange Pi PC.