Orange Pi for SBC instead of Raspberry Pi?

[7milesup]

Hello Everyone. New to the forum here and just starting my Voron 2.4r build. I have owned a Prusa for five years, but it is time to upgrade. The mechanical side of the build is the easy part for me. I am a hobby machinist with a shop full of equipment. I just completed the frame build of the Voron, utilizing my 4'x5' Blanchard ground table. It came out perfectly! BUT, when it comes to electronics, that would be my weak point. I have worked with Basic and Fortran, but that was 35 years ago, LOL.
As everyone knows, Raspberry Pi's are hard to find, and if you do find one, they are very expensive. In light of that, I purchased an Orange Pi 3 LTS with the hopes of getting Klipper to run. I downloaded Armbian, Balena Etcher, and Putty. I was able to get Armbian onto the Micro SD, and I thought installed on the Emmc on the Orange Pi. However, when I powered down the OPi and restarted with what I thought would have been a boot from the Emmc, the OPi loaded its default Android OS.
Since I am extremely new to the software side of this build, my order of operations was going to be to install Armbian (maybe I should use Debian instead?) and then Fuidd and Klipper. I was originally going to use Octoprint but not sure if that is a good route to go or not.
Sorry for the long, disjointed post. It would be really great if someone had the Orange Pi 3 LTS implementation process documented. I did run across this one blog post, but he uses a different Orange Pi.

 

[510n]

The install process should be the just about the same for any Orange Pi board. 3dpandme has several blog posts on Raspberry Pi alternatives and how to setup Klipper on them. I recommend checking out his blog post the Orange PI install: https://3dpandme.com/2022/09/03/tutorial-orange-pi-pc-klipper-install/ They also have reviews and guides for other PI alternatives: https://3dpandme.com/2022/08/22/pi-alternatives-for-klipper/

 

[ScaleDoctors]

Sorry I don't have an Orange Pi. I went through similar problems getting my Rock Pi working. I now have 3 Rock Pis. 1 connected to a Ender 5 Plus with Klipper. Another running Home Assistant and a third running misc apps. For my Voron build, I bought a Raspberry Pi. Everything about getting the Rock Pi (and an Orange Pi) working is just slightly different. I learned so much about setting them up and getting them to function. At the time I thought it was fun. Now I'm building a Voron with the hopes of using it to create production parts for my product. I want to spend my time and energy on designing parts and improving my 3D prints, not learning more about the odd behavior of my Rock Pi. I'm not even sure I could get an accelerometer working with it to get input shaping working with it without spending a week of research.

If you're really wanting to learn how to get your Orange Pi working I think Armbian is the right OS. I tried several and Arabian and DietPi were my favorites. Armbian forums is where I learned to do everything. I would just Google what I was wanting to do and include Armbian and I usually could find what I needed. Understanding what I found was a whole different story.

My Rock Pi came with a removable EMMC with an adapter that let me flash it like it was an SD card. I know there are ways to flash the EMMC while attached using a boot loader, but it was beyond me. I don't know if you really need to use the EMMC. Just install Armbian to an SD card and boot from it. If you're using a good, fast card it will be just as fast. It will also be easier to back up your SD card. Just use Balena Etcher and back it up to another sd card. You do plan to back up your system? Backing up your EMMC may not be as easy.

 

[kubik]

I second the Armbian recommendations, not a bad word to say about them in this regard. They support a lot of the H3/H5/H6/etc boards and it works great. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the beast, using the GPIO headers on those alternate boards is more involved - not impossible, but more involved. If you don't want to play around, I would recommend getting a Pi Pico and using that for things like ADXL and such, since it works over USB and there aren't many compatibility problems with that

 

[ZoZo]

I recently started to use a MKS-Pi with Armbian as a replacement backup solution for the Rasberry Pi 4B in my V2.4r2.

It was a seamless transition for me, the only exception being the fact that my BTT TFT50 is not compatible, and that I lost a USB port due to the fact that it does not have on-board wireless networking (also only three USB ports instead of four).

Also works great with my CAN bus network, not bad for less than $50…

 

[7milesup]

Well, folks, I was able to get everything installed on my Orange Pi 3 LTS. I utilized the Raspberry Pi imager, which allowed me to load Debian onto the emmc and move forward from there. I had an extra monitor, keyboard, and mouse, which eliminated having to work with Putty. I was overthinking the process of how to get this running, which was a contributing factor to my difficulties.

 

[Knewman34]

Well, folks, I was able to get everything installed on my Orange Pi 3 LTS. I utilized the Raspberry Pi imager, which allowed me to load Debian onto the emmc and move forward from there. I had an extra monitor, keyboard, and mouse, which eliminated having to work with Putty. I was overthinking the process of how to get this running, which was a contributing factor to my difficulties.

So I am awaiting delivery of my LDO Voron 4.2r2 and cannot find any Raspberry Pi's anywhere. I came across your post and was wondering if there is any difference in the installation process and getting it hooked up to the main controller board. Can you just follow the assembly instructions?

 

[7milesup]

So I am awaiting delivery of my LDO Voron 4.2r2 and cannot find any Raspberry Pi's anywhere. I came across your post and was wondering if there is any difference in the installation process and getting it hooked up to the main controller board. Can you just follow the assembly instructions?

It was not that hard to get it running, but remember that the instructions don't cover the software side of the build. It will take me a little while to remember just what I did. The process for me to utilize the Orange Pi was an uphill climb, but I knew absolutely nothing about SBCs, Linux, or anything else related to that, so keep that in mind.
Another guy on the "other" Voron forum utilized an Orange Pi with excellent results. He goes by Ken226, including over on a Hobby Machinist site, which is where we became acquainted in the first place.

A solution that is most likely better than the Orange Pi, and maybe even a Raspberry Pi, is Big Tree Tech's new boards that operate in together. My understanding is that they have the files compiled for this setup, which will make setup a breeze. Here is a link to their website and the M8p board.
That is the route that I would utilize. Super easy setup. Don't waste your time trying to find a Raspberry Pi. The amount most places/people are charging for them could get you the complete BTT system.

 

[Mike Eitel]

Ivm very happy with mp8.... The cheep CB1 works, but there is no chance to get DSI and CSI (klipper screen & camera) running. Si I swapped for cm4. Also in the moment camera and bullseye is not jet running with streamer... Will come and the cm4 is the winner.

Mike

 

[TinaBuilds]

I use and tested a few Raspberry alternatives:

• Raspberry PI 4 with BTT PI-TFT50 (currently in my V2)
• MKS-PI with their 3.5'' TFT, USB WiFi stick and eMMC (in my SW)
• BTT CB-1 1G and 16G, with the BTT SPI TFT (tested in a PI 4 B adapter and E3EZ)
• Orange PI PC (in my modified ER-20)
• Orange PI Zero2 (in my V0)
• Orange PI 3 LTS with BTT HDMI TFT50

My "5 cents" are: if you can get a Raspberry PI Zero2W, 3, 4 or CM4 go for it.
The alternative I would suggest is the Orange 3 LTS, followed by the CB-1 with eMMC.
The OPI3LTS runs with Armbian (bullseye) and it is my favourite compared to the others as it "just" needs a small heatsink and does not heats over 35°C (Allwinner H6) and has eMMC.
The CB-1 needs the BTT heatsink AND a fan. Without it it goes towards 60°C. Then there is no real Armbian for the CB-1s and the BTT Debian has its flaws: 1. no root password, 2. root via SSH disabled..., 3. user biqu. I always create a user pi on my sbcs. Compared to the Armbian 1st boot, where you login as root with 1234 pwd and change the pwd then AND create a user. The current BTT OS wastes time... But apparently BTT works on an Armbian, lets hope they do it propper and not like MKS did.
The MKS-PI needs also active cooling, without it goes over 60°C AND the MKS OS (an Armbian fork) is just unusable! I use this: https://github.com/redrathnure/armbian-mkspi. Further the µSD adapter needed to be reworked in order to fit into a µSD card slot: the corners needed to be filed down a bit. The MKS TFT is unusable with their OS. I had it and use it in my Switchwire.
The OPI02 has the same MPU, an Allwinner H616, like the CB-1 and needs active cooling too. There was a problem with the Armbian OS for it so I use an older bullseye with it and do not update it (22.02.0). That way it runs without problems in my V0.

All RPI alternatives need more work than a RPI.
I install the minimal OS, create a user pi and then install KIAUH. That way I had no problems with any of the sbcs.