Orange Pi PC booting problem

vanjo9800

Hello,
I ordered the Orange Pi PC with a power cable and it arrived last week. However, the seller made a mistake with the cable - instead of DC cable, I received a microUSB cable. So I could not possibly power the board. I figured out I can give power trough some of the pins, so that was a small relief. I figured out how I can power it using my Raspberry Pi Zero and once or twice it booted successfully and worked. I tried Raspbian and Android from the official Orange Pi website and Debian Jessie and Ubuntu Mate from Loboris -  no effect. The successful boots were only with Raspbian. The main errors were of bad sectors in the SD card, however I checked the SD card and it works fine. I supposed it was a power problem, so I bought a 5V2A DC adapter from Samsung. Then I cut down a USB cable in order to get the +5V and GND. Then connected the wires with the pins. The LAN lights turned on as well as a red LED which I read meant that it was booting. However, nothing more. The monitor recognizes it as output, but the output is blank. In Android the logo of Allwinner H3 stays and neither a green light turns on nor something changes.

Can someone tell me where is the problem?

Thank you very much in advance!!!

vanjo9800

Also, I read that I can see the debug log using the UART interfaces ( the 3 pins away from the 40). I have an FTDI device however I do not know how to setup the serial communication. Can someone explain me?

Thank you in advance!!!

engshien

Likely, it booted successfully but just no display.. some of the distros make assumptions about the display (1080p; no DVI converter).

You COULD hook up to the serial port or check your DHCP for a new machine or just port scan for port 22.

However, I would give the Armbian distro a try:
  http://www.armbian.com/orange-pi-pc/

They've leveraged some of Loboris' work and produced probably the most usable distro to date (don't expect Mali support though).

vanjo9800

Hi, Armbian works perfect ( it boots well). However, I have a problem with the resolution:


Also, sometimes the Orange Pi PC says that it has bad sectors on the SD card, but the next boot works OK.
Last, it sometimes just stops working without any mark. I wanted to install terminator and it stopped working, also I wanted to watch a YouTube video on fullscreen and again it stopped.

Can you tell me how I can solve these small (compared to the last ones) problems?

vanjo9800

For the SD card, I think the problem is that I do not supply it with enough current. I power it from a Raspberry Pi because the seller sent me the wrong cable. Also, I tried with an SD card I use for my Raspberry Pi, and it again gives bad sector errors, while the Raspberry works great with it.

For the resolution, I change it with h3disp. My monitor is HD (720p) and I have set the Orange Pi PC with such resolution, however, I still have the problem with the photo above.

vanjo9800

First - the display is not rotated, just I am not able see 1cm from the top and 1cm from the left.

Second - I do not want to give that way supply to my Orange Pi PC, so I ordered a cable with the board, but the seller sent me the wrong cable. I ordered another one and wait for it. The time I wait, I want to test the board.

Third - On previous boots, there was a log that there is very little current passing through the SD card and little after it, the I/O errors started.I tried it with the SD card which I use for my Raspberry Pi which works perfectly with it and again in the boot process there were logs for I/O error.

d4t3n7od

I would also assume a weak or faulty power supply. I power my OPI PC with a cheap Ikea 3port USB charger (called Koppla in Lingua Ikea) which is rated at 3400mA total and max 2400mA per port, using the banggood supplied USB-to-4mm/1.7mm-barrel-plug cable. Using on of the other ports to charge my ZTE Blade cell phone (which itself comes with a 1500mA charger IIRC) overnight had no adverse effects.

Did you use the pins according to http://linux-sunxi.org/Xunlong_Orange_Pi_PC,
say: "It is also possible to power the device via GPIO pin header: connect +5V to either pin 2 or 4 (both are connected to DCIN test point) and GND to pin 6" ?

Greets!

d4t3n7od

trpaslikcz replied at 2016-3-25 00:16
Using 'smart chargers' with dumb devices is a very bad idea since they provide max 500mA per port  ...

Well, the Ikea charger is as dumb as can be =)
Also appears to be able to deliver some more current than advertised, did draw 4A for testing with no excessive heat or voltage instability.