Orange Pi Zero and WIFI

strontium

The Orange Pi Zero is a great little concept.  However a major weakness is its very bad WIFI. If the OrangePI hardware devs do a respin, they should consider using a ESP32.  The reason is its actually open source programmable and not locked down like the majority of radios, and would also give Bluetooth in addition to wifi.  Also, if its IO was tied in parallel to the expansion connector with the H2+/H3/H5 it would give the board a real time coprocessor (without needing kernel drivers) and also analog IO capabilities. Its just a suggestion, but a OrangePI zero with a esp32 wireless device would be a killer IOT board. (even if it costs more than $8).

strontium

Also in the case of the ESP32 there are a bunch of analog inputs and two dacs so you would get analog capabilities for "free".  They can also interface using sdio to a chip like the H3 so there should be no performance issues.

8bitbacon

I used to say the wifi was bad too but I found a way to get it to work for the h2, you have to disconnect the attempt to connect to lan each startup and also connect as a hidden network if you don't do fs_resize, if you do fs_resize you wont see anything that allows you too connect to wifi, instead you have to get to this .text file that stores what ssid to auto connect to and each startup will auto connect, also I get like 3 bars from far away now. esp8266 would probably save a lot of processing power from the main board though its kind of worth it because wifi can affect the pi's speed sometimes.

strontium

The biggest problem with most wifi chipsets are they are locked down and undocumented.  At least with the ESP32 (and esp8266) they are reasonably well documented and have strong software communities of their own.  Using  one as a wifi chip would live up to the promise of "open source" but the standard ones just don't.