armbian-build/documentation/H3_mini_faq.md

Armbian H3 mini FAQ

OS images with legacy Kernel (3.4.110)

Armbian supports starting with release 5.04 all available H3 based Orange Pi boards (also One and Lite when available). Compared to the preliminary releases the following has been fixed:

• HDMI/DVI works (bug in boot.cmd settings)
• Reboot issues fixed (bug in fex settings)
• 1-Wire useable (we chose to stay compatible to loboris' images so the data pin is 37 by default. You're able to change this in the fex file)
• changing display resolution and choosing between HDMI and DVI now possible with the included h3disp tool (should also work in the stand-alone version with Debian based OS images from loboris/Xunlong)
• Ethernet issues fixed (combination of kernel and fex fixes)
• USB-to-SATA bridge on the Orange Pi Plus works
• stability problems on Orange Pi One fixed (due to undervoltage based on wrong fex settings)
• problems with 2 USB ports on the PC fixed (wrong kernel config)
• already useable as stable headless/server board

Important to know

• User documentation
• Geek documentation
• 1st boot takes longer (up to 5 minutes). Please do not interrupt while the red LED is blinking, the board reboots automatically one time
• CPU frequency settings are 648-1200 MHz on OPi One/Lite and 480-1296 MHz on the other boards (cpufreq governor is interactive therefore the board only increases CPU speed and consumption when needed)
• These are still test images regarding everything beyond headless/server usage
• In case you experience instabilities, think about installing RPi-Monitor for H3 to get an idea whether you suffer from overheating

Areas that need testing

• SPI
• I2C
• GPIO in general
• GPU acceleration (needs boot.cmd adjustments and at least mali module loaded)
• Wi-Fi on OPi Plus, Plus 2 and 2
• USB wireless dongles

What you can do to improve the situation

• improve software support for Orange Pi One by testing DRAM reliability!
• get back to us with feedback regarding our OS images
• fork our repo, fix things and send pull requests

Known to NOT work yet

• Camera support. We included @lex' patches but miss phelum's basic patches. Fixes welcome
• HW accelerated video decoding. Fixes welcome (anyone willing to port the stuff from the H3 OpenELEC port?)

OS images with vanilla Kernel (4.x)

Mainlining effort for H3 and Orange Pi's is progressing nicely but since Ethernet support still isn't ready we currently do not provide OS images with vanilla kernel.

But since we collected a bunch of necessary H3 patches you're already able to build your own 4.4.x image at this time. Choose Orange Pi Plus as target and when trying to use the resulting image with OPi PC or OPi One then overwrite the contents of the Plus' .dtb file with the one from PC (ugly hack but at least you get all USB ports working this way). But please remember that you end up with a rather limited image where just SMP, UART and USB is working.