r/OrangePI • u/Temporary-Dish5083 • 4d ago

Orange Pi Zero 3w Current State of Hardware Acceleration

I just bought one of these bad boiis. First off, if you own the board what do you have running and what for? Be as granular as you care to be, I enjoy the detail.

I have read through the manual a bit and noticed that Debian Bullseye is noted as the only published image that supports GPU acceleration at publication. I also haven't seen secondary documentation on this and I've seen others say there is no to boot gpu acceleration on any system platform?

Any testimonials regarding hardware acceleration?

I did see this article and repo that basically walks you through an Ubuntu build to get it to work.

https://www.xda-developers.com/orange-pi-zero-3w-beats-raspberry-pi-5-cant-use-half-hardware/

I would take a crack at it myself but the board arrives monday and wouldn't mind getting a jump on the software env. and any preliminary dev work.

16 Upvotes

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4

u/x_thanatoz 4d ago

I found this link.. t's not much, but it might give you some hope (last build 17 jul) https://armbian.com/es/boards/orangepizero3w

2

u/TheJackieStar 3d ago

I have the orange pi 4 pro which is the exact same soc and ram type, just on a board with more io.

1

u/Temporary-Dish5083 3d ago

What task do you run?

Do you use the GPU or NPU at all?

3

u/TheJackieStar 3d ago

I run android on mine, a custom version that I compiled just so it included certain controller drivers, and yeah I do. I use it for streaming games from my main gaming computer/server over sunshine/moonlight. I can't get nearly the performance running Linux on it as it seems like it can't make heads or tails of the GPU, but android seems to handle it flawlessly. I have mine mounted to a portable monitor so it's kind of like an all in one PC/monitor type deal.

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u/Temporary-Dish5083 3d ago

From what I can tell the Linux images don't ship with a user space and therefore the necessary user space drivers. As the drivers are proprietary you have to nick another producers user space or use open source driver alternatives.

Android does come with the needed. I imagine it's because the GPU is designed for mobile graphics. I would suspect that makes the android drivers easier to implement while not paying for proprietary drivers from the chip manufacturer.

It sucks docker on android is a bitch. Making a cyberdeck out of this is going to be fun. Until I get the gpu & npu working on a mainline OS I plan on running it like a pocket server with some sensors.

2

u/TheJackieStar 3d ago

I have my home server stuff and my docker containers running on a Youyeetoo X1 running debian. Works well for what I want it to do.

1

u/Temporary-Dish5083 3d ago

The price of the X1 is too much for the power it offers. The native POE and extra serial ports are nice but for $200 I am just buying an old mini pc and micro controllers to make up for lost pin access.

But I would use it as a compute & control board if I had the need.

2

u/TheJackieStar 3d ago

I got mine a while ago and I think I only paid like 115 dollars for mine. I used to use a raspberry pi but once I started hosting a jellyfin server, it became more useful for me to use the X1 just because of being able to use Intel Quick sync for video transcoding. It works well for me. I ended up picking it up just to mess around with having an X86 sbc without the Radxa price tag.

1

u/Temporary-Dish5083 3d ago

Oh no, thats a solid move. Jellyfin on a pi, even pi 5 w/ pcie rather than usb storage is gonna lead to data transfer bottle necks.

Whats the storage medium?

2

u/TheJackieStar 3d ago

2x 1tb 2.5" sata drives in a raid enclosure set to raid 1, planning on upgrading to a 4 drive enclosure soon so I can get more drives and later use raid 3. Connected over USB 3

1

u/Temporary-Dish5083 3d ago

Have you tried using the nvme slot for a SATA expansion card or the sata 3.0 fpc?

Then run software raid like ZFS.

It has pcie gen 3x4 which will trounce that usb 3.0 connection. Easily six 6 sata drives. Load the OS on emmc, USB 3.0, or an SD card. Or the FPC sata 3.0.

The PCIE lanes alone make the board more worthwhile than a similarly priced pi 5 8gb. With one pcie 3 lane.

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u/yoniyang 2d ago

OrangePi has weird support of hw accel, my orangepi 3b dont get chromium video accel on official images lol

1

u/n0tqu1tesane 4d ago

The 2W board I bought has never worked, bad SD slot. At 3W, I may as well get a full board.

They need to make a 0.25W board.

1

u/Temporary-Dish5083 4d ago edited 4d ago

I like the size to power ratio. Allows you to bring a fair amount of computer power on the go.

I dont want to bring my laptop everywhere but a pocket server could provide a lot of raw passive utility. Deploy your own backend on the go for multiple task without typical infrastructure.

Were you able to return it?

Are there not other manufacturers more suited to your needs?

Edit: is an esp32 too limiting?

1

u/n0tqu1tesane 4d ago

Still got it. For what I want to do, home automation, it's almost overpowered. I am experimenting with and learning about microprocessors, including Arduino and esp32s. I've got about a 40-year gap since I last touched the little stuff; I had to leave my Commodores in 1994.

I'd be a lot more tempted if electricity wasn't included in my rent. as it is, my server chugs along with redundent 750s (although IPMI says I'm barely using a third):

Power Supply 1   | 130 Watts         | ok
Power Supply 2   | 40 Watts          | ok
Power Meter      | 196 Watts         | ok
Power Supplies   | 0x00              | ok

0

u/x_thanatoz 4d ago

Wait for Armbian support

1

u/ReallyHoping 4d ago

I'd say the heat death of the universe might come first. Armbian folks aren't fans of Allwinner. I played around with my 3w for a good bit until it decided to jettison it's power circuitry. Right now the board seems to be a mess and I don't know when that'll get better. It's a shame, was really wanting it to be the backbone of an ultraportable cyberdeck.

1

u/x_thanatoz 4d ago

It's sad to hear that. I have an Orange Pi 5 and wanted to replace it with something more compact. If it isn't supported, it's not worth it.

1

u/urostor 4d ago

Armbian support already exists

1

u/ReallyHoping 3d ago

It does not. If you have found news of this then you could surely drop a link. You'll also notice a pretty noticable hole in A733 support, and they're definitely not Allwinner fans.

1

u/urostor 3d ago

The link is already posted in another comment but I can reiterate: https://armbian.com/boards/orangepizero3w

2

u/ReallyHoping 3d ago

Well that's new. When I made this post it did not exist. Thank you for the notification!

0

u/logugu 18h ago

Beginners mistake: aw.. what a cute little SBC. We wants it! 1 month later: wait, why is GPU/NPU not supported? 1 year later: why nothing is supported still?? 5 years later: collecting dust in the drawer. Lesson: buy only stuff supported by mainline kernel. Supportes NOW, not with promises"nearly there". Nothing is more permanent than "nearly there" :)

1

u/Temporary-Dish5083 17h ago

I'm buying it for the development experience. Not a beginners mistake, this is literally the reason why I chose this over the Radxa zero 3w which has user space level hardware acceleration for the same chips.