An Orange Pi Week

It’s been a while since I’ve had any Orange Pi products (earlier) (even earlier) to play with, but last week in the mail arrived a package comprising Orange Pi RV, Orange Pi RV2, a “5.1v5A GAN” USB-C power supply and a small packet which took me a few minutes to figure out…

Ok, sorted, the little package contains a 256GB EMMC module.

As there is only one EMMC, next I had to decide in which board to fit it… Ok, that answers that – opening the two boxes I pulled out the Orange Pi RV and RV2 units – RV2 on the left in the photos below – that’s the only unit which will take the 256G EMMC module (2*M.2 M-Key slots).

Both units have WiFi antennae and the RV has 4 USB3 connectors and a single network socket whereas the RV2 has 3 USB3 and 1 USB2 connectors along with twin network sockets. On the underside, both have an SD socket and whereas the RV has an M.2 M-Key 2280 PCIe NVME SSD connector, the RV2 has TWO of them (one on top, one on the bottom). Both have standard HDMI connectors and USB-C for power and of course the usual “Raspberry Pi compatible” pin connector.

Both have standard 3.5mm jack sockets for audio and the RV2 has a couple of “CAM” connectors. This is starting to look good. I never liked the micro HDMI connectors on the Raspberry Raspberry Pi so I’m happy with standard HDMI.

RV – RISC-V processor – RV2 – 8-core RISC AI processor. The RV takes 2/4/8GB of LPDDR4 RAM whereas the RV2 takes 2/4/8GB of LPDDR4X RAM.

Where the RV simply states WiFi and Bluetooth, the RV2 supports BT 5.0 and BLE. RV2 also supports dual-screen “heterodyne” displays.

RV2 states support for DeepSeek although the link below mentions support for Ubuntu 24.04 “deeply adapted” to DeepSeek. More on the RV2 web page below. As always that will depend on how good their Ubuntu support is. Actually I could spend a lot of time expanding on the specs – instead – here’s the RV page and the RV2 page complete with much better photos than mine and the full, in-depth detailed spec.

I must say at first glance I didn’t initially see Ubuntu on their software section index page… and yet this is presumably a key sellingpoint because of the inclusion of local Deepseek – more later.

Before you ask, I’m not paid to show these boards but Orange Pi usually send their latest stuff to me and providing the RV2 software is up to it, this is looking like a winner. I hope someone does a suitable case and I suspect a heatsink/fan will be needed judging by the 5A PSU.

OOOH, I found the RV2 downloads page check this out…. and the RV downloads page.

RV2 running Orange Pi Ubuntu

So… by day two of playing with the new Orange Pi RV2. I’d plugged in the 256GB eMMC, also a microSD I had floating about and on which I’d installed the Ubuntu from the RV2 downloads page above – using Balena Etcher on my Windows 11 PC. I plugged in my 1920*1080 monitor I use as a spare, plugged in the power supply to the RV2 and initially plugged in my Ethernet cable to one of the two Ethernet sockets at random. I also plugged in a random USB mouse and a USB keyboard I had handy.

The usual Linux rapidly moving, undecipherable text taking a minute or so, something we Windows users have not had to endure for a long time.

Ultimately A nice ORANGE Pi image showed up onscreen. Why as below instead of a full screen image – who knows?

Anyway if you’ve ever used a recent Ubuntu, you should recognise the bottom of the screen – console, file manager, browser (Chromium) and a block you can click to open up installed APPs. I remembered the volume and network icons on the top right from previous Ubuntu sessions… and I clicked that applications icon just to see what is included by default – no surprises there.

I just had to go look see what was happening with the network – it seems the Ethernet was connected and WiFi available. At this point I didn’t mess about as I was dying to see what kind of results I’d get in the browser with YouTube.

So next I went straight in to the browser – YouTube is always a good indicator of speed….

Network connected – nothing unusual there and I felt quite at home despite having little experience of Ubuntu desktop environments. Next – the browser – and YouTube – what could I expect out of this, I wondered?

The browser appeared at something of a snail’s pace – but then I’m comparing a full Windows 11 PC to a tiny low-cost board in my head – bound to happen.

YouTube came up – and as we do these days I went straight to the latest meetings between President Zelensky and other leaders. In many respects this was like a normal experience on my PC – as the video started up (hardly a scientific test as the monitor resolution is nothing to write home about – just a standard 1920*1080 job) I noted that, albeit with a slight startup delay, the video just worked with no stuttering.

So, my FIRST experience with the RV2 and Ubuntu – no heatsink, the board gets warm but not burningly warm with YouTube running, the video quality looked fine – HDMI audio out to my monitor worked automatically and just fine (there is also a 3.5mm jack out) and so I put in my WiFi credentials for my nearest 5Ghz WiFi6 access point – no discernable difference in output. I do wish Orange had sent me a heatsink case – but hey – it works.

Fair to say this next test is going to be the least scientific of the lot. I pulled up SpeedTest.net on the browser and also on my Windows PC. I ran one test after the other (thats the short version, the broadband went down in the middle of my first attempt) – oh – and in each case the browser version of Speedtest.net was LITTERED with ads – I’d forgotten how much better the Windows APP is… suffice it to say that the SpeedTest.net results on my hardwired Windows 11 PC came to 636Mbps download, on the hardwired Orange Pi about 140Mbps.

To Infinity and Beyond

Having proven to myself that the RV2 works with Ubuntu – and eager to go a little further while being aware that the unit could be faster – also eager to get the RV2 booting from the supplied 256GB eMMC – I made a start. As an aside, I note the Op Sys is called Orange Pi 1.0.0 Noble and that I have 7.7GB RAM. Note also that the 5v5a PSU is 5v only, not PD – no doubt that’s why it has thick leads.

So next – the manual... I have to say, I’m part way through the manual and up to now it is good – clear English, sensible level. Could be improved and I’ve written off with suggestions – read on…

Up and running with SD I went to page 26 of the manual – It suggested running a script to move everything to eMMC – and to remember to use SUDO in a terminal to run the script – no mention of the user password – I just happened to know the default is orangepi. I could not see the script – but it turns out it is hidden and “ls” command doesn’t show it – but it’s there. Next – select file system for the new eMMC version – options include ext4 and btrfs – but on the board, no btrfs option appeared.

Manual says “eMMC install – this will take approx 4 minutes” – the board says “approx 16 minutes” – but the manual was nearer the mark. At the end of that a blank screen – no explanatory “Well done”…. so I took out the SD and rebooted the board – everything came up in eMMC as it did with the SD only faster. GOOD.

So once again, I went off to SpeedTest.net in the browser – speeds for comparison – my PC – 739/77 – the Orange Pi 170/61. Could be better but improved – and of course to do this properly I’d have to take half a dozen or so speed readings on each machine interlaced. But it’s a start. I expect YouTube to run more smoothly…. and now I have the amount of storage you might find in a basic mini PC.

Browser – youtube.com – to open and get a page full of previews – maybe 0.5 seconds. Orange Pi – around 24 seconds. Needs improvement..

So next, I noted on the browser – there is the usual minimise button top right – but no maximise as you’d in Chrome on a PC – instead you have to hit F11. Annoying but that’s not a feature/fault of the Orange Pi.

Remember I’m using unmodified, per-installed Chromium on a brand new machine – on opening Chromium, there is an annoying warning “You are using an unsupported command line flag — no sandbox. Stability and security will suffer” – NO I’m NOT – I’m using Chromium out of the box on a brand new machine. I’ve done nothing more than run YouTube and SpeedTest.net – that’s it.

Next – the usual Linux update – terminal – sudo apt update – sudo apt upgrade. 10 minutes later a LOT of updates had been installed and I restarted the RV2.

I noted improvements after the upgrades, but still – getting YouTube up and loaded with a page of previews seemed sluggish. Next – some command line stuff…

Just checked – in my network, the RV2 appears as orangepirv2.lan – Oh I like that – none of this prohibited access nonsense – in Mobaxterm on my PC, I put in the hostname and username orangepi – and when asked for password – straight in with SSH access..

It is in fact running both Ethernet and WiFi.

I note that if I leave the PC for a while and come back to it and bring up a YouTube video – sometimes there’s no sound where there should be. More on that soon…. It has been pointed out to me that this and similar boards have no hardware acceleration for video – but even then, YouTube REALLY is slow.

And now the big one – AI – Local AI – REALLY?

The board is supposed to be great for AI local use – will that 256GB eMMC be good for useful DeepSeek local ? More on that further down…

Next I spoke to OrangePi who told me that all I have to do is look at the default web browser (Chromium) at port 8080 to start my AI journey. I tried that – absolutely nothing at port 8080 (i.e. 127.0.0.1:8080).

SO – this is where it gets INTERESTING….. OrangePi accepted that I could not get anything on port 8080 and sent me a script to download the AI code (which according to their docs should have been in the Ubuntu install in the first place). I tried running their code on the RV2 in a terminal and (I have fast Internet – 800Mbps on a good day) my friend Antonio who you’ll see in here quite a lot, helped me to use their link and instructions to WGET files. WELL, THAT didn’t work. Something to do with the COMPOSE part of Docker not being installed.

To cut a long story short, Antonio came up with a way to get the files downloaded and installed – problem was, it was trying to load one file at over a GB and others close to that size all at the same time. We’re not sure why but that failed over and over, so Antonio split up the batch file and pulled in files one at a time (he was coming in from Italy remotely). Really, this is the SHORT version.

We got everything to work – I’ll not cover that here as OrangePi will clearly have to fix something so that users don’t have the hassle we did to get local AI on the RV2.

So – done, running – their instructions, as I mentioned above, said to go to the local browser at port 8080 – the instructions also then said “Hello Deek” – looks like someone missed the part about creating an Open WebUI account. I did that and “OI” appeared – ready to be an AI assistant.

I might be slow but I’m nobody’s fool, so I disconnected the Ethernet and turned off the WIFI before asking the AI page my first question. Really!

I was feeling like being awkward by now, so:–

“What is the weather like in Huescar, Granada, Spain?” I asked.

Within seconds the OFFLINE machine came back with:

deepseek-r1-1.5b:latest 7:17 pm
<think> </think>
Huescar, also known as El Escorial, is a popular tourist destination in Granada, Spain. The weather there can vary depending on the time of year and season. In spring and fall, the area receives warm, sunny weather with clear skies and temperatures ranging from 18°C to 25°C (64°F to 71°F). By summer, temperatures may increase slightly due to humidity and the arrival of warmer air masses. In autumn, the temperatures cool down again but remain mild, with pleasant sightlines for hiking and visiting natural landmarks like El Escorial Monastery.

Be sure to check the weather forecast each day for accurate details

---

I am ABSOLUTELY, 100% sure I’d disconnected the Ethernet and WIFI on the RV2 before asking that first question. To be sure, when I say the response, I sent the browser off to YouTube.

I know what you are likely thinking – Peter’s lost the plot – or – this is just a new sales ploy from OrangePi – NO – I just wrote this and have NO connection to the company – they sent the two boards FOC to play with – no pre-conditions and no payments…. I’m quite familiar with chatGPT and other AI online tools and rely on them a lot – so not THAT new to AI – but new to LOCAL AI.

Ok, of COURSE it didn’t know the weather but how does this model even know where the little town of Huescar is? From when I created an account? No, I don’t live in that town.

So now I have that off my chest, I’m back to OrangePi to find out what to do next. And how to get OpenWrt running – not that I’m likely to part with this new Ubuntu-based AI toy for a while 🙂 A parlour trick like that HAS to be worth investigating. After all I have 256GB of eMMC – I neeed OrangePi to tell me how to jam-pack that with downloaded AI 🙂

Currently the installed package “deepseek-r1-1.5b:latest” is using about 10GB of the installed 256GB eMMC – I also had it clarify that it cannot in fact go off to the web for new knowledge.

So as a complete local-AI novice I’m currently led to believe that this is not intended as any form if general AI but specifically to help make use of the RVs and it’s various IO and sensors.

First attempt – I asked it to tell me how to best determine how much free space I have in the EMMC (I already knew the answer – “df -h” – around 10GB is used… the AI came back (after some delay) with 3 responses all of which failed to produce anything useful. See responses below… and my comments in italic..

To determine how much storage is unused in your Orange Pi RV2 with 256GB eMMC (i.e., the installation that includes an additional extension like R1-15B), you can use the following command line commands:

Step 1: Check Total Storage

lsc | grep [unused] |

This command will list any storage units marked as unused by the Least Shared Common Segment (LSSC) tool, which is commonly used with the Orange Pi.

That returned a prompt – not an answer.

Step 2: Verify EMMC Usage

If you want to confirm that the eMMC allocated for your current extension is using the full 10GB of space:

lsc | grep [unused] |

That returned a prompt – not an answer.

Step 3: Install Module Updates (Optional)

To ensure compatibility and prevent future issues, update the module to use the correct configuration file. For example, installing the new module:

sudo apt-get install orange-modifications

Summary

These commands will help you inspect the storage usage and confirm that your current eMMC is fully utilized.

The command failed to “install orange-modifications” – could not find such a package.