Orange Pi, BAIDU and foreigners

Updated: Do they just have it in for me or is this typical? I’ve been trying to get an account with Baidu for some time as some of the Chinese suppliers often put firmware up there.

So, armed with Google translate, I went off to get an account, filled in the international telephone number so they could send me a code and… received a code – which didn’t work. Accordingly the web form decided that there might be some unusual activity going on here and insisted on sending me a code – but this time, no international numbers are accepted. I’ve tried 0044, +44, my number without a prefix etc, makes no difference.

So now if I start from scratch, I can log in – CONGRATULATIONS – but first we just need to confirm by telephone….

I have a horribly racist tendency to think they really do not want foreigners in there.  So now I’m waiting for the 1000s of responses to say you all have Baidu accounts outside of China.

Meanwhile the point of all of this was, I was looking for a recent (so called) Raspbian image for the Orange Pi – just to see if it is any good. Well, the jury is out on this – but I found it on someone’s Dropbox account if that is of any help to others. 800+ meg. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sxbv3n2l8xp63ps/Raspbian_For_OrangePi_PC_v0_8_0.img.xz?dl=0&force_dl=1

Looking at the Orange Pi site this version has just been made available although they screwed up the links – hence the address I’ve used.

After three attempts at downloading, I finally managed to blow an SD with the image. The red light came on and shortly thereafter, the screen lit up to ask me for a password. Attempts at “orangepi” failed – but “root” and password “orangepi” took me straight in.

The screen was set to a fairly low resolution with the menu slightly set off my screen which didn’t help. It had an “old” look to it. There was a version of “Arduino IDE” on the desktop – I ran that up – very early version 1.1

I noted under the start menu, QJACKCTL – for audio control – I tried that – it immediately came up with “Could not open ALSA sequencer as a client. ALSA MIDI patchboard will not be available. When I tried to close the message it took a couple of attempts as strange things happened to the screen. I’m guessing this has not been properly implemented. I pressed START on the JACK connection and all mannter of errors came up. I closed the lot. I’m guessing audio is not going to work.

Monitor settings – unable to access monitor settings.

I pulled up a browser and that worked – so the Internet connection (hardwired) was working.

I tried SCRATCH – changing window size resulted in the edges of the program disappearing – as the window resized and the program within didn’t!! No sound.

A check of the Debian release version suggested 7.6 – other commands which might have given more info failed to work.

With the issues I was having – I figured I’d try the other login option-  openbox. That rendered a white screen with no control – only one way out of that.

I’m beginning to see how why the link on the Orange Pi site was blank… but what I don’t understand is.. WHY do people publish stuff that clearly just does not work.

Verdict: Give this one a miss unless you know something I don’t.

Pete