So just got one of those OrangePI PC from ALI Express, it’s one of `rPi` compatible board that have Android 4.4 OS on it. (the other alternatives that I know are BananaPi and ODroid). It’s based on Allwinner H3 processor and most of the OS are based on sunxi kernel
The first thing I do was scourging trough the forum and download Android 4.4 image base for it.
To install the Android image, AllWinner provide tool called `PhoenixCard` that is only available for Windows OS. (Android image is not `dd` able images – so you cannot use `dd` or `piBaker`)
Let me warn you that PhoenixCard is a weird beast (there’s a bug that cause it to intermittently fail) – and it need some compatible of card-reader hardware. So if you experience a lot of failures on burning images to microSD – try other card-reader hardwares (I try 3 types of card reader – a Sony card reader, mac card reader (using VM) and internal generic ASUS laptop card reader – the ASUS one works fine)
Plug the OPIPC to HDMI monitor – it works fine.
The thing is you cannot plug it to DVI monitor using HDMI-to-DVI converter because the HDCP protection is enabled by default – so to plug it to DVI monitor you will need to disable HDCP protection on it. There’s a lot of guide to fix it on the official forum – but most of the time it’s only for Linux based OS.
For Android you will need to go the extra miles.
- Download the `linux sdk source code` for your hardware here (see section Orange PI PC and find the one with linux sdk source code title). It’s a huge file – so prepare some Coffee.
- Extract it into case-sensitive file system (I use VM with ubuntu 14.04 on my Mac, ext4 is case sensitive, mac osx default one is not)
- You will need to download and compile sunxi-tools. We will need fex2bin to convert sys_config.fex to it’s compiled binary version
- Go to the extracted folder. You will find brandy, buildroot, linux-3.4, out and tools folder
- Run `cd tools/pack/chips/sun8iw7p1/configs/dolphin-p1` and edit `sys_config.fex` in it. You will need to find section named `[hdmi_para]` and add these lines
[hdmi_para] hdmi_used = 1 hdmi_power = "vcc-hdmi-18" ; Adding DVI monitor compability by disabling HDCP and enabling CTS-compat hdcp_enable = 0 hdmi_cts_compatibility = 1
- Go to `tools/pack` folder and run
cp -fv chips/sun8iw7p1/configs/dolphin-p1/sys_config.fex out/sys_config.fex > /dev/null 2>&1
cp -fv chips/sun8iw7p1/bin/boot0_sdcard_sun8iw7p1.bin out/boot0_sdcard.fex > /dev/null 2>&1
unix2dos out/sys_config.fex > /dev/null 2>&1
pctools/linux/mod_update/script out/sys_config.fex > /dev/null 2>&1
fex2bin out/sys_config.fex out/sys_config.bin > /dev/null 2>&1
- Patch boot0 using generated sys_config.bin
pctools/linux/mod_update/update_boot0 out/boot0_sdcard.fex out/sys_config.bin SDMMC_CARD > /dev/null 2>&1
- Copy Compiled Uboot and patch using generated sys_config.bin
cp -fv chips/sun8iw7p1/bin/u-boot-sun8iw7p1.bin out/u-boot.fex > /dev/null 2>&1
pctools/linux/mod_update/update_uboot out/u-boot.fex out/sys_config.bin > /dev/null 2>&1
- Write to SDCARD (Change /dev/sdX to use your own sdcard path, it’s /dev/sdf on mine)
cd out
sudo dd if=boot0_sdcard.fex of=/dev/sdf bs=1k seek=8 > /dev/null 2>&1
sudo dd if=u-boot.fex of=/dev/sdf bs=1k seek=16400 > /dev/null 2>&1
After all of that your OrangePi PC Android should be working on DVI monitor.