Orange Pi 5

RedMarsBlueMoon

I think I saw some ETA prime video where he took an old office dell and probably added some bits to make it work better. Very cheap for sure and probably ended up more powerful than an OPi5. But you then have a much bigger form factor and not the exciting funsies of an Arm chip.

Some recent news regarding more focused(?) support for Arm Mali Mesa,

https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/a-helping-arm-for-panfrost.html
https://www.arm.com/company/news/2023/07/arm-expands-open-source-partnerships

Iv'e been creeping a bit on the Panfrost IRC and they do talk about Vulkan support and improved performance for the Opi5 Mali chip (I forget the name, G610 ?) but not for a few more months still (3-4 ?) if I interpreted the chatter correctly.

George Spiggott

@RedMarsBlueMoon said in Orange Pi 5:

Very cheap for sure and probably ended up more powerful than an OPi5. But you then have a much bigger form factor and not the exciting funsies of an Arm chip.

Agreed, there's a playoff in a number of areas but it would be interesting to see what performs best in a pure cash vs capability play off. Going rate for the 8GB model Opi5 seems to be around £70, it's actually quite hard to compare like for like as the Dells are second hand and come with additional parts the Opi5 doesn't (case, PSU storage). I found an Optiplex 3020M (i3 4150T, 4GB RAM, 500GB HDD) for £65. I also found this video of games being run on a very similar build.

DarklyAdonic

I have installed Retropie on an OrangePi 5 plus using the installation script from the Ubuntu Jammy Server image from the OrangePi website.

Everything works splendidly (tested GameCube performance at 2x resolution and it worked well), except I can't figure out how to get HDMI audio working.

I had a similar experience in the past with a RaspberryPi build, which was resolved through alsamixer. However, I don't see any options in "orangepi-config" to change the audio device.

Has anyone here had this issue and managed to solve it?

mitu

@DarklyAdonic said in Orange Pi 5:

I have installed Retropie on an OrangePi 5 plus using the installation script from the Ubuntu Jammy Server image from the OrangePi website.

Does it have PulseAudio installed ? You can use pacmd to choose the default audio device (pacmd set-default-sink).

DarklyAdonic

@mitu

I was able to get it working by:
-Installing PulseAudio:
sudo apt install pulseaudio -y

-Finding the name of the HDMI sink by using:
pacmd list-sinks | grep -e 'name:' -e 'index:'

then:
sudo nano /etc/pulse/default.pa

Then adding a line at the end:
set-default-sink YOURSINKNAME

For some reason, the emulation station sound settings still show "0%" as the volume regardless of input or card, but I'm not going to look a gift-horse in the mouth.

DarklyAdonic

I hit another snag with autolaunching emulationstation. I found a solution but it's not ideal.

Autolaunch through RetroPie-Setup (via autostart.sh) doesn’t work with Opi5 plus.

I made my own autostart.sh with the same contents and tried running it with crontab and bashrc.

While both methods successfully load the ES GUI, neither can successfully start a game.

Crontab method had no sound and it seems terminal is still accepting any keystrokes in the background. After launching a game, it crashes to terminal when any button is pressed.

Bashrc method had double sound (two clicks for menu navigation) and when I launch a game it starts flickering and boots me back to ES Gui after I press any button.

However, when I close and manually restart ES from terminal it works perfectly.

I made a brute-force workaround by changing my autostart.sh script to:
"
emulationstation
killall emulationstation
emulationstation
"

This launch ES, I close it, then it immediately relaunches and works properly

If anyone knows what I'm doing wrong so I can get a proper autolaunch, I would be much obliged.

jlegenzo

Weirdly, RetroPie is only working properly on certain TVs for me.

On my old "dumb" 1080p TV, RetroPie works perfectly.

However, on my new 4K smart TV (LG OLED77CXPUA), EmulationStation crashes after I exit emulation of a game (regardless of system). Error message is the standard "Emulation Station Crashed! If this is your first..."

Hardware is OrangePi 5 with Ubuntu 22.04 (Josh Reik Ubuntu for Rockchip).

Anyone else been having a similar issue?

mitu

@jlegenzo said in Orange Pi 5:

However, on my new 4K smart TV (LG OLED77CXPUA), EmulationStation crashes after I exit emulation of a game (regardless of system). Error message is the standard "Emulation Station Crashed! If this is your first..."

The real error is in $HOME/.emulationstation/es_log.txt, maybe try opening the file and see what's the last logged message.

Anyone else been having a similar issue?

HDMI on the OrangePi 5 is hit-or-miss, I wouldn't be surprised if it's caused by it. Or maybe caused by the Wayland support in the SDL version that's bundled with the distro ?

RedMarsBlueMoon

@jlegenzo

For me sometimes a monitor would work with USB-C when HDMI didn't and vice versa.
But its been a while since I tinkered with this so might be out of date and I was testing with experimental kernel builds sometimes.

I also read this morning,

"Orange Pi has the option "NoEDID" "true" for X11 which you could try"

https://github.com/orangepi-xunlong/orangepi-build/blob/next/external/packages/bsp/rk3588/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-modesetting.conf

jlegenzo

@mitu

I checked the error log and only one things was marked error:
"Error - folder with path "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/amstra>"

Since it seemed like an easy fix, I made a folder with that name in my roms directory and restarted. The issue seems to have been resolved because I can exit games without crashing. Seems strange that a missing folder would only cause a crash for certain TVs, but I'm glad it works.

@RedMarsBlueMoon

Thanks for the suggestions

Full error log:
Oct 15 13:11:01 lvl2: EmulationStation - v2.11.2rp, built Aug 17 2023 - 14:45>
Oct 15 13:11:01 lvl2: Parsing XML file "/opt/retropie/supplementary/emulation>
Oct 15 13:11:01 lvl2: Parsing XML file "/opt/retropie/supplementary/emulation>
Oct 15 13:11:01 lvl2: Parsing XML file "/opt/retropie/supplementary/emulation>
Oct 15 13:11:01 lvl2: Creating window...
Oct 15 13:11:02 lvl2: Created window successfully.
Oct 15 13:11:02 lvl2: GL vendor: Panfrost
Oct 15 13:11:02 lvl2: GL renderer: Mali-G610 (Panfrost)
Oct 15 13:11:02 lvl2: GL version: OpenGL ES 3.1 Mesa 23.0.0-devel
Oct 15 13:11:02 lvl2: Checking available OpenGL extensions...
Oct 15 13:11:02 lvl2: ARB_texture_non_power_of_two: MISSING
Oct 15 13:11:03 lvl2: Loading system config file /etc/emulationstation/es_sys>
Oct 15 13:11:03 lvl1: Error - folder with path "/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/amstra>
Oct 15 13:11:03 lvl1: System "amstradcpc" has no games! Ignoring it.
Oct 15 13:11:03 lvl1: System "arcade" has no games! Ignoring it.
Oct 15 13:11:03 lvl2: Parsing XML file "/home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/>
Oct 15 13:11:03 lvl1: System "atari5200" has no games! Ignoring it.
Oct 15 13:11:03 lvl2: Parsing XML file "/home/pi/.emulationstation/gamelists/>
Oct 15 13:11:03 lvl1: System "atari800" has no games! Ignoring it.
Oct 15 13:11:03 lvl1: System "atarilynx" has no games! Ignoring it.

e-zero

Has anyone had success with the Orange Pi 5b and connecting multiple Bluetooth controllers?

dotcom6

@DarklyAdonic which script did you use?

e-zero

This post is deleted!

e-zero

So this is my status with the bluetooth controllers (I have an OrangePi5b using Ubuntu Jammy Server 22.04 from OrangePi site, and RetroPie)

If I try to setup bluetooth via the retropie_setup.sh script, pairing the controllers works, but the pairing doesn't stick after orangepi boot.

If I use bluetoothctl via the terminal, it's the same thing (i.e., pairing works but can't get it to stick on bootup).

Any ideas how to get pairing working during boot up?

snakos47

@e-zero You could use a crontab job to run the script / command at reboot (under root user type "crontab -e" to edit crontab):
@reboot sleep 60 && /path/to/script.sh

pp7

@DarklyAdonic Can you share this installation script? And or instructions. It is no longer on the OrangePi website. I'm having a hell of a time getting retropie to work on the OrangePi 5 PLUS 32gb model. Thanks!

RedMarsBlueMoon

Much improved Dolphin experience with the kernel 6.10 panthor driver + new mesa.

Notes from info box under video:

This disk image was,

Armbian_24.8.1_Orangepi5_noble_current_6.10.6_gnome-kisak_desktop.img.xz

from,
https://www.armbian.com/orangepi-5/

Dolphin compiled from source following instructions for 'Linux Local Build Steps'
https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin

I wanted to use Wayland for this test but it didn't work with Qt6 in this configuration it seemed.
Might not make a big difference though.
Also I would have like to play full in screen mode from desktop and cli but that didn't work for me either. Cheers!

mitu

@RedMarsBlueMoon said in Orange Pi 5:

Much improved Dolphin experience with the kernel 6.10 panthor driver + new mesa.
[...]
Armbian_24.8.1_Orangepi5_noble_vendor_6.1.75_gnome-kisak_desktop.img.xz

So, which one is it ? The link on the download page for the image mentions kernel 6.1, while the Panthor (Linux kernel/Mesa) driver was added - indeed - in 6.10.

AFAIK, while the new drivers are a welcomed addition for open source and overall better Linux support, the HDMI output is still missing the audio support, so you won't get audio to your TV with the new driver.

RedMarsBlueMoon

@mitu

Sorry just realised I pasted the wrong filename. It should be
Armbian_24.8.1_Orangepi5_noble_current_6.10.6_gnome-kisak_desktop.img.xz
(updated above.)

Basically the 6.10 kernel, Ubuntu based, Gnome I think it was. And has mesa pre-installed.
The Mesa is from some forked repo but seems to work. Not sure why they use that. Mesa needs to be of a certain version for Panthor, don't remember exactly which.

Iv'e added some more notes on the youtube info box.
For example,

You'll still need to add to your,
~/.config/dolphin-emu/GFX.ini
a line
PreferGLES = True

and

If you get an error when trying to run a game try first running in the term,
export WAYLAND_DISPLAY=""
to revert the environment to xwayland. (or something like that)

Alternatively use the -nogui version. That doesn't complain about wayland in qt6.

Ahh.. regarding Audio. I got audio in my desk speakers by running a dongle I use for my sons headphones. It plugs into USB and gives me a 3.5mm jack I can plug into the desk speakers. Don't test using the Ubuntu Settings->Audio 'Test' thingy as that seemed broken.
I also got sound by plugging the headphones into the jack of my PS5 controller and using that to play with. But something was a bit janky with glitchy on/off input for some reason so I ended up swapping to an xbox controller I had.