The company I work for will be realizing an embedded project using Orange PI. I can use any tool I want, but the project will be on a Orange PI (A very small chance of Raspberry PI). Does any one have FPC running on Orange PI? If so would you be willing to help me get set up? I am totally unpracticed in Linux, but am sure I can get into it.

Thanks in advance,

Andreas

I have not used the Orange Pi, but reading the site www.orangepi.org it seems to be a clone of the Raspberry Pi and it also seems like there are 9 different models of it.
So in order to come further:
Which exact model are you thinking of using?

I have used FPC/Lazarus on a range of Raspberry Pi models now on RPi3B and it has worked just fine. One has to install carefully from the command line to get the proper versions, but I have written a script to do just that. It works on the Raspbian operating system (a Debian version) and basically does all you need to get the stuff on board. However, it uses a starting fpc compiler built for the RPi3B, which is downloaded from my site (since I could not find a suitable compiler only download). This may or may not work on an Orange Pi device...

Warning:
On their site's download page are listed a number of instances of Raspbian, but these are not the current Raspbian versions. The ones I found are from 2015-06-06, 2016-11-08, 2016-11-12 and 2016-11-16.
So it seems likely they are tweaked versions of the "real" Raspbian, which might cause concerns down the line.

Why not go with the original Raspberry Pi instead?

Bo Berglund wrote

Why not go with the original Raspberry Pi instead?

I found a test video on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzy914jLU_w

Seems like going original RPi is better.

At the very least I'd suggest starting off with a pukka Raspberry Pi as a familiarisation exercise, since it's a popular platform and they've a got good support forum. It also makes it much easier for the rest of us.

Indeed. I would disagree with them that it is a clone..

It's similar but not a clone. It does not run your typical Pi operating system and it looks nothing like a Pi, it's basically a completely different Pi altogether, not a clone.

Not criticising you, as you are not the one claiming it is a clone - they are.

I have been meaning to try my Orange Pi... bought a few to try.

I just disagree that it is a clone and was disappointed when I found out it's really just a "similar computer to the raspberry pi" but in no way a have to download custom operating systems that run on it, not the pi OS. So how is that a clone..

And, it does not look anything like the raspberry pi so again how is it a clone? it has similar ports but not a similar layout. The only thing it has in common is the size, it's small... But then you could say a BeagleBone is a clone of a Pi, but it's not.

Big advantage of Orange Pi is the cost for all the ports you get.

Gosh!
My main reply point was NOT the word "clone"...

My point is that the Orange seemed to be a clone or a derivative of the RPi by the info on their website. They even list Raspbian (clearly for the RPi) as one of the operating systems, so that is why I questioned the use of Orange over the original RPi.

With the Rpi there is a lot of experience in running FPC/Lazarus available on these lists. With Orange it seems like you are much worse off, basically on your own.

And Andreas wrote "I am totally unpracticed in Linux", which makes his task even more difficult.

So, Andreas:
Go with a standard RPi3 and get to know the way it works, then if you are OK try porting what you did to the Orange if the company forces it on you.

Bo, thanks for your two answers. I'm also pushing RPi, but the company is looking price. However, it looks like the OPi is closing the gap so who knows what will be when the company makes the final decision. It was good to see that if FPC works on RPi it should work on OPi.

Bo, when the time comes for me to start working on any Pi, can I get in contact with you to help get FPC started?

Coming from a guy who hears about all the pushing, proving, planning, cost analysis, and everything involved to get a new box of pencils (Ok, bit sarcastic there, but with all seriousness, my teams ESX server is 4 years out of warranty) that something needs to be done for a company, from a financial point put it to your superiors the cost in turn around time on what its going to cost them to employ you to figure out something that isn't wildly supported as the RPi.

I didn't know there were precompiled versions of fpc for the raspberry pi. I had to compile my own when I setup my pi2 nearly 2 years ago. It wasn't difficult, but it did take quite a bit of time, even with the 4 cpus going for the compile. :)

However, it is relatively easy, if a bit long of a process to compile your own fpc for the pi.

I didn't know about the orange pi. I shall go take a look. I haven't gotten my pi3 working yet, something is wrong with my image I think, or perhaps I'm not using a powerful enough power cable, though I thought the pi2 cable would work on the pi3, <sigh>. I knew about the banana pi, and I've heard of others though I've not checked them out in detail, once I saw price wasn't comparable to the raspberry pi, but orange is a new one on me.

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Using multiple OrangePI-PC's here

Haven't loaded FPC/Lazarus directly on the OPI, but I am running apps pre-built (on an Odroid UX4) using fpc/lazarus on it.

So far all good - except

the following functions fail (within fpc/lazarus calls)

Params all return blank - so cant use Param(0) etc ApplicatioName returns blank
ProgramDirectory returns blank

There may be others, but haven't hit them yet.

I have work-arounds for these if you need them

SteveG

Thanks Steve, some of those blanks could be irritating. I am really encouraged by how people are willing to help. When the time comes those workaround could become handy, especially since I don't have a clue about the linus API.

Andreas

Andreas Berger wrote

Bo, when the time comes for me to start working on any Pi, can I get in contact with you to help get FPC started?

Shure, you're welcome!

You should report your findings to the bugtracker so they can be fixed.

That sounds like the OS has mangled the shell in some way.

I have work-arounds for these if you need them

And from the Orange's webpage each model has its own set of possible OS:es so there is a chance that it will actually work somewhere, but who knows where?
With the RPi we know it works and there is ample developer support to plug a problem fairly quickly.

Cyrax wrote

You should report your findings to the bugtracker so they can be fixed.

The FPC or Lazarus or RPi or Raspbian or Orange bugtracker? Not clear to me.

I agree. Most of our RPis are actually running Debian, but in extremis it's always possible to roll back to Raspbian as a baseline configuration.

There are of course other small boards: Olimex, Odroid and now Asus. However RPi does offer a fairly flexible and cost-effective range, and unless the OP is considering shipping hundreds rather than 10s of boards I suggest that getting onto both the Linux learning curve and one for minority hardware is quite simply not cost-effective.

First test: OP to do

echo $0

If that doesn't show the name of the shell, possibly prefixed by - , then it's definitely an Orange problem. In other cases please post a minimal FPC (i.e. not Lazarus) program showing the problem, telling us /exactly/ what version of FPC is being used.

In our previous episode, Mark Morgan Lloyd said:

The problem is that rpi has no fast storage interface (like SATA), some of the more expensive orangepis have sata. (though I'm not entirely sure if it is not bridged via usb)

In our previous episode, Mark Morgan Lloyd said:

Storage is one of the factors the HW developers mentioned. The system using the Pi will be doing a LOT of information logging. I personally don't know if it is a factor since all log info in coming in on a 10MBit ethernet so it shouldn't overload the file system. We have a project using a Blackfin that save data (in similar proportions) on a SDCard.

That's true and is obviously a major point. I've got an RPi3 on my desk and even though it's not using its SD-Card for live storage there are mystery slowdowns which suggests that something's hogging the USB.

But it /is/ fairly painless for (32-bit) FPC and for Lazarus, running KDE but with most programs targeting GTK2. I've run an Odroid C2 enough to respect the hardware and low-level firmware but to be a bit dubious about their bundled Ubuntu, and more than anything else that's a sign that there's quite simply not enough people using it.

And speaking as the one person who more than anybody else has bullied the community to keep things like SPARC going over the years, I'm keenly aware of how frustrating it can be when people agree that it's worth fixing something but not enough developers have the required hardware (or space, or tolerance for heat and noise :-)

A colleague's just pointed me at ongoing discussion of the new Asus board, where somebody's observing that "OrangePI also offer a solution with integrated bootable eMMC"

I had an Odroid/Hardkernel eMMC module fail a few weeks ago, and my understanding is that I'm by no means the only person to have seen this. I also believe that the manufacturer is keenly aware of the problems... but at least it was a removable device and once pulled the board will boot from SD-Card.

Being able to plug an ordinary SD-Card into a Raspberry Pi is definitely one of its strong points. It's a bit unfortunate that it doesn't use one of the standard boot loaders (U-Boot, OpenFirmware or whatever) but it generally /just/ /works/, and it doesn't rely on having an onboard component which can only be fixed by JTAG when it breaks.

Now one might argue that as long as it works or at least can be fixed, the boot loader isn't relevant to something like FPC and/or Lazarus. But I'm currently playing with an Arduino-compatible board hooked onto the RPi's console port, and to get that working I had to change the kernel command line: for an RPi that meant editing a text file, while for many other boards it would mean updating Flash.

I've got a normally very cautious engineer colleague who for the last two or three years has been saving CCTV frames onto an SD-Card without problem. I think he's still some way from filling it.

My understanding is that there are two issues that need to be considered:

i) Each cell on that sort of device can only be written a certain number of times before its performance degrades. For FAT etc. that includes the directory area, which will be getting updated in situ even if the remainder of the filesystem is only being written (i.e. to virgin blocks).

ii) A power failure during a write or update is particularly risky.

So far I've had an eMMC module and a couple of (identical) thumb drives fail during normal operation, i.e. not through power removal.

The article below, from the well-respected Bunnie Huang, illustrates some interesting problems affecting what would be expected to be quality devices. https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?page_id=1022

I don't know anything about your intended use/design, but network storage is always an option. I quite successfully connect to other computers on my pi to store extra materials if I need additional backups, including copies of the sd card image for booting the pi, and although the access isn't exactly lightning fast, it's plenty fast enough for most purposes. Assuming the pis aren't going to be out in the field or something, there's nothing preventing you from using a file system mounted on the pi that physically exists on another system elsewhere on the network, but if it comes to that, there's plenty of thumb drives, external hds, and various other devices that plug in via usb that will work just as well. I had multiple external hds plugged into my pi via the usb ports, and there was no issues whatsoever with them. I had an 80GB IDE drive in an external case plugged in via usb, and I had another drive that was a 500GB SATA drive in an external case also connected to the pi via usb, and transferring files from pi to drive or indeed from disk a to disk b worked perfectly well. It took time due to the limitations of usb transfer rates, but it worked with no trouble. mounting network shares works too. I used to transfer files to my wife's windows machine this way.

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote

A colleague's just pointed me at ongoing discussion of the new Asus board, where somebody's observing that "OrangePI also offer a solution with integrated bootable eMMC"

Industrie Solution with Raspberry

https://revolution.kunbus.com/