Orange Pi i96 Getting Started Guide

Recently I reviewed the Orange Pi Zero 2 and thought it was a fantastic board. I really like the amount of polish that the Orange Pi line of products have as it is the closest I have seen to anything approaching a Raspberry Pi experience. We also benchmarked the Orange Pi Zero 2 and determined it’s a very capable board.

I recently got a Orange Pi i96 (thanks munecito!) and this board is very exciting because it was purchased on sale for ~$10! That is insanely cheap. The reason it’s so cheap is because it’s a headless board that doesn’t contain any display-out ports.

If you are going to be using the board headless anyway (I use most of my SBCs headlessly) you may be able to save a fortune with this board. Let’s get started!

Hardware Used

Getting Started

EDIT: I now recommend using my fixed Orange Pi i96 image as it will fix your USB port to be able to operate at full speed and give you a much newer OS of Debian Bullseye.

Alternatively you may use the official images (not recommended for this board). If you’d like to use the official images instead head to the official Orange Pi downloads page:

Now select the Orange Pi i96 from the list. I will be using Ubuntu Linux for this guide but you may use Armbian as well.

If you are wanting to try Android I highly recommend seeing my Orange Pi Android Installation Guide as the installation process is different than Linux.

Writing the Image

The images are typically distributed as a .tar.gz file. The name of the Ubuntu image tar.gz file at time of writing was OrangePi_i96_ubuntu_xenial_server_linux3.10.62_v0.0.4.tar.gz.

We will need to extract this file. If you are using Windows then grab 7-zip to be able to extract a .tar.gz file.

Inside this file will be a .img file. Since I downloaded the Ubuntu image the name of my file was OrangePi_i96_ubuntu_xenial_server_linux3.10.62_v0.0.4.img. This is the image that we are going to write to our SD card.

There are several choices to write the image to your SD card. If you are on Windows I recommend Win32DiskImager. Etcher is also available for Windows/Linux/Mac OS X.

Write the image to the SD card using your preferred software.

First Startup

Before starting up you should make sure that the Orange Pi’s switches are in these positions (indicating to boot from SD card):

We’re ready to put the SD card into the Orange Pi i96. But how are we going to connect to the device? There’s no network port and the device isn’t configured to connect to our WiFi yet.

Connection Option #1

If you happen to have a USB to Ethernet adapter that is the easiest way to connect to the device for initial configuration:

Connection Option #2

If you have a TTL to USB serial debug adapter* you can use that as well. See the OrangePi instructions for that method.

Initial Configuration

orangepi-config Utility

Once you’ve connected it’s time to do some basic configuration. We will use the tool orangepi-config:

sudo orangepi-config

You may now set the WiFi settings, etc. The orangepi-config is just like raspi-config if you’ve ever used that on a Raspberry Pi.

Don’t reboot before doing the next section.

Fix Second Startup (Debian / Ubuntu)

You will notice if you reboot the device it will often not come up the second startup. This is especially likely if you performed a sudo apt dist-upgrade.

To prevent this I recommend removing the alsautils package. This will impact sound functionality on the board but as I was not using it and intended to use this more as a headless board this was fine for me.

sudo apt purge alsa-utils

If you need to have the sound working on the board there is an alternate solution available here.

This is not necessary in my Legendary image as it has kernel fixes for these issues (highly recommended)

Set Timezone

Replace my timezone with yours in the following commands:

rm /etc/localtime
ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Denver /etc/localtime

Setup Locales

Setting the locales isn’t in orangepi-config (such as it is in raspi-config) but here’s a quick way to set them:

sudo apt install locales -y
sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

Setup Wireless CRDA Regulatory Domain

For the wireless to function very well at all you need to set the wireless regulatory domain.

If you are not using my image then you will first need to install the crda package with:

sudo apt install crda -y

Now we can set the regulatory domain by editing the following file:

sudo nano /etc/default/crda

At the bottom of the file there is this line:

REGDOMAIN=

Put the 2 letter country code for your country. Mine is “US”. Once finished press Ctrl+X then Y to save the file.

Optional – Upgrade Debian OS to Buster/Bullseye

Note that this will not upgrade the kernel. You can upgrade everything else though including all the way up to Bullseye. You should do this one release at a time and start with “Stretch” and then do “Bullseye” afterward.

If you are using the Debian installation you can upgrade to Buster by editing your /etc/apt/sources.list file.

Change all instances of “stretch” in the file to “buster” and then do the following:

sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade -y

Once this has completed reboot the system (make sure you’ve done my fix second reboot section first by purging alsa-utils). Verify you are on Buster with

cat /etc/os-release

for example:

root@orangepii96:/# cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="10"
VERSION="10 (buster)"
VERSION_CODENAME=buster
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"

Now you can upgrade to Bullseye. It’s almost the same as upgrading from Stretch to Buster but there has been a change in the security updates server format. Here is a working “Bullseye” apt sources file for the Debian Orange Pi i96 image:

root@orangepii96:/# cat /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://ftp2.cn.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib non-free
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://ftp2.cn.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/ bullseye-security main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://security.debian.org/ bullseye-security main contrib non-free

Once you’ve changed the files do a sudo apt update and make sure you don’t see any errors. If everything looks okay start the Bullseye upgrade with:

sudo apt full-upgrade -y

After a reboot you should be on Bullseye! We can verify this with cat /etc/os-release:

orangepi@orangepii96:~$ cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye)"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="11"
VERSION="11 (bullseye)"
VERSION_CODENAME=bullseye
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.debian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://www.debian.org/support"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://bugs.debian.org/"
orangepi@orangepii96:~$ uname -a 
Linux orangepii96 3.10.62-rel5.0.2+ #4 PREEMPT Wed Mar 18 18:49:25 CST 2020 armv7l GNU/Linux

Notice that the kernel has not changed at all (as cautioned at the beginning of the section) but everything else on the system will be Bullseye!

Performance Benchmarking

I benchmarked the board using a SanDisk Extreme SD card on my Pi Benchmarks web site. This gives us comparable results between boards and there are over 30,000 benchmarks submitted for various boards / storage devices.

I had a total score of 497. This was below average or off from an average Raspberry Pi setup by about 47%.

To be clear the storage performance on the board is relatively low compared to the Orange Pi Zero 2 or a Raspberry Pi (Zero or 4). That is to be expected for a price of around ~$7-$10.

I’m not sure I would say this is a disappointing result though. We are talking about a board that is a single digit number of dollars. For the price point that is fantastic performance! In fact for the price point it’s a wonder that it works at all.

Conclusion

It’s a great board. At a price point of $7-$10 it reminds me of the really, really old Raspberry Pi Zero days where you could actually get a Raspberry Pi for around that price point.

The Zero 2 is a significantly more powerful board. It benchmarked much higher than the i96 but it also costs significantly more. If you need more power that board will be a better choice. If you’ve never had an Orange Pi before I would recommend the Zero 2 first as this board is quite a bit trickier and has more outdated software available for it.

The version of Ubuntu on this board is also quite old (Ubuntu 16.04 / Xenial) compared to the Orange Pi Zero 2 which is actually running a modern 5.X kernel whereas this one is a 3.X kernel. Make sure that is not going to be a problem or you will want to step up to a higher Orange Pi. The i96 is definitely meant for simple services / projects that don’t need a lot of power. It’s perfect for those.

If you need a headless board then the Orange Pi i96 may very well fit the bill for you, the price is certainly right! Don’t skip the heatsinks though. It got very warm during testing (warm enough to freeze once during consecutive benchmarks) and Orange Pis are known to get quite hot!

Other Resources

I highly recommend using the Legendary i96 Debian Bullseye image available here

I’ve also reviewed the Orange Pi portable monitor here

Don’t miss my Orange Pi Zero 2 Review / Tips / Guide for another great board (with display connections)

I’ve also reviewed the Orange Pi 3 LTS which is roughly equivalent in power to a 2GB Pi 4

If you’re trying to set up Android definitely see my Orange Pi Android Installation Guide

For the fastest storage options check out my Linux storage benchmarking script