Orange Pi RV2 $40 RISC-V SBC: Friendly Gateway to IoT and AI Projects
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thoughtful
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mixed
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tech
Key topics
RISC-V
SBC
IoT
AI
The Orange Pi RV2 is a $40 RISC-V single-board computer that sparks interest in IoT and AI projects, with discussions around its capabilities and limitations, particularly regarding GPU support.
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This results in a higher performance per Watt, but doesn't scale well to higher-power applications.
For example, on the CPU one may pin all cores to stream a USB camera or software decode h264. With the SoC GPU decoding or streaming with the v4l2 interface might take up 30% on one core (mainly to handle the network traffic.)
The Raspberry Pi are not the fastest or "best" option (most focus on h264 or MJPEG hardware codecs), but the software/kernel ecosystem provides real value. Also, the foundation doesn't EOL their hardware often, or abandon software support after a single OS release.
A cheap RISC-V SBC is great, but ISA versions are generally so fractured (copied the worst ideas of ARM6)... few OS will likely waste resources targeting a platform that will have 5 variants a year, and proprietary drivers.
A Standard doesn't even need to be good, but must be consistent to succeed. =3
I wouldn't say "never", but a clone is highly unlikely for another decade or so. =3
A patent is an alternative to a trade secret. You can't eat your cake and still have it.
Some groups have attempted open IP cores, and made some progress:
However, the effort involved in getting standards compliant ASIC built puts folks in a Fabless manufacturing sector. Most firms that survive, will choose to stay with a generic FPGA option to avoid custom silicon unless absolutely necessary.
Patents are often useless/vague in many places, but on occasion may prevent platform decay for a few years. One can be sure a unique/new design will not go to fab unless such protection is in place. =3
Publish the software that does this for free so that more customers come to you instead of using FPGAs or just not making the attempt. Make it easier to design new chips so that more people do it and you get more customers.
People have tried, but helping other competitors for free rapidly decays the market. =3
Rule #23: Don't compete to be at the bottom, as you just might actually win.
This Orange Pi RV2 has a small vector unit in each core, and could be used for at least prototyping the software until more powerful chips are available.
BTW. There have also been a couple hardware startups that have been working on commercial GPUs based on RISC-V's vector extension, with their own GPU-specific instruction set extensions for texture lookup and the like.
RISC-V has a fragmented ISA standard, and every version is a magical unicorn part (the worst facet of ARM6.)
A Standard doesn't need to be good, but must be consistent to succeed. =3
And there have been some others as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_graphics_...
Recently https://www.furygpu.com/
Part of the problem is that every ASIC manufacturer (and indeed each fabrication process) has a different toolchain with a different set of primitives for circuit design. Yosys and other open tooling for FPGAs has helped a great deal in lowering the barrier to chip design and by association reuse of circuits. But every ASIC, at the moment, is tied to some vendor's PDK. Here's the one Google open sourced for Cypress Semi's SKY130 process node: https://github.com/google/skywater-pdk
That said, the actual processor cores in this SBC seem to max out at 256 bit registers, which does not seem to be a lot.
And I think a language like golang can be a really really nice fit given how it can be compiled really fast towards risc-v as well
Maybe java also runs in risc-v I am not sure, surely people are working on java support I suppose.
People buy risc-v to support an open standard and to not worry about licensing fees.
Isro (india's nasa basically) uses some risc-v chips to not license arm chips etc. because of either better national security (to have less arm influence) or because they don't want licensing fees given how rudiculously price efficient isro is.
But what I cannot accept is the truly awful documentation and software support from the vendors. This is where Raspberry Pi shines, and is IMO one of the most significant factors in its success. I'm excited that RPi is dipping their toes into the RISC-V pool with the Hazard3 cores in the RP2350- perhaps they will be able to release a Raspberry Pi RISC-V edition board some day.
But I'm hesitant to buy one of the current RV SBCs, so I guess I'm part of the problem.
I'm also surprised that there aren't any startups producing small, simple CPUs and SOCs outside of China (as least, none that I'm aware of). Is there no investment available in India, N. America, Japan, Europe, Israel (* not bringing the current situation into this, just noting they have chip fabs)? Fabricating chips is not cheap, but the first ones don't need to be the top-of-the-line TSMC 3nm process.
What that leaves is a need for good documentation, but Orange Pi does have that: http://www.orangepi.org/orangepiwiki/index.php/Orange_Pi_RV2
If you're not working on RISC-V-specific development, than it isn't a product for you, but with step-by-step guides for building uboot and the linux kernel, as well as running various LLMs on the TPU, it is very well supported for the current RISC-V audience.
Whats the go there? Is there no distro like Raspbian supporting it?
They provide official OS images at release but don't care much afterwards.
Most customers couldn't port software to an SBC, but for the ones who can, having all of the documentation makes it trivially easy, and having any that share their work makes it available to the whole community.
Check out the Oz64 documentation, (https://pine64.org/documentation/Oz64/_full/) which includes schematics and links to the datasheets for all of the major components. Raspberry Pi products, on the other hand, need some pretty intense reverse engineering to develop on: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/reverse-engineering-a....
For my use case, and most Pine64 customers, I'd rather have the hardware documentation than off-the-shelf official support for a software stack. Raspberry Pi has an entirely different user base.
Orange Pi fills a similar niche, and really anyone releasing RISC-V SBCs at this point does too, as it's too early into the development of the architecture for microprocessor-level products.
Regarding RISC-V SBCs, there was serious consideration to release the Milk-V Oasis with SG2380 and LPCAMM2. But this didn't work out as the SG2380 was held up by geopolitical issues.
but it's an x86 system and pricey, and borderline not an SBC
memory is soldered in most of these smaller systems including the Orange Pi and it's the main price differentiator
RAM is by far the most expensive thing in those systems past the very lowest specs, this one goes from 2GiB to 8GiB AFAICS (amazon page: https://www.amazon.com/Orange-Pi-RV2-Development-Ubuntu24-04... )
the Orange Pi 5 plus comes with 16GiB but the price jumps to US$160+ or 32GiB for US$ 270+
The whole point is offloading load from CPU and doing something in parallel while NPU does its thing.
So far....nothing. Not even an ETA on when they will be shipping hardware.
My fear is that they could be in endemic Japanese death spiral disease of hand-wavingly waiting for massive orders while not doing much to secure one.
There are so many cool stuffs and perfect plans from Japanese large companies and government agencies that are pushed forward up to one step before volume production or commercial rollout and then stalled until funding dries up and everyone moves on. Which, if I were to explain by speculating, might be due to people prioritizing own job security over corporate revenues, due to low psychological safety and perceived invincibility of large organizations, as one among many consequences of employment ice age phenomenon.
But whatever the mechanism is, it'll be sad if this one follows that path. Hopefully they make and ship them in substantial numbers. That should be their goal anyway.
- go to https://developer.spacemit.com/
- click on documentation
- click on Keystone
- click on K1
I need one of such devices for my self-hosted services. And it will be time to port from C to assembly, really, because we have finally a CPU ISA which is 'sweet spot' balanced, standard, global, pushed forward with significant resources and without IP locks anywhere. No more developer/vendor lock-in via "the only compiler able to generate correct machine code", extremely hard to do planned obsolescence, etc, we need mainstream adoption NOW :)
The main blocker: how do I buy such device with a noscript/basic (x)html browser? And no way I use a credit card on a web site: would require well identified bank swift account, or wallet codes bought from local and physical currency terminals. I don't know of any local retailers I can buy such device from. Yep, the "web geniuses" at amazon (which supports wallet code) broke noscript/basic (x)html support a few years ago.
Run a VM or a container with a full-blown browser, then throw it away.
Get a merchant-locked, ephemeral credit card at privacy.com or equivalent, or buy a preloaded anonymous card.
Problem solved.
I've bought RISC-V SBCs from both Pine64.com and Arace.tech, and neither required I make an account. Arace.tech does require JavaScript to checkout, but Pine64.com does appear to work without it, although I didn't complete a transaction without it. Pine64.com also accepts USDC payments, but no other cryptocurrency.
That said, 'privacy.com' does not deserve anymore trust than all the shaddy stuff already out there...
They only have RAM and flash in the hundreds of megabytes, not gigabytes, but they can run full Linux and are as capable as many household Wi-Fi routers. They include USB, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and wired Ethernet ports, and even have MIPI CSI and DSI interfaces for cameras and displays.
If this is a practical application, I would recommend sticking with ARM for this generation, as RISC-V is still in early development. In a year or two we should start getting more standardized RISC-V processor implementations, with broader support.
Have you looked into what someone suggested here, splitting the NVMe to some SATA ports? It didn't sound like a horrible solution, but I have no experience.
https://gist.github.com/faried/6955a992c6d68362fd1e07a1cd575...
I own one since a couple months ago but I already regret the purchase.
But as a basis for IoT projects that's perfectly fine. They're meant to be install and forget.
This is me with every single SBC
One is currently running Scripted to integrate my unifi cameras to HomeKit. Zero fans.
I've equipped the other one with 2 beefy 22TB HDDs, Tailscale and Minio. I'll send to my parent's house to act as remote backups.
A good example. There is also a link to builscripts.
However there should be next year, and quite likely a couple of different choices by the time Ubuntu 26.04 LTS is officially released.
Waiting until 28.04 for RVA23-optimised code would be far too late.
My notes from that little project are here -
https://www.hydrogen18.com/blog/orange-pi-rv2-first-look-ker...
Regardless of the Linux distribution, it's still way to early to get good support for RISC-V. Current products are good enough for general development, but RVA23 was ratified less than a year ago, and I don't know of any designs started after the ratification that have hit the market yet. Once that's the case, it should be easier to get universal support, but until then, every RISC-V SBC is a one-off development board.
Sucked too as I lost $300 but hopefully helps open source community anyway
I used to occasionally buy a single board computer ~10 to ~5 years ago.
Then I waited until SBC's reached the 32GB RAM level. The first such affordable and performant board was an Orange Pi 5+ or 5B (I should double check, may add a comment later).
I believe I wanted the Orange Pi 5+ but it was sold out, so I ordered and paid for the Orange Pi 5B (the 2 ethernet port variant) which was a bit more expensive but was still for sale. Both had 32GB RAM, my main requirement. There were multiple "flavors", with power adapters or with case or with memory card or eMMC etc. I chose the memory/eMMC version.
I sent a message to ask them to give me heads-up when they are about to ship mine, and then I was patient.
Then I waited, and waited, and waited.
Too patient, after a long while I start looking up on forums if other people are also waiting. I discover I am not the only one. So I take up contact again and ask when the board will be shipped.
They inform me the SBC is no longer manufactured, and offer me inflation-devalued currency.
I check which single board computers they still sell, and indeed they no longer sell the 5B variant, but now the 5+ is back in stock.
I ask them if they can just ship me the 5+ instead of the 5B. They refuse.
OK, I ask them how much I can pay extra so they ship me the 5+ instead of their unilaterally discontinued 5B.
They refuse.
A few months pass by. I ask again if they intend to ship the 5B as agreed, or the 5+ as a substitute.
So here comes the orange Lie:
They claim they shipped it, and provide a DHL link.
I first name (same as my father's) is German, even though I live in Belgium.
Their DHL link, is a shipment to somewhere in Germany, with a weight far below the weight of a single board computer, and which was delivered just minutes before their sending this message claiming shipped delivery.
I confront them that the weight of the SBC is advertised on their own site, and their DHL delivery link lists a value far below it, that I live in Belgium and the shipping address was in Belgium (I have 0 links to Germany), and that the timing of the delivery and their response message is so close it suggests people at customer support (presumably without arbitrary access to deliveries outside of the case) asked colleagues to let them know if a case pops up with a German delivery, so they can manually copy and paste bluff delivery of product X to customer Y as if it was my order to me into the message.
I confront them and ask them to answer a numbered list of questions.
They refuse to answer the questions (they can't without incriminating themselves), instead they offer me my money back.
Don't buy into the orange lie.
If you work for Orange Pie, feel free to msg me with a way to contact you, if you positively resolve my case I will remove this message.
EDIT: adding the seller on Amazon.nl was BestMii, and they were linked as the sellers from Orange Pi website.
Amazon only has a single listing for any given product, and all distributors, whether authorized or not, are under the same listing. When there's more than one distributor, you can choose which one to order from, but the buy now button follows a default.
If it isn't too late, I would highly recommend disputing through Amazon, as disputes are the only way Amazon addresses problem distributors. Many know how to game the system, so if you communicate directly with them, they will try to delay you until after the dispute period has ended.
they were directly linked from the Orange Pi 5 website.
Its their responsibility they direct their customers to dubious distribution systems (IF THAT IS THE CASE).
We should never reward orders or preorders in any fast devaluating area (like electronics) to be reneged after inflation: this would allow manufacturers to post-select a financial path: if less inflation than expected fulfill order, if more inflation than expected renege the deal.
I simply report what happened to me.
Orange Pi should fulfill my order, which I paid for, and still patiently await to see the board. If they feel it is the fault of Amazon (the platform of their choice) or the distributor of their choice, they can complain there and ask them for remuneration for reputational damage and cost of unfulfilled orders.
All I know, is that I paid via the Orange Pi endorsed channel and never received the board.
I have the right to warn others.
Hiding behind front company distributors to pull of inflation postselection tricks or whatever malice or incompetence it turns out to be should not be rewarded.
Also strangely, I am unable to load the https version of www.orangepi.org even though it was available in the past:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CKVPWJVL?ref=myi_title_dp
I also just discovered the dropshipping policy (and necessary requirements and forbidden practices).
Either they had an agreement with Orange Pi or they didn't. Either way this gives leverage to ensure my order gets fulfilled.
I'm sorry you have this experience but it's definitely not typical.
The work required to build an actual secure, maintainable product on top of an SBC is so big that you'd surely never use one of these. The hard work is all in software. You need a supplier with product lifetime guarantees and a known SoC manufacturer.
If you're a hobbyist, unless you really don't value your time you'd be much better served buying an x86 PC or a Raspberry Pi for whatever project you've got. Any money saved buying one of these would be completely negated by the extra time taken to maintain it.
So who's the target market? Are there products out there built on these? Or are they mostly just shipped straight into desk drawers? How many of these do they actually ship?
Many of these boards serve as development boards for the parts they include. If you want a dev board to try this part or you need a cheap RISC-V system to test RISC-V things on, buying one of these is an easy choice.
Right. An SoC takes five years and tens of millions of dollars.
An SBC using that SoC can be designed and made in three months for the cost of a small team's salary -- possibly even just one person e.g. see Paul Stoffregen of Teensy fame, or Jonathan Oxer at Freetronics. I'll bet the teams at Sipeed, Banana Pi, Orange Pi etc are pretty small too.
They make decent home servers, unless you need fast storage.
Hobbyists, mainly.
I could see this being a hit with people who want to work with RISC-V, which still needs a lot of low-level stuff built out for its ecosystem. You don't need it to be a screamer, just for it to run predictably.
Remember, the Raspberry Pi was mainly a hobbyist curiosity when it came out. There's definitely a market.
We need easily accessible documentation on the hardware so anyone can maintain the software. The problem I see is most SoC makers either have poor or no publicly available documentation. Their poor excuse for "open source" are undocumented Linux drivers for their black box hardware and a near obsolete kernel that they may or may not update.
These chips are made by big companies for big companies and not hobby people. They expect that you're going to buy in volume, sign NDAs and possibly license IP from them. The chip goes into a product that is likely never going to be updated and thrown out in 5 years.
If only you knew the ecosystem in China and Taiwan. Even a fraction of the Chinese domestic market alone is enough.
I might just buy one to play with it for two or three hours and then throw it in a closet. Cheaper than going to a movie and more entertaining!
All people who want to optimize software for the RISC-V Vector extension, as this is the most afordable SBC which supports it.
The value proposition of using SBCs is in their embedded connectivity; in addition to standard USB/network/HDMI ports they tend to have built-in connectors for:
* MIPI input, for video cameras
* MIPI output for LCD panels
* i2c and SPI for weird peripherals (accelerometers, temp sensors, etc)
* i2s for sound
* GPIO and timers/PWM for custom peripherals like motors/servos, contacts, programmable LEDs etc.
Might research this a bit more. Of course even if there's no perf improvement but perf/watt is better, that be valid too. But sounds very marketing speaky
The entire platform is more for development of RISC-V software, especially at the operating system level, than it is an end-user product. There's still a lot of development needed to get RISC-V perf/watt, even with acceleration, to match ARM and x86 systems. I would expect at least a couple of years until then. RISC-V microcontrollers are already getting there, competing well with M0, but that's an entirely different market.
I'm not sure if any RISC-V boards support ACPI, and Unified Discovery is not even specified yet, so ... yeah probably don't buy this. We'll get there.
Not bad at all, but the OpenWRT image still didn’t have Wi-Fi support a week or so ago, so I don’t know how good software support is going to be in the long run.
So far, all the RISC-V SBC's I've tried were woefully under-powered compared to a comparably-priced Raspi.
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