Banana Pi and Pi-Star

General support for the Pi-Star System
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m0ppr
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Mar 16, 2022 1:19 pm

Banana Pi and Pi-Star

Post by m0ppr »

Hi All, for obvious reasons I decided to buy a Banana Pi, it works for what I need (not pi-star related project) but I could not resist and I checked if it would work with Pi-Star - it sounds like it does not work. Is there any solution to run pi-star on banana-pi?

PS. In case somebody does not know, Banana Pi is a clone of Raspberry Pi
AF6VN
Posts: 821
Joined: Fri Jul 20, 2018 1:15 am

Re: Banana Pi and Pi-Star

Post by AF6VN »

m0ppr wrote: Wed Aug 10, 2022 10:36 am PS. In case somebody does not know, Banana Pi is a clone of Raspberry Pi
Apparently not a "clone". A "work-alike" at the user level, perhaps. Note that the Pi-Star download page has (out-dated) builds for NanoPI, Odroid, and Orange-Pi, indicative that they too are not clones.

Looking at the Banana-Pi web site, none of their products use a Broadcom SoC, so the actual processor boot and device tree settings are likely quite different from a Raspberry-Pi (the R-Pi actually loads the first stage boot into the GRAPHICS processor, and IT then configures the ARM processor(s) is the SoC before loading second stage boot into RAM and transferring control to the ARM).

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AF6VN
Dennis L Bieber
M1DNS
Pi-Star Team
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Re: Banana Pi and Pi-Star

Post by M1DNS »


m0ppr wrote:
PS. In case somebody does not know, Banana Pi is a clone of Raspberry Pi
The only similarity to a rasp. Pi is its also a SBC.

We currently do not offer support for the hardware you mention, neither are we looking to support any other SBCs than what we cater to currently.

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Andrew M1DNS.
Pi-star Admin Team.
YD6HQL
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Joined: Wed Nov 02, 2022 1:42 pm

Re: Banana Pi and Pi-Star

Post by YD6HQL »

why not provide support to other devices. while outside so many similar devices.
Raspberry Pi is already hard to get, especially Raspberry Pi Zero which is no longer in production (the raspberry mentioned)
M1DNS
Pi-Star Team
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Re: Banana Pi and Pi-Star

Post by M1DNS »

YD6HQL wrote:why not provide support to other devices. while outside so many similar devices.
Raspberry Pi is already hard to get, especially Raspberry Pi Zero which is no longer in production (the raspberry mentioned)
Join the team, help us develop for this board, can you dedicate your time and /or add funding for additional costs towards resources needed to support other boards?




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Andrew M1DNS.
Pi-star Admin Team.
WA1OKB
Posts: 14
Joined: Mon Mar 23, 2020 5:11 am

Re: Banana Pi and Pi-Star

Post by WA1OKB »

YD6HQL wrote: Tue Nov 08, 2022 2:05 am why not provide support to other devices. while outside so many similar devices.
Raspberry Pi is already hard to get, especially Raspberry Pi Zero which is no longer in production (the raspberry mentioned)
Where did you get that the Pi Zero is no longer in production? It most certainly IS still in production.
DG0LFL
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Jul 30, 2022 2:09 pm

Re: Banana Pi and Pi-Star

Post by DG0LFL »

A BananaPi-M2zero is hardware-wise identical to the OrangePi-Zero or the NanoPi-Neo.
But unfortunately the BananaPi-M2zero does not boot with a Pi-Star image from the OrangePi or NanoPi.
A Nano/Orange image has a FAT-boot-partition, an Armbian image uses ext3/4-only!
An Armbian-Debian-Buster with a SunXi kernel 5.xx.yy starts, but a MMDVM-Hat is not recognized - and causes boot problems!
Either the boot loader is built differently, or the parameters do not fit for the boot process.
And: Either it does not fit voltage-technically, or in the GPIO control still something is missing, for the recognition of the HAT board.
(I can control i2c and spi, but something is still missing).
But since Andy & Co. unfortunately do not offer a universal installation, and the existing images do not boot, a BananaPi currently fails as a Pi-Star-Hotspot! :-(
M1DNS
Pi-Star Team
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Re: Banana Pi and Pi-Star

Post by M1DNS »

They might look the same but firmware and hardware on these boards varies dramatically. As well as the underlying OS.
Showing that all boards are not the same when judged solely on appearances.

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Andrew M1DNS.
Pi-star Admin Team.
DG0LFL
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Jul 30, 2022 2:09 pm

Re: Banana Pi and Pi-Star

Post by DG0LFL »

You're right about that. I'm trying to get a BPi with a single HAT to play.
The endeavor is pretty tricky.
I'm pretty far along in the meantime though.
The base is an Armbian-Buster with a kernel v5.10.60, Mmdvmhost and Dmrgateway, completed with the Dashboard.
The only thing that doesn't work so far is the small OLED display of the single HAT.
I ran the Arduino OLED patch for the BPi, but after rebooting I get a "brm2835_init -> Permissions-Error" when initiating the Oled.
As solution "gksudo" is suggested - but this is not available in the Debian-Buster anymore!
Now I am missing an idea here to address the display via i2c, or to correct the permissions error ?!

Should the Pi-Star team have an idea for this, I would be very grateful!
Unfortunately, there is not much information on the Internet on the subject of BPi + PiStar!
But since images of the NanoPi are available, an Oled control for the BPi should also be feasible?

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