Originally this was going to be titled the Newbies guide to installing an Orange Pi… But I ran into issues recreating the install. The tutorial starts below the vid.

The concept I wanted to show was that with just a laptop running Linux, a home wireless router and the Orange PI we could easily set up a OrangePi without a monitor and keyboard. The problem is when I tried to test and recreate this same scenario multiple times with my same equipment it failed 2 out of 10 times. So this will not be a definitive guide but a helpful setup strategy.

It’s easy to say the OrangePi hardware is very unreliable. Also if I attached any USB WiFi card right away for some reason it would make the on board NIC inaccessible. The OrangePi also was very picky on which USB ports worked. I suspect a power issue on the USB ports but I did have a steady working port… I just had to trial and error to find it.

So for my new installs I just did not place any USB device in the OrangePi until I was ready and after applied full updates and upgrades and the RDP package was installed.

It should also be noted that if the SD card is not written properly, on windows machines because of the extraction this is typical, it will not boot! In fact it will look DOA or broken. The Pi’s do not have a BIOS so the software that is loaded into the boot partition runs the commands that normally would be found in a computer BIOS… So if no lights come on or it looks dead in most cases you will find that the card was not written properly and the Pi can not see the BOIS setting.

If the SD card is not the proper speed it will not boot! So make sure you properly extract the image if you are on windows and make sure you have a fast card.

 




 

So with that in mind Lets begin.

This tutorial will need:
A computer with Linux.
A home router / WiFi access point.
Ethernet cable.
Orange Pi with Micro SD card.

Download Packages:
Angry IP scanner.

My suggestion would be Fedora 23 Linux. You can download a bootable working image from the site.

You will need to download the OrangePI image. I am using Ubuntu Vivid Mate.

First we need to verify which model of OrangePI we are using. Download the proper image for your Orange PI version, in my case it is OrangePI PC ver 1.2

After downloading then transferring the image to the MicroUSB using the Linux Image restore tool we will insert it into our OrangePI. By Using the builtin disk restore tool in Fedora it makes this process much easier and the image does not need to be extracted, Linux will do it all for you.

Fedora > Disk > Write image to disk

We will then connect the OrangePI straight to our wi-fi router by using an Ethernet cable.

We will then search for the OrangePI on our home network by using IP scanner such as Angry IP Scanner.

Once found on our network we will connect to the OrangePI by using SSH in Linux Terminal. Open up terminal and type the following”

ssh -l orangepi 192.168.X.X

The -l (lowercase L) is the main login username, in this case orangepi

The user name is orangepi and Password is orangepi.

We accept the security token granted to us by initiating the SSH and enter our password: orangepi

We should be in, orangepi@OrangePI will appear at the top of your terminal, we are now an extension of your OrangePi!!!

 

You must sudo all commands!

 

The order is specific. Resize, update first, add xrdp & then upgrade

Resize the partition to use the extra space

sudo fs_resize

sudo reboot

 

We then update the system.

sudo apt-get update

 

in the vid it goes very fast but you need to install the RDP package onto the Orangepi. This is so we can RDP from windows or Linux box.

sudo apt-get install xrdp

 

Now these OS’s are tricky and you may actually have to run these commands a few times for it to start.

After you have installed xrdp and have the system updated then we need to upgrade the OS.

sudo apt-get upgrade

 

From here we can reboot the system.

Next we can RDP into the OrangePi still using the Router Ethernet connection.

We have now set up the OrangePi to be used by both SSH and RDP. At this point you should be able to try to install the WiFi adapter, this will probably need more research.

You can use lsusb to list the devices in any USB port.

lsusb – list usb port devices

ifconfig – list network connections seen by the OS. Hint.. If your new connection is not listed here then its not seen.

 

 

Final thoughts.

I did not try this with the OrangePi version of Android.

First the images seem to not be consistent in design which also affects the hardware, depending on OS version USB or Ethernet ports may not be available.

I also ran into issues after installing the OS and my first boot if I had attached a USB WiFi adapter.

So in conclusion I was not able to make a concrete way of starting Orange PI for beginners BUT I have developed a way of approaching your first install, this method worked 8 out of 10 times.

The OrangePI may not be reliable as a Pi PC but you can still get it up and working to run some small projects. I have mine set up as a web server running Damn Vulnerable Web Application which is a pen test site where you can practice hacking