Tutorial: Orange Pi 5 Klipper Install

The Orange Pi 5 is the latest single board computer (SBC) from Orange Pi and it is clear with this one that they are targeting the high end SBC market that was historically dominated by the Raspberry Pi 4. With offerings of up to 32gb of RAM, an 8k video capability and a fast 8 core 64bit processor it just might have the hardware to challenge the Pi.

All that said this is a 3d printing blog and as such I will be showing you how to put Klipper onto the Pi 5. Personally I’d say it is overkill however if you are someone who runs 1 or more HD webcam streams or utilises a single SBC to drive multiple machines then this could be for you.

Because people are struggling to get hold of Raspberry Pi’s I’ve seen a big demand in alternative cheap SBC sources. I have also seen a lot of questions arising on whether or not it’s possible to install Klipper on it. Well today I’m going to answer that question and take you through the process.

Specifications

The Orange Pi PC is available for £66 to £100 depending on the specification you pick plus taxes. It has a promising specification except for one major flaw… It doesn’t have built in WiFi. I am not sure why they made this omission because most users expect almost every device to be WiFi enabled these days. Thankfully it is easy enough to pop a USB dongle in and it does have a standard ethernet port available.

Hardware Specification

SoC	Rockchip RK3588S (8nm LP process)
CPU	• 8-core 64-bit processor • Big.Little Architecture: 4xCortex-A76 and 4xCortex-A55, Big core cluster is 2.4GHz, and Little core cluster is 1.8GHz frequency.
GPU	• Arm Mali-G610 MP4 “Odin” GPU • Compatible with OpenGL ES1.1/2.0/3.2, OpenCL 2.2 and Vulkan 1.2 • 3D graphics engine and 2D graphics engine
NPU	Built-in AI accelerator NPU with up to 6 TOPS, supports INT4/INT8/INT16 mixed operation
PMU	RK806-1
RAM	4GB/8GB/16GB /32GB（LPDDR4/4x）
Memory	• QSPI Nor FLASH 16MB • MicroSD (TF) Card Slot • M.2 M-KEY Socket
USB	USB3.0 × 1 USB2.0 × 2 Type-C (USB3.1) ×1
Video Output	• HDMI2.1, up to 8K @60Hz • DP1.4 (DisplayPort), DP1.4 and USB3.1 ports are multiplexed, and the port is shared with Type-C • 2 * MIPI D-PHY TX 4Lane, configurable up to 4K @60Hz
Camera	• MIPI CSI 4Lane • 2 * MIPI D-PHY RX 4Lane
Audio	CODEC: ES8388 • 3.5mm headphone jack audio input/output • Input: Onboard MIC • HDMI 2.1 eARC
Ethernet	10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet
Expansion Port	For extending UART, PWM, I2C, SPI, CAN and GPIO interfaces.
M.2 M-KEY Socket Expansion Slot	Support PCIe NVMe SSD Support custom PCIe Wi-Fi6+BT5.0 module
Button	1×MaskROM key 1×Recovery key 1×On/Off key
Power Source	Support Type-C power supply, 5V @ 4A
LED	Power indicator: red Status indicator: green
Debugging	3 Pin debug serial port (UART)
Supported OS	Orangepi OS（Droid）、Orangepi OS（Arch）、Ubuntu、Debian、Android12

BOM

• Orange Pi PC Aliexpress
• Micro SD card (<=32gb) Aliexpress Amazon
• USB micro wire Aliexpress Amazon

Unboxing

The Orange Pi comes in a small cardboard box with some instructions and an EU plug (Not much use for me in the UK but at the end of the day it is USB C powered so most people will have a power supply available already). The board was in a sealed antistatic bag as is expected with most circuit boards.

The board is slightly larger than the Pi 4 and the IO pins DO NOT match meaning you cannot use it as a drop in replacement with shield or pre-wired cables to the IO breakouts. The PCB itself looks nice and clean, parts are oriented nicely and there aren’t any obvious soldering or solder mask issues.

A lot of these boards come with heat sinks. This one did not and as of yet performance has been ok without it but I’d be tempted to add some in the future anyway!

There is no paper based use manual but it can be downloaded from here.

Setting up the OS

Head over to the Orange Pi website and download the OS. There is currently a good selection of available OS’ but I’d recommend going for the desktop version of Debian to keep things as close to a stock Pi as possible.

To write the OS image to the card I like to use the Raspberry Pi imager. Open the OS image in the Raspberry Pi imager and then select the SD card. Note – The SD card should be formatted with FAT32 and the download came in a compressed format that I had to extract before the imager would accept it. Click write and then yes to acknowledge that any existing data on the SD card will be wiped.

Wait for the image to write to the SD card. This can take quite a while so grab a cup of tea or do whatever else you do to pass the time.

Insert the SD card into the board. Connect the board via ethernet to your network. Lastly plug in the USB C for power.

You should see a red light and soon after some flashing blue lights around the ethernet port. Use a network scanning tool like advance IP scanner or your networks configuration interface to locate the IP address of the board.

Open a terminal client like PuTTY and use the IP address to SSH into the device.

You should be greeted with a command line interface prompting you to enter a username and password. Enter username ‘orangepi’ and password ‘orangepi’

At this stage if you want to use WiFi you will need to plug in an external dongle (and reboot). Run the command ‘nmtui’ then select activate a connection. You should see the following dialog with a list of WiFi networks discovered. Pick your network and enter the password to join the network. An Asterix * will appear next to the network if it connected. Quite this dialog once happy.

Congratulations your SBC is up and running!

Installing Klipper

We will be using KIAUH to install Klipper and the associated packages.

First off we need to make sure git is installed. Paste and run the following command. It should already be there but there is no harm in checking!

sudo apt-get install git -y

Next install KIAUH. run these command one at a time. You should now have successfully installed KIAUH.

cd ~

git clone https://github.com/th33xitus/kiauh.git

Next launch KIAUH using the command below. You should be greeted with the menu for installing Klipper, Mainsail and Moonraker!

./kiauh/kiauh.sh

Press 1 and enter to go to the install menu. We are going to work our way through the installed in numerical order. Start with Klipper (1) then Moonraker (2) then Mainsail (3). If you are familiar with this process and know what you want you can start adding extras but otherwise you can add them later. You will likely be prompted for the sudo password during this. Enter it (note no text appears when doing so) and press enter. Installing these will take a while. Choose y for all the options as you go along. Note I suggest using Python 3.x as it is now the recommended version.

Once complete enter b to go back to the main menu. You should have a status that looks like this. If you do press q and exit.

Either use the IP address you found earlier for an ethernet connection or complete the next step to find the ip address for the WiFi device. Enter ifconfig and them look for wlan in the printout. The IP address we are interested in should be listed as inet. Copy that address into your browser and hopefully you should be greeted with a Mainsail user interface.

You will almost certainly have a Klippy error because you haven’t defined a board yet.

Plug in your controller board of choice and find the serial port using the following command. You should get the serial id you need to paste into your Klipper config.

ls /dev/serial/by-id/*

And thats it guys! you are ready to move onto setting up your printer controller board.

Follow instructions specific to your board to flash the firmware and then update your printer.cfg file as per any other Klipper install! Hope you liked it and that this helps some people out who are scared of using a non-official Raspberry Pi board!