Tutorial: Orange Pi 5b Klipper Install

The Orange Pi 5B is a powerful single-board computer designed to cater to the needs of developers, makers, and hobbyists who are looking for an affordable and versatile computing platform. This board is powered by a high-performance Rockchip RK3588S octa-core (quad-core A76+quad-core A55). Notably unlike the Orange Pi 5 (Which I wrote about here) this version comes with built in WiFi 6 and bluetooth 5.0 With its impressive specifications, the Orange Pi 5B is an excellent choice for a wide range of applications, including home automation, media centers, gaming consoles, and much more.

The Orange pi 5B is really shaping up to be a genuine Raspberry Pi 4 competitor however I’m here to show you how to install Klipper on it. The specific version I am testing has 8Gb ram and 64Gb EMMC storage.

Specifications

The Orange Pi 5B is available from around £105 (plus tax) depending on the specification. Specification wise the board is similar to the Orange Pi 5 but as I mentioned earlier now comes with WiFi built in. It is probably overkill for a Klipper installation unless you need multiple webcams or to run multiple printers.

Hardware Specification

SoC	Rockchip RK3588S (8nm LP process)
CPU	• 8-core 64-bit processor • Big.Little Architecture: 4 * Cortex-A76 and 4 * Cortex-A55, Big core cluster is 2.4GHz, and Little core cluster is 1.8GHz frequency.
GPU	• Arm Mali-G610 MP4 • 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	• 32GB/64GB/128GB/256GB eMMC • MicroSD (TF) Card Slot
USB	USB3.1 * 1 USB2.0 * 2 Type-C (USB3.1) * 1
Video Output	• HDMI2.1, up to 8K@60Hz • DP1.4 (DisplayPort), maximum output resolution up to 8K@30Hz • 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
Wi-Fi, BT module	On-board Wi-Fi6+BT 5.0 module, Wi-Fi6 interface: PCIe, BT interface: PCM+UART
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）、Debian11、Ubuntu22.04、Ubuntu20.04、Android12

BOM

• Orange Pi 5B Aliexpress
• Micro SD card (<=32gb) Aliexpress Amazon
• 2 x USB c wire Aliexpress

Unboxing

The Orange Pi comes in a small cardboard box with some instructions. Mine did not come with any accessories 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 user 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.

The Orange pi 5B has built in storage which can be used instead of an SD card. The process is a bit more complicated than using an SD card so if you want to install the OS via SD card check out my instructions for the Orange Pi 5B because the steps are identical (just use the OS you downloaded above).

Download the RKDevTool and driver from here. You can click the folder and then the download icon to get everything you need in one go. Once downloaded unzip all the folders.

Find DriverInstall.exe within the DriverAssistant folder.

Run the .exe file to install the driver. Then click install.

Plug your board in using the USB C port closes to LCD connector (Note this port won’t power the board – we will use the second USB C port to do this later on. DO NOT plug it in yet)

Next navigate to the RKDevTool folder and open the config.ini file. By default the tool language is in Chinese and if you are reading this blog English is probably your preferred language option. Swap the Lang1file and Lang2file around.

Now open the RKDevTool and it should prompt you that no device is connected.

Locate the MaskROM button. You need to press this down while plugging in the second USB port to provide power.

If successful the RKDev software should now indicate it has detected a MASKROM device.

Right click in the table area and choose load config

Navigate to the miniloader folder and choose the rk3588_linux_emmc.cfg file. Then click open.

Next click on this box and open the MiniLoaderAll.bin file.

Next click on this box and select the Linux image we downloaded earlier.

Make sure to tick the write by address box then click Run.

The status box on the right will give some updates as the installation occurs but it will take quite some time on the downloading image step. If everything worked the last line should read ‘Download image OK’ and the board will no longer be connected.

Your device should now be ready to log into Linux. You have two options here. Plug in a keyboard, mouse and a screen or connect via ethernet and detect the IP address by checking what devices are on your network.

The device appeared with an accurate name (rare for chinese SBC’s!)

SSH into the device by opening a terminal window on your PC and using the command below substituting the IP address of my device for the one you found above. You will be prompted for the password which by default is “orangepi”

You can now use ‘nmtui’ command to connect to your WiFi network.

That’s it you are ready to install Klipper!

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 ‘ip addr show wlan0’ and then 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 that’s 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!