Hello,
how can I enable SPI (/dev/spidev…) on orange-pi-zero and up-board (UP^2) platforms?
Many thanks.
Rostislav
Hi @spinarr, for those devices, how does enabling work in other OS? As quickly checked, for the OrangePi it is a similar mechanism as the Raspberry Pi with a armbianEnv.txt file on the boot partition? I think if so, we don’t yet support that, but will open an issue for our internal issue tracker to discuss and add.
For the UP^2, does it have those /dev/spidev... devices available if you connect to the host OS? If it already has, then you might just need to set the service you use privileged: true and it should show up inside the containers too, as per our documentation Interacting with Hardware.
Hi @imrehg,
- orange pi zero armbianEnv.txt
verbosity=1
logo=disabled
console=both
disp_mode=1920x1080p60
overlay_prefix=sun8i-h3
overlays=usbhost2 usbhost3 spi-spidev uart1 uart2
param_spidev_spi_bus=1
param_spidev_max_freq=100000000
rootdev=UUID=a2c25aee-d15d-4aa7-8f41-ab6bb511776f
rootfstype=ext4
usbstoragequirks=0x2537:0x1066:u,0x2537:0x1068:u
- up2
SPI devices are not available
Thanks.
For the OrangePi, where have you put this file? Is it on the resin-boot partition of the SD card? (in the running system / host OSit’s /mnt/boot/).
Also, would not add anything extra except what you need (i.e. no rootdev, rootfstype, etc… as that can mess with the system)
We are checking with our team whether this is supported by balenaOS.
For UP^2, checking with our team, maybe the kernel modules are not compiled in, but need to check on a device.
- opi zero
This file is present when using armbian distro.
Using balenaOS is not present.
- up2
Using ubilinux/ubuntu distro SPI needs to be enabled:
https://wiki.up-community.org/Pinout_UP2#Installing_ACPI_overrides_to_enable_spi_in_userspace
we are checking on both accounts with our device support team, and will get back to you with more info.
@spinarr currently the armbianEnv.txt for overlay support is only an armbian feature that they have built. We plan to add this functionality to balenaOS, but currently not being worked on. Hopefully we can find some engineering resources soon to work on this or someone from the community will pick up the task. it will be incredibly useful to have 
On the UPboard SPI, we have created an issue to track it here https://github.com/balena-os/balena-up-board/issues/74 so if you are interested, add your finding there and our team can work on getting it working
Thanks.
Is it also possible to create issue for OPI Zero board?
How does community know about the task?
I will check UPboard SPI issue.
We have one tracking internally, but I will add a corresponding one on this repo https://github.com/balena-os/balena-allwinner and we can track it there as well.
Issue for the OPI zero here: https://github.com/balena-os/balena-allwinner/issues/78
Hi, any information regarding this?
Hi @shaunmulligan is there any news on the SPI issue on the UP boards? I see some work has been done but I have not seen an OS release for the UP with the fixes in. Do you know if this will be released soon?
Cheers
Chris
hey @ChrisMoorhouse,
Indeed, we recently did some work in this regards and you should be able to edit the ssdt overlays from the dashboard for UP device type applications. However, this requires supervisor version >= v10.9.2 which will be available in the future balenaOS version. Unfortunately, we cannot provide an ETA for the OS release at the moment.
We could help update the supervisor version on your current device if you would like to test the feature in the meantime.
Let us know.
Thanks
Hi @rahul-thakoor that’s really good news. I would like to do some testing of this feature as I am trying to bottom out a design for a LoRaWAN gateway based on the UP2 and need SPI in order to communicate with our LoRa concentrator.
Do you have a document describing the process to update the supervisor or how do I go about doing it?
Cheers
Chris
sync
Hi @lucianbuzzo, not sure I understand your reply?
Cheers
Chris
Hi Chris
There was a problem earlier this week regarding message syncing between balena forums and our internal support platform, so I believe Lucian was just testing whether it’s working 
Regarding your question - I’m looking into it now and will let you know as soon as I have an answer.
Kind regards
Alida
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Hi @ChrisMoorhouse I was smoke testing our support platform and posted the message publicly by mistake, sorry for the confusion 
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Hi again
Updating the supervisor separately from balenaOS is something we would do for you. Could you please enable support access on your device, and send me the link in a private message? (Once you have done so, please just let us know in this thread as well.)
Thanks!
Alida