Dear community!
Is it possible to support the NanoPi R5C for usage with balenaOS?
https://wiki.friendlyelec.com/wiki/index.php/NanoPi_R5C
Since the NanoPi R5C is a very powerful device, I think that many developers would benefit from supporting it.
Thank you very much!
Best regards,
Matthias
Hello @fellwell5 first of all welcome to the balena community!
I will share this device with our devices team but i’m not sure it is on the list of the next devices that will be compatible with balena.
Could you please share the use case where you think this is a powerful device?
Thanks
Hello Marc @mpous !
Thank you very much for your warm welcome.
Our volunteer firedepartment is developing a software solution for displaying emergencies for responding firefighters and alerting them with a mobile phone application.
We are in need of two ethernet ports, because we need to connect a proprietary device which provides us with the information over the telnet protocol. The second ethernet port is to connect us to the internet.
We really like to use balena for our software solution, because it provides us with important features for our fleet managment, because we are working voluntary on this project and want to provide other fire departments with our free tool to help them respond to emergencies.
Thank you for your support!
Best regards,
Matthias
Thanks @fellwell5 for sharing more details about your project! It sounds like a great project.
I checked on the internal requested devices for balenaOS and sadly I don’t see the NanoPi R5C in the list.
My recommendations here are 2 if there is a chance to select another hardware:
first suggestion here is to select an x86 device type with 2 ethernet ports. The x86 usually are compatible with balena.
alternatively you can select a Raspberry Pi (e.g.) or similar and try to find a USB to Ethernet, if that makes sense to you.
Let us know what are the next steps on your project!
Dear @mpous !
Thank you very much for your reply!
I searched for alternative devices and stumbled across the Nano Pi R2S, which is listed as compatible with balena.
Can you tell me: Is the Nano Pi R2S Plus also compatible? The plus version would be WiFi compatible.
Best regards,
Matthias
Hello @fellwell5 the main problem with the NanoPi R2S Plus is that is only supported up to balenaOS version 2.98.11. This is probably a 1 year old balenaOS version.
We are automatising the OS updates and at the moment these devices are still not included in our atomatic system to test the new releases of hostOS updates. We still do not have a clear roadmap of when these devices are going to be included on the Autokit process.
I understand that you want to use this device due the low price, right? If you have one, try it with balena as it’s going to work and in the meantime we can try to find solutions without changing any line of your code.
I will also ping the devices team to explore what can be compatible with your needs!
Thank you @mpous !
We are in need of a device with two ethernet ports, because it has to communicate with the existing emergency information system, which provides us with the information we want to visualize.
The other one is to connect to the internet.
The NanoPi series got in our eye, because they provide a small form factor, are not expensive and have models with two ethernet ports.
We are happy to use another device which is supported by your platform.
And appreciate your advice.
I saw the Nano Pi R2S on the device page and asked myself if the Nano Pi R2S is compatible, because it would also support wifi for remote locations in the firedepartments.
Is the Nano Pi R2S up to date?
Hi @fellwell5,
The NanoPi R2S is supported, but it hasn’t made it into our automated testing suite yet, so the OS version is out of date.
Are you able to share your project timeline? It might be that we could get it added in time, but we have a few boards in line right now that need to be added, so I would just want to better understand if it’s possible logistically for us to do.
Hi @the-real-kenna,
we’re currently developing our cloud connector software and are planning to deploy it to other departments later this year.
It is good to know, that we can use balenaOS with this device and are looking forward to get the newest version. We would like to start developing with the current available version.
Does a version overview exist, where I can look into the roadmap?
And will the NanoPi R2S image support the NanoPi R2S plus as well?
Thank you very much for your work and your much appreciated help!
Apologies for the delay. I had to attend a few conferences and then got the flu, so I’ve been a bit hard to reach lately. 
I wanted to let you know that I’ve created a project internally to get the NanoPi R2S added to our automated testing rig (AutoKit). We don’t have the Plus version, just the R2S, so if you’d prefer us add that one I’d like to ask you to send us one if possible?
I don’t know when we’ll be able to get this work completed yet though; our next work-cycle review is the week of May 20th, so I’ll know if it gets slotted into the pipeline by the end of that week. I’ll keep you updated. 