I bought an Orange Pi today to get a chance to play with another single board computer. Looking forward to receiving it. I hope I don’t live to regret giving Aliexpress my CC number! 
Hahaha…jepolch, we think the same way.
Last night after filling all details at Aliexpress, when I reached the point where I had to ente my Credit Card number, I hesitated, and finally cancelled everything. May be I am too skeptical, or addicted to eBay/Amazon/Paypal. But I have not yet given up idea of buying an Orange Pi. May be in few days I gather enough courage to give my CC number to Aliexpress. The $15 Orange Pi is so alluring!
I’ve bought probably 6 or 7 times via AB over the years including the OrangePI PC, so far (fingers crossed) with no problems. They are now such a seriously large organization, in Asia at least that the credit card providers couldn’t afford to allow too much BS.
Their biggest downside I know of is the lack of support if the item purchased turns out to be rubbish but i guess at 15$ for the OPI PC thats not too big a problem.
jepolch, Which one did you get?
I have decided to place order to Alibaba Express for Orange Pi today. ieand & jepolch taking bold steps boosted my morale. Actually the name “Alibaba” rang warning bells in my mind because of my childhood story “Ali Baba & 40 Thieves” from ancient story book “One Thousand & One Nights”, also known as “Arabian Nights” 
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Just remember, AliBaba was the ‘good guy’ in the story.
I bought this set here: aliexpress.com/item/Orange-P … 86788.html
The higher end Orange Pi’s caught my attention, but the idea was to buy a SBC cheaper than the RPi, not more expensive. This one seems about as capable as a Pi 2. I have no idea how long it will take to get to me from China.
I guess Paypal doesn’t do business with Alibaba. Too bad.
I have used Banggood for about a year. Always use my credit card, never had a problem. Delivery can be between 2 and 5 weeks to Spain. I suspect better to the US and Canada.
Phill
i’ve had my piaware setup off an orangepi pc since around end of september-ish.
works fine.
Order placed. Hope givig my Credit Card number to 40 Thieves…oops Ali Baba , will not lead me into any problems.
Orange Pi PC Board + Transparent case + Power adaptor 110v ac to 5V 2A dc
US $23.00 + postage US $5.89 = US $28.89 = Canadian $38.69 (1 US $ = 1.37 Canadian $).
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When I ordered mine a couple of months ago shipping to AUS was around 12 days, getting closer to Christmas now so who knows…
The main thing that attracted me to the OPI PC in the first place (apart from the price) was the quad core and Ethernet being on a separate bus to the USB (unlike RPI2) so multiple RTL dongles are not a problem. None of the other peripherals mattered much, haven’t even plugged in a monitor yet
I tried a couple of distros but the cleanest install of the usual ADSB stuff came with Debian_jessie_mini.img.xz from http://www.orangepi.org/orangepibbsen/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=342 but i see there are newer builds there so others mileage may vary
@abcd, Don’t you wish for the good old days of the mining boom when all this stuff was as cheap as… 
Over the past three years I’ve made around fifty different purchases through Ali Express, without any issues. As part of the publicly-traded Alibaba group, they have a reputation to protect, so I have no greater a concern about them having my credit card number, than with anyone else.
As with any online platform like Amazon or eBay that hosts many small businesses, you still need to shop around to ensure that you get the value you expect. Check the seller’s ratings, check the number of orders they’ve handled, check the feedback, ask the vendor any questions you have etc. I’ve only had one instance where on a repeat purchase, the well-packed item arrived with a unexpected rattle to it - the item was damaged. After sending a photograph to the seller comparing the first and second item, a refund was quickly provided.
Shipping times to Canada have typically been anywhere from three to eight weeks. Once shipped, the items often take about a week to get to Canada and the rest of the time they slowly make their way to their ultimate destination. Registered Air Mail has changed in the past few months and can now be tracked only up to their departure from China or in some cases their arrival at the first point in Canada.
A couple of months ago I bought an Orange Pi-PC with the plastic case and usb power cable. The package arrived in about 3 weeks, and although the there was no padding material in the small box, everything was in good shape. The power connector is not a common one, but I was fortunate to locate a 5v 3a power pack from an old 2Wire ADSL box that has the correct connector. It’s beeen running 24/7 ever since.
There isn’t the level of support that one can find with other small boards. It took me about four days of fiddling and reading a lot of forum posts to get the thing going, using the Debian Jessie mini image. Installation of Dump1090-Mutability was straight forward, and has been running headless ever since.
In setting up, it’s important to get some specific files in specific places, and you 'll know that you missed a step if it just won’t boot or the network doesn’t connect. I believe that most of the complaints about ethernet and USB not working are because of the incorrect files being copied over.
On Nov 11th they had a huge sale (To give you an idea of how big Alibaba is, btw, their revenue on the Nov 11th sale was in the neighborhood of 14 billion, with a ‘B’, dollars.) I ordered another Orange Pi-PC which arrived this week, and it only took me one day to get it running. I should have made notes the first time.
ABCD, the Orange Pi-PC community could certainly use your skill at writing illustrated step by step guides.
Yes, you are right
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Thanks for the info about delivery times to Canada. I think you are located in Saskatoon in Canada, am I right?
A couple of months ago I bought an Orange Pi-PC with the plastic case and usb power cable. The package arrived in about 3 weeks, and although the there was no padding material in the small box, everything was in good shape. The power connector is not a common one, but I was fortunate to locate a 5v 3a power pack from an old 2Wire ADSL box that has the correct connector. It’s beeen running 24/7 ever since.
I have ordered “set 5” which has a ac to dc 5v 2A adaptor. I have seen others ordering “set 3” which has a usb to dc pin cable, and needs a dc 5v power source to power the Orange Pi.
There isn’t the level of support that one can find with other small boards. It took me about four days of fiddling and reading a lot of forum posts to get the thing going, using the Debian Jessie mini image. Installation of Dump1090-Mutability was straight forward, and has been running headless ever since.
In setting up, it’s important to get some specific files in specific places, and you 'll know that you missed a step if it just won’t boot or the network doesn’t connect. I believe that most of the complaints about ethernet and USB not working are because of the incorrect files being copied over.
Thanks for the useful tips. I will need a lot of these when my Orange Pi arrives.
ABCD, the Orange Pi-PC community could certainly use your skill at writing illustrated step by step guides.
Thanks for the compliments. You being pioneer in using Orange PI, know a lot about it, while I know nothing about it. You are more suitable to write the step-by-step guide for Orange Pi. We do need such a guide.
Yes, indeed ! I’m in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. As much as I’d hoped to get an antenna outside and on the roof, the snow came before I was ready, so I’ll keep tweeking and experimenting to squeeze every possible kilometer out of the indoor antennae. I don’t have the benefit of height, but do have the benefit of being in a relatively flat part of the country, so not a lot of hills or mountains to get in the way. With the three indoor antennae in different corners of the house, I get almost complete coverage out to 300km, with several reliable strong spots ranging from 350-400km, and the occasional valid surprise even further.
Being somewhat central in Canada, traffic from Asia to the east coast via Anchorage crosses over us, and traffic from the west coast to Europe also passes overhead - makes for a good mix of aircraft.
With the Orange Pi, I first ordered set 3, and subsequently ordered set 2. The second one I hope to run using wifi, but that still seems to be a challenge.
With so many of you jumping on this Orange Pi PC, it seemed like a good time to buy one since I’m sure there will be ideas aplenty to sort out any problems.
And fortunately I could buy from a UK supplier - one OPi plus extras like abcd567 has ordered would just have slipped under the UK tax limit but current time of 39 days is a long time to wait.
So for £16, I now have an “Orange Pi PC” (next day delivery!) - unfortunately no more OPi left now at that price. Had to go and buy a power supply with the correct fitting.
I couldn’t get Debian_Jessie_mini to boot at first but OrangePI-PC_Ubuntu_Vivid_Mate worked first time. Once I copied uImage from the Ubuntu version to the Debian version, everything worked - minimal Debian with just a console.
And I successfully installed dump1090 and Piaware (now version 2.2.0 so some changes to compilation). Just need to check it is receiving ok.
Looks like this will be releasing a Pi2 from Piaware duty.
my exeperience was similar a few months ago with the orangepi pc. Put the ubuntu image on the sdcard, apt-get installed the software. It was sufficiently uneventful i don’t remember much of it.
It was sufficiently uneventful i don’t remember much of it.
Agree - but reading comments on the internet, I expected a whole load of problems. Not so. 
Good to see another OPI up and running.
Did you try the uImage from the scriptbin_kernel.tar.gz archive?, normally the kernels and video stuff in there are the most recent versions.
Did you try the uImage from the scriptbin_kernel.tar.gz archive?,
Yes but no immediate success. Once I realised that the Ubuntu version worked, I just used the uImage from there and didn’t explore further.
Not sure if anyone else has noticed that the power supply needs to have a 4.0 x 1.7mm connector. Apparently the PSP uses this and the model PSP-103 PSU supplies 5v with 2A max. Available used on eBay or new from another Chinese retailer Banggood.com - ordered one last night for £2-21 including delivery, and they take PayPal. Usual wait for it to arrive but nice price. Meanwhile I’m using my multi-voltage power supply with the correct tip.
Please be very careful with cheap Chinese power supplies. They can be extremely dangerous.
Have a watch of this: youtu.be/T88ej64aXUM