OrangePi Zero 2W Expansion Board not operating

General Discussion
1

I recently purchased an OrangePi Zero 2W to replace my RPi Zero Version 1.1.

I loaded up DietPi 10.1.2 that was listed for an OrangePi Zero 2W and all was working great. I’m only using it for Tailscale at the moment, nothing fancy until the hardware is fully functional.

Then unlike the RPI, there are no power switch contacts on the OrangePi so I ordered and installed the Expansion board. Before I purchased the OrangePi, I downloaded the Usr Manual and Schematics. I’m fairly smart about electronics and computers, and such. But after reading the User Guide and surfing the internet for a few days, I have only come across one similar posting on this forum about the expansion board power on/off issue and the advice given there was not very helpful, at least to me. So it is time to put my pride down and ask for some assistance.

The Results:

  1. The OrangePi Zero seems to be operating fine.
  2. The Power On LED is on for the Expansion Board.
  3. The Power On/Off button on the Expansion Board does not work.
  4. The Key1 when pressed will restart the Pi if I previously ran poweroff command. So this key seems to be acting as a Power On button.
  5. I have to install evtest and when I run this, it only shows me one item (sunxi-ir), no other items at all.
  6. No amount of the Expansion Board key pressing will halt the Pi.
  7. I do not believe the Power On/Off button is software controlled, it looks like it is using the PWRON signal to toggle this line low (active). I still need to place a meter on it, just incase I have a defective Expansion Board. I can’t rule this out as a possibility. Too bad this signal doesn’t have a test pad. I will be tracing the circuit board traces on the Expansion Board, I should be able to find a point there.

My questions:

  1. Is this possibly the version of DietPi I have installed? It is Trixie which is fairly new.
  2. I noticed a note about the fact that the Zero 2W verison is the same as the Zero 3W but without Ethernet, and my Expansion Board does have an Ethernet connection. I will attempt to install that version to see if it helps, but after that, I’m not sure what else to try.
  3. I could add my own Shutdown Button and use a GPIO pin, I’ve done that on a few RPi’s but this is not an RPi, this is an OrangePi, so there are some differences I’m certain.

Any advice would be appreciated. In the meantime I will try a few different software packages. The OrangePi Zero 3W (DietPi), if that fails, the full blown OrangePi software package (not DietPi).

Thanks

2

Disregard. Where in the User Guide does it state to hold down the Power On/Off button for 10 seconds for it to activate? Did I miss it? I found this out by accident, after I installed a different OS. A 1 second press, a 4 second press, notta. A 10 second press and it works.

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