There is an old expression that ‘you can only make one first impression’, so today I decided to meet the Banana Pi R2 for the first time. I created an SD card on another machine, and purchased a new keyboard and mouse for it, I already had an HDMI monitor.
On reading the ‘getting started’ page there is a conflict on the power supply spec: in the left column it states a 12V supply, in the body of the table a 5V. Which is correct? I first tried a 5V supply and nothing happened. Then a 12V and still nothing. Finally I connected a powered USB to the OTG port and it appeared to power up. It took a while but the OS booted up. Is there a way to bring it up without a USB connection? Seems weird to have both, and our intended application does not have another machine kicking around. It did seem to work on the 5V supply, and when the USB connection was removed it seemed to stay powered up.
The first thing I wanted to ascertain was how to drive the various Ethernet ports. I did not see any ethxx on /dev, how are they implemented? For the four port switch: is that one Ethernet presence to the processor or many? Is there some documentation on the Ethernet part anywhere?
Regards