Hi,
have anyone implemented FriedlyElec NanoPi R2S recently?
I’m encoutering conflicting information on the power suply connector. Is it an MicroUSB-B or an USB-C cnnector?
On it’s Wiki page, it says MicroUSB: power input and USB Slave but on the figure immediately below, it says USB-C.
Are there diferent versions of hardware?
Best
According to
it's USB-C for for power input.
In fact what OP mentioned was true: There were 2 different versions of R2S, however FriendlyElec didn't make another product code for the USB-C powered one.
The old one from an online review indicated that it was really using micro USB as power, but later when I purchased it almost 3yrs ago it's already using USB-C power.
Here is what I guess: NanoPi has another product released after R2S not too long time, called R2C, same base platform and board layout as R2S, except the USB NIC changed from Realtek RTL8211E (R2S) to Motorcomm YT8521S (R2C), and power changed from micro USB to USB-C.
The R2C wasn't discussed too much because at that time the YT8521S has no upstream driver for quite long time, and I think FriendlyElec wants to unify the board to a single one so they changed all micro USB R2S to USB-C, I remember when I received the USB-C version R2S I was shocked and thought FriendlyElec sent me R2C, but later I found that it's really R2S and I simply use the same R2S OpenWrt firmware on it.
Hi fakemanhk,
Thank you very much for the very complete and enlightening answer.
As soon as my R2S arrives, I'll post a picture here to document this fact.
Have a nice week.
Best, carliedu
I have an original R2S that I used to create the WikiDevi page back in Oct 2020 that has USB (Micro-B) Female for power input. It has "NanoPi R2S" and "V1.0 1912" silkscreened on the top and bottom of the board. The Friendly Elec Wiki page shows an image of the board with USB (Type-C) for power input. This image shows “NanoPi R2S” and “V1.1 2009” silkscreened on the board. So it is likely safe to assume that anything after V1.0 of the board will have USB (Type-C) for power input.
That makes sense to me, I ordered my R2S in 2022, by that time probably no more micro USB version, and I almost never heard anyone buying R2C because of unsupported NIC.
I can confirm this.
Early versions are shipped with MicroUSB-B. I got 3 of them.
Newer versions are USB-C only. Got 3 of them too.
They are fully interchangeable. I’m testing i.e. openwrt updates on a USB-C version first.
Then I’m swapping SD-cards from then USB-C R2S to the Micro-USB R2S (my production R2S)
Never got any problems ….
My seller just answered my question about the NanoPi R2S I bought (it hasn't arrived yet): According to him, it's USB-C and comes with a USB-C to USB-C cable.
Hello,
I can also confirm that current versions of the R2S have a USB-C power connector. I ordered mine this summer, the QC stamp says 2025-05-09. It also came with a quite nice USB-A to USB-C cable.
I would post a picture, but the forum won’t let me.
Hi @elder_tinkerer, @fakemanhk, @RaylynnKnight, @fow0ryl, @air1,
I posted this case and owe a position on the device I bought.
When my device arrived, I discovered that, in a hurry to take advantage of a good price, I ended up buying a NanoPi R2S Plus.
Upon discovering this, I was extremely disappointed because I had read that there was no original OpenWRT firmware for the Plus model.
To my surprise, Friendlyelec has made available an updated build, version 24.10.2 (not the latest, but it's good enough).
However, I can no longer say with absolute certainty whether the NanoPi R2S comes with a Micro-USB or Type-C power connector because I don't have the device in hand.
But while I waited for it to arrive, I did a lot of research and now I'm sure that the new NanoPi R2S comes with a Type-C power connector in hardware version 1.3 since 2022.
Another big difference I noticed between the regular and Plus versions is that they replaced the GPIO pins with a GPIO button, which I think reduces possibilities.
Best,
You should check the support before you buy.....
It might be a bit difficult to see it getting support now (I guess), the reason is there are too many RockChip new devices coming out last year, while the R2S series is 1 onboard NIC + 1 USB NIC which makes people with less interest, especially the R3S which fills the gap between R2S and R4S, you'll probably need to help the dev team with your device to drive it forward.
From what I saw ~7 months ago, someone tried to boot your R2S Plus with R2C and it can boot with single ethernet working (since SoC are the same), it's kind of a good news but if the user base is not there it's difficult to see it being developed.
Hi @fakemanhk ,
I begun configuring my NanoPi R2S Plus this week, and are very satisfiked. All is working well. I’m using firmware rk3328-sd-friendlywrt-24.10-20250811.img.
I will post any problems I have.
Best