Orange Pi Community to the Rescue: Missing Ports Found?
 
Many of the lower cost boards have various functions or ports missing. But a couple of people noticed that when some of these boards boot, it lists the missing functions or ports as present. So they decided to look over the boards’ schematics and boards themselves under a magnifying glass. This threaded set of posts on their Armbian Forum is what they found (includes pictures):
https://forum.armbian.com/index.php?/topic/755-orange-pi-one-adding-usb-analog-a
udio-out-tv-out-mic-and-ir-receiver/
 
Though they talk about the Orange Pi One, it is also shown that the Orange Pi Lite (aka O-Pi Mini) can also be modified to add the missing functions and ports. The boards have solder tabs where the ports can be gotten from and added to it. Thing it, these solder tabs are micro miniature in size, and a hell of an eye strain. I verified them myself on the O-Pi One and O-Pi Lite that I have under two sets of magnifying glasses, they are there, they are labeled, and they are tiny! You would need to use the thinnest wire you have to solder to the board. Or like somebody on the forum did, use Pogo Pins soldered to a piece of bread board and add the ports from there. But not all the ports are on the same side of the board, they are on both sides.
 
In comparison to the O-Pi PC board, what are these boards missing?
2 USB Ports, Composite Video Port, Left/Right Audio Ports, Microphone/Sound In Port, and IR Receiver. The Audio ports are going to need an external Amplifier to run, however. And the O-Pi Lite has a tiny microphone on the board but the solder tab is still there.
 
Why is this important? How does it compare to the O-Pi PC board?
 
The O-Pi PC has everything the O-Pi One and O-Pi Lite (Mini) has plus the missing ports on a very large board. The O-Pi One and Lite is 1/3rd the size of the O-Pi PC. The only difference between the O-Pi PC and the O-Pi One and O-Pi Lite is the amount of RAM. The O-Pi PC has 1GB of RAM while the O-Pi One and O-Pi Lite has 512MB. But consider that the O-Pi PC is about $25 and the O-Pi One and O-Pi Lite are about $12 to $15. Does the price of adding physical ports one way or another worth it? This is where the arguments begin. Some say yes, many say no.
 
(Due note: Both the O-Pi One and O-Pi Lite has Audio through the HDMI port as far as I know.)
 
With the USB Ports, the solder tabs are right next to the Surface Mounted CPU. The same with the Audio In/Out line are also next to the CPU. One wrong slip or too much heat from the iron could kill the CPU. One would have to be very gentle when doing this job. Maybe one can use the Pogo Pins approach to do this? It is doable, as per the user who did it on the forum. The other solder tabs are more accessible but are still very tiny to access. Thus the wire soldered to them must be very thin, the thinnest gauge available. The other problem is being so close to the CPU, such added ports would get in the way of the heat sink the CPU needs.
 
I would say this depends on one’s skills and equipment they have if they want to do such mods. I only have one O-Pi One and O-Pi Lite. If I had spare units, I would try to modify the spares. Having replaced USB ports on a pair of R-Pies somebody tried to destroy, it was a tricky repair. Use of hi-temp No-Lead solder made it difficult, and I shorted the USB Port on one of the board; on boot it stated that the USB Ports has an Over-Voltage Condition on them. I had to unsolder the ports, clean up the board of stray solder and carefully resolder the ports again to get them properly soldered in place. To date – they are the only R-Pies with White USB Ports anywhere! Thing with the O-Pies is, is there enough protection on the board to protect it from a soldering mistake like with the R-Pi, or will they fry when turned on? This only proves that one has to be very careful when doing this type of modification.
 
R-Pi Repair Thread: http://www.hondosackett.com/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1413739839