jock

You should not advise to buy shit, they are cheaper because:
* they are made of scrap parts, that often break after very short usage (see the emmc in the rk3318 thread)
* they have no kind of warranty
* the power supply is a joke, made of cheap components and very lousy - switching power supplies are one of the thing the more they weight the better; confront with a quality 5V/2A power supply and see the difference
* the HDMI cable is crap quality, often not capable to transfer CEC or collects any kind of interference at 1080p/4K
* the case is a bit of plastic, with little to no design for heat dissipation - right now I have a rk322x board here withing its case that reaches 97°C while simply installing a package with apt...
* many sorts of limitations to keep them as cheap as possible: no sd card UHS mode, no real shutdown/suspend, USB ports have limited power: be prepared to have headaches if you try to attach something that requires just a tiny bit more power like an external hard drive.
* wifi is a lottery and clearly tells you the general quality: you can find freshly made boards with wifi chips discontinued years ago!
 
Most of all: they have absolutely no software support; if you are able to run armbian on your tv boxes it is because some people within armbian and other projects spent their time for the fun of making it.
Tv box makers don't care at all, they just need to sell their cheap shit to make some profit. Some (not all) SBC makers at least in some way provide support, but tv box makers are mostly parasitic and should not be endorsed.
 
Now that you stated that about 20 pcs of different tv boxes run armbian, may I also ask you what you did in change for that for armbian? Because tv box makers obviously did nothing for armbian, still keeping up the servers infrastructure and the general maintenance cost real money to real people, and who pays that?

Hi
I had heard that you can install LINUX on a TV BOX, so I got an X96 which has the RK322X CHIPSET.
Since I am a Hamradio and I did some tinkering I told myself that I would create an interconnected repeater with the X96 as a server.
After installation and configuration I was able to create my repeater which worked very well for more than three months.
Here is the photo of the interconnected repeater in working order:
 

 
I made a tutorial on my site where I described my configuration and installation of the system: https://www.dmr-maroc.com/Repeteur_sans_Raspberry.php

Hello, this quick tutorial is to introduce an experimental Debian and Ubuntu APT repository to install ffmpeg compiled with v4l2request and v4l2drmprime patches developed by Linux kernel, LIbreELEC and Kodi folks to allow hardware video decoding on stateless decoders like those implemented in Rockchip and Allwinner SoCs for h.264, h.265, vp8 and vp9 codecs.
 
The repository introduces a new ffmpeg package that integrates and substitues the base ffmpeg package and its related packages.
 
Preconditions:
Mainline kernel 6.1 or more recent armhf or arm64 architecture Supported distributions: Debian 12 - Bookworm Debian 13 - Trixie (unsuggested: ffmpeg works, mpv doesn't) Ubuntu 22.04 - Jammy Ubuntu 24.04 - Noble Rockchip and Allwinner have already been tested, but this should work on other platforms with stateless decoders supported in kernel  
APT REPOSITORY SETUP
To install the repository, just copy and paste the lines in a terminal:
$ sudo wget http://apt.undo.it:7242/apt.undo.it.asc -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/apt.undo.it.asc $ . /etc/os-release && echo "deb http://apt.undo.it:7242 $VERSION_CODENAME main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/apt.undo.it.list $ echo -e "Package: *\nPin: release o=apt.undo.it\nPin-Priority: 600" | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/apt-undo-it  
INSTALL FFMPEG AND MPV PACKAGES
$ sudo apt update $ sudo apt install ffmpeg mpv  
SETUP MPV CONFIG FILE
$ sudo mkdir -p /etc/mpv $ echo -e "hwdec=drm\ndrm-drmprime-video-plane=primary\ndrm-draw-plane=overlay" | sudo tee /etc/mpv/mpv.conf  
You can now play your videos using mpv and they should run with hardware decoding if supported, either in virtual terminals or in X11/Wayland windows!
Enjoy!
 
Notes:
your mileage may vary a lot: the more recent is the kernel version, the better is support (you may need edge kernel) bug: when rendered in X11/Wayland window, video may show scattered tiles during frames bug: Lima driver (Mali 400/450) shows a red/pink tint when video is played in X11/Wayland (see https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/12968) (workaround below: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/32449-repository-for-v4l2request-hardware-video-decoding-rockchip-allwinner/?do=findComment&comment=177968) you may want to add --gpu-hwdec-interop=drmprime-overlay to the mpv command line if used in pure virtual terminal (no X, no Wayland) to use direct-to-overlay output Panfrost driver should work flawlessy 10 bit HEVC are generally supported on all Rockchip devices (rk322x, rk3288, rk33x8, rk3399), but Allwinner H3 have no hardware support for that  
 
 

Hello, first of all I would suggest you to avoid DietPI; there have been some circumstances were has been reported that credits were not due to the big work done here by armbian maintainers and taken without proper attribution.
This is sad to say, but until I hear the opposite, I woudl stay away and don't endorse such "distribution".
 
More about the hardware decoding and rk3318: legacy kernel is now completely deprecated and not suggested to be used at all. It is old and unmaintained code, plus standard linux tools won't work because it contains vendor-specific modules and paths.
 
You would rather stay stick to a regular armbian image with recent mainline kernel.
You could also advance to edge kernel (at the moment it is 6.6), but it is not necessary.
For the hardware decoding capabilities, I recently made an apt repository for both debian bookworm and ubuntu jammy that may be helpful to you:
 
That repository provides ffmpeg compiled with the right patches to work with hardware decoding, and the player of choice is mpv which is working pretty fine.
Unfortunately there is a bug for Mali 400/450 in mpv (or mesa) that causes the video to be pink-colored when played in X11 or wayland, but when run from virtual terminal is works fine though.
Also rockchip64 does not have yet the patch to enable hevc, something which I would like to fix soon
 

Post reserved

Hello, this quick tutorial is to introduce an experimental Debian and Ubuntu APT repository to install ffmpeg compiled with v4l2request and v4l2drmprime patches developed by Linux kernel, LIbreELEC and Kodi folks to allow hardware video decoding on stateless decoders like those implemented in Rockchip and Allwinner SoCs for h.264, h.265, vp8 and vp9 codecs.
 
The repository introduces a new ffmpeg package that integrates and substitues the base ffmpeg package and its related packages.
 
Preconditions:
Mainline kernel 6.1 or more recent armhf or arm64 architecture Supported distributions: Debian 12 - Bookworm Debian 13 - Trixie (unsuggested: ffmpeg works, mpv doesn't) Ubuntu 22.04 - Jammy Ubuntu 24.04 - Noble Rockchip and Allwinner have already been tested, but this should work on other platforms with stateless decoders supported in kernel  
APT REPOSITORY SETUP
To install the repository, just copy and paste the lines in a terminal:
$ sudo wget http://apt.undo.it:7242/apt.undo.it.asc -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/apt.undo.it.asc $ . /etc/os-release && echo "deb http://apt.undo.it:7242 $VERSION_CODENAME main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/apt.undo.it.list $ echo -e "Package: *\nPin: release o=apt.undo.it\nPin-Priority: 600" | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/apt-undo-it  
INSTALL FFMPEG AND MPV PACKAGES
$ sudo apt update $ sudo apt install ffmpeg mpv  
SETUP MPV CONFIG FILE
$ sudo mkdir -p /etc/mpv $ echo -e "hwdec=drm\ndrm-drmprime-video-plane=primary\ndrm-draw-plane=overlay" | sudo tee /etc/mpv/mpv.conf  
You can now play your videos using mpv and they should run with hardware decoding if supported, either in virtual terminals or in X11/Wayland windows!
Enjoy!
 
Notes:
your mileage may vary a lot: the more recent is the kernel version, the better is support (you may need edge kernel) bug: when rendered in X11/Wayland window, video may show scattered tiles during frames bug: Lima driver (Mali 400/450) shows a red/pink tint when video is played in X11/Wayland (see https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/12968) (workaround below: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/32449-repository-for-v4l2request-hardware-video-decoding-rockchip-allwinner/?do=findComment&comment=177968) you may want to add --gpu-hwdec-interop=drmprime-overlay to the mpv command line if used in pure virtual terminal (no X, no Wayland) to use direct-to-overlay output Panfrost driver should work flawlessy 10 bit HEVC are generally supported on all Rockchip devices (rk322x, rk3288, rk33x8, rk3399), but Allwinner H3 have no hardware support for that  
 
 

Hello, for those still interested in hardware video decoding, I made a new thread introducing an APT repository to make installation easier for Armbian Debian Bookworm and Ubuntu Jammy distros:
 
 

Hello, for those still interested in hardware video decoding, I made a new thread introducing an APT repository to make installation easier for Armbian Debian Bookworm and Ubuntu Jammy distros:
 
 

Hello, this quick tutorial is to introduce an experimental Debian and Ubuntu APT repository to install ffmpeg compiled with v4l2request and v4l2drmprime patches developed by Linux kernel, LIbreELEC and Kodi folks to allow hardware video decoding on stateless decoders like those implemented in Rockchip and Allwinner SoCs for h.264, h.265, vp8 and vp9 codecs.
 
The repository introduces a new ffmpeg package that integrates and substitues the base ffmpeg package and its related packages.
 
Preconditions:
Mainline kernel 6.1 or more recent armhf or arm64 architecture Supported distributions: Debian 12 - Bookworm Debian 13 - Trixie (unsuggested: ffmpeg works, mpv doesn't) Ubuntu 22.04 - Jammy Ubuntu 24.04 - Noble Rockchip and Allwinner have already been tested, but this should work on other platforms with stateless decoders supported in kernel  
APT REPOSITORY SETUP
To install the repository, just copy and paste the lines in a terminal:
$ sudo wget http://apt.undo.it:7242/apt.undo.it.asc -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/apt.undo.it.asc $ . /etc/os-release && echo "deb http://apt.undo.it:7242 $VERSION_CODENAME main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/apt.undo.it.list $ echo -e "Package: *\nPin: release o=apt.undo.it\nPin-Priority: 600" | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/apt-undo-it  
INSTALL FFMPEG AND MPV PACKAGES
$ sudo apt update $ sudo apt install ffmpeg mpv  
SETUP MPV CONFIG FILE
$ sudo mkdir -p /etc/mpv $ echo -e "hwdec=drm\ndrm-drmprime-video-plane=primary\ndrm-draw-plane=overlay" | sudo tee /etc/mpv/mpv.conf  
You can now play your videos using mpv and they should run with hardware decoding if supported, either in virtual terminals or in X11/Wayland windows!
Enjoy!
 
Notes:
your mileage may vary a lot: the more recent is the kernel version, the better is support (you may need edge kernel) bug: when rendered in X11/Wayland window, video may show scattered tiles during frames bug: Lima driver (Mali 400/450) shows a red/pink tint when video is played in X11/Wayland (see https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/12968) (workaround below: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/32449-repository-for-v4l2request-hardware-video-decoding-rockchip-allwinner/?do=findComment&comment=177968) you may want to add --gpu-hwdec-interop=drmprime-overlay to the mpv command line if used in pure virtual terminal (no X, no Wayland) to use direct-to-overlay output Panfrost driver should work flawlessy 10 bit HEVC are generally supported on all Rockchip devices (rk322x, rk3288, rk33x8, rk3399), but Allwinner H3 have no hardware support for that  
 
 

Hello, this quick tutorial is to introduce an experimental Debian and Ubuntu APT repository to install ffmpeg compiled with v4l2request and v4l2drmprime patches developed by Linux kernel, LIbreELEC and Kodi folks to allow hardware video decoding on stateless decoders like those implemented in Rockchip and Allwinner SoCs for h.264, h.265, vp8 and vp9 codecs.
 
The repository introduces a new ffmpeg package that integrates and substitues the base ffmpeg package and its related packages.
 
Preconditions:
Mainline kernel 6.1 or more recent armhf or arm64 architecture Supported distributions: Debian 12 - Bookworm Debian 13 - Trixie (unsuggested: ffmpeg works, mpv doesn't) Ubuntu 22.04 - Jammy Ubuntu 24.04 - Noble Rockchip and Allwinner have already been tested, but this should work on other platforms with stateless decoders supported in kernel  
APT REPOSITORY SETUP
To install the repository, just copy and paste the lines in a terminal:
$ sudo wget http://apt.undo.it:7242/apt.undo.it.asc -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/apt.undo.it.asc $ . /etc/os-release && echo "deb http://apt.undo.it:7242 $VERSION_CODENAME main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/apt.undo.it.list $ echo -e "Package: *\nPin: release o=apt.undo.it\nPin-Priority: 600" | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/apt-undo-it  
INSTALL FFMPEG AND MPV PACKAGES
$ sudo apt update $ sudo apt install ffmpeg mpv  
SETUP MPV CONFIG FILE
$ sudo mkdir -p /etc/mpv $ echo -e "hwdec=drm\ndrm-drmprime-video-plane=primary\ndrm-draw-plane=overlay" | sudo tee /etc/mpv/mpv.conf  
You can now play your videos using mpv and they should run with hardware decoding if supported, either in virtual terminals or in X11/Wayland windows!
Enjoy!
 
Notes:
your mileage may vary a lot: the more recent is the kernel version, the better is support (you may need edge kernel) bug: when rendered in X11/Wayland window, video may show scattered tiles during frames bug: Lima driver (Mali 400/450) shows a red/pink tint when video is played in X11/Wayland (see https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/12968) (workaround below: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/32449-repository-for-v4l2request-hardware-video-decoding-rockchip-allwinner/?do=findComment&comment=177968) you may want to add --gpu-hwdec-interop=drmprime-overlay to the mpv command line if used in pure virtual terminal (no X, no Wayland) to use direct-to-overlay output Panfrost driver should work flawlessy 10 bit HEVC are generally supported on all Rockchip devices (rk322x, rk3288, rk33x8, rk3399), but Allwinner H3 have no hardware support for that  
 
 

That is intended to work that way, for an important reason: the bootloader is not just a mere bootloader, but installs complex code in memory and you don't know what it does. More on that: that code runs in a secure context, which is not accessible by anything, so you really don't know what it does and what it can do.
One clear example is the fact that the stock bootloader artificially blocks the rk3318 when it runs beyond 1.1ghz, while we have seen it is pretty capable of running at 1.3ghz perfectly fine like the rk3328.
 
The idea is to remove as much as possible of the proprietary blobs (ie: the stock bootloader) and provide open alternatives; tinkering with the bootloader may work now but surely will cause troubles when there will be an updated bootloader.
 
Your case with broken emmc is a different condition by the way, because you have limited alternatives. However there are no real secrets in the boot process, just some complexities and some of them are explained here

Please Just remain focuses on rk322x and their problems.
Dont go off topic
Thank you all very much for understanding , highly appreciated

Then it would not be a maintenace tool anymore but something else; but feel free to take it as a base for anything else!
Hint: speaking of Kodi, you are just heading on something like LibreElec
 
Yes, and also because it is the only what to make it cross-OS down to Windows XP.
Previously (four months ago) the partition was FAT32, but it would not support files larger than 4Gb
 

try this image: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bcOfc-df_84-qa0-SQjrQnKpzfEGrdsd/view?usp=sharing
 
I've updateed ddrbin (I manually placed  u-boot-rk322x-with-spl.bin with ddrbin 1.11 at 0x8000 in image) and it boots OK on my board

Which are known to "steal" the work of others without giving credits and support.
That's the best way to kill armbian project 😒

Oh right, you still need the v1.11
There are some caches around, but should not affect the bootloader which is always rebuilt from scratch AFAIK.
 
Will double check soon, stay tuned!

@Rodrigo Campos hello; I don't think HDMI stopped working, but instead something went wrong with xfce installation via armbian-config.
 
Honestly, I never try to install a desktop enviroment via armbian-config, but instead I usually build and use images with xfce already installed.
 
Some fresh debian and ubuntu images have been built by armbian servers just yesterday: https://imola.armbian.com/dl/rk322x-box/archive/
You may want to give a chance to them perhaps? They are still command-line only, but maybe they work better.
 
In case they don't work, maybe you could post on this other forum, since I guess it is a userspace issue.
 

Hello!
 
If you mean overclock the cpu, it depends on your sample. rk3318 are rated for 1.1ghz, for so far it looks like a software limitation rather than a hardware one. Some people pushed them up to 1.5ghz, but the increased horsepower is not worth the heat at all IMHO.
About overlocking the ddr, actually they are underclocked at 333mhz: dynamic reclocking requires a proprietary Trust OS blob, but this won't allow CPU to go beyond 1.1ghz. On the other side, booting the device at 667mhz caused many boards to not boot at all (notably X88 Pro 10 market models)
 
About the LED Clock, if you mean the frontal led panel, there is a kernel driver + userland application which work together; they do the job, but are rather suboptimal for technical reasons and not included into regular images.

@Ineptitude unfortunately the driver is not yet included into armbian. I tried to take a quick look to it and there is the usual mess of preprocessor directives to compile and run on the various manufacturer platforms, plus some low general quality code. I gave it some hours for inspection, then I gave up. Perhaps I will give some more love to it sooner or later, but I don't promise anything.

@jock I finally managed to extract the firmware. Here's the trust partition https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E7mxBVE1lUshqdcjqTMfxKQMW2iLUvye/view?usp=drive_link. And here's the rest of the backup https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/165r4bV3jFj8Ptx4yY2sXmbmOUOBIMWaW?usp=drive_link. I've been trying to install Armbian via USB cable, but no luck so far, always getting Test device fail. Thanks 

It doesn't work for me on same board, but shorting any data lines to each other pushed chip to mask rom on boot.
 
I have 1.5G/8G version, and it doesn't boot armbian or multitool from sd/emmc - it just hangs on boot with no output to console (1500000 and 115200 speed)

Have a box with rk3528 here and did some work some weeks ago, mainly to get a kernel and multitool running on it.
It works, but I didn't publish an image for it yet (only available in source code), plus my board does not want to boot from sdcard and had no time and no will to further study it better.

Yeah, we live in the clouds and sometimes we land to go to the grocery store ...

Yeah, we live in the clouds and sometimes we land to go to the grocery store ...

Hi @n3o
 
please don't say things I've never said. I won't do what you wrote. You are still free to use my (hard) work because I believe in healthy sharing, which is already the basis of my work on libreelec. Without @jock and @fabiobassa these boxes would not have this level of support.
 
Cheers
Michele