MX10.AC2N

­DISCLAIMER (PLEASE READ): everything you can find in this thread (binaries, texts, code snippets, etc...) are provided AS-IS and are not part of official Armbian project. For this reason not people from Armbian project nor myself are responsible for misuse or loss of functionality of hardware.

Please don't ask about support or assistance in other non-community forums nor in the official Armbian github repository, instead post your questions in this thread, in the TV Boxes forum section (hardware related) or in the Peer-to-peer support section (general linux/software related).

Thank you!
 
This thread is to give stable and mature long-term range support to rk3318/rk3328 found in many tv boxes in Armbian project as Community Supported Configuration (CSC).
The current work is mainlined into Armbian project, but your mileage may vary; most recent developments live on my personal fork on github -> here <-
 
Important notes: is just a personal opinion, but apparently widely supported, that rk3318 chip is not an official rockchip part. They probably are scrap rk3328 parts which have not passed conformance tests but are sold anyway to tv boxes manufacturers. They don’t reach the same operating frequency of the rk3328, have much higher leakage currents (and thus higher temperatures) and often the boards they are installed on are low quality with low quality components, in fact a very very common issue is the eMMC failure due to bad parts and bad soldering. So said, I personally suggest not to buy any rk3318 tv box, but instead find a properly supported SBC (Single Board Computer) if you need a reliable product. In the unfortunate case you already have such product, this thread may help you have some fun with them.
 
What works:
    • Works on RK3318 and RK3328 TV boxes with DDR3 memories
    • Mainline u-boot
    • Mainline ATF provided as Trusted Execution Environment
    • All 4 cores are working
    • Ethernet
    • Serial UART (configured at stock 1.5Mbps)
    • Thermals and frequency scaling
    • OTG USB 2.0 port (also as boot device!)
    • EHCI/OHCI USB 2.0 ports and XHCI USB 3.0 ports
    • MMC subsystem (including , SD and sdio devices)
    • Hardware video acceleration (fully supported via RKMPP on legacy kernel, support via hantro and rkvdec kernel driver on mainline)
    • Various WIFI over SDIO are supported
    • Full acceleration on legacy kernel and mainline kernel
    • U-boot boot order priority: first the sdcard, then the USB OTG port and eventually the internal ; you can install u-boot (and the whole system) in the internal and u-boot will always check for images on external sdcard/USB first.
 
Unbrick:
Technically, rockchip devices cannot be bricked. If the internal flash does not contain a bootable system, they will always boot from the sdcard. If, for a reason, the bootable system on the internal flash is corrupted or is unable to boot correctly, you can always force the maskrom mode shorting the clock pin on the PCB. The procedure is explained here for rk322x, but for rk3318/28 is the same.

In most of the rk3318/28 boards, shorting the clock pin is difficult or impossible because eMMC are BGA chips with no exposed pins. Pay double attention when burning something on the internal flash memory and always test first the image booting from the sdcard to be sure it works before burning anything in internal flash.
 
This is a list of posts where forum users have been able to spot the eMMC clock pin to trigger the maskrom mode:
H96 Max+ (board signature: RK3318_V1.4) by @Gausus X88 PRO 10 (board signature: X88_PRO_B) by @mathgaming Ninkbox N1 Max RK3318 by @enigmasphinx  
 
Partecipation and debugging:
If you want to partecipate or need help debugging issues, do not hesitate to share your experience with the installation procedure of the boxes.
In case of issues and missed support, provide as many as possible of these things is very useful to try and bring support for an unsupported board:
 
some photos of both sides of the board. Details of the eMMC, DDR and Wifi chips are very useful! upload the device tree binary (dtb) of your device. We can understand a lot of things of the hardware from that small piece of data; and alternative is a link to the original firmware (you can do a full backup with the Multitool); dmesg and other logs (use armbianmonitor -u that automatically collects and uploads the logs online) attach a serial converter to the device and provide the output of the serial port;  
Multimedia:
Mainline kernel: 3D acceleration is provided by Lima driver and is already enabled. Hardware video decoding: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/19258-testing-hardware-video-decoding-rockchip-allwinner/ Legacy kernel: If you need multimedia features, like OpenGL/OpenGL ES acceleration, hardware accelerated Kodi, ffmpeg and mpv you can take a look to this post  
Installation (via SD card):
Building:
You can build your own image follow the common steps to build armbian for other tv boxes devices: when you are in the moment to choose the target board, switch to /TVB/ boards and select "rk3318-box" from the list.
   
Prebuilt images:
Archived images - built by Armbian servers and GPG-signed: https://imola.armbian.com/dl/rk3318-box/archive/ Nightly stables - built from trunk by Armbian servers and GPG-signed: https://github.com/armbian/community Stables provided by me (unsigned): https://users.armbian.com/jock/rk3318/  
Multitool:
Multitool - A small but powerful image for RK3318/RK3328 TV Box maintenance. Download it from here  
Quick installation instructions on eMMC:
Build or download your preferred Armbian image and a copy of the Multitool; Burn the Multitool on an SD card; once done, place the Armbian image in images folder of the SD card NTFS partition; Plug the SD card in the TV box and plug in the power cord. After some seconds the blue led starts blinking and the Multitool appears; OPTIONAL: you can do a backup of the existing firmware with "Backup flash" menu option; Choose "Burn image to flash" from the menu, then select the destination device (usually mmcblk2) and the image to burn; Wait for the process to complete, then choose "Shutdown" from main menu; Unplug the power cord and the SD card, then replug the power cord; Wait for 10 seconds, then the led should start blinking and HDMI will turn on. The first time the boot process will take a couple of minutes or more because the filesystem is going to be resized, so be patient and wait for the login prompt. On first boot you will be asked for entering a password for root user of your choice and the name and password for a regular user Run rk3318-config to configure the board specific options Run armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options Congratulations, Armbian is now installed!  
Despite the procedure above is simple and reliable, I always recommend to first test that your device boots Armbian images from SD Card.
Due to the really large hardware variety, there is the rare chance that the images proposed here may not boot. If a bad image is burned in , the box may not boot anymore forcing you to follow the unbrick section at the top of this post.
 
Quick installation instructions to boot from SD Card:
If you are already running Armbian from eMMC, skip to the next step. Instead if you are running the original firmware you need to first erase the internal flash; to do so download the Multitool, burn it on an SD Card, plug the SD Card and power the TV Box. Use "Backup flash" if you want to do a backup of the existing firmware, then choose "Erase flash" menu option. Build or download your preferred Armbian image; Uncompress and burn the Armbian image on the SD Card; Plug the SD Card in the TV Box and power it on; Wait for 10 seconds, then the led should start blinking and HDMI will turn on. The first time the boot process will take a couple of minutes or more because the filesystem is going to be resized, so be patient and wait for the login prompt; On first boot you will be asked for entering a password for root user of your choice and the name and password for a regular user Run rk3318-config to configure the board specific options Run armbian-config to configure timezone, locales and other personal options, or also to transfer the SD Card installation to internal ; Congratulations, Armbian is running from SD Card!  
Tutorial - How to install Armbian on your TV Box (by @awawa) :
https://www.hyperhdr.eu/2022/01/tv-box-mania-i-part-x88-pro-10.html
A note about boot device order:
With Armbian also comes mainline U-boot. If you install Armbian, the bootloader will look for valid bootable images in this order:
External SD Card External USB Stick in OTG Port Internal  
The Multitool does not boot / How to burn image directly on eMMC:
 
Some boards have the sdcard attached to an auxiliary (called also sdmmc_ext or external) controller which is not the common one.
Forum findings declare that those boards are not able to boot from sdcard with stock firmware and they neither do in maskrom mode: the stock firmware always boots even if you put the multitool on sdcard.
 
In such case, burning images directly on eMMC is the only way to have a working Armbian installation.
You can follow these instructions by @fabiobassa to burn images directly on eMMC:
 
https://forum.armbian.com/topic/17597-csc-armbian-for-rk3318rk3328-tv-box-boards/?do=findComment&comment=130453
 
Notes and special hardware:
Script to change DDR memory frequency here Wireless chip AP2734, SP2734, HY2734C and similars: they are clones of AmPAK AP6334 which is combo wifi + bluetooth of broadcom BCM4334/B0 chips. You may need a special nvram file, instructions by @paradigman are here  
Critics, suggestions and contributions are welcome!
 
Credits:
@fabiobassa for his ideas, inspiration, great generosity in giving the boards for development and testing. The project of bringing rk3318 into armbian would not have begun without his support! @hexdump for his precious support in early testing, ideas and suggestions
@MX10.AC2Nfor his patience in testing mxq-rk3328-d4 board support
All the rockhip64 maintainers at Armbian project who have done and do most of the work to support the platform
 
 

@MX10.AC2N @curse That's true, the only way to update currently is to start from scratch and the reason is exactly the one hiphotesis by @curse is right: since the whole thing is not yet into mainline armbian, upgrading via apt is not possible. Even worse: upgrading via apt will install official armbian packages, and it would just break the installation because it would remove the existing dtbs.
 
I'm going to add the .deb packages in the first page along the pristine images for manual upgrade, in the hope it will not break existing installations

Hi all,
So I continue my feedback on a TvBox MX10 with rk3328 I tried adding overlays to have 1.4GHz and 1.5GHz but none will have allowed to use these max values in armbian-config via CPU governor (I still have 1.3GHz as the max value). Pity..
Another thing I always try via armbian-config the docker install, it did not finish correctly and I had to be able to install docker use the method described in https://alexbacher.fr/unixlinux/installer-docker-debian/
I tried to install docker-chromium-armhf in order to be able to have chromium with DRM rights (amazon, netflix, ...) because no DRM lib in ARM64 ..
https://github.com/HenningThiemann/docker-chromium-armhf
So I was able to start Chromium-armhf but unfortunately once I arrived in my Amazon primevideo account, streaming is not allowed due to lack of DRM rights
I also attempted the construction of https://github.com/gort818/qtwebflix it works but again and again this problem of DRM lib .. If someone has found a solution I am well interested..
@jockI see you updated but, do we have to reflash ?
Have a nice day..

Update!
 
Images on first page have been updated to kernel 5.14.13
 

Great, I did find 1300MHz as the maximum value for the CPU, for the wifi I will have to look because I use the box connected by wire (and then it's an SV6051P chip ..)
thanks again, and again

Hi and Thanks again,
so here is dmseg => https://paste.yunohost.org/vawijabuga.erl
system diagnosis information => http://ix.io/3C6s
the option to choose the CPU governor is functional again (well seen ..) on the other hand I still only have 1000MHz as max value ..
Thank you again @jock you are great..

@MX10.AC2N Here it is another attempt, last one for today
 
I rewrote the overlay and double checked anything I could simulate on my board.
If the system boots, please send back a dmesg log!
rockchip-rk3318-box-led-conf3.dtbo

@MX10.AC2Nwell at least some error is showing up: Failed to register regulator: -517
I will try to find what's wrong with that.

OK no worries I have already read the 15 pages of this thread ...
Now the problem is that when I run rk3318-config at the end it requires a reboot and there starts the bug, my box bug during the boot process .. only solution I found, delete all the overlays line which a was added in the armbianEnv.txt (luckily I can connect my SD card to my computer) ..

It's strange I never had any problem using the 1.3GHz processor with the other armbian images. The Station-M1 system installed on Emmc works at 1.3GHz without any particular problem.
When I had put rk3328-evb.dtb in armbianEnv.txt I had found the max value at 1.3 GHz and the system started up without worries (but no hdmi signal).
In any case for the moment the system is stable, I left it running all night without any problems (but at 1GHz) .. I will continue ..
Something a little off topic:
Any idea why lightdm crashes startup when lxdm is running fine ..?
Thank you again for the job, great ..!
 

Here is the .dtb file that I use with the Station-M1 image, I just modify rk3328-box.dtb  a little to have a correct use of the leds on my MX10 box (a red led "off" and a led blue "on")
rk3328-mx10.dtb rk3328-mx10.dts

Yes there is a small chip marked RK805-1 CAADA9018
When I bought it it was running on android 7.1.2 here is the link to the firmware I was using (because rooted)
http://geekbuying.mediafire.com/file/brngum8r862f8h2/MX10_RKMC18.0_20171212_r1.img
 

Hi all,
And first THANKS @jock for all that ..
I have an MX10 TvBox first generations MXQ-RK3328-D4_A VER: 1.0 DATE: 20170713 registered on the SOC with 32G Emmc and 4G RAM DDR3
I have been running Armbian on it for a while now first from an RK3328-TVBOX image from @balbes, then I booted from an M1 station image, currently I have station-M1 running on my Emmc, and here I come across this thread ..
So I test from an SD card the image Armbian_21.11.0-trunk_Rk3318-box_bullseye_current_5.10.68_minimal.img
It starts but I don't have an HDMI signal, I was able to connect in SSH and do the update, the upgrade, install armbian-config, install full firmware, install desktop .. I use rk3328-evb.dtb
Copy the diagnostic : http://ix.io/3Bsu
 
I will continue with the installation and above all try to find the signal on my HDMI output.
Thanks again...

I have found a bit too hard to configure HW encoding with TVHeadend. It doesn't give you the possibility of specifying custom ffmpeg commands, so your only chance is creating a pipe in each mux, which AFAIK it can only be done with IPTV muxes. I haven't even tried this.
 
What I do is using the Jellyfin TVHeadend plugin, so I let Jellyfin do the transcoding. That also gives me easy and secure access to my TV channels from outside my home.
 
The device I am using is a Odroid HC1. XU4 and its derivatives (HC1/HC2/MC1) has always been my recommended device for anything requiring HW accelerated encoding, since it has a standard v4l2-m2m interface supported by ffmpeg. AFAIK, there is no other ARM board offering this feature as of today. Plus, since it is an older device, it's being sold for $50, a real bargain for what it offers IMO.
 
If there is people interested in a tutorial on how to do this setup, I think I can do one.