Bert Kortenbach

Hello all, I just found an HK1 RBOX R1 and its remote in a box of hand-me-downs and I wanted to document what I've achieved so far for anyone else who is in my situation and turns to search engines.
 
This is the device I'm referring to:
 

 

 
First, my hand-me-down was missing its power supply and it doesn't say what it takes on it. Since I wound up having to learn from a photo in an Amazon Marketplace listing which isn't likely to last, the power supply is 5VDC 2A, centre positive and the barrel plug has an outside diameter of 5.5mm according to my cheap eBay calipers.
 
The case is screwless but it spudgers open easily. Here's a photo that, among other things, shows the clip placements:
 

 
Here are higher-resolution PCB shots:
 

 

 
I followed the instructions in the initial post to flash Armbian_23.8.1_Rk3318-box_bookworm_current_6.1.50_minimal.img.xz onto it and the default settings have given me no problems so far, though I haven't really done much yet beyond setting up SSH with public key authentication, disabling root login, applying pending APT upgrades, and getting the IR remote working. (Since all my other devices except my retro-hobby LAN's NTP/Samba/Netatalk server are x86-based, I figure it'll be a nice smoke-test platform to scp ARM builds of my Rust projects onto.)
 
Speaking of which, this is what the included remote looks like...
 

 
...and it uses the `nec` protocol. Here are the button mappings:
 
0x8013 OK 0x8027 Back 0x8037 Left 0x8038 Up 0x8039 Right 0x8040 Down 0x8048 LeftClick 0x8073 Home 0x8081 Power 0x8083 Menu 0x8087 Volume+ 0x8089 Volume-  
...and here is an hk1_rbox_r1_remote.toml you can start from:
 
[[protocols]] name = "HK1 RBOX R1 Remote" protocol = "nec" variant = "nec" [protocols.scancodes] 0x8013 = "KEY_ENTER" 0x8027 = "KEY_ESC" 0x8037 = "KEY_LEFT" 0x8038 = "KEY_UP" 0x8039 = "KEY_RIGHT" 0x8040 = "KEY_DOWN" 0x8048 = "BTN_LEFT" 0x8073 = "KEY_HOMEPAGE" 0x8081 = "KEY_POWER" 0x8083 = "KEY_MENU" 0x8087 = "KEY_VOLUMEUP" 0x8089 = "KEY_VOLUMEDOWN"  
As for things I haven't had time to read up on yet:
LEDs: This thing has a blue segmented LED display on the front that, with the stock Android, shows "boot" and then switches to displaying a clock. I also need to figure out how to to make the blue status LED stop blinking once it's finished booting (See next message.) rk3318-config: Identifying what non-default settings to choose, if any ... but, for my first foray into something non-x86 beyond installing officially-vendor-supported Debian on a Cubox i4Pro, turning my old Raspberry Pi Model B into a specialized MP3 player for my mother years ago and turning my brother's Raspberry Pi 3B into a Batocera Linux box for Christmas a couple of years ago, I'd say I'm making good progress.

@Benedito Portela
Thank you for your reply!
I was thinking along those lines to, bit what interests me is -How did the box get into that state?- 
I shut down the box a few times by unplugging it. That may have had something to do with it, but normally a thing like that shouldn't happen
How can I prevent it from locking again in the future?
 
This is the second time he eMMC locks (stuck in programming state). The first time I thought it was the Multitool SD-card that failed somehow,
but apparently that was not the cause because now it happened while the box was running Armbian from eMMC.
The first time the chip *magically* got unlocked somehow but now it had been locked for almost a week...
The weird thing is that the yellow light blinks after starting!?
 
Best regards,
ert

A guide to installing Armbian on the H96 Max V11 (RK3318_V1.4 blue PCB)
 

 
What you will need
Your H96 Max V11 TV box with the power supply and the HDMI cable that came with it; A TV or a monitor with an HDMI port; A wired USB keyboard (or a wireless one with a USB dongle); An Ethernet cable to connect to a router on your home network that has Internet access; A Micro SD card (minimum 1GB, more if you're going to back up Android on your box before overwriting it with Armbian); A USB card reader for Micro SD cards; A Windows PC connected to your home network;  
Installation steps
Download the experimental Armbian image (kernel 5.19.15 and libreelec patches — alas, that's the latest version that works correctly with our box) and a copy of the Multitool; Burn the Multitool on the SD card using Rufus (no need to change any settings, just click "SELECT" and locate multitool.img.xz or drag and drop the file on Rufus and then click "START"); Connect your TV box to the TV or monitor, connect the keyboard, plug in the Multitool SD card and then plug in the power cord; Wait a minute (while SD card partitions are being resized) for the Multitool main menu to appear, then select "Shutdown"; Unplug the power cord and the SD card, then plug the SD card into your PC. Two new drives should appear, labeled BOOTSTRAP and MULTITOOL. If you see both, skip the next step. If you only see the BOOTSTRAP, proceed to the next step; Start Disk Management (press Win+X, K). Scroll down the list of disks (use the scrollbar, because mouse wheel doesn't work there) to locate your SD card, and on the MULTITOOL partition right-click, then press C, and click "Add", "OK"; Open the MULTITOOL drive in Windows Explorer (or your favorite file manager) and copy the downloaded Armbian image to the images folder; Safely remove (eject) the SD card, plug it into the TV box and plug in the power cord. The Multitool main menu will appear in a few seconds; If you don't care about stock Android firmware on your TV box, skip the next step. If you want to back up the Android firmware, proceed to the next step; In the Multitool main menu select "Backup flash" and click through (there will be only one option). Name your backup file. Wait for the backup to finish. The backup file will be saved to the backups folder on the SD card's MULTITOOL partition; Now it's time to replace Android with Armbian. In the Multitool main menu select "Burn image to flash" and click through (there will be only one option). Wait for the process to complete, then in the main menu select "Shutdown"; Unplug the power cord and the SD card, then replug the power cord. Wait a few minutes for Armbian to get everything ready for its first launch, and then follow the initial setup prompts; You will be taken to the login prompt. Log in with the name/password for the regular user you've created; Connect your TV box to your home network router with an Ethernet cable; In Armbian, enter the command sudo cat /run/motd.dynamic and note the IP address assigned by the router to the TV box; Now you will need to connect to your TV box on the home network via the SSH protocol. If you're running Windows 10 or later, press Win+X, I, Enter. A PowerShell/Terminal window will open. Enter the following command, substituting the words in angle brackets with actual values: ssh <IP address from the previous step> -l <name for the regular user>. Type yes at the prompt asking if you really want to connect to this unknown host. At the next prompt that appears, enter the password for the regular user you've created. Skip the next step; If you're running an older version of Windows, you will need to download PuTTY, an SSH and Telnet client, set up an SSH connection to your TV box with the IP address above and log in with the name/password for the regular user; Now it's time to fix the settings for the Wi-Fi chip that doesn't work out of the box on the H96 Max V11. To delete the old settings, copy the command sudo rm -f /usr/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac4334-sdio.rockchip,rk3318-box.txt and paste it by right-clicking in the SSH window, then press Enter; To create the new settings file, enter (copy-paste) the command sudo nano /usr/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac4334-sdio.rockchip,rk3318-box.txt The nano text editor will open with a new empty file; Now open this small text file (a copy of nvram_2734c.txt from this forum topic), press Ctrl-A to select all text in it, then Ctrl-C to copy it to the clipboard; Switch to the SSH window, right-click to paste the copied text to nano then press Ctrl-S to save and Ctrl-X to exit; Enter (or copy-paste) the command sudo reboot -f to reboot Armbian. After that you can either close the SSH window and proceed with the physical console or start a new SSH session once Armbian has restarted; Enter (or copy-paste) the command sudo apt update && sudo apt install armbian-config After the update and installation is completed, run armbian-config to configure various software and hardware settings (including Wi-Fi). It is recommended to select "Freeze" in System settings to disable Armbian kernel upgrades because our kernel is compiled with custom patches enabling HDMI output on H96 Max V11 to work properly that are unavailable in other kernel versions.

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

What about the "walnut pi 1b" (allwinner h616 SOC) ? Does Armbian run on that? (Didn't see any post on that SBC)

This is a bit off topic, sorry for that, but I want to buy another tv box. I tried to find something like a best buy guide with links to AliExpress or something similar, but I can't find any. Tips?

This is a bit off topic, sorry for that, but I want to buy another tv box. I tried to find something like a best buy guide with links to AliExpress or something similar, but I can't find any. Tips?

Hi @Benedito Portela
 
Thanks for pointing out this alternative route using multiboot / armbian-install!
For now I won't try that route though because I'm currently using my box without HDMI running node-red and it's finally working.
To get HDMI I'll try to get my hands on the correct  rk322x-led-conf7.dtbo first.
 
Best regards,
 
Bert

Finally I've cracked it!
I used the same SD that I used for the first box.
BIG MISTAKE!
I created a new SD. Multitool recognized the eMMC now and I burned the image again.
Now it's working.
 
Only thing is,,,
I get no HDMI output yet, but I'm working on it...
Any ideas? (Multitool WAS giving me HDMI but the new image doesn't)
Diagnostics dump  (armbianmonitor -u) can be found at https://paste.armbian.com/avapokirog 
 
Best regards
 
Bert