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https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16976-status-of-armbian-on-tv-boxes-please-read-first/

So I bought this chinise Android TV Box and would love to install armbian on it. I am new on this and discovered armbian just after buying it. I didn't know there was no support and not official open source for the Rockchip RK3528, otherwise I would have chosen any other. The box works fine but it has that known malware that send packets to suspicious links (I scanned activity with pi-hole). Description says it has 2GB RAM and 16GB storage (Hynix H26M51002KPR) WiFi chip is LGX8800D I attach images of the board and all of it's componentes, including IR sensor and display. It also has a red LED that turns on when in stand-by mode. I hope this help to develop or patch a working version of armbian for it. I have already read about some patches around that would probably work, but I' new to this and I'm not sure how to start. What I would like to do first is a completly ROM backup, and start doing test with a pendrive or SD card, not writting directly to the eMMC (if possible) until the important things get working. And any help would be appreciated. Edit: I will keep posting in this thread with my progress (or attemps!)

I have this Rupa X88 13 TV BOX with also uses RK3528, I dumped many parts of firmware using a tool called rkdumper and managed to extract .dtb files using a tool called dtb-extract Maybe this can help you. I don't know how to use those files yet, but reading your post I think I have a hint now

https://forum.armbian.com/topic/16976-status-of-armbian-on-tv-boxes-please-read-first https://forum.armbian.com/topic/33676-installation-instructions-for-tv-boxes-with-amlogic-cpus

Google has launched the new Chromecast with Google TV (HD) powered by an Amlogic S805X2 quad-core Cortex-A35 CPU that offers a cheaper alternative to the Chromecast with Google TV (4K) that is limited to 1080p60 resolution, instead of the 4Kp60 video output supported by the Amlogic S905X3 model. While the processor is slower, the system comes with less memory (1.5GB vs 2GB), and only supports 1080p60, it supports the more efficient AV1 video decoding and as well as A/B partitions for seamless updates since the firmware does not need to be downloaded to the internal storage before the Chromecast with Google TV (HD) specifications: SoC – Amlogic S805X2 quad-core Cortex-A35 processor with Mali-G31 MP2 GPU, 1080p60 H.265, H.264, VP9, AV1 video decoder System Memory – 1.5GB RAM Storage – 8GB eMMC flash with support for “virtual A/B updates with compression“ Video output – HDMI up to 1080p60 with HDR support [...] The post Chromecast with Google TV (HD) features Amlogic S805X2 CPU with AV1 video support appeared first on CNX Software - Embedded Systems News. View the full article

Hi I know this is an old thread. A few years ago i bought two NanoPi K2's I used these as kodi boxes for a while, but eventually stopped using them when i got an nvidia shield and other android tv boxes Recently i have wanted to put these back to use, specifically to run Armbian and do a source install of Retropie (which works suprisingly well) with only two caveats 1: The Video resolution seems to be locked to lower resolutions (1024x768 and i think 800x600) 2: The onboard HDMI Audio does not seem to work these issues are both apparent with the latest "automated" builds available on the Armbian website I was just wondering which build was the last "non automated" build where HDMI Audio and Video resolutions (say, 1920x1080) are supported Alternatively, are there any patches that can be applied to make the HDMI Audio work or to hard code a custom resolution? I seem to be finding conflicting info online, and this board does not appear to be very popular which is a bit sad, because it actually seems like a well featured board. If only the manufacturer supported it better.

hey guys! nice to meet you all! my goal is to get TV-OUT working on Zero 2W (posting here instead of Zero 2W topic since this one is more live ). I've seen in this discussion that @VioletGiraffe have the same goal as well. I'm trying to modify those 6.1 (H2 H3 H5) patches for 6.6 || 6.7. If someone is working on that as well, let's collaborate (actually I'm open for an extra donation if someone does that btw) and please share if there is some progress with that. Many thanks in advance! One question to clarify: - as I understand there is no code in 6.8 that fix TV-OUT issue, right?

Hello everyone, grateful for your support, please how do I update the legacy armbian kernel on the tv box, rk322x, to a more updated kernel version, considering that the legacy kernel 4.4 is already obsolete, from the terminal with APT.. ..Thank you for your answers.

i perfectly understand, I also hate when an available piece of hardware cannot be used, but really lost a lot of time in wifi drivers and, especially realtek drivers, need constant care because they are overbloated software written by simians. When complied, any realtek driver is few megabytes large, while the average wifi driver is well below the 100kbytes. The device id you see in rk322x-config 024c:8723 is clearly declares that your chip is rtl8723as (for some other references: https://forum.libreelec.tv/thread/27091-no-wifi-at-mxq-pro-4k-5g/)

Hi. I'm out of my depth here, but I noticed that one of the official Armbian builds with platinum support is for the Khadas VIM1S, which has a S905Y4 SOC with 2GB of RAM. This is a similar configuration to many cheap Android TV boxes. According to some sources I can find, the S905W2 is also in the same family as the S905Y4 (Amlogic NE S4). Both are also supported by Coreelec, although I understand that Coreelec DTB's can't be used with Armbian. What would be involved in porting Armbian from the VIM1S to S905Y4/S905W2 TV boxes? Is this likely to work, and where could I start? Thanks!

Description Various minor fixes to rockchip rk3318/rk322x based tv boxes: usb ports gain resets in uboot and kernel, so hopefully they gains some more compatibility and/or less hangups rk3318-box now uses the ddrbin from vendor; it was accidentally switched to uboot TPL during last uboot update some patches have been removed because useless or because things could merged into board dtbs Except for a change in dwc2.c driver in rockchip 32 bit (that may have an effect on OTG port on ASUS Tinkerboard, which is usually unused due to being the power connector), no other boards are affected by these changes. It looks like that USB resets,at least on rk3318/rk3328, are good for USB gadgets and makes the audio gadget work in both UAC1 and UAC2 modes. During previous tests, without these patches, audio gadget were totally refusing to work. How Has This Been Tested? USB device have been tested on all USB OTG/EHCI or hubbed ports on these systems: [x] Tested current 6.6 kernel on rk322x live system, complied edge 6.8 kernel [x] Tested current 6.6 kernel on rk3318 live system [x] Tested current 6.6 and edge 6.8 kernels on rk3328 live system Checklist: [x] My code follows the style guidelines of this project [x] I have performed a self-review of my own code [x] I have commented my code, particularly in hard-to-understand areas [x] My changes generate no new warnings View the full article

Dear All, First I would like to thanks all the contributors to armbian, What a great OS for our small SBC ! Context: I run succesfully latest Armbian on a X9T 4K TV Box (amlogic s912) from SD Card 2GB (following instructions here The Problem: I would like to run armbian from emmc (16GB on this box) for better reliability and performance. So, I run the install-aml.sh script, I had some error (no boot.ini ...), but the process seems to finish successfully Next Reboot: It's seems my boot partition is Not OK ... something missing ... For reference See bellow for reference the succesfull boot from the sdcard If I boot from SDCard, I can inspect the /boot and root partition on emmc, everything seems ok On the emmc partition, the /boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf is correctly modified: extlinux.conf LABEL Armbian LINUX /Image INITRD /uInitrd #FDT /dtb/amlogic/meson-gxbb-p200.dtb #FDT /dtb/amlogic/meson-gxl-s905x-p212.dtb #FDT /dtb/amlogic/meson-gxl-s905w-tx3-mini.dtb FDT /dtb/amlogic/meson-gxm-q200.dtb #FDT /dtb/amlogic/meson-g12a-x96-max.dtb #FDT /dtb/amlogic/meson-g12b-odroid-n2.dtb append root=LABEL=ROOT_EMMC rootflags=data=writeback console=ttyAML0,115200n8 console=tty0 rw no_console_suspend consoleblank=0 fsck.fix=yes fsck.repair=yes net.ifnames=0 splash plymouth.ignore-serial-consoles And the disk partion on the emmc fdisk -l /dev/mmcblk1 Disk /dev/mmcblk1: 14.64 GiB, 15724445696 bytes, 30711808 sectors Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes Disklabel type: dos Disk identifier: 0x09170000 Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type /dev/mmcblk1p1 1953792 2953215 999424 488M c W95 FAT32 (LBA) /dev/mmcblk1p2 2955264 30711807 27756544 13.2G 83 Linux If you can help me .... Thx in advance Nico

Description Cut and sewing work around mailing list/libreelec patches to include a minimum set of patches that attempt to solve the various issues with HDMI on rockchip64 family. This affects both current kernel 6.6 and edge kernel 6.8. References on the forums: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/26818-opi-4-lts-no-hdmi-output/ https://forum.armbian.com/topic/37166-hdmi-issues-on-6x-kernel/ One kind guy tested the kernel package on rockpro64 and reported success: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/26818-opi-4-lts-no-hdmi-output/?do=findComment&comment=189646 Also remove a patch named "rk356x-vop2-support", that was not about vop2 support but rather tweaks the HDMI phy timings and code because it has been already included in this more general clock fixes. Jira reference number AR-2118 How Has This Been Tested? [x] Tested on a live Orange PI 4 LTS system [x] Tested on a rk3328 tv box [x] Tested on rockpro64 by the guy in the description Checklist: [x] My code follows the style guidelines of this project [x] I have performed a self-review of my own code [x] I have commented my code, particularly in hard-to-understand areas [x] My changes generate no new warnings View the full article

I recently purchased a cheap TV box (RK3228A) on AliExpress and I'm trying to boot up MULTITOOL for installing Armbian. However, it's not starting. Steps followed: - Flashed the multitool.img onto an SD card using BalenaEtcher. - Removed the SD card from the Computer and inserted it into the TV BOX slot. - Connected the power cable to the BOX. Result: - No event occurred. - The red light on the BOX lit up. - However, MULTITOOL didn't start. - The monitor shows "HDMI no signal". I tried using another multitool.img, but also without success. Could anyone help me? I'm not an expert on this matter. TV BOX: https://i.ibb.co/NsZ12LT/tvbox.jpg | https://i.ibb.co/ScwRG4V/tvbox2.jpg

Hello, I'm new to this forum here. I don't know if it have solution to boot flashed USB (NOT SD-Card) contain Armbian OS from Recovery Mode on cheap Android TV Boxes (Set-top) ? Because I have this box with model `SB801` (Device name: Acnos SB801 [from Vietnam] ) doesn't have SD-Card slot but it has specs like Odroid C1 / MXQ / Mbox SB801. Little specs preview: + CPU: Amlogic S805 + RAM/ROM: 1GB/8GB + Running OS: Android 4.0 + USB Slot: 2 + Display connector: HDMI, [? Red,White,Yellow] + Network: Ethernet, Wi-Fi Thanks. **sorry for my bad English

There are is no Armbian support for s805 based tv boxes (only s905 based boxes).

Hello, it's been months since I've said to myself "I've got to get a cheap TV box, since SBCs are now so expensive and my Raspberry Pi 3 is showing its I/O and memory limits", and I think I'm now finally forced to, because 2 weeks ago my Pi started to show some strange (load/power) issues, and even started to emit a funny burned smell (!!!), slowly with hours of continuous (even if light) uptime. It still works, but I fear that some component is dying, maybe having kept an USB HDD connected for months has fried something: the smell strangely is always coming even after changing PSU and disconnecting the HDD (apart from that, there are now no other connected peripherals except for the microSD), and it appears to come from the micro-USB port section of the board. Point is, I don't trust this thing to keep working 24/7 after this incident, I have to get a new small homeserver. Indeed, I mostly used the Pi as a server these years, and after reading "Status of Armbian on TV Boxes" I think I can at least give a shot at trying to buy a TV box as a Pi substitute for this kind of task. Since today and tomorrow the Amazon Prime Day takes place, and I'm finding some more-decent-than-usual deals (yes, I did check with Keepa, some boxes are really on discount today), I thought I might as well buy now and stop postponing. So, my requirements are about the following, and they seem easy enough to get on today's TV boxes with Android, but I don't know what happens if I was to desire Armbian: 4 GB RAM or more (unlike the Pi's 1 GB) USB 3.0 ports (unlike the Pi's 2.0), to add big additional storage with minimal bottleneck (but maybe we don't rely on an USB-Y cable anymore if connected to a separate PSU...) WiFi, preferably 5 GHz, because I don't have a good place to put the box near my router, and can't have Ethernet cables going from one corner of the room to the opposite... Now, I probably don't really need bare-metal pure Linux, since the majority of the software I have to run can do so in a proot container in Android (in the past I did use an half-broken Android smartphone as a server actually), but I would have to sacrifice Docker (which sometimes is really useful) and also Pi-Hole (since to work it has to bind on a privileged port, and I wouldn't bet on being able to root these Android boxes), so I am at least making an attempt at buying something that can run Armbian. From what I'm gathering from the forum, the best choices are usually Rockchip boxes (most supported), next come those with some Amlogic SoCs (driven by a small community), and lastly there are some Allwinners. However, it's a bit chaotic trying to infer what's the best choice from browsing semi-random threads, and that's why I'm asking any potential TV box expert (now that's hyperspecialization!) what could be the best choice among what I found for an acceptable price (some are on Prime Day discount, some aren't but still have a good price): X88 Pro 10, X88 Pro 12: RK3318 chip, I understood that it's good support-wise (https://forum.armbian.com/topic/26978-csc-armbian-for-rk3318rk3328-tv-box-boards/#comment-122715), WiFi works too if I'm reading correctly, but hardware-wise it's kind of crap, wastes energy, and can fail. Oh well, I'll be honest: I know I should be worried, but I don't know how much worried! X88 Pro 13: RK3528, is it a very new SoC? I can't find anything on the forum about it, and so I fear there is no support. Magcubic thingy, Magcubic 8K Ultra HD, Tanix thingy (Allwinner H618); T95H, Q Plus (Allwinner H616): It appears these are not well supported, there are some experimental builds around but many things are broken. Would be happy to discover that I'm wrong on this and support is actually good for my standards, though. TUREWELL T95 Max+: Amlogic S905X3, here I kinda don't understand at all if there's enough good community support or not, but there are many threads about issues and solutions. To be clear: I can tinker if something doesn't work out-of-the-box with Armbian, I have a bit of experience with embedded devices like routers or Android smartphones so I think I could solve minor issues if they arise, but I'm really looking for a quick replacement for my Raspi and don't want to spend more than a few days after getting the box to make Armbian work. That's why I'm thinking so hard on getting a device with good compatibility. Anyways, thank you to anyone who comes here to help, I would appreciate it. If no help comes, I think I will bet on a box with the RK3318 and hope for the best.

Hi again, Quick update for potential other readers, and some questions. I've now also got overlayroot setup to keep the internal flash mounted as readonly for normal operation. So as to not burn through the flash's endurance counters within a year on a device that's writing logs, status information, etc. to flash continuously. And also to protect it against issues when people just pull the plug while it's operational, potentially corrupting flash and making it unusable without physical recovery. Seems to be working great, but had to adjust the initramfs hook and script files (mount -o move instead of mount --move in script, and adding lines to copy_exec /bin/grep, /usr/bin/stat, and /bin/echo to the initramfs. Seems to be working just great including with pikvm. Two questions: My rk3318 android tv box "H96 Max v11" does have the two red/blue leds on the pcb, but no clock display. There are solder points on the pcb though. Would it be possible to use these pins for GPIO access (maybe even add an I2C RTC module), or would that not be possible within the limits of hardware/firmware? Any pointers on where to start looking, if at all possible? In pikvm config, following generic instructions, I was able to easily add the usb ethernet gadget and do routing/masquerading for the attached device. Yet, when I tried to configure usb mass storage gadget, the result was that the keyboard/mouse stopped responding in pikvm. From the pikvm documentation (unfolding the USB limitations section) it looks like there could be an issue with capabilities of the chip in relation to the number of endpoints needed. Yet, that page mentions mass storage would require 2 endpoints for each msd, and usb ethernet would require 3 endpoints per emulated device. So it's strange that ethernet does work but msd does not. Enabling only one at a time, of course. Is there any data on the number of endpoints available on the rk3318 chip? Or maybe someone knows how to make msd working? Or.. maybe it was intentionally disabled in srepac's kvmd-armbian because it's not working either way? The usb ethernet gadget was disabled in the config as well but works like a charm, so not sure why msd didn't work as expected. Or maybe msd is only supported for the usb3 port and not on the usb2 port that I'm now using for otg connection to the remote? Sorry, too many question marks here... Any pointers would be much appreciated!

hey guys! nice to meet y'all the reason that brought me here is Zero 2W and tv-out issue any recommendations how can I adapt these patches to h618? or maybe someone is already working on that? or maybe there are other options how to turn on tv-out for Zero 2W? I've tried different distros with 6.1 & 6.6 kernels and no luck with tv ;( many thanks in advance!

Hello, I have two of those TV box Android Q+ tv box, which apparently has H616 CPU in it, and I am trying for literally two days to install armbian or some other linux on it (I want to repurpose them to something usefull). I tried with all the images for orangepi zero 2, tanix t96s/96, basically all the images that I could imagine and could find, that apparently should boot from SD card. My procedure is that I press button inside of AV port, with SD card inserted, and pluging power in whilist holding reset button, and it newer boots into any armbian or other distro that I tried. I saw few people here managed to install linux on it, but I ran out of ideas, if somebody can just direct me to correct image/procedure how to install it. I also followed this https://indomus-it.translate.goog/guide/come-installare-e-configurare-armbian-su-q-plus-q-smart-tv-box/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp#boot, to no avail. Thank you!

I start to make System changes to H96 MAX TV-Box To backup my device: sudo dd if=/dev/mmcblk1 of=/DATA/disk/disk_image.img status=progress bs=4096 my "/DATA/disk/" is SMB Gigabit LAN SSD Mounted by /etc/fstab //10.1.0.1/disk /DATA/disk cifs username=admin,password=weakpasswd,iocharset=utf8,file_mode=0777,dir_mode=0777,x-systemd.automount,x-systemd.idle-timeout=60 To shrink the Image from 64GB to 6GB for Backup Files:

Armbian doesn't support TV boxes. Of the three major cpu families alwinner has the least support (practically no activity on alwinner). You can look at other threads in this forum discussing the h616.

I install armbian in tvbox rockchip rk322x run normally. Sorry I think That this fórum questions any TV box too, i see any tópics with TV box in the fórum. Dont exist any topic área for this in here ? Thanks