TicTid X9T Pro Armbian Install

[Petee]

Just installed Armbian on a TicTid X9T Pro which has:

 

- 3Gb of DDR3

- 32 Gb eMMC

- Amlogic S912 with an Octa-Core CPU

- WiFi Dual band

- Bluetooth 4.1

- Gb LAN port

- GPU which does 4K HD fine

 

Also installed the desktop which presents itself in HD 4K mode (connected to my new LCD TV just fine).

 

Then installed Kodi from default repository.

 

Noticed that it would crash on startup.  Changed the default Desktop resolution to HD (1900X1200) afterwards and noticed that KODI started fine in HD mode.

 

Seeing now though that KODI is not using the GPU rather it is doing the VM for video driver thing.

 

lsmod shows meson_vdec for GPU stuff.

and loading up meson-gxm-khadas-vim2.dtb.  Not sure if this is correct.  Just know now that it works.

 

Thinking I need to use the 3Gb version of this file: gxm_q201_2g.dts dtb.  Where can I find it? 

 

A couple of questions:

 

1 - Is Kodi 18.X available that runs on arm64 or aarch64?

2 - What can I do relating to having KODI use hardware GPU for HD 4K video?

3 - configured the Gb interface for one static IP and it is showing both the static IP and the DHCP IP when it starts up.  I have tried to configure only one static IP and it keeps defaulting to using two network addresses.

Googling the forum see that there are no mali drivers for s912 and that GLXinfo / KODI shows it using a VM driver for video.

 

Found a file called gxm_q201_3g_1gbit.dtb which did not work for me.

 

 

[Petee]

I was able to get the above mentioned gxm_q201_3g_1gbit.dtb file to work fine with CoreElec today.  I have configured CoreElec to boot in to 4K HD mode and testing playing back a few 4K files with no issues.  Sound working great.  I did lose the static IP settings on one reboot and could not restore them so went to using DHCP for time bean.

 

It would be nice to be able to get this DTB file working with Armbian.

[AndrewDB]

You forgot to mention which version of Armbian you have tested.

 

Also, FYI, in the S912 the ARM T820 GPU does not do video decoding, it's the Amlogic VPU that handles video decoding.

 

There are no drivers for the T820 GPU. ARM does not release the closed-source drivers and the open-source, reverse-engineered drivers are still WIP (work-in-progress).

[Petee]

Thank you Andrew.

 

I tested with most current stable release of Armbian and used armbian-config to install desktop.

 

Armbian_5.77_Aml-s912_Ubuntu_bionic_default_5.0.2_20190401

 

On the test run of coreelect and KODI system video properties see it using the Mali 820 (same as running KODI in Android) in the video properties.

 

I was able to play back a few test 4K HD movies fine streaming them from the NAS on the network.

 

How come I cannot utilize the dtb.img file from coreelectric in Armbian? 

 

 

 

[AndrewDB]

3 hours ago, Petee said:

How come I cannot utilize the dtb.img file from coreelectric in Armbian? 

 

Because it's from a different kernel. Check the kernel version used in Coreelec, it's probably the old kernel 3.14.something from Amlogic and it's using the proprietary ARM GPU drivers. Armbian uses mainline kernel 5.02 with different dtb's. And as I wrote before, ARM is not supporting Linux X Window graphics on newer kernels on the drivers for the T8XX GPU's.

[Petee]

Thank you Andrew.

 

Ahh...

 

Checked the kernel this morning...

 

ICS-X9T:/proc # uname -a
Linux ICS-X9T 3.14.29 #1 SMP Wed Feb 27 00:10:49 GMT 2019 aarch64 GNU/Linux

 

ICS-X9T:/proc # cat /proc/cpuinfo
Processor    : AArch64 Processor rev 4 (aarch64)
processor    : 0
processor    : 1
processor    : 2
processor    : 3
processor    : 4
processor    : 5
processor    : 6
processor    : 7
Features    : fp asimd evtstrm aes pmull sha1 sha2 crc32 wp half thumb fastmult vfp edsp neon vfpv3 tlsi vfpv4 idiva idivt
CPU implementer    : 0x41
CPU architecture: 8
CPU variant    : 0x0
CPU part    : 0xd03
CPU revision    : 4

Hardware    : Amlogic

 

Noticed too this morning that it appears that there is no LibreElec build for this device.

 

Played a couple of 4K movies last night streaming them from the Internet and NAS and they played back fine except noticed that the CPU got really hot such that dropping a heat sink on the device.

 

Curious too why I see this chipset recommended as the fastest out there now for 4K streaming?  Is it because of Android (which I do not want to use)?

 

Curious why "ARM is not supporting Linux X Window graphics on newer kernels on the drivers for the T8XX GPU's."?

 

So I am OK with running coreelec on this device using a 64Gb microSD card or 32Gb microSD card.

 

Note that this box was only $50 USD which is really cheap.  EXCEPT that Amazon doesn't have these any more and I look at the invoice for this device and it shows a different TV box.

 

This morning looked at some more boxes and see RK3328 - quad core ARM, 4Gb RAM, 64Gb eMMC except that they are only 100Mbs NICs for around $50.

 

I want to turn the next box in to an automation server (not a TV box) and fit it inside my media panel running:

 

1 - docker

2 - mosquitto server

3 - Node Red (which I cannot get running on aarch64 docker)

4 - Home Assistant

5 - Homeseer (runs in Mono)

6 - firewall (adding a USB NIC)

 

Current TV boxes are old and too big here running on Aopen Digital Engines and getting long in the tooth these days.  Well not TVs here are all 4K HD.

 

New micro automation server needs to be small.  Mixing legacy Leviton Omni Pro 2 combo panel and newer automation.  Currently running firewall inside of alarm panel using a micro router Nexx with OpenWRT on it.  Not enough play space to run much software on OpenWRT at current time. 

 

I was running the above on an old Pine64 device with old Ubuntu on it and it worked fine until I updated it to latest build of Armbian.  Seems that I have a bad NIC as it will run for days then the NIC port just quits (even though the leds continue to blink).  I did change it to 100Mbs and it is doing the same such that I am giving up on the box for time being (after using it for some 3 years).  Well too cannot fit the Pine64 inside of my alarm panel can here.

 

So for the new automation microserver looking at the above mentioned to run Armbian Ubuntu server only. 

 

Will it suffice?