CSC Armbian for RK322x TV box boards

[fabiobassa]

@Harleyyyu

my 2 cents thought .....

We are talking about a 10 dollars soc . Is already a great milestone it is " just working"
Anyway.. If you achieve any good result let's us know

[Harleyyyu]

Okay here's a huge update and a win for me:

While i stopped playing with the kernel, i focused on improving openauto by replacing GStreamer with ffmpeg and utilizing the same RTAudio to Alsa Patch which achieved the following things:

• 720p 60 1080p 60 FPS Stream (cma set to 265)
• RTAudio to Alsa (Video and Audio are synced)
• Low Latency Touch or Mouse Response

Now while there is still some bugs like when i disconnect my phone by pulling the usb cord results into a segment fault i'd say that's just a minor bug that can be fixed along the way.

Huge thanks to the experimental ffmpeg patches and the guide @jock

PS: hopefully someone can help me improve the code even more, i know this board is capable of being an android auto head unit for those who like to build it on their own: Github: Openauto-rk3229-armbian (requires you to compile aasdk)

Edited Friday at 10:10 AM by Harleyyyu

[fabiobassa]

@Harleyyyu

Your project could be interesting , I would suggest to open a dedicated 3ad on It own so people can contribute.

 

As you have already realized by yourself quite all  hardware and drivers aspects of this rk322x soc have bene investigated by @jockand/or @ilmich

 

But if you achieve any progress on GENERAL drivers and performance that isn't already been discussed or achieved you can came back here to share

 

Thanks

[Dangrain]

Hey just checking in.

I haven't forgotten about this yet, I want to make sure everything is repeatable and possible to do on multiple versions of armbian before I write a guide and confuse a lot of people.

Noticing that mpv doesn't work, I tried to do what jock suggested to Harleyyyu and update to a newer kernel version.

So far... no luck. Seems like the problem boils down to having to write u-boot.bin to the eMCP before burning the actual OS onto it. 

I'll write again if anything goes.

Edited Saturday at 03:58 PM by Dangrain
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[ArturHey]

Issue booting Multitool on RK322x Box (Kingston eMCP) - Red IR Light Only

Hi everyone,

First of all, thank you for this incredible project. Bringing new life to these generic boxes is vital work.
 

I am struggling to boot the Multitool on an "RPC Plus" TV Box. Here are my hardware specs and the steps I’ve taken so far:

 

Hardware Specs:

• SoC: Rockchip RK3229.
• Storage/RAM: 8GB Kingston eMCP (Chip ID: O8EMCP08-ELSCV100).
• SD Card: 16GB Lexar microSD (Class 10).
• Board LEDs: POWER, NET, and IR.

Since the official download links for the Multitool are currently down (I get a 404 error idk why), I had to compile it myself on a Debian machine using the https://github.com/paolosabatino/armbian-build?tab=readme-ov-file repo and the ./create_image.sh rk322x script. I flashed the 500MB image to a 16GB Lexar card using BalenaEtcher and placed the Armbian minimal forky (6.18.7) image inside the /images folder (file name Armbian_community_26.2.0-trunk.357_Rk322x-box_forky_current_6.18.7_minimal.img.xz).

 

The problem is that the box just won't boot from the SD card. When I hold the reset button and plug the power, the only thing I get is a static red light on the IR LED—no HDMI signal, no activity on the Power or Net LEDs, nothing. Android still boots fine if I pull the card out, so the hardware is okay, but it seems the boot process is hanging.

I've tried both the reset and update buttons with different timings but no luck so far. I’m attaching pictures of the board and the chip. Any help to get this thing past the red light would be great. I'm putting the pictures of the board here in case it helps.

Thanks!

IMG_6826.HEIC IMG_6827.HEIC

[Harleyyyu]

@ArturHey I Happen to have a backup of multitool on my pc, I have uploaded it to my github page for everyone to download.

https://github.com/Harleythetech/RK322x-multitool/releases/tag/rk322x-multitool

if you don't need to backup your current operating system you can also just use RKDevelopTool to flash your armbian image to your board.
https://github.com/rockchip-linux/rkdeveloptool

Edited 4 hours ago by Harleyyyu

[ArturHey]

Hi, @Harleyyyu, thanks for the copy of multitool. Sadly it behaves just like before. When turning on with the SD card inserted I only get a red LED. 

I saw some people saying they had luck booting from LibreELEC, but I get the exact same behavior.

I do want to keep a backup of my current OS. Any next steps for debugging it? Maybe it needs a shittier SD Card?