CSC Armbian for RK322x TV box boards

[Vinicius Guastala]

On 4/17/2026 at 8:15 AM, digital said:

But wifi does not work, although armbian-config sees my wifi network and saves password for it. rk322x-config shows Wifi device: unknown - Device ID: 024c:b723. 
dmesg:

r8723bs: module is from the staging directory, the quality is unknown...

r8723bs: unknown parameter 'rtw_enusbss' ignored

lsmod shows module as unused:
r8723bs 405504 0

Could changing led-confs help?

 

 

@digital, there is not a lot of info about the 024c:b723 device you mentioned on linux-hardware.org, but there is a lot of people claiming it works on debian 10+.

 

Some boards have alternate pins for wireless chips, hence there is an specific wifi overlay for those scenarios (attached pic). However, I would not recommend to add this overlay for now, until we find the exact wifi chip model from your board... Can you share more details form your board? Brand/Model would be a start, but pictures from the board, and specially the wi-fi chip would be the best.

Also, please share the output of the commands below with us:

1- lsusb
2- lshw (install it with sudo apt install lshw)
3- dmesg | grep -iE 'wlan|wifi|wireless|80211'

4 - ip a

5 - nmcli

 

[Vinicius Guastala]

On 4/9/2026 at 5:31 PM, Tavares R said:

3D Graphics Acceleration on T95N (A98X Jackbox) - RK3229 with 2GB RAM / 16GB eMMC - Educational Project for Schools

 

Hi,

I’m working on a project using a specific TV Box model (A98X Jackbox) to repurpose these boxes as low-cost computers for schools. The goal is to provide students with a platform to use AI tools and basic productivity, but I need better browser rendering.

 

Hardware Specs (Confirmed via board teardown and logs):

• Board ID: T95N-RK3229_512X4_V1.5
• CPU: Rockchip RK3229
• RAM: 2GB (Confirmed via free -m)
• Storage: 16GB eMMC (SanDisk SDIN9DS2-16G)
• OS: Armbian 21.08.8 Bullseye (Legacy Kernel 4.4.194-rk322x)

 

What I have done so far:

1. Installed the Minimal image and set up LXDE with LightDM.
2. Optimized the system (Governor set to performance, swappiness set to 10).
3. Ran glxinfo -B which confirms it's currently using llvmpipe (Accelerated: no).
4. Tried searching for Mali drivers via apt, but armbian-config is not available in the repositories for this specific build/architecture.
5. Verified Wi-Fi functionality (working fine with LED config 2 via rk322x-config).

The system is stable and surprisingly fast thanks to the 2GB RAM, but the CPU is struggling with 100% spikes during browser rendering (Epiphany WebKit) because it lacks GPU acceleration.

 

Question: Is there a way to enable Mali-400 MP2 drivers for X11 on this Legacy 4.4 kernel? Are there any specific packages, blobs, or workarounds to get hardware acceleration working and replace llvmpipe?

 

I’m available to run any tests or provide further logs if needed.

 

Thanks for this amazing project!

Hi @Tavares R

You should definetly check the "Media framework installer v0.1" by Jock, on this link -> https://forum.armbian.com/topic/34923-csc-armbian-for-rk322x-tv-box-boards/page/10/#comment-102655

 

Also, this other link contains a repo to install some patched libs to at least use decoded video -> https://forum.armbian.com/topic/32449-repository-for-v4l2request-hardware-video-decoding-rockchip-allwinner/ 

 

Hope it helps, but reality check is the rk3229 is just too weak to properly handle a full DE running a modern browser... 

Something also worth trying is to enable the "cpu-hs" overlay. it will "overclock" the rk3229 from 1200Mhz to 1400Mhz, giving some extra performance, but keep low expectations...



PS: Are you brazillian by any means? Tavares is a very common last name in Brazil.

[jeffbzrr]

Hello everyone. I made a direct connection between the 5V from the motherboard and the 5V from the USB ports to try and overcome the current limitation of the USB ports.

 

However, something went wrong. I undid this direct connection, but the motherboard is still shorting the USB ports.

I believe the short circuit is in that ADG3T port. Does anyone have any idea what happened? I didn't even connect anything to the USB port.

Thanks.

 

[Joel Gómez]

Hi everyone, I have a ZQ01-v1.51 board (a clone of the MXQ Pro 5G—way to go, China!) with an RK3228A chip and Kingston eMCP memory. I’ve tried the Armbian and Educabox images, as well as LibreELEC 10, 11, and 12, and they all have a common issue: the system boots up to the login screen. The screenshots I’m sharing now are from Armbian 23.08.0 Edge 6.5.5 Minimal.

 

The problem is that at a certain point during the boot process, the screen starts flickering, and then when I finally reach the login screen, the image lasts a few seconds before the screen goes black. However, the screen doesn’t turn off—there’s simply no image, the red LED stays lit, and nothing else happens.

 

I don't have an SD card, so I'm using Lubuntu and Rkdeveloptool for flashing.

[reinoldo vieira]

---
  Hey everyone! Long-time lurker, first post here.

  I picked up one of those cheap RK3229 TV boxes and decided to see how far I could push it on a mainline
  kernel — no Android, no BSP, no blobs. What started as curiosity about whether rkvdec actually worked on
  kernel 6.6 turned into a full rabbit hole of GStreamer pipelines, PHY register dumps, and DRM memory
  bandwidth math.

  The whole debugging and documentation process was done collaboratively with Claude (Anthropic's AI
  assistant), which made it a lot easier to dig into kernel driver internals and iterate on the pipeline
  without spending weeks at it. All the results were validated on real hardware.

  Sharing here in case it saves someone else the same rabbit hole.

---
  [GUIDE] Hardware H.264 decode at 720p — mainline kernel 6.6, GStreamer, no blobs

  After spending some time on my RK3229 TV box running Armbian 24.2.5 Bookworm (kernel
  6.6.22-current-rockchip), I got hardware H.264 decode working at 720p real-time using only mainline kernel
  drivers and open-source GStreamer plugins. Posting here in case it helps others.

  ---
  What works

  - H.264 720p@30fps fully hardware decoded via rkvdec (the mainline V4L2 stateless decoder)
  - Direct HDMI output via kmssink (DRM/KMS — no X11, no Wayland needed)
  - Audio output via ALSA (HDMI or analog)
  - YouTube streaming with audio+video in sync using a small proxy server

  What doesn't work and why

  - 1080p: The decoder itself handles it, but writing ~90 MB/s of NV12 frames to uncached DRM memory
  saturates the Cortex-A7 memory bus. Not a software problem — there's no fix without DMA-BUF zero-copy
  between rkvdec and the DRM subsystem.
  - YouTube in a browser: Browsers do their own software decode — no VA-API bridge exists for rkvdec on
  mainline. Even with a desktop environment installed, frame rate will be unusable.
  - HEVC / AV1: Not supported by rkvdec on RK3228/RK3229.

  ---
  The GStreamer pipeline

  # Local H.264 file — video only
  gst-launch-1.0 filesrc location=video.mp4 ! qtdemux ! h264parse \
    ! v4l2slh264dec ! videoconvert ! kmssink driver-name=rockchip sync=true

  # YouTube streaming with audio (requires proxy — see repo)
  gst-launch-1.0 -e \
    souphttpsrc location="http://PROXY_IP:8091/play?v=VIDEO_ID&q=720&fmt=ts" automatic-redirect=true ! \
    tsdemux name=demux \
    demux. ! queue ! h264parse ! v4l2slh264dec ! videoconvert ! kmssink driver-name=rockchip sync=true \
    demux. ! queue ! aacparse ! avdec_aac ! audioconvert ! audioresample \
    ! "audio/x-raw,rate=44100,channels=2" ! alsasink device=hw:2

  Key points:
  - v4l2slh264dec is the stateless GStreamer element — do not use h264_v4l2m2m (that's for stateful decoders
  like RPi)
  - kmssink driver-name=rockchip uses /dev/dri/card0 (Rockchip DRM display), not the Lima GPU
  - For YouTube, MPEG-TS (fmt=ts) is required — fragmented MP4 with empty_moov breaks GStreamer cap
  negotiation

  ---
  Why this is different from Jock's media framework

  Jock's framework uses kernel 4.4 + RKMPP proprietary blobs. This uses kernel 6.6 mainline + rkvdec upstream
   driver + open-source GStreamer. No blobs, works with current Armbian, survives kernel upgrades.

  ---
  Requirements

  - Armbian 24.x with kernel 6.6-current-rockchip (kernel 5.15 / Bullseye not tested — V4L2 stateless API
  wasn't stable until 5.18)
  - GStreamer 1.22 from Debian Bookworm

  sudo apt install -y gstreamer1.0-tools gstreamer1.0-plugins-base \
    gstreamer1.0-plugins-good gstreamer1.0-plugins-bad \
    gstreamer1.0-libav gstreamer1.0-alsa

  ---
  Repo with scripts and full setup guide

  https://github.com/Reinoldo-Ozy/rk322x-mediaplayer

  Includes the yt-play playback script and the proxy server (yt_proxy.py) with systemd unit. The README
  covers the full setup, performance numbers, and a detailed limitations section.

  Tested on a generic MXQ Pro-style box with RK3229, 2 GB RAM, Armbian 24.2.5 Bookworm, kernel
  6.6.22-current-rockchip, DTB rk322x-box.dtb.

[jock]

@reinoldo vieira nice you found a pipeline that works with gstreamer!

 

I have a couple of notes though:

• why using such an old armbian image with such old kernel? Current images are on Debian Trixie with kernel 6.18 (edge packages are on 7.0)
• hardware video acceleration is working for years on rk3229, there is a thread mentioned in first page to an ffmpeg repository to achieve that with mpv

[reinoldo vieira]

Hi @jock, thanks for the feedback!
  
  Honestly, I didn't expect the current images to be that up to date — when I was looking for a
  stable image for the RK322x I ended up grabbing what was readily available (24.2.5 Bookworm)
  without checking if there were newer ones. My bad for not looking more carefully.
 
  I'll update the box to Trixie with kernel 6.18 and also take a look at the ffmpeg/mpv thread you
  mentioned. Appreciate the pointers!

[jock]

5 hours ago, reinoldo vieira said:

  I'll update the box to Trixie with kernel 6.18 and also take a look at the ffmpeg/mpv thread you
  mentioned. Appreciate the pointers!

You'd better upgrade the kernel to 6.18 and keep Debian Bookworm, because Trixie has an mpv version which is not exactly friendly with hardware video decoding because some things are in the middle of a transition