Armbian for Onn UHD 4K TVBox (S905Y2)

[sicxnull]

Got Armbian to run on those $20 TV Boxes sold at Wal-Mart. This is for the Dopinder variant, i have not tested on the newest version (YOC) but I will likely pick one up just to see. 

 

-removed-

Requires a few changes outside of the norm for armbian builds, so it's on my own fork. Likely will not be doing a PR. That said, it pulls the latest armbian source when building. 

https://github.com/sicXnull/Onn4K-TV-Box-Armbian

 

Needed:

 

OTG Cable (required)

USB Hub (recommended)

USB to Ethernet adapter (recommended)

 

Working
 

HDMI

Audio

Bluetooth

Wi-Fi

Building:

git clone https://github.com/sicXnull/Onn4K-TV-Box-Armbian.git
cd Onn4K-TV-Box-Armbian
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/armbian/build armbian-build
cp -R armbian-patch/* armbian-build/
cd armbian-build
./compile.sh build BOARD=onn4k BRANCH=current BUILD_DESKTOP=yes BUILD_MINIMAL=no DESKTOP_APPGROUPS_SELECTED= DESKTOP_ENVIRONMENT=mate DESKTOP_ENVIRONMENT_CONFIG_NAME=config_base EXPERT=yes KERNEL_CONFIGURE=no KERNEL_GIT=shallow RELEASE=bookworm
cd ..
sudo ./postscript.sh

write the image to USB.

cd armbian-build/output/images
sudo dd if=Armbian-unofficial_24.11.0-trunk_Onn4k_bookworm_current_6.6.48_mate_desktop.img of=/dev/sdb bs=4M status=progress

 

Booting from USB

 

Plug it into your onn 4K UHD using an OTG cable, and hold the reset button while plugging in power.

 

For future boots, you just need the USB drive plugged in during poweron. There is no more need to hold the reset button.

EMMC Boot

I'm assuming flashing to EMMC will break it, i have not tested this yet, although i plan to in the future. 

Edited September 13 by Werner
edit on user request

[mona]

If there is still interest, I can try testing the newer variant of the Onn box with the S905Y4. 

It seems to me this could be super useful (especially if we can flash to the EMMC in the future). It could be a relatively cheap RPI alternative for things like pihole.

Edited September 24 by mona
added thoughts

[sicxnull]

9 hours ago, mona said:

If there is still interest, I can try testing the newer variant of the Onn box with the S905Y4. 

It seems to me this could be super useful (especially if we can flash to the EMMC in the future). It could be a relatively cheap RPI alternative for things like pihole.

From what i understand the bootloaders are locked and cannot be unlocked on the new ones, but there's always the possibility that there's a workaround. I need to run to walmart and grab one to play with, but if you make any progress by all means, let us know! 

For $20 these things would be great for pihole/light work like you mentioned. 

Edited September 24 by sicxnull