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H2: Sunvell R69 Android TV Box (AliExpress)

vlna

By vlna
in Allwinner CPU Boxes

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vlna

vlna

Posted
Posted (edited)

see http://www.cnx-software.com/2017/04/28/24-sunvell-r69-android-4-4-tv-box-is-powered-by-allwinner-h2-processor/

 

This device boots from uSD with Ubuntu desktop – legacy kernel 5.30 for OrangePi One and RetrOrangePi-3.0.1.Orangepione.img. It didn't boot after initial setting and reboot command/automatic reboot (I don't know why yet, but it should boot and resize fs). It looks it somehow breaks filesystem on uSD card (and I don't have different uSD card to test it).

 

Ethernet works out of box.

 

Some guy in Facebook group RetrOrangePi confirmed RetrOrangePi for OrangePi One works.

Edited by vlna
post update
0
Schmurtz

Schmurtz

Posted
Posted

This device has a really good price for a great H2+ implementation (with RJ45, wifi , 1GB ram and 8GB of flash storage).

It seems that it boots with the pi one img but wifi won't work.

Very interested by this topic, :) thank you.

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Igor

Igor

Posted
Posted
  On 8/11/2017 at 9:06 PM, Schmurtz said:

but wifi won't work

Expand  


Wifi on this device is done by XR819, module name is xradio, like on Orangepi Zero. Changing link to right board config might help /boot/script.bin -> bin/orangepione.bin to bin/orangepizero.bin


Performance of this chip is bad, so don't expect too much.

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Mik1Mak2

Mik1Mak2

Posted
Posted

Hello!

 

I am desperately try to install (Orange pi) Linux on this TV box.

How do you boot installation Linux on it?

At this stage I stuck with the sunxi-fel USB issues.

 

Please advice.

 

Michael

0
guidol

guidol

Posted
Posted
  On 8/7/2017 at 9:57 AM, vlna said:

see http://www.cnx-software.com/2017/04/28/24-sunvell-r69-android-4-4-tv-box-is-powered-by-allwinner-h2-processor/

 

This device boots from uSD with Ubuntu desktop – legacy kernel 5.30 for OrangePi One and RetrOrangePi-3.0.1.Orangepione.img. It didn't boot after initial setting and reboot command/automatic reboot (I don't know why yet, but it should boot and resize fs). It looks it somehow breaks filesystem on uSD card (and I don't have different uSD card to test it).

 

Expand  

 

I did get my R69 today (my birthday) - but did buy it myself :)
I also got a reboot problem with a old 8GB Samsung Class 4 uSD. It doesnt boot after filesystem-resizing (and after reconnect power),

but with a 16GB Sandisk Ultra Class 10 it does boot after resizing and power reconnecting :)
  

login as: root
root@192.168.6.151's password:
 ____                       _ _   ____   __   ___
/ ___| _   _ _ ____   _____| | | |  _ \ / /_ / _ \
\___ \| | | | '_ \ \ / / _ \ | | | |_) | '_ \ (_) |
 ___) | |_| | | | \ V /  __/ | | |  _ <| (_) \__, |
|____/ \__,_|_| |_|\_/ \___|_|_| |_| \_\\___/  /_/


Welcome to ARMBIAN 5.31 stable Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS 3.4.113-sun8i
System load:   0.23 0.26 0.12   Up time:       3 min
Memory usage:  4 % of 1000MB    IP:            192.168.6.151
CPU temp:      69°C
Usage of /:    9% of 15G

[ General system configuration: armbian-config ]
Last login: Thu Oct 19 12:41:47 2017 from 192.168.6.17

root@beelinkx2:~#

for the ASCII-Logo I changed the file /etc/update-motd.d/more 10-header

first apt update & upgrade is finsihed :)

used for my display (1280x1024)  h3disp -m33 

 

 

dmesg.txt

1
t.munzer

t.munzer

Posted
Posted

As said in the other topic about R69, using Beelink X2 images (Ubuntu or Debian) is fine too. Installation on emmc using armbian-config script went fine, but after that sd card reader isn't recognized after boot. For now I use it as a headless pi-hole server. Run for 3 days, 54 °C reported. But before that I had two freeze (unable to access via SSH ) after running one or two days.

(tm)

monitor.png

0
guidol

guidol

Posted
Posted
  On 10/19/2017 at 12:36 PM, t.munzer said:

As said in the other topic about R69, using Beelink X2 images (Ubuntu or Debian) is fine too. Installation on emmc using armbian-config script went fine, but after that sd card reader isn't recognized after boot.

Expand  

So you can boot armbian from uSD and got no eMMC or boot from emmC and got no uSD....strange or onla a internal switch?

 

Is any image better/stable on the R69?: Beelink X2 <==> OrangePi One 

Booth are normally for a H3 CPU

 

Reboot Problems seems to be on booth (on Beelink Image I do get a kernel crash on the HDMI-Console before reboot(kill init) - that could be the problem why its not rebooting and we had to power-cycle....

I like the low memory useage of the Beelink-server image :)
  

root@sunvellr69:~# top
top - 19:01:37 up  5:12,  4 users,  load average: 0.07, 0.08, 0.06
Tasks:  82 total,   1 running,  81 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  0.6 us,  0.1 sy,  0.0 ni, 99.2 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem :  1024936 total,   844536 free,    42744 used,   137656 buff/cache
KiB Swap:   131068 total,   131068 free,        0 used.   958075 avail Mem

 

0
t.munzer

t.munzer

Posted
Posted
  On 10/19/2017 at 4:05 PM, guidol said:

So you can boot armbian from uSD and got no eMMC or boot from emmC and got no uSD....strange or onla a internal switch?

 

Expand  

I read somewhere that Beelink X2 (with armbian)  has the same issue.

 

Everytime I see the memory used by this little beast, I feel a little younger... not young (my first PC had an Intel 1Mbyte memory extension board selled around 1500€) but younger.

 

Running pihole the card spend all the time at 0.240 GHz, I think I will try the Google Voice Assistant SDK to keep it a little more busy.

 

 

0
tkaiser

tkaiser

Posted
Posted
  On 10/19/2017 at 12:36 PM, t.munzer said:

using Beelink X2 images

Expand  

 

Can you please provide output from 'armbianmonitor -u'?

 

Beelink X2 image is wrong since feeding the SoC all the time with 1.3V but the DRAM settings (624 MHz vs. 408 MHz for an OPi Zero image) might be better. As already said somewhere else it would be great if someone could extract the sys_config.fex stuff from the Android running on this thing then we could add an optimized fex file to Armbian's repo which could then also be used as the base for mainline kernel DT.

0
tkaiser

tkaiser

Posted
Posted
  On 10/19/2017 at 4:05 PM, guidol said:

on Beelink Image I do get a kernel crash on the HDMI-Console before reboot(kill init) - that could be the problem why its not rebooting and we had to power-cycle....

Expand  

IIRC this could be Wi-Fi driver being loaded. As usual: 'armbianmonitor -u' output please.

0
guidol

guidol

Posted
Posted
  On 10/19/2017 at 5:10 PM, tkaiser said:

 

Can you please provide output from 'armbianmonitor -u'?

 

Expand  

with Beelink Image

root@sunvellr69:~# armbianmonitor -u
/var/log/armhwinfo.log has been uploaded to http://sprunge.us/VeDV

 

with OrangePi One Image
root@orangepione:~# armbianmonitor -u
/var/log/armhwinfo.log has been uploaded to http://sprunge.us/FIQF
Please post the URL in the Armbian forum where you've been asked for.
 

0
t.munzer

t.munzer

Posted
Posted
  On 10/19/2017 at 4:05 PM, guidol said:

So you can boot armbian from uSD and got no eMMC or boot from emmC and got no uSD....strange or onla a internal switch?

 

Expand  

I read somewhere that Beelink X2 (with armbian)  has the same issue.

 

Everytime I see the memory used by this little beast, I feel a little younger... not young (my first PC had an Intel 1Mbyte memory extension board selled around 1500€) but younger.

 

Running pihole the card spend all the time at 0.240 GHz, I think I will try the Google Voice Assistant SDK to keep it a little more busy.

 

@tkaiser

http://sprunge.us/NdZZ

 

0
Igor

Igor

Posted
Posted

AFAIK @SKayser made some success with this box. There is one long thread in a OPI facebook group.

 

  Quote

Turns out Armbian Desktop for OPI PC+ starts and boots off the bat with no modification. DVFS doesn't work (as expected), hence the CPU is stuck at 1008 Mhz (or less?), but that's easily fixable. U-Boot also complains about not being able to set the core voltage. HDMI works, CVBS probably too.

Setting the CPU frequency to 1296 results in immediate crashes. So I think it is fair to assume that I was wrong about the 1200 mV power rail being used, but probably the 1500 mV power rail, which then in turn is pulled down to 1300ish mV. 1200 Mhz should be fine (edit: actually a tiny notch more should work, too, but that's fine tuning), so we indeed are OPi one / lite level here. Also worth noting: The DRAM seems to perform stable at the OPi Plus' 624 Mhz. This would be a welcome thing and another indicator that the parts used for this board are not that crappy.

Expand  
3

 

  Quote

Good news: Beelink X2 Armbian just works. No customization needed (except, well.... WiFi). And yes, Mac Tack, it runs the desktop.

Could have thought of that earlier, but whatever. It's probably the best way for people to use the box. There basically is no tweaking required (or even possible) if you just wanna run Armbian on this. eMMC is recognized and works, both USB ports work (and no "phantom" ports present), HDMI works. System survives a short 4 core burn without any core shutdowns.

There is a weird quirk with the sd card failing to reinitialize on soft-reboot. But well.... I guess that's something one can work around.

The big minus is the lack of WiFi support, and frankly, I'm not that confident I'll get it working. I'll have to analyse the original firmware. Maybe there I'll find some clues. 

Other than that the R69 does anything you'd expect the X2 to do - or not do.

I'm fairly confident pretty much any image compiled for the X2, including openELEC and ROPi, will work ootb with the exception of wifi.

Expand  
2

 

0
guidol

guidol

Posted
Posted
  On 10/19/2017 at 5:45 PM, tkaiser said:

I would go with the Beelink X2 image (since eMMC support) and trying out this fex: https://pastebin.com/ghjyAPju (naively assuming it's as close to H2+ reference design as OPi Zero is). Cooler_table, Wi-Fi, THS and DVFS settings are from OPi Zero, rest from Beelink X2. Feedback welcomed.

Expand  

I would try that - but was had read in the net a fex needs to be "compiled" with fex2bin? and where to put the bin (and file name) - because Iam a fext/bin-noob :(

0
tkaiser

tkaiser

Posted
Posted
  On 10/19/2017 at 5:42 PM, Igor said:

Beelink X2 Armbian just works

Expand  

 

Yeah, but with wrong DVFS settings (PMIC = 0) so hotter than necessary and also consuming a little bit more than necessary.

 

  On 10/19/2017 at 5:49 PM, guidol said:

I would try that

Expand  

 

It's as simple as grabbing https://pastebin.com/raw/ghjyAPju with wget and then running fex2bin with the file as input and /boot/script.bin as output. Followed by a reboot.

 

  On 10/19/2017 at 6:05 PM, t.munzer said:

http://sprunge.us/SVSS

Expand  

 

Thank you. It seems you still have the full Android install on eMMC! Can you please try to extract sys_config.fex? Once we have this it's just a matter of a little bit more copy&paste to get Wi-Fi working if it currently works in Android. Please follow wens' instructions how to get such a fex file from Android: https://github.com/linux-sunxi/sunxi-boards/commit/4a432501c910fddf759dd1171b15b0327b0d787a

 

0
guidol

guidol

Posted
Posted
  On 10/19/2017 at 9:44 PM, tkaiser said:

It's as simple as grabbing https://pastebin.com/raw/ghjyAPju with wget and then running fex2bin with the file as input and /boot/script.bin as output. Followed by a reboot.

 

 

Thank you. It seems you still have the full Android install on eMMC! Can you please try to extract sys_config.fex? Once we have this it's just a matter of a little bit more copy&paste to get Wi-Fi working if it currently works in Android. Please follow wens' instructions how to get such a fex file from Android: https://github.com/linux-sunxi/sunxi-boards/commit/4a432501c910fddf759dd1171b15b0327b0d787a

 

Expand  

for the fex/bin I did: 

cd /boot/bin
(getting the sunvell_r69.fex via ftp here)
fex2bin ./sunvell_r69.fex ./sunvell_r69.bin
cd ..
(remove symbolic link to beelink = script.bin -> bin/beelinkx2.bin)
rm script.bin
(setting new symbolic link to sunvell_r69 = script.bin -> bin/sunvell_r69.bin)
ln -s bin/sunvell_r69.bin script.bin
reboot

but for the sys_config.fex I seem to miss the serial port for u-boot.
I could in Android in a root-terminal get the config_sys from Point 1:

cat /proc/cmdline
config_size=35444

 

but with Point 2 (starting to u-boot) u-boot doesnt come up at the HDMI-screen :(

(did try to open the case without breaking it, but its very good closed and its my new birthday present)
To which mmc will fatdown write the bin (before bin2fex'ed) with?:
fatdown mmc 2:2 0x43000000 fex.bin <config_size>

 

The attached sunvell_r69.bin is only the fex2bin'ed version for /boot/bin :(

sunvell_r69.binFetching info...

0
tkaiser

tkaiser

Posted
Posted
  On 10/20/2017 at 9:16 AM, guidol said:

cat /proc/cmdline
config_size=35444

Expand  

Ok, then it should be possible to extract the relevant data from a running Linux accessing the the eMMC. But I'm too stupid to do the necessary calculations for an appropriate dd call and still too much of an u-boot/bootloader noob to be of any help at this stage. Once we have the blob able to be converted with bin2fex I could jump in again.

0
guidol

guidol

Posted
Posted

BTW:

with the commandline 

echo "heartbeat" > /sys/class/leds/red_led/trigger

you will get the Heartbeat-blink with the blue LED inside the R69 (front-right) :) (tested with the Beelink_X2-Image)

So I edited my /etc/rc.local  :)

0
t.munzer

t.munzer

Posted
Posted

@tkaiser,

Well with new fex file, R69 temperature seems constantly a little more hot (59°C) than with original Beelink X2 fex (and room temperature is a liitle lower!).

monitor.png

0
tkaiser

tkaiser

Posted
Posted
  On 10/21/2017 at 10:57 AM, t.munzer said:

with new fex file, R69 temperature seems constantly a little more hot (59°C) than with original Beelink X2 fex

Expand  

Honestly I don't care since wasting time on supporting TV boxes is stupid anyway (from a developer's point of view). Please check schematics of your TV box with which voltage H2+ is fed here by default and then get back to us. Otherwise provide original sys_config.fex used by manufacturer with Android.

 

To understand 'the problem' you need to dive into DVFS basics, then realize that we have 3 types of H2+/H3 devices: no voltage regulation, primitive voltage regulation (only 1.1V and 1.3V) and sophisticated voltage regulation (I2C accessible SY8106A chip able to adjust voltage in 20mV steps).

 

Beelink X2 has no voltage regulation and we believe H3 is fed with 1.3V (since the device seems to run stable at 1200 MHz). This thingie here obviously implements primitive voltage regulation and when you use the Beelink X2 fex it will remain at the default voltage set by resistors (or whatever -- I'm no hardware guy). The voltage shown by RPi-Monitor is irrelevant since this is just parsing fex or DT and doing some math. If you write in the fex file 15000V RPi-Monitor will display this regardless of the real voltage used.

 

If this TV box is set to 1.1V it will most probably become instable or even crash when you run demanding workloads when you allow the SoC to clock up to 1.2 GHz (very easy to test when switching back the X2 fex with some demanding benchmark). If the default voltage is set higher then the board should run stable at higher clockspeeds. It's a trial&error game since TV boxes aren't dev boards (no schematics available -- that's why extracting the sys_config.fex stuff is that important)

0
t.munzer

t.munzer

Posted
Posted

@tkaiser,

Well, as you take time to cook some fex file you supposed more adapted to the R69, I try to use it and report (as I can see it) how well it performs. As I nand-install armbian I cannot (am I wrong?) extract original R69 fex file. Thank you for your explanations. 

(tm)

0
guidol

guidol

Posted
Posted (edited)
  On 10/21/2017 at 11:34 AM, tkaiser said:

Otherwise provide original sys_config.fex used by manufacturer with Android.

 

Expand  

 

Today I did try my very best... Opened the R69 (without breaking anything), solder the TTL-Pins, connecting USB-TTL -

BUT when I power on with the u-boot button pressed I didnt get any output to disable the u-boot boot-sequence
(normally counting 3.2.1 on other boards and you have to press a key)

 

So I can - today - only deliver the boot-log from android on the R69 and two find commands for *.bin and *.fex as android-root on the filesystem:
 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Sunvell_R69__Mainboard.jpg

Sunvell_R69_TTL_Connect_Mainboard.jpg

Sunvell_R69_TTL_Connect_USB.jpg

Edited by Tido
added Spoiler
2
guidol

guidol

Posted
Posted
  On 10/21/2017 at 3:29 PM, t.munzer said:

The only button in R69 is the reset, hidden in the audio output.

Expand  

This button is named u-boot at the mainboard/pcb.

If I hold this button while powering on I didnt get any output on the TTL-serial-port :( (maybe some special key will do the magic to start u-boot console)

 

The only was to get output is to reconnect power without holding this button :(
 

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