H2: Sunvell R69 Android TV Box (AliExpress)

[Igor]

On 11. 11. 2017 at 12:17 AM, manuti said:

lock the /var/dpkg after first apt update , so I need to manually fix before run apt upgrade

At least this is understandable on the surface - apt-update is running in the background automatically when the board starts the first time.

[tkaiser]

1 hour ago, 邓平平 said:

does any body  can boot Linux from eMMC?

 

Just read through this thread, there are several people having reported this working. Since in your log appears 'ext2' multiple times... did you chose that when running nand-sata-install when transferrring to eMMC?

 

 

[manuti]

4 hours ago, Igor said:

At least this is understandable on the surface - apt-update is running in the background automatically when the board starts the first time.

OK, sorry for this mistake.

[manuti]

Any question about cpu performance.

Running sysbench test (only for basic stress the borad) I find the CPU info only reach 648MHz and a marginal 0.04% at 1,01GHz  with interactive governor.

 

Is this the normal behavior or it can reach high frequencies during more time?

 

[tkaiser]

17 minutes ago, manuti said:

Is this the normal behavior or it can reach high frequencies during more time?

 

Maybe it's normal behaviour, without armbianmonitor output not easy to tell. You would need to run 'sudo armbianmonitor -m' in another terminal while running benchmarks (to see when throttling occurs) and if this does not explain the 'performance' (which is not bad, it seems this is just the device throttling down to 648MHz at the end of the sysbench run) then 'sudo armbianmonitor -u' is needed anyway.

 

Policy is to remain at 240 MHz as long as the box is idle, then clock up to the maximum until throttling jumps in. Since heat dissipation doesn't look that great judging by the pictures I would assume 'everything as expected'

[邓平平]

12 hours ago, tkaiser said:

 

Just read through this thread, there are several people having reported this working. Since in your log appears 'ext2' multiple times... did you chose that when running nand-sata-install when transferrring to eMMC?

 

 

Thank you, that's OK Now.

Because used the old version of ARMBIAN's nand-sata-install script, the u-boot cannot boot from eMMC after installation.

[Mert Samet Erdogan]

You guys are super. Yesterday I run armbian on my device over sd card. everything was very nice but i could not upload the kodi anyhow. the device constantly gave a pacth error. is there any special method to do it or iis it impossible?

Edited November 22, 2017 by Mert Samet Erdogan

[manuti]

Is impossible, if you want KODI keep using the Android provided by the vendor is not the last version but is usable.

[guidol]

4 hours ago, Mert Samet Erdogan said:

but i could not upload the kodi anyhow. the device constantly gave a pacth error. is there any special method to do it or iis it impossible?

 

If you want to update the KODI under Sunvell Android - there is the problem that their Android 6.0.1 is a fake.
Its only a 4.4 Kitkat which shows a Android version number of 6.0.1

And for Android 4.4 is no new KODI available - but you could get a patched version of Kodi 17.1  (EBOX-Logo) :
https://www.entertainmentbox.com/install-kodi-17-krypton-android-4-4-solved/

https://quickfileshare.org/te/EBMC_17.1_4.4.apk

or

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appmakr.entertainmentboxretrogameing

[Mert Samet Erdogan]

i was try to ask can we install kodi in armbian i flashed armbian last night and i loved it.

[tkaiser]

In the meantime there's both an Android 7.x 'SDK' out for H3 boards and a new BSP relying on some 4.4 kernel version is said to be ready to release today. No idea who'll look into this (none of the TV box vendors most probably since why should they), maybe the guys behind https://h3droid.com

[t.munzer]

I'm testing Beelink Debian Strech 4.13 server image on the R69. Results are very satisfying for my use case. With legacy image (even on orange pi pc) I never get stability running pi-hole,either pihole web server ran but dnsmasq was stopped, or the whole beast stopped responding even with SSH ; sometimes it stopped afted one day, other times after less than one hour. With mainline I ran for 6 days without a glitch. So I'm Happy...

 

...But I do not find how to replicate in mainline/dtb context what I do in legacy/fex, changing sdc_detmode parameter to have access to µsd card when booting from emmc. In fact I do not need at all using it, but I do not like not being able to do so !!!

[TheLinuxBug]

On 11/22/2017 at 7:02 AM, tkaiser said:

In the meantime there's both an Android 7.x 'SDK' out for H3 boards and a new BSP relying on some 4.4 kernel version is said to be ready to release today. No idea who'll look into this (none of the TV box vendors most probably since why should they), maybe the guys behind https://h3droid.com

 

Right now I am working on getting it working as I type this.  The only issues I have right now that makes it not stable (using fex from one of the Armbian images in this thread and working pretty well) is that for some reason in the surfaceflinger (windows manager for Android) end up with weird flickering and I can detect some artifacts in video playback and though I don't have a way to test temp at  the moment the temp of the heatsinks seems pretty hot to touch.  I am guessing some additional changes to u-boot we use or fex is needed to fix this.  If someone actually has a link/download of the u-boot being used in the Armbian image in this thread it would help me to not have to try and extract it for testing and I would appreciate it.

 

I plan to write a article on my adventure on our blog as well once completed. (h3droid.com/blog).

 

To clarify, I meant our current Android 4.4 based image, not 7.x.  There are some people with the Android 7.x SDK but I believe is still under NDA so kinda waiting till we can get our hands on it to see what we can do with it.

 

Cheers!

 

[TheLinuxBug]

The issue I am seeing actually seems to only happen in 1080P resolution.  It seems the thermal throttling setting that are default in the fex I have tested with are too high and the heatsink is actually getting almost scalding hot and CPU temp in Android reports 78c after playing 15 minutes at 1080p video (after disabling hardware overlay in developer options to stop surfaceflinger flickering).

 

So something doesn't seem right.  
 

However, that said, almost everything works!

 

Currently the following works under H3Droid:

- WiFi

- BT Dongles

- Both USB ports

- 100Mbit ethernet

- HDMI

- UART Console

- eMMc

 

I did drop DRAM to 528 for my testing purposes to see if it helped with heat a bit.

 

At 720P it currently runs alright and doesn't seem to overheat as much.

 

Pending is testing of CVSB to make sure it works as well, but I would love to work out this thermal issue and 1080p issue first before proceeding to that.

 

I also changed the u-boot I was using from one for Plus 2E to PC Plus after reading some people had better outcome with that here, seems to work alright.

 

If anyone has some suggestions for the DVFS settings for CPU and GPU in the fex that might help with this issue, please share!

 

I will continue to update as I have more.

 

Cheers!

[tkaiser]

7 hours ago, TheLinuxBug said:

If someone actually has a link/download of the u-boot being used in the Armbian image

 

There's something with Support_Package.tar in its name at http://kaiser-edv.de/tmp/NumpU8/ but I don't understand what you're doing since all that's needed is Armbian's build system, config file ending on .csc and latest fex file. We use boot config from OPi Zero Plus 2 H3 and I hope this one uses 408 MHz DRAM speed.

 

BTW: https://github.com/Allwinner-Homlet (forward ported BSP stuff to kernel 4.4, one single code vomit as usual)

[tasmatto]

hello, I would like to know if it was possible to install armbian on the box sunvell r69 - allwinner h2. if which instructions should I use?

[guidol]

2 hours ago, tasmatto said:

hello, I would like to know if it was possible to install armbian on the box sunvell r69 - allwinner h2. if which instructions should I use?

At the page http://kaiser-edv.de/tmp/NumpU8/ there are 2 compressed boot-images. One for Desktop and one for headless server.

You could download, extract the image and use Etcher as software for writing the image to MicroSD card.

then insert the card in the Sunvell R69 and boot your armbian :-)

[tasmatto]

Thanks a lot for the answer. which is the most stable version to install on the internal memory? Is kodi working? forgive me if I ask stupid questions but it's the first time I've approached armbian.

[guidol]

31 minutes ago, tasmatto said:

Thanks a lot for the answer. which is the most stable version to install on the internal memory? Is kodi working? forgive me if I ask stupid questions but it's the first time I've approached armbian.

There is only this version of armbian for the Sunvell R69 and I - personally - wouldnt it recommend for using with Kodi.

I dont know it the armbian-Desktop Version is hardware accelerated for Video.

 

If you would use Kodi its better to use Android.

For the original Android of the Sunvell R69 (Android 4.4 which is named 6.x) you could use a patches KODI 17.1 which can be found at:
https://www.entertainmentbox.com/kodi-17-1-4-4-android-powered-devices/

 

H3Droid wouldnt run because the Sunvell R69 has a H2 CPU?

https://h3droid.com/
https://h3droid.com/howitlooks

[Mario Ernesto Villarreal]

Sadly, I am using @tkaiser 's desktop image and I cannot see NAND or mmcblk1 internal image, botting with uSD

[tasmatto]

On 8/12/2017 at 1:45 PM, guidol said:

At the page http://kaiser-edv.de/tmp/NumpU8/ there are 2 compressed boot-images. One for Desktop and one for headless server.

You could download, extract the image and use Etcher as software for writing the image to MicroSD card.

then insert the card in the Sunvell R69 and boot your armbian :-)

 

What is the right image on the site: http://kaiser-edv.de/tmp/NumpU8/?
I would like to try ubuntu desktop

[guidol]

1 hour ago, tasmatto said:

What is the right image on the site: http://kaiser-edv.de/tmp/NumpU8/?
I would like to try ubuntu desktop

Now the image is downloadable under
https://web.archive.org/web/20171210180447/http://kaiser-edv.de/tmp/NumpU8/Armbian_5.34_Sunvell-r69_Ubuntu_xenial_default_3.4.113_desktop.img.xz

[guidol]

On 12.12.2017 at 1:12 AM, Mario Ernesto Villarreal said:

Sadly, I am using @tkaiser 's desktop image and I cannot see NAND or mmcblk1 internal image, botting with uSD

I also did use only MicroSD (to keep the Android image on eMMC) - but I didnt could see also the eMMC device.

So no dd'ing from MicroSD to eMMC - but as I did read this wouldnt also work then as boot-device, because it need some partition-scheme...

[Mario Ernesto Villarreal]

2 minutes ago, guidol said:

because it need some partition-scheme...

That should be easy to fix, with sunxi-nand-part, the hard problem is to make it recognizable

[raschid]

There is community support (sunvell_r69.csc) for a mainline kernel now, which provides access to the eMMC. No HDMI support yet though ...

[Mario Ernesto Villarreal]

8 minutes ago, raschid said:

There is community support (sunvell_r69.csc) for a mainline kernel now, which provides access to the eMMC. No HDMI support yet though ...

Nice! So we need to recompile the kernel with the patch?

 

https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/843/files

[raschid]

you don't need to apply the patch manually.

This will do:

./compile BOARD=sunvell-r69

[TheLinuxBug]

Hey Guys,

 

Saw everyone bumping this so wanted to make a follow-up:

 

This board runs entirely too hot to use without a fan attached.  I have mounted a 30mm x 30mm x 6mm fan to the bottom of the case after cutting a hole to allow air flow into it:

 

 

With fan it runs about 42-55c, without it can run as hot as 100c under load.  Now, most of my testing has been under H3Droid (Android) , so with a smaller work load and not utilizing graphical display should allow it to run around 70c without a fan.  For me it wasn't a choice as running GPU full out without fan was running things WAY too hot.

 

(As a side note, the only reason their original Android image works as it does is it constantly kills off all cores (keeping 1 active at lowest frequency) to keep the SoC from hitting the thermal limit and freezing (while still running at 80-90c it will still run and play videos without freezing fully), where in the case of H3Droid we are trying to use all cores which isn't possible without a fan (will literally overheat and freeze under any kind of load).)

 

I ended up using a FEX file provided earlier in this thread which works to get things working as one would expect, I have also placed it at the following link in case someone else needs it:  http://phoenix.phix-it.com/sunvell-r69.bin

 

The only downside I have found after all my testing is that you should NOT expect to use this board for 1080p (at least in Android) without weird glitching issues.  It appears, to allow them to sell this for the price they are, that they are using slower RAM than would normally be used on other development boards (566Mhz 16bit) causing memory to not be fast enough to always handle 1080p without weird timing glitches.

 

To note, the Android image provided by the vendor is also a hack job, there is no real 1080p mode that can be accessed, they fake 1080p on the 720p frame buffer (meaning you can change it in settings all you like, its still 720p) which is why no one has yet reported issues with 1080p as they are fooled into thinking it is running that way, when it is not.

 

In Armbian as you are not using Mali, it is possible that you could display 1080p without seeing these issues, as of yet I have not tried so can not be sure.  I just know that this board will not work without 'Disable Hardware Overlay' chosen in the Android developer settings on the 1080p frame buffer without glitching and when activating this option it decreases the quality of the video output but seems to work with some noticeable refresh lag in some cases.

 

My hope is that this weekend I will get my blog post up about my adventure and showing the mods I have made to have this run reliably.  I will come back then and update again.

 

Cheers!

 

[TheLinuxBug]

On 12/10/2017 at 5:21 AM, guidol said:

H3Droid wouldnt run because the Sunvell R69 has a H2 CPU?

https://h3droid.com/
https://h3droid.com/howitlooks

 

Actually it will work, the only think you need is to put the correct FEX in place manually.  I will be writing a blog post with the needed directions to do this this weekend, I hope, and will post it on our blog (https://h3droid.com/blog).

 

H2+ and H3 are the same SoC just some parts of H3 are disabled in H2+ so its a bit more limited. (Some have said its likely H3's that didn't pass quality control for all cores or something along those lines).  Effectively, however, they are the same SoC so they will work with the same software (u-boot / kernel).

 

Cheers!

[Mario Ernesto Villarreal]

1 hour ago, TheLinuxBug said:

Hey Guys,

 

I ended up using a FEX file pro

 

Hey, bro! It's me, netomx from LET  It is a pleasure to know you're working on this. Does this FEX file enables eMMC access?