T95 Mini 2+16GB. No Wi-fi problem

1st Official Post

    Hi everyone. My mother has purchased a cheap tv box and I am wanting to put LE onto it.

    When I flash LibreELEC-H6.arm-10.0-nightly-20210309-c9205b6-tanix-tx6.img to my SD Card I cannot see any wireless networks to connect to.

    Wifi works fine on the device when running LibreELEC-H6.arm-9.80-devel-20200606231954-0848005-tanix-tx6.img though.

    Does anyone have any suggestions for what I shoudl try?

    I have no idea where to begin, on how to compare the two builds with respect to how network interfdaces are brought up. Please help an eager beaver. I can do the legwork/heavy-lifting but I don;t have knowledge. This horse would happily drink water if someone to lead me to it.


    (As an aside, if easier problem to address)

    I would happily use 9.8devel build but I cannot install some 3rd party add-ons. I get failed installs with pop-up messages about missing dependency for xbmc.python 2 (vsarious versions). If I could install python2 Or even perhaps trick addons into using python3 that is installed?
    Once again, eager to learn but no clue where to start

    • Official Post

    What is max. ethernet speed? 100 Mbit or 1 Gb? First one should work with TX6 image. Not sure how wifi could work (it's not enabled on TX6) unless it's based on USB, but that would be very unusual. Detailed photos of both PCB sides would also help.

    For your second question - there is no way to install pyhon2. Kodi announced that this would happen a couple of years back, but a lot of addons are still not updated. If you have addon source, you can try to rebuild it with python3 dependency, but very likely it won't work well without changes.

    Ive iploaded 2 photots to my google drive as the images were too big to upload here.

    I can see the wifi module near the antenna is an XR819. I have performed lsusb and cannot see it as a usb device.

    I'm currently d'loading T95mini-H6-9.0-2.1.21-CV200 .img as the factory shipped rom doesn't have Play store, instead having "google store" which doesn't connect. Hopefully new android rom will allow me to downlaod cpu-z or hwinfo app that will show ethernet details


    https://drive.google.com/file/d/117vR12…iew?usp=sharing

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/115dt1p…iew?usp=sharing

    Quote from chewitt

    Also note: if the add-ons in question are on the Kodi banned add-ons list, i.e. pirate add-ons, we really don't care.

    noted.

    I am more interested in getting XR819 wifi to work in the nightly build I have from yesterday.

    Edited 2 times, last by wodgey: Merged a post created by wodgey into this post. (March 10, 2021 at 12:35 PM).

    • Official Post

    I should rephrase my request - PCB images with clearly visible chip labels. Currently I can't tell which chip is used as DC-DC (top side, right of board label, on top of 4 pin connector).

    Anyway, XR819 is probably the cheapest and worst way for wifi (random disconnections were observed). There is not and won't be support for this wifi in official LE builds unless this driver is included in Linux itself. Some time ago it was decided to stop adding support for random, out of tree wifi drivers. Nobody wants to maintain them and it's not always trivial to fix them for new kernel release. You are better off with supported USB wifi dongle. If you want, you can take a look at Armbian which has support for this wifi, but I won't be able to help you much (I never worked with this driver).

    Oh, ok. that is frustrating to read. especially as this wi-fi module works in one build but not another. clearly the dev of the 9.8 build compiled their kernel with sources for m,y wifi device whereas the v10 build doesn't.

    Without SSH access, I am at a loss on how to modprobe the requisit module. Nvm. As you suggested, a 3rd party dongle might be the best way forward.