MeCool M8S Pro W

  • he hello.

    i have a mecool m8s pro w with coreelec installed. problem is i still run on kodi 17 krypton it is impossible for me to update kodi to version 19.

    can someone help me how to update, because this version doesnt work anymore.

    thanks for helping me.

  • You can create a new SD card from https://chewitt.libreelec.tv/testing/LibreE…85.0-box.img.gz and as a starting point, set the dtb name to "meson-gxl-s905w-p281.dtb" in uEnv.ini. You may need to force recovery boot again for the SD card to be read. The SSV6051 WiFi chip is not supported in the upstream codebase that LE uses (and no hope of that changing) but Ethernet should work. The IR remote will need a keymap creating, but once you get the box booting the LE image it's not hard to capture the IR codes and then I can add that. If you do not have a USB keyboard to complete the first-run wizard with you, can always force SSH on by adding "ssh" to boot params in uEnv.ini.

    NB: This is an LE11/Nexus (pre-Alpha) image. There are no LE10/Matrix images .. and this is LE not CE. The upstream codebase is still a little experimental, but works quite well on older GXL hardware.

  • It's a rainy Sunday here (doesn't happen often) so there is now a "meson-gxl-s905w-mecool-m8s-pro-w.dtb" device-tree and an untested IR keymap in the "box" image. See how it goes and report back.

  • well the problem is i need wifi.

    i cannot use lan because there is no way to make a cable to the room.how do you put android back on this box because there is no button to put it in recovery mode.

    shame because i love coreelec.

  • The specs I found online suggest it has the SSV6051P WiFi chip. If true it is not supported and won't ever be - we have sources for the driver but they are ugly code (easily the worst legacy driver code we've seen) and will not compile on any kernel newer than Linux 4.11 without a major rewrite that nobody sane is going to volunteer for. Plan B is to use a USB WiFi stick (avoid Realtek ones). Plan C is a WiFi bridge that presents Ethernet to the box via a short cable. I use an old Apple Aïrport express like this during board/box testing as (even with boxes that have supported WiFi chips) it eliminates the need to configure WiFi to get online.

    I've no idea where the reset button is, but the normal locations we see with cheap TV boxes are either between the air-holes/grille on the underside of the box, or down the bottom of the 3.5mm AV jack.

    One of the USB ports is probably an OTG port that can be connected to a PC to flash the eMMC with an Android image via Amlogic burning tool .. but I have no advice on what image to use.

  • The specs I found online suggest it has the SSV6051P WiFi chip. If true it is not supported and won't ever be - we have sources for the driver but they are ugly code (easily the worst legacy driver code we've seen) and will not compile on any kernel newer than Linux 4.11 without a major rewrite that nobody sane is going to volunteer for.

    Obviously there is someone with suitable insanity! It's not me! ;)

    The patch (patch/kernel/archive/rk322x-5.15/wifi-4003-ssv-6051-driver.patch)

    can be applied on 5.16 Amlogic Kernel. It compiles, but unfortunately I couldn't make it work. Is there something missing in dtbs?

    I tried on X96 mini with dtb for p281.

  • Interesting. One of the contributors is ilmich and the other is known(ish) to me via Armbian. I was able to compile the driver and trigger probing on a Tanix TX3-mini with a small device-tree tweak to the SDIO node but the driver didn't load: http://ix.io/3Noj - it probably needs some firmware/config stuff adding - it's not clear what though.

    NB: Existence of the driver is one thing. LE would want to see it being upstreamed to the kernel before we'd consider picking/backporting the upstream submitted patches to images. Community images are something different.

  • Hi all,

    with fabiobassa and jock2 we are experimenting with the 6051p driver.

    The idea is to rewrite it, but in the meantime we have managed (by cleaning up the code a bit) to have a working version for the mainline kernels.

    It needs firmware (ssv6051-sw.bin) and a configuration file (ssv6051-wifi.cfg) under /lib/firmware in order to work properly.

    Don't tested yet with libreelec (my working on mainlining libreelec for rk322x is not yet usable), but with armbian seems to works well.

  • I'm impressed with what's been achieved. The legacy code was an unholy pile of .... to start from :)

    In LE if you create /storage/.config/firmware/ and place the firmware .bin and .cfg files there, they will be overlaid onto /lib/firmware at boot time. I've done that but it makes no difference to load. Here's dmesg: http://ix.io/3NrC and ssv6051-wifi.cfg content: http://ix.io/3NrD

    NB: If having samples of the chipset in other SoCs (e.g. Amlogic) would help with the upstreaming effort LE will be happy to fund them.

    EDIT .. I noticed this in dmesg:

    Code
    TX3:~ # dmesg | grep meson-gx-mmc
    [ 0.373380] meson-gx-mmc d0072000.mmc: Got CD GPIO
    [ 0.376230] meson-gx-mmc d0074000.mmc: allocated mmc-pwrseq
    [ 1.164926] meson-gx-mmc d0070000.mmc: allocated mmc-pwrseq
    [ 11.361455] meson-gx-mmc d0070000.mmc: DMA addr 0x000080001218b430+8 overflow (mask ffffffff, bus limit 0).
    [ 11.364105] meson-gx-mmc d0070000.mmc: dma_map_sg failed

    Have a look at the recent history of changes to drivers/mmc/host/meson-gx-mmc.c in the kernel .. I suspect the issue has to do with memory use and alignment.

  • hi chewitt

    to obtain this result we studied the flow a lot and understood that, for example, the driver used a custom implementation for the encryption protocols, when in reality the chip can do it at the hardware level/using the kernel routines.

    Therefore a lot of code incompatible with the mainline kernel has been removed and porting has become easier.

    But we worked on what we had (rockchip) so the custom code for amlogic was removed because we couldn't test it.

    The original driver has different behaviors for amlogic, and the error you receive is related to how the mac address is retrieved (rockchip read efuse .. amlogic seems to use static uboot parameter)

    Clearly having an amlogic box would be more useful, and I thank you for the proposal.

    But I do it in my little free time and I would not like to promise something that I cannot keep.

  • I picked up a "Tanix TX3 mini" S905W box for $22 including shipping in 2018. Even if Covid has doubled the cost since it's still a bargain if it helps to get another rouge driver upstream in the long-term (there's no expectations of rapid fixes).

  • chewitt
    Tanix is only a "brand" company.

    I can give for sure to you that I have a Tanix that inside is rockchip , the very old and familiar for me rk322x , so the " roulette buying" is:

    "I order TANIX TX3 !!"

    What the hell will I get X( ? And spin the roulette :-/

  • The "mini" version normally has S905W and SSV6051P inside, but that's assuming you get a box made by Tanix themselves and not one of the bazillion clones of their boxes :)