[UNOFFICIAL][RK3228/RK3229][box]Libreelec builds

  • dale, I took a look at your device tree.

    It looks like an v88mars (ddrw, nand, ssv6051p) but with the addition of ddr3 scaling.

    My images have just that as device tree (without ddr3 scaling support for greater compatibility in the first installation phase). It's very strange. Can you please share miniloader, trust etc etc etc?!

  • dale, I took a look at your device tree.

    It looks like an v88mars (ddrw, nand, ssv6051p) but with the addition of ddr3 scaling.

    My images have just that as device tree (without ddr3 scaling support for greater compatibility in the first installation phase). It's very strange. Can you please share miniloader, trust etc etc etc?!

    Hi,

    Please take a look at miniloader. I got it from jock2 on armbian forum. Trust & uboot from your tar version which also don't work for me. Here are trust & uboot for your reference link

  • Hi dale,

    unfortunately I don't know how to help you.

    My images are tested to be flashed as is. You are even using the miniloader from another project (which has a lot in common with this one anyway). I understand that you have difficulty in making it work, but unfortunately for me it becomes difficult to understand where the problem lies.

    I can tell you that in today's build I removed a miniloader that was giving me problems. Try and tell me if it's better.

  • Hi,

    Please take a look at miniloader. I got it from jock2 on armbian forum. Trust & uboot from your tar version which also don't work for me. Here are trust & uboot for your reference link

    Since you apparently removed the original idbloader (of which the miniloader is part), you have to follow two procedures I described in the armbian forum first post under the paragraphs:

    1. first restore a working idbloader: "NAND bootloader upgrade"
    2. install a special u-boot that allows USB boot: "Installation (without SD card, board with NAND)"

    Then you finally can put multitool and libreelec image on a USB stick and boot from there, using the "Burn image to flash" menu item.

    It's a longer procedure, but unfortunately you have the worst combo ever (no sdcard slot and NAND flash chip).

    A serial adapter attached to the box UART is very welcome, otherwise you're blind in case of issues.

  • Hi all,

    just to say that i have backported the rockchip driver for the remote. This is because it was easier for me, to develop power off/power on via remote.

    Also, all legacy libreelec remotes are now supported.

    I will wait a few more days before releasing, because there are also other small changes that I want to test thoroughly.

  • Hi all,

    new build available with:

    - linux 5.10.109

    - small stability fixes

    - backported rockchip remotectl with wakeup/suspend

    - ddr3 at 534mhz by default for better compatibility (for example green screen issues)

    I would like to thank jock2 and fabiobassa for the support (including moral) and the community behind libreelec.

    This operating system is great. As well as the official support for rockchip boards (my job is nothing compared to those who, for example, have been involved in hardware decoding).

    Without these people, I would never have been able to make a great alternative to Android for my boxes.

    Thanks again

  • Hi Ilmich.

    Thank you for this version. ;)

    Now the remote control works well except the color of the led which is again reversed with the MXQPRO4K tree. X(

    With the previous version the led was fine.

    Do you think I can extract the device tree from the previous version and put it with the latter?? :/

  • hi JoeEdison,

    compiled device trees are in the tar version of my builds

    On my google drive, oldest builds are in the archive folder.

    However I'm working on a new build.

    In a slower way, but because the build is quite complete.

  • Hi, I'm a complete newbie so please be patient...

    I've been experimenting with the 20220329 LE 10 nightly build on my TV box booting from SD card, and it's been really stable, I'm really impressed with it, performance is so muhc better than Kodi on the Android 7.1 installation previously. Even the remote and wifi worked out of the box ( for some reason I cannot SSH into the box over wifi yet, but that may be and issue on my network tbh. possibly wireless isolation is on )

    My TV box is branded as SMBOX SM1, but I've has a look inside and it looks like the R329Q v3.0 board seen in many of the others e.g. MXQ 4k

    I'd like to burn the image to internal memory. I have a Multitool image on another SD card, which reports that the device is equipped with NAND, rather than eMMC

    I backed up the Android image, then erased the flash using Multitool options 1 and 3. I then burned the LibreELEC-RK322x.arm-10.0-nightly-20220329-c3a59e9-rk322x.img.gz image file using Multitool (option 4 - skipping the idbloader area as recommended by Multitool) , which completes in about 45 seconds, but afterwards the device does not boot from the internal storage.

    The .gz image was burned very quickly to the internal storage (when compared with a restore of the android image)... Do I need to unpack / ungzip the image before writing to NAND?

    Restoring the original Android from backup was successful but took approximately 20 minutes.

    Am I doing something wrong? /shrug :S

    Thanks,

    Barry

    Edited once, last by oneillb (April 11, 2022 at 2:52 PM).

  • hi oneillb,

    I'm glad my build is working fine for you.

    I have more or less the same board as you and you are lucky, because it's one of the best around.

    To install the build in NAND I used the multitool, but I didn't skip the idbloader.

    That option is needed, because some NAND drivers skip the first sectors(even if you erase NAND). But it doesn't work for everyone.

    Try ignoring that option and let me know.

    edit: I'm slowly improving the documentation of the first post.

  • oneillb, typically wifi errors like yours are due to arp protocol issues.

    I don't know how to explain the cause, but basically the router loses the indication of the mac address of the box, which becomes unreachable.

    I solved it by increasing the frequency of beacon signals.

    For example in my router (dlink 3782) the option is called

    Signal-Interval: Set the rate at which your wireless network is advertised. The default is 100 milliseconds

    I hope it will be useful

  • Hi again,

    RE: WRT the Wi-fi & ssh issue...

    I've spotted something odd, so it may not be completely router related. ( BTW - I use discreet wireless APs [TP-link EAP225] rather than the radio on my router. Unfortunately the beacon interval on the APs is not configurable)

    If I boot up LE from SD card , without an Ethernet cable attached, inbound ssh doesn't work, but LE does connect to the wi-fi and I can see the network & internet etc.

    However, if I now connect an Ethernet cable, even if it's just for a few seconds for the link to come up and acquire a DHCP address, I can now ssh onto LE via the WLAN address...

    This suggests that something which occurs during the initialisation of the eth0 interface is fixing the issue with wlan0

    Barry

  • RE: the wireless issue with SSH and image LibreELEC-RK322x.arm-10.0-nightly-20220329-c3a59e9-rk322x.img

    I've changed the extlinux.conf file to utilise the /rk3229-box-v88mars.dtb and then /rk3229-box-v88mars-ovclk.dtb overlay and the wlan seems to be generally more stable as a result. :) :)

    RE: Burning the latest image to internal NAND...

    I've now tried both options for the idbloader but both result in an un-bootable system from NAND.

    I do get a warning that the driver cannot write to the idbloader area of the NAND, so maybe the request to write over the idbloader is not happening. Are there different types of NAND out there? and does the above image contain the required NAND drivers? (What I think is the NAND chip on my board is labelled 7MG22 NW814, but that doesn't give many results on google so I'm not 100% sure).

    Also I'm using a recent Multitool build dated 6th Feb 2022 if that makes any difference. Is there a different approach i can try to write an image to internal NAND?

    Any help would be welcome.

    Barry

  • I do get a warning that the driver cannot write to the idbloader area of the NAND, so maybe the request to write over the idbloader is not happening. Are there different types of NAND out there? and does the above image contain the required NAND drivers? (What I think is the NAND chip on my board is labelled 7MG22 NW814, but that doesn't give many results on google so I'm not 100% sure).

    hi oneillb, it's correct. At some point the rockchip released a driver which is no longer able to update the loader (

    https://github.com/rockchip-linux…a197b77b6e448fc)

    The multitool driver should be able to update it (because it has an old kernel).

    This is because once the nand was deleted, you were able to restore android. Which you couldn't have done otherwise.

    I have used it successfully with

    - empty nand

    - nand with android installed

    - nand with another operating system

    and I have never had problems on my boards.

    The only difference from your procedure is that I unzip the image before using it with the multitool (multitool supports compressed images, I've just never tried it).

    An alternative procedure is the flash through the open source rockchip tools (if you have linux available) explained here RE: [unoffical] LE-9.2/9.80-Images for RK3229/RK3228

    I don't mention it often because multitool is the simplest method, and I've never had any particular problems.

    Let me know

  • The gzipped libreelec image is burned very quickly because the uncompressed libreelec image is quite small (500 megabytes circa); the backup of the existing Android is the same of the whole NAND (8 gigabytes I guess).

    Multitool is quite capable to handle gzip and other compressed formats: it will decompress them on the fly while burning is in progress, so no need to do that manually.

    A possible issue that may come from your steps is the Flash Erase step you said you did. I don't remember if it is so, but it may be that the Erase Flash step completely erases the NAND, idbloader included. idbloader can't be installed again by multitool because of the NAND rockchip driver limitation and you may need to do that manually using rockchip upgrade_tool (see this post on armbian forum, paragraph
    NAND Bootloader Upgrade)

  • I suspect that Multitool isn't uncompressing the images, as the 130MB .img.gz image burns much quicker than a the 550 MB uncompressed .img which shouldn't be happening, but I haven't timed it so it may just be a perception. To be sure, I now only use multitool with uncompressed images, using the "5. Burn image to flash" option (not Jump Start or steP-nand options) and not skipping idbloader, but I still cant get LE to boot from Nand.

    Looking at what dmesg reports when I run up Multitool

    Kernel as Linux 4.4.194-rk322x

    rknandbase v1.2 2018-05-08

    rknand 30030000.nandc

    No1 FLASH ID:2c 64 32 a5 0

    The nand chip on the board is a Labelled Micron NW814

    I've ordered a malemale USB cable, so may have a go using rkdeveloper. I've also ordered a CP2104 USB-Uart adapter to get at the serial console output directly off the board which may help diagnose what's going on.

    Thanks for your help so far.

    Barry

    Edited once, last by oneillb (April 12, 2022 at 4:43 PM).