Odroid-C2 discussion

    Quote from yubby

    Would this be the only Odroid device, that LE would support ? (I currently use CE on a C4)

    Newer Amlogic hardware like C4/HC4/N2/N2+ is currently better with CE, but we do support it with the upstream codebase; the problem item is hardware decoding but for users who only need 1080p support (which is more than you realise) the boards have enough CPU to software decode everything well. The upstream codebase is cleaner/lighter than the vendor one and it continues to grow users. LE also supports C2 which has been dropped by CE; again with the upstream codebase which works better on older hardware (vdec drivers work and were written for older hardware which is one reason why things don't work so well on newer hardware). It doesn't have all the features of the vendor code but it's daily driver useable.

    LE needs to push RK images onto upstream u-boot, and then we can start adding newer board families again. M1 support should be relatively simple as there is good upstream activity on the RK3568 SoC now. Hopefully HK upstream the board at some point.

    Quote from chewitt

    LE also supports C2 which has been dropped by CE; again with the upstream codebase which works better on older hardware (vdec drivers work and were written for older hardware which is one reason why things don't work so well on newer hardware)

    But, when I check the 'downloads' page, I see that 'all' of the AMlogic releases are still only up to version 9.0.2 (which I 'have' used on the C2 in the past...).

    Quote from chewitt

    See https://test.libreelec.tv/11.0/Amlogic/odroid-c2/ for current LE11 test images. The loose plan is to resume support for older GXBB, GXL and GXM hardware with LE11.

    This is great!

    I've been running CoreElec until now, but they dropped support for the C2, so I came here looking for a solution and found it.

    I tested one of the images there, it works well. I also built my own in ArchLinux, it was a easier than expected, thanks to the wiki.

    The only problem I have is that in my old CoreElec Kodi was using /dev/fb0 to render the UI, so I could use a VNC server called aml-vnc. Now this is rendering via EGL, and I haven't been able to find a compatible VNC server for this.

    Still, great news!

    After testing the nightly image from August 19th on my Odroid C2, I have some observations.

    1. Kodi hangs frequently when seeking an h265 encoded video. This doesn't happen with h264.

    dmesg shows:

    meson-vdec c8820000.video-codec: Couldn't find ref. frame 4294967184

    2. Some sporadic reboots, when playback starts, maybe at other times too. I haven't had time to check for clues with an uart cable.

    3. No /flash/boot.ini file?

    4. Support for common led triggers missing from kernel (ie: timer, disk, etc)

    1. Known .. the HEVC decoder isn't in as good shape as H264/VP9 ones (no VP9 on S905 tho). It's not likely to change anytime soon due to the lack of developers interested in working on the Amlogic VDEC. All historic work has been done by commercial developers who'd be happy to continue working on it - if someone pays them to do it. There might be some changes to that, but early days.

    2. I've not seen random reboots with a WP2 (which should behave the same) .. hard to comment without more specific info.

    3. No, we are using extline and mainline u-boot not the prehistoric vendor u-boot, so no boot.ini.

    4. OS contains "ledfix.service" which deliberately sets all LEDs with a heartbeat config to 'none' as flashing LEDs are annoying on an HTPC device. You can disable/mask the service to stop that and see the system heartbeat again. To change from a system heartbeat you need to change the device-tree to use a different trigger.

    Hi chewitt.

    I was just trying to disable ledfix.service on my C2 when I discovered that service is disabled already, yet it still is being run at boot. It seems ledfix.service currently has an error in that it lists kodi.target as both a "Wants" as well as a "WantedBy". Likely the "WantedBy" should be dropped.

    Quote from smf007

    Hi chewitt.

    I was just trying to disable ledfix.service on my C2 when I discovered that service is disabled already, yet it still is being run at boot. It seems ledfix.service currently has an error in that it lists kodi.target as both a "Wants" as well as a "WantedBy". Likely the "WantedBy" should be dropped.

    I take that back. Seems the issue is purely that when having a "WantedBy", systemd would be creating (enable) or removing (disable) a symbolic link under the wantedby target, but that fails since the filesystem in read-only.

    Code
    ● ledfix.service - LEDfix Service
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/ledfix.service; disabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: active (exited) since Sat 2022-09-24 14:27:48 +04; 6 days ago
    Process: 675 ExecStart=/bin/sh /usr/bin/ledfix (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 675 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
        CPU: 102ms

Sep 24 14:27:48 WP2 systemd[1]: Starting LEDfix Service...
Sep 24 14:27:48 WP2 systemd[1]: Finished LEDfix Service.

    I don't see any issues with the service when it runs ^ .. admittedly not on a C2 but the service has run without logging errors.

    chewitt, issue is if one wants to disable the service. It can't be disabled as the symbolic link, from the "WantedBy" dependency, can never be deleted due to the file system being read only.

    When ServiceA has a "WantedBy" ServiceB, a symbolic link is created under ServiceB that results in ServiceA being run. When using systemd to disabled ServiceA, systemd would delete the symbolic link.

    In this case our filesystem is read only, so systemd cannot delete the symbolic link under kodi.target, thus the ledfix service can never really be disabled as kodi.target is always running it.

    Quote from chewitt

    See https://test.libreelec.tv/11.0/Amlogic/odroid-c2/ for current LE11 test images. The loose plan is to resume support for older GXBB, GXL and GXM hardware with LE11.

    Such a good news !!

    I was desperate with my old Kodi 18.2 python 2 on my Odroid C2 because last years scrapers updated to brand new python3 versions. And I wondered when I'd have to unplug this not so old SBC.

    Which LE11 image is best to test : nightly or beta ?

    hello, i have installed LibreELEC 11.0.0. on my Odroid C2 plugged into LG tv 2020 with magic motion controller but HDMI CEC is not working....

    CEC Adapter is enabled, simlink on tv is on...

    but when I login to my Odroid with ssh and check cec-client output is

    does anybody have same issue?

    I did not reach the level of testing the CEC adapter.

    I first did a clean install of LibreELEC 11.0.0 on my C2 and it booted correctly. Then I tested some 1080p H264 and HEVC files through samba and nfs and none of them worked correctly. All of them had a lot of artifacts in them, too many for normal playback and seeking was also not working. So after that I recovered my backup of 9.2.8.

    Does you C2 play any 1080p files correctly?

    I have recollection that some of the early iterations of the S905 have silicon bugs which can result in artefacts; back in 2016 the folks behind WeTek made a big deal out of their boxes only using revised silicon with fixes, but I forget the specifics now.

    If you can share sample clips of media with artefacts I'd be interested in testing/comparing with a C2 and WP2; although my C2 is from one of the last production batches so might also have later S905 silicon. I don't see any issues with 1080p H264 on a WP2 box the kids use, and seek works well. HEVC shouldn't have playback issues but does have some known seek issues (as stated in release notes). SMB vs. NFS shouldn't make any difference (unless using over WiFi, which is always rubbish for streaming).

    Interesting to know. I ordered my C2 at the UK odroid shop in January 2017. Never had artifacts with playback until LE11. Is there a way to find out what batch my s905 was (visually or through a serial nr by a cmd?)

    I will try to flash LE11 again this weekend and make some pictures of the artifacts.