Initial boot of Orange PI3 LTS

petediscrete · February 25, 2023 at 4:11 PM

Another item worth checking is your card reader. I had a USB card reader which displayed similar symptoms. Changed the card reader and it solved the problem. The electronics in those USB card readers do fail. I wouldn’t go to any expense though. Just try an alternative reader and see if it makes any difference.

I will say the quality of SD cards these days is a little dubious. Even supposed branded ones and particularly high capacity ones. For anyone interested there’s a neat little utility for Linux called f3. You’ll be surprised at the results it returns for so called branded high capacity cards https://medium.com/@drawn_stories…al-f0109bef63ea

spschneer · February 26, 2023 at 4:06 PM

Okay, time for step 2 of what seems like a 1,000 mile trek

How do I get my brand new FLIRC IR-USB to control Kodi on the Orange-Pi3-LTS with a Harmony 650.

OR

Can I use the "built-in" IR receiver (that I saw a reference to somewhere) to control the OPi3-LTS instead of the additional FLIRC IR-USB?

I was using the Cubox device definition in the Harmony configuration for HTPC setup, but there were some missing keys etc. I changed to the FLIRC IR-USB definition and now nothing works on the remote/orange-pi connection... Plus, I don't have a native FLIRC IR-USB remote controller to use to "train" the Harmony???Is there one? Should I have bought that too?

**chewitt** · February 26, 2023 at 6:14 PM

The Cubox keymap is probably for an older Linux kernel and will need to be transcribed into the 'toml' format used now. There is a section in the wiki on creating custom keymaps. It needs to be updated to reference the toml format but the files you need to create and their locations are still correctly described. There are lots of existing keymaps in /usr/lib/udev/rc_keymaps/ to crib the toml format from.

Or the whole point of flirc is that you can program it to respond to any remote. If you install the config app on a PC it should take no more than 2 mins to map all the core Kodi functions to remote buttons.

spschneer · February 26, 2023 at 7:43 PM

chewitt

you said: "If you install the config app on a PC it should take no more than 2 mins to map all the core Kodi functions to remote buttons."

That sounds great since I'm planning to migrating to OPi3-LTS....however, the "how-to" is sadly lacking...I installed the FLIRC config app and it comes up but it "feels" like it is made to configure the FLIRC for use on my Laptop, not on another machine. There's no instructions (that I could find (without a major search effort) on how to configure, what, and where, to get my remote to control the Opi3-LTS...

Can you point me toward a (hopefully) simple how-to that addresses that...

Thanks, yet again...

spschneer · February 27, 2023 at 12:55 AM

I'm trying to document my entire experience thru this adventure since I wasn't able to find much in the way of how-to's since the OrangePi 3 LTS is rather new and not as well documented as the RPi...

Found out how to deal with the FLIRC...the downloaded app allows you to choose a "profile" application you will be using on the SBC that the FLIRC IR USB device is mounted. In my case, Kodi is the app I'm running so I chose that.

Then it presents a "keyboard" of actions that the remote will send the IR codes to the IR Receiver to "remember" (via the Flirc App). The "actions" are the remote control activities that the user wants to have the OPi to repspond to (e.g.: up,down,right,left cursor movements, "menu", Back, etc). After going thru all the available selections on the "keyboard" of the remote, you can save the codes to disk (just in case)...

Final step is to take the Flirc IR-USB from the computer you did the encoding and install into the OPi that is the destination machine. Turning that on allows the FLIRC iR-USB to become the receiver for the IR and it presents the "codes" thru the USB into the Kodi program via the magic of LibrElec... Whew....

I do have one question for the experts who did this long (?) before I got into this: Is there a way to power on/off the OPi3 from the remote? If so, how (in simple terms please)...That's the one thing I couldn't figure out ....

S

BTW...I'm using a Harmony 650 Remote...

**chewitt** · February 27, 2023 at 6:43 AM

You can power the board off from flirc, but not power on as the USB device is not awake/listening once off. It may be possible to configure a power on event from the IR sensor, but that normally depends on the low-level boot firmware and the device being suspended rather than powered off (so the sensor can receive the power-on code). jernej would need to comment on that possibility.

spschneer · February 27, 2023 at 1:54 PM

chewitt

Gotcha...I have been able to put it into "suspend" mode (main screen, icon at bottom left, 3rd choice) by choosing each of those manually. I haven't found the "command" for that (if there is one) to get a single press of a remote control to get it to suspend...Also, I did get it to wake up from there (once) but haven't been able to recreate the wake-up...maybe jernej will have some magic...

Mostly trying to get the BRIGHT power-on light off when not using the OPi as my HTPC.

Thanks again for all your (and jernej's) help on this...

**chewitt** · February 27, 2023 at 4:57 PM

Code

WP2:~ # find / -name brightness
/sys/devices/platform/leds/leds/wetek-play:wifi-status/brightness
/sys/devices/platform/leds/leds/wetek-play:ethernet-status/brightness
/sys/devices/platform/leds/leds/blue:power/brightness

Let's say the blue:power LED is the annoying one:

Code

echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/leds/leds/blue:power/brightness

Should make it turn off.. and we can script this to run after startup:

Code

echo "(sleep 10 && echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/leds/leds/blue:power/brightness)&" > /storage/.config/autostart.sh

Should result in the LED being turned off 10 seconds after boot starts. You will obviously need to modify the /path/to/brightness for whatever LEDs are on the board. NB: this only works if the LEDs are GPIO controllable; some LEDs are hardwired.

spschneer · February 27, 2023 at 7:13 PM

There's a Blue LED??? I've only seen the one "power" (Orange/Red) that comes on and stays on whenever the power is on (e.g. it's not OFF or Standby). I would be fine with it being on whenever the power is on, IF I could script the standby function and assign it to a keystroke that I could assign with Harmony remote...

Actually, a command for "Standby" would satisfy most of my wishes in that it would turn the LED off when not in use, and the power too, assuming I could link it to a remote "keystroke"... The Harmony doesn't like the native HTPC because it can't associate it with a key equivalent table.... gotta stop for now..my head is spinning with trying to think thru this ...

**chewitt** · February 28, 2023 at 4:32 AM

Quote from chewitt

You will obviously need to modify the /path/to/brightness for whatever LEDs are on the board

^^^^

spschneer · February 28, 2023 at 7:36 PM

jernej

As you might remember, we had a discussion about the quality of MicroSD cards etc... Well, I was going to create a backup MicroSD card of the 11Beta 2 you sent me on a BRAND NEW, Sandisk Ultra 32G via a BRAND NEW Anker USB C SD/MicroSD adapter/writer. The results were as follows:

First time, normal execution of the LE SD fomat/loader program all the way thru and it finished normally. Created 2 partitions 512MB Libreelec and a 32MB (swap?). Attempted to boot, it failed with the original error message about not being able to mount the "drive".

Next I reformatted the partitions (leaving them sized as is...and tried to use the Win32Disk Imager that was recommended and had worked before...It failed also...same message.

Tried to re-run the LE SD format/loader program again (just in case) and it failed again to write the disk with a "Write Error" at 93%. I had erased the partition but left it sized from before by the LE-SD Format Loader...

I did try re-installing the original (successful) MicroSD card into the OPi3 and it worked....

I just don't get it...any ideas what's going on???? and what could be causing this? I have chkdsk'd the MicroSD card and it passes normally. No errors found.

S....

petediscrete · February 28, 2023 at 8:16 PM

Quote from spschneer

jernej
As you might remember, we had a discussion about the quality of MicroSD cards etc... Well, I was going to create a backup MicroSD card of the 11Beta 2 you sent me on a BRAND NEW, Sandisk Ultra 32G via a BRAND NEW Anker USB C SD/MicroSD adapter/writer. The results were as follows:
First time, normal execution of the LE SD fomat/loader program all the way thru and it finished normally. Created 2 partitions 512MB Libreelec and a 32MB (swap?). Attempted to boot, it failed with the original error message about not being able to mount the "drive".
Next I reformatted the partitions (leaving them sized as is...and tried to use the Win32Disk Imager that was recommended and had worked before...It failed also...same message.
Tried to re-run the LE SD format/loader program again (just in case) and it failed again to write the disk with a "Write Error" at 93%. I had erased the partition but left it sized from before by the LE-SD Format Loader...
I did try re-installing the original (successful) MicroSD card into the OPi3 and it worked....
I just don't get it...any ideas what's going on???? and what could be causing this? I have chkdsk'd the MicroSD card and it passes normally. No errors found.
S....

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Did you try SD Formatter as I suggested above before proceeding any further. Outside of that you may have a flaky card reader. Try an alternative one if you can. https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter/

spschneer · February 28, 2023 at 10:46 PM

Well, I thought I knew what was going on..... I tried to re-create the build process of the MicroSD card with a brand new one ... Sandisk Ultra 32GB just purchased along with a brand new Anker SD - USB Reader/Writer.

I attempted to re-create the steps for setting up ... Format SD, ( petediscrete 0 yes I did use both regular format and SD Format...no change).

Ran the SD-LE tool to partition the SD, pointing to the LE version that @jernj setup that I got to work properly.

Now when I run the install, I get a

"Write Error 1.0"

An error occurred when attempting to write data to handle. Error 5: Access is denied.

(This happens at 93% completion of the writing of the Librelec code to the Librelec Partition on disk(SD)).

I tried a bunch of different combinations of all the tools and all the pieces and still cannot get it to work...

I do still have the one that worked a day or two ago, but wanted to have a backup, as well as prepare the one for the LR setup....(it's not using the entire partition - 366MB of 512MB so it isn't running out of room writing the files)...

ARRRRRGHHH....

petediscrete · February 28, 2023 at 11:17 PM

Honestly I find it simpler to do a backup of LE, copy it to a USB stick keep it safe and if my SD card fails for any reason, just do a fresh install and restore the backup.

**jernej** · March 4, 2023 at 9:09 AM

Integrated IR receiver is more than capable handling most if not any IR remote. All you need is correct keymap. Chances are that there is already working keymap that just need enabling. Note, I'm far from being expert in this field, so I can't give you any better explanation that it's already on wiki.

Of course it's possible to wake up or power on board via IR. However, protocol and key number must be selected at build time (limitation of power management firmware.) Due to that fact, default protocol and button on boards which come without remote (including OrangePi 3 LTS) is RC9 MCE power button. This combination was selected due to popularity of windows media center remotes. If you want to customize this, you have to build your own image with adjusted configuration. But good news is that usual LE updates don't update U-Boot, which, among others, contains power management firmware and is responsible for loading it. So you have to do this only once.

Any power button, be it on board or on IR remote, only brings up power menu in Kodi. I'm not aware of any direct way to power it down or sleep with one press.

Note, other power up options are power button on board and HDMI CEC (although CEC might not work reliably - still under development.)

spschneer · March 12, 2023 at 5:42 PM

Well... I finally had some free time and decided to try working on my OPi3-LTS again...Found that the release of LE 11.0 had gone live for the Allwinner chips so I downloaded the version for the OPi3-LTS. I used the LE SDCreator to write it to a brand new SanDisk Ultra MicroSD card(with no problems or errors), and then inserted that into my OPi3... Connected the cables and powered on...

and it failed with the same error as my first message to this thread...

*** Error in mount_storage: mount_common: Could not mount UUID=XXXXXXX(didn't bother copying)XXXXXXX ***

### Starting debugging shell for boot step: mount_storage... tyoe exit to quit ###

(Added keyboard and typed "exit")

Response:

mount: mounting /storage on /sysroot/storage failed: Invalid argument

LibreELEC (official): 11.0.0

(Followed by:)

[FAILED} Failed to start storage-log.service.

[DEPEND] Dependency failed for var-log.mount.

[DEPEND] Dependency failed for systemd-update-utmp-runlevel.service.

...

[FAILED] Failed to start pulseaudio.service.

These were the same messages I got originally and was able to eliminate with jernej late-beta download. (see above messages).

I did make sure that the 3 partitions on the micro-SD card are all read/writable 9formatted fat or fat32 and the sizes are

512MB, 32MB, 14.3(+-) GB (total size is 16GB)

S

spschneer · March 13, 2023 at 3:52 AM

Okaaaay....I've got a question...

Do I have to do anything "special" to get the LE 11.0 imaged MicroSD card to install its LE code and Kodi onto the EMMC of the OPi3-LTS?

The reason I ask, I removed the SD card from the OPI3 and let it boot itself, and it came up with a GUI that looked suspiciously like Android/Linux...It appeared to be a stand-alone micro-PC that just waited for me to move a mouse or keyboard to get it to do something...

I'm coming from a framework of the Cubox world where the SD card is the environment that is being run compared to the OPI3 which is apparently running from the EMMC. In the Cubox world, I don't do anything between starting up the box with the MicroSD card in the slot, and getting a Kodi initial interface to define my storage locations and let it rip.

It seems there's something missing here between the download of the LE image, and the Kodi prompt. I thought the LE SD tool took care of that but maybe I'm missing something?????????

Help...

**jernej** · March 13, 2023 at 4:38 PM

SD card image must be written 1:1. If you start making your own partitions and stuff, IDs won't match and you'll get exactly the problems you have. FYI, there should be 2 partitions, one FAT32 and another ext4. Later one is just 32 MiB at first and it's resized at boot to cover whole card.

Automatically installing OS on eMMC would be extremely bad. It destroys all data on it. If you want to do that, call "install2emmc" command from ssh.