Wetek Play 2 how to downgrade ?

    Found my old Wetek Play 2 recently and thought to give it another go. Want to use it to stream some security cams to it.
    Happy to see it's still supported I directly installed the latest LiberElec directly to the EMM with the EMM tool.

    Great units boots trying to setup Kodi finding that my CCTV plugin (Surveillance Camera) is not supported by the latest version of Kodi and I need to downgrade.
    No worries I found the legacy stable on the download page but than realised I am not able to select to boot from SD CARD anymore.

    I tried all "unbricking" methods but LibreElec won all battles and still is booting bravely every attempt I made (Tried several unbricking methods using the reset button on the bottom of the device as found in the Unbrick resources of Libre Elec

    I found a threat mentioning using DD to write an image back to the EMM (as the EMM tool does not allow this as you boot from it and not having another boot option it's unusable) but that seems impossible to do so to the medium which I booted from, is mounted and I am running the OS on.


    Can anyone help me out here, what am I missing ?
    Goals is to get the 9.0 version running either on SD or EMM I actually do not care but currently I feel out of options to access the EMM / downgrade the unit.
    It only wants to boot LibreElec 11 whatever I try.

    Would be fun if I am able to fix this, I just opened the box but that also seems not to give any extra options.

  • Go to Best Answer
    Quote from Old-guy

    I tried all "unbricking" methods but LibreElec won all battles and still is booting bravely every attempt I made (Tried several unbricking methods using the reset button on the bottom of the device as found in the Unbrick resources of Libre Elec

    Unfortunately, at the moment there is no (easy) way to restore, because the factory bootloader is overwritten by the LE11 image, and the function of the recovery button in the upstream uboot is not implemented.

    Quote from chewitt

    Upstream u-boot has no support for Amlogic proprietary restore image formats and sequences.

    Currently the only solution to boot from recovery sdcard is the emmc pin shorting method (I haven't tested this):

    Thanks Will try that route too.

    I also reread the mentioned threat in my openings post and I overlooked initially that erasing the EMM / make it unbootable forces the Uboot loader to find another boot medium and enables the boot via the SD card again.

    There is only one way to find out, and not having currently an option to unbrick my unit makes this me a bit hesitant as if this does not work my unit is permanently bricked.

    So anyone able to confirm this actualy works / or able to share his / hers experience with this ?

    backup-wp2.img.gz

    boot (AMLGX) from an SD card so emmc is not actively in use and write ^ that file with "emmctool w backup-wp2.img.gz" and you'll restore the factory image to the box. The backup is a raw (dd) image of mine before I first wiped it.

    chewitt Sir thank you I read most of your post in regard to this topic (twice sometimes before I actual got them).

    I understand the recovery actions and already found and downloaded the backup-wp2.img.gz. (thanks for that ! )
    Challenge lies now in booting from SD and having the EMM enabled (after boot) to do the recovery DD, as you mentioned in earlier post one is not able to do a DD to a storage device that the unit booted from as the OS is running of this device.

    So what is the best way forward?
    Option 1
    Hardware disable EMM (as mentioned by dtech ) boot the unit and enable the EMM again ( I am thinking putting 2 wires to pad 7 and 8 and a switch to tmp short / disable the EMM during boot and enable it as soon the SD card boots).

    Option 2
    Erase the EMM with a rm * -rm command having no bootfiles on the EMM forcing Uboot to boot from another storrage device (SD card / USB) ?

    • Best Answer

    Just flash the normal "LibreELEC*wetek-play2.img.gz" board file to an SD card and boot. Yes it technically still boots from emmc, but once u-boot on emmc finds extlinux.conf on the SD card and boots KERNEL/SYSTEM from the SD card, emmc is not actively used. Or at least the OS will not fault/lock-up when you overwrite emmc with the factory image.

    You can also do "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/mmcblk1 bs=1m count=100" and erase the first 100MB of emmc which will trash u-boot and partition data. This will cause the box to lock up at some point, but on the next power cycle the box cannot boot from emmc and finds u-boot on SD card, then you copy the backup file over and write the file as mentioned before. This is technically better (emmc is definitely not being used in any way) but I never had issues with the first method.. so /shrug

    chewitt Thank you sir the first option worked perfectly I was perfectly capable to restore it back to Android / WeOS with your procedure. Thank you.

    For future reference it is essential to create a new SD card I used the version I installed but a freshly flashed SD with LibreELEC-AMLGX.arm-11.0.5-wetek-play2.img.gz
    As chewitt mentioned the Wetek Play 2 unit automaticly boots from the SD card, one can tell as the first boot the installation initiates the new partitions on your SD card.

    Enable SSH & Samba in the KODI wizzard you get after the succesfull boot and than copy the backup-wp2.img.gz to a Samba share I used the update share which you can find in /storage/.update in the filesystem.
    I did the gunzip on the device this is SLOW 30 minutes or longer .. so for a faster procedure use 7zip or whatever you use on your workstation to extract the backup-wp2.img file from the backup-wp2.img.gz and copy this directly to the share.
    Than revert back to the SSH shell and use emctool to write the image to your EMC emmctool w backup-wp2.img.

    This is also a slow process 10 to 15 minutes or so and will give a few errors no worries this was my output :

    Reboot your device et voilla back to the stock WeOS.

    Big thanks to this community best support ever !

    Well long story short.
    All previous version boot from SD but after the partitioning the startup of Kodi results in a boot loop.
    Tried several stable versions.
    Only succesfull boot from SD is .. the box image of 11.05 the version I initialy got stuck on :)

    No Idea why, I also did the recover option I found here (unbrick option via the reset button on the bottom of the unit).
    This procedure also works but still gives same behaviour bootloops after the resizing of the partitions on the SD card.

    Still happy as I was able to boot WeOs that has a old Krypton version of Kodi installed so I was able to try the Surveilance Camera plug in. This was not what I was looking for.

    In the end I hope to use my old Wetek Play 2 to show preferably 4 CCTV camera's in 1 view (RTSP streams) or cycle trough them as I expect the WeTek Play 2 has not enough resources to handle 4 streams and recalculate them to a full hd resolution.

    Thanks all for the support it was a fun ride and almost successful.

    Ahh, I've forgotten that the 'w' option tries to resize etc. after the dd/writing stage; and all that will of course fail as emmc doesn't contain an LE image after restoring the backup. It doesn't cause any issues though.

    Quote from Da Flex

    Start with a clear description of your goal next time. LE isn't made for split screens.

    The goal still is to be able to downgrade my WeTek play 2 and to gain some knowledge, both accomplished.
    Will find another goal for the unit anyways as it is pefectly capable to stream a single RTSP stream :)

    Quote from chewitt

    It doesn't cause any issues though.

    Well I am still not able to successfully boot any version of LibreElec other than 11 as all older version get in a boot loop.
    Too bad I cannot find the RS232 cable so I am not able to debug that.
    Curious what the cause is will spend some time on it when I have some to spare.

    Hi and thanks to everyone. Wonder if i should give it an extra try. Here's where i am at:

    - WP2 does not boot unless via sdcard (no image at all on the screen)

    - I am using LibreELEC-AMLGX.aarch64-12.0.2-wetek-play2.img that i flashed to the card. It boots OK.

    - Then i copied backup-wp2.img to Music samba folder (guess any folder would do right?)

    - Connected via putty and inserted the command emmctool w backup-wp2.img

    - Putty gives an error: no emmc module detected!

    Im just a curious fellow and really not tech savy...

    Can anyone help on how can i get the emmc module to give that command?

    Will it run with Putty?

    chewitt  Old-guy thanks

    (Sorry for my english ;))

    The WP2 "board" image you are using cannot boot with the factory Android u-boot on EMMC, so either you wiped/zero'd EMMC to use the image, or the EMMC chips have failed which means the OS cannot detect Android u-boot; thus allowing it to boot upstream u-boot from the SD card.

    I'd guess the EMMC chips have gone bad. Share the URL from "dmesg | paste" and we can probably confirm.

    Quote from chewitt

    The WP2 "board" image you are using cannot boot with the factory Android u-boot on EMMC, so either you wiped/zero'd EMMC to use the image, or the EMMC chips have failed which means the OS cannot detect Android u-boot; thus allowing it to boot upstream u-boot from the SD card.

    I'd guess the EMMC chips have gone bad. Share the URL from "dmesg | paste" and we can probably confirm.

    Cheers for that.

    Really dont know how to do the "dmesg | paste" sorry.

    So i just ran putty and copied/ pasted the full lines:

    Quote from Wetek_D

    Really dont know how to do the "dmesg | paste" sorry.

    You managed to type "dmesg" and hit enter. All you had to do was type "dmesg | paste" and hit enter.

    Code
    [ 1.543265] mmc1: Card stuck being busy! __mmc_poll_for_busy
[ 1.544665] mmc1: Failed to initialize a non-removable card

    The eMMC storage fails to init ^ and thus isn't visible to the OS, so cannot be addressed. No idea what the underlying issue is, but normally the issue with Android boxes (not specifically WP2) is the chips go bad and throw errors. On the upside, it's failed but still allows SD card boot, which is better than starting to boot and not being able to continue (which can also happen).

    Quote from chewitt

    You managed to type "dmesg" and hit enter. All you had to do was type "dmesg | paste" and hit enter.

    Code
    [ 1.543265] mmc1: Card stuck being busy! __mmc_poll_for_busy
[ 1.544665] mmc1: Failed to initialize a non-removable card

    The eMMC storage fails to init ^ and thus isn't visible to the OS, so cannot be addressed. No idea what the underlying issue is, but normally the issue with Android boxes (not specifically WP2) is the chips go bad and throw errors. On the upside, it's failed but still allows SD card boot, which is better than starting to boot and not being able to continue (which can also happen).

    Really apreciate it chewitt Later i manageddmesg.log to extract it with WinSCP. Anyway guess its the end of the road with this one. Cheers