O-C2 (PulseEight) CEC / AnyNet+ & ARC issue that affects the whole HomeTheatre

Just to start off with that info, there is an analog workaround for this, but its quite annoying tho I might have to life with that for the time being.

Here is what's going on:

I am running chewitts 12.0.2 for the Odroid-C2 I had lying around since years and discovered the following odd behaviour that pre 9.0 never has been an issue.

I skipped 10 & 11, the last build I ran properly was an 8.something.something and a 9 pre Covid(?).

Whenever the HDMI of the C2 is plugged into the TVs regular HDMI port the whole TV + Receiver CEC / AnyNet+ Audio Return Channel setup breaks and stops working part ways also existing CEC connections become disrupted or entirely broken. The HDMI can be removed while all devices run and sometimes CEC figures that out and recovers. The C2 unplugged from the TV turning both TV and Receiver off and on again usually does the trick anyway.

Funny enough it makes 0 difference if the PulseEight Adapter is activated or deactivated. The issue appears as soon as the board is HDMI connected. (This issue seems to also inhibit any regular CEC functionality between a TV and the C2 like control via the TV remote)

If I want to hear the sound of the C2 over my 2.1 BD HT Receiver I have to unplug the HDMI, start the TV and HTS (connected via HDMI ARC) wait until they figured out each other and sound comes over the HTS and only then plug in the C2 at which most CEC functionality ceases to function on all three devices except direct HTS volume control. As long as I am not changing the HDMI input away from the C2 I can hear the C2s output over the HTS speakers.

This leads me to believe that this issue must be disconnected from the PulseEight Adapter driver AS that is currently deactivated.

Has anyone had any similar issues with their setup recently or in the past?

Quote from chewitt

I don't ever test CEC as I have too many devices connected and it causes issues, so I disable it in my AVR, but grab a spare SD card and see what happens with https://chewitt.libreelec.tv/testing/LibreE…droid-c2.img.gz which should be using Linux 6.14.0 and libCEC 7.0 which may (or may not) improve things?

I am amazed. This is probably the first time since I work in IT that updating something actually fixed the issues at hand xD

I also saw that, against all previous conviction of mine, I apparently was NOT running your 12.0.2 but the default one. IDK where I went off road there to get to the wrong download, but in my defence at that point I was probably through 4 CE, 2 other images and two 9er versions installations on the C2 and half of those on a physically damaged SDcard that the system would recognise as entirely OK.

My brain was a bit on the weak side I may say.

Quote from chewitt

I don't ever test CEC as I have too many devices connected and it causes issues, so I disable it in my AVR, but grab a spare SD card and see what happens with https://chewitt.libreelec.tv/testing/LibreE…droid-c2.img.gz which should be using Linux 6.14.0 and libCEC 7.0 which may (or may not) improve things?

So now that I figured I was not running your 21.x Version of the image, I would like to see if the issue persists if I change to your image, as I was using the default one.

I read about it being possible by placing an image file in the .update folder of the current installation.

That way I could test if the CEC issue that is in the official image also was taken over to your images of 21.x if that is the case I should then simply be able to upgrade again to 22Alpha by placing that image in the .update folder that I used to downgrade.

Is that correct?

Also: does up- and downgrading via the .update folder behave like a soft or hard reset or is it simply replacing static OS files?

Quote from chewitt

You can drop the .tar files in /storage/.update but Kodi does not support downgrades so after downloading the .tar file to the board you need to manually stop Kodi and rename /storage/.kodi to /storage/.kodi22 before rebooting to start the update. On restart after the update this will give you a clean K21 instance to (re)configure.

Note that I don't keep archives of my older K21 images and I bumped to K22 more than a year ago, so the only K21 images around are the official releases which allegedly have a boot bug on C2 boards. It will start u-boot then fail to boot into the kernel, but this only visisble with a UART cable connected.

Also note that earlier K22 images in my share solved the boot bug with a workaround in u-boot, and the latest images solve it with a kernel fix submitted upstream (that should do the same thing). I'm not sure if the board will boot with u-boot from the latest image and kernel from the older one. You'll have to try it and see.

So what you are saying is: if I want to use your buildwith all the additions and fixes and alterations but as K21 I will have to do the downgrade procedure described by you

Or

Use this https://test.libreelec.tv/12.0/Amlogic/o…droid-c2.img.gz but life without the changes in your builds that haven't made it into the nightlies yet.

Have I understood that correctly or do I need another coffee?

Quote from chewitt

If you install from my image and then downgrade to 12.0 you are no longer running my image. The 12.0 nightly might not boot. It's hard to comment further because we're both talking hypotheticals. I haven't booted a C2 for some time and have no plans to dig a board out for a couple of weeks due to travels. So just experiment and see what happens.

NB: Even if you prove something is broken in the LE12 image and resolved in the newer one we aren't going to backport Linux 6.14.y or libCEC 7.0 to "fix" the LE12 branch so the information is entirely academic.

If things don't work, you have my LE13 image to use. K22 will start moving towards release soon.

Ah now I understand.

I did not want to test this to get some changes out of LE no worries. Pure curiosity.

Thanks for the clarifications regarding the downgrade.