Posts by kszaq

Kerber is a developer for some custom Amlogic builds, his Github account is here: surkovalex (Alexandr) · GitHub He has some good knowledge about Amlogic and also seems to have access to AML source code with Git history. He helped me in the past to make some things work for S805 boxes. I don't know if he's willing to join LE community, though.

As for S812 boxes, if you have some knowledge on compiling OE/LE, you can grab my LE fork, modify options file to reflect your device and grab Kodi patches from WeTek Core project. Then compile and see if it works.

Quote from Compos

Hi kszaq,

My all black MXQ has shown a red LED permanently since I first flashed over the stock rom. When booting 7.0.0.2 my LED was red on the u-boot image and then it turned blue!!! When Libreelec booted the LED flickered a little and then went off. Now the LED is red when the unit is in standby and off when the unit is on. Even when powering off and re-powering the unit it now stays like this - Red standby, Off power on. Have you any ideas why my blue LED would appear on the first boot but never after that?

Thanks for the excellent work.

It seems like your LED is connected to a GPIO port that is defined for some other system device in device tree. Do you have a link to original Android firmware that makes the LED work correctly?

Quote from OpenElecCrazy

kszaq, Ive tried again following the instructions on first post but each time it only captures this info. I turn the box on, connect it to my routers LAN port so I can SSH with Putty. I capture the log file by teminal "pastebinit /storage/.kodi/temp/kodi.log" then copy from explorer and Its the same capture each time? I get no WiFi signal with OE or LE but it works fine with Android. Do I need to get some info with it running on Android first? Is LE not reconizing my WiFi chip?

Please let me know if Im missing a step...

Thank you, Frank

Sorry, it's my mistake: I thought that LibreELEC Wiki instructs to provide all the logs, not only Kodi log... Here's what you need to do:

• reboot your box or turn off the power completely and power the box
• if you can access Samba shares (Windows shared folders), go to \\box_IP\Logfiles - there will be a log file that you need to give me
• if you're unable to access the share, you can also SSH to the box, execute createlog and download zip file with logs over SFTP from /storage/logfiles

I'll update the first post accordignly. Thank you for your cooperation.

Quote from OpenElecCrazy

kszaq, I was able to boot all versions of your last 7.0.0.2 but I do not have working WiFi. When LE boots I have no WiFi signals during the setup phase. Wired LAN works great. I have MXQ_S805_V3_1_20151230 blue board and I have included a logfile for your review and help. The box is currently running MXQ SD 7.0.0.2

The box runs very well and movies play smooth. Thank you for your hard work getting LE to run on our boxes...

Frank

Kodi log has no information on WiFi. Please collect the logs according to instruction in the first post.

Quote from PatrickJB

K,
Is it possible to force the time to update on resume from suspend? It often updates after 15 - 20 min and used to update if I used bbc iplayer but doesn't anymore. Hey it's not a big deal just hoping it's a simple line of code. And yes, for the last few or more versions of your builds, suspend has worked fine apart from the time update thang.

And yes full power off seems to work fine too. Nice!

Yes we know it's not really full power off but it's as good.

Not tested, an idea: use this guide to create a resume script. You can name it 01-update-time.power and place the following content inside:

#!/bin/sh


case "$1" in
  post)
    ntpd -q -n -p pool.ntp.org
    ;;
esac

This would force time update on system resume.

Quote from Rumblefish

I have a box that I think is tricky to access the reset button/boot menu. So not sure how I'd boot into it the first time.
But, apart from a few obvious issues (rcu keymapping, audio etc.) that may or may not happen, should this boot on any S805 box?

Yes, these builds should boot on most S805 boxes but I can't guarantee S/PDIF, WiFi and remote control to work. You should try running from SD card first, it is a completely safe method.

You have to be able to access the reset button to be able to boot from SD card, there is no other way to apply aml_autoscript. On the other side, if you want to flash to NAND, you can prepare an SD card with NAND installation files, boot to Android, insert SD card and execute reboot recovery in terminal - the box will reboot to flashing LE on NAND.

Quote from Kiwi_man82

Lol. Glad to hear that you might have found a fix for the issue of the v3_1 boxes freezing. And I guess big props to fanni2 for supply you a box with this board in it. He did mention to me that he was going to send you one. Was hoping to hear better news re the ram issue thou But I'm still confused as there are 2 ram chips marked as 512x8ddr3 each.....lol. Oh well, at least you now have one of the v3_1 boards too

Yes, the board I got also has 512X8DDR3 markings but even in Android - when you factor out fakes in logs - only 512MB of physical RAM is available.
[hr]
I have uploaded a new build: 7.0.0.2
It includes changes developed in many hours of trials, errors and testing.

7.0.0.2

Consider it a test build. Why "test"? I can't check every single setup you guys have.

Git changelog: Comparing 7.0.0.1...7.0.0.2 · kszaq/LibreELEC.tv · GitHub
Kernel git changelog: Comparing 4e597d35...bd872fa · kszaq/linux · GitHub

Human-readable changelog:

• deffered CEC initialization for better compatibility
• added a workaround for Realtek 8188 WiFi with reverted power pins
• brought back "power off" option in Kodi menu with a fix for blue screen issue
• added front LED driver for "costdown" boards - this makes front LED work properly for some boards
• fixed "Reboot from NAND" option in Confluence
• cleaned up device trees a little - removed nonexistent camera and i2c entries
• reverted an upstream Kodi patch to minimize stuttering on some videos
• device-specific fixes:
  
  
  • MXV: male-male USB cable between port 1 and 4 is no longer needed to boot (user reported)
  • infamous m201d: fixed freezing on video playback; added ZRAM support

There is one known issue for the m201d build: my device cannot wake up from suspend/power off by pressing remote power button! This is an issue with manufacturer-supplied u-boot (improper power key code in u-boot) and needs to be worked around. When I checked how this is handled in their Andoid build - well, that box doesn't suspend. It only turns off HDMI output.

Please flash, test and report!

Quote from Boi73

is the false ram the same for boards marked MxQ V3.0?

I don't know. An easy way to tell is which version of my builds works for you: if you can run HD18Q or MXQ build, you have 1GB RAM. If m201d is the only one that boots for you, you have 512MB RAM.

Quote from mercucho1

Thanks for your reply. Do you know other torrent client I can install it?

You can use Transmission from unofficial OE repo: service.downloadmanager.transmission-7.0.1.zip

Quote from jnnuzzo

Is this why my box only displays 375 mb RAM in your m201d build? This is the only build that boots on my box S805_v1_D08. hopefully your fix for the freezing issue works. Thanks for all your work!

Yes. The box has 512MB RAM but some part of it is reserved for video decoder, deinterlacer and post process engine. 375MB is the RAM amount available to user. The real one.

Quote from bordiart

kszaq,
I have the same thing with my all balck mxq, it freezes when trying to play anything. I have the same configuration as Kiwi_man82 has.

fanni sent me a box with the V3_1 board and I was able to play with it a little. I was also able to reproduce the issue and I think I have a fix!

The bad news about that board is that it has 512MB of physical RAM.

Here's screenshot from unpacked kernel proving that they are faking RAM amount in kernel log (They also fake RAM amount in free command in Android):

And here's a screenshot from kernel from other box that prints real RAM amount:

At first I thought they are somehow initializing the second RAM chip later but now I am almost 100% sure that half of the RAM is a fake.

sammaz After lots of trials and errors I was finally able to compile libcec-daemon! I needed to add log4cplus package, find libcec-daemon fork that works with libcec 3.0.1, find another fork that allows compiling with CMake (autoconf was throwing errors all the time), merge them and add a fix for the latest boost library. Lot of things learned down the way!

You can download it from here: libcec_daemon
Source code for plugin is available at GitHub - kszaq/my-addons: A simple VNC server for OpenELEC on Amlogic

I have only verified that it works, I am not sure if key mapping are correct.

What you can do for your retroarch setup - to have CEC work all the time - is disable CEC in Kodi settings (System -> Input -> Peripherals) and add libcec-daemon -d to autostart.sh. That way you'd be able to stop Kodi by SIGSTOP and not systemctl stop and have CEC input working all the time.

Quote from Boi73

bud thanks for the swift response (and all your gr8 work ;p)

how do i install retroarch zip tho?

& how do i ssh into the Mxq?

sorry for the noob Qs

kind regards

These things are covered in OE, LE and Kodi Wikis.

Quote from Boi73

sorry i know off topic a tad but how do you install retroarch onto LibreElec plz

Retroarch addon for Openelec on MK808B+ and MXQ - FreakTab.com

Use this plugin: emulator.tools.retroarch-7.0.2.zip
Source code: GitHub - kszaq/openelec.retroarch-aml

Quote from sammaz

Could you implement this into the next build?

libcec-daemon/src at master · diablodiab/libcec-daemon · GitHub

Its just a simple daemon for libcec but i think it will be good for keeping CEC control going.

Is there any Kodi addon that allows to configure the daemon? The good thing now about having Kodi in charge of connecting to libCEC is that we can have all configuration in one place, I don't want to lose that. I was thinking that maybe I would be able to compile the daemon so that you can use it in Retroarch? You would have to use systemctl stop to kill Kodi, though. Would that be OK?

Quote from Kiwi_man82

Hello kszaq

So I have decided to try using my box to stream movies off my local pc. I have a mix of sd and hd movies/tv series etc and I can setup LE to see my media all ok but when I try to play either sd or hd my box freezes and I have to pull the power plug. I then tried playing off a usb thumb drive and again the box froze up. Am running the m201d build off sd card. Didn't try this with your oe builds so I don't know if it is related to just le or both le and oe

Sent from my SM-G900F using Tapatalk
Edit : Just tried your latest build of oe for m201d devices and local network stream working fine so it's just le I'm having this problem with [emoji3]

The main difference is that LE uses Kodi 16.1 final whereas OE is still on 16.1rc2. Are you able to connect to the box over SSH/Samba when Kodi freezes? If yes, you know what to do...

Quote from LibreFAN

Thanks ksazq once again for your help and tips. It works like a charm
The default logo.img from android firmware for MK808B+ is Google TV logo. Where I can find LibreELEC logo? I tried from update *.tar archive but this archive is without logo.img file.

P.S. I have found in WeTek NAND release (LibreELEC-WeTek_Core.arm-7.0.0-update.zip) logo.img but I don't know if that is WeTek logo or LibreELEC logo? OK it's not a problem to transfer the logo.img to Download folder of MK808B+ and execute dd if=/storage/downloads/logo.img of=/dev/logo, but maybe you guys know which logo is in WeTek release...

There is no logo.img available with LE logo. WeTek uses WeTek logo (obviously) and you can't always flash logo.img from a different device as its format may be different. I remember that I created OE logo.img by first creating a 1920x1080x24bpp bmp file and pasting it in HEX editor to original logo.img afterwards.

Quote from LibreFAN

I noticed while booting up first is shown OpenELEC, than LibreELEC and at the end KODI logo. This is due the fact that I migrate / upgrade the system from OpenELEC to LibreELEC and some system files are left behind? Best would be a clean install from scratch? Would that speed up a little bit the Kodi interface?

The very first logo you see is an u-boot logo. OE logo was flashed on your device by one of my early releases, I dropped flashing logo some time ago. If you want to revert to default logo (manufacturer-provided), you should extract logo.img from Android firmware, copy to your device and dd it do /dev/logo. For example, if you put logo.img to Downloads folder, you should execute dd if=/storage/downloads/logo.img of=/dev/logo.

Quote from ukmark62

kszaq

Are there any plans to develop LibreELEC for other Amlogic SoCs such as the S812 or S905 boxes??

Thanks.

I don't have any S812 nor S905 boxes and I'm pretty happy with how my S805 box works so no plans from me. There are some OE builds for S905 boxes available on the internet and I know that there is Odroid C2 support coming for LibreELEC.

Quote from punter

Thanks kszaq works great on MXQ with red stripe
Any plans to do anything for a 4K box ie one with Rockchip RK3229? I see these boxes are cheap now

This is completely different platform, I have no plans to build anything for it.

sammaz

The part of dmesg you pasted is "device vendor" message received from TV, actually nothing to do with restoring CEC funcionality. No CEC after SIGSTOP-SIGCONT is a general issue, not specific to Amlogic CEC driver. You can read that someone has the same problem with P8 CEC adapter: OpenELEC Mediacenter - OpenELEC Forum - Retroarch addon by tssemek (2/16)

To resolve this, we would need to have a SIGCONT signal handler in Kodi that would reinitialize CEC driver.

Quote from mr.Allexx

MXQ can run on a usb stick? if so, how to make a bootable usb flash drive?

Not possible at the moment.

Quote from LibreFAN

Thanks ksazq.
I tried your fix, and return key on my remote is now bringing me back through menus, but in fullscreen video playback when I press return I get codec info?! Before with old version of openELEC and old CEC driver when I press return on my remote the video playback stops. This was default settings, this button I have not changed with keymap editor. Some other buttons I have chnaged in the past, such red button - show codec, yellow - info...

I guess I'll have to rearange keymaps so the remote will be completely functional as before, with this new CEC driver.
One question though: Is it possible to map one key for multiple actions. For example if I want to map RETURN key to BACK in General/Navigation - that works fine, but if I set RETURN key to STOP in General/Playback then BACK action will not work in menus when I press RETURN on my remote. I hope you can understand what I'm trying to say.

I think yes, you can: you need to add <FullScreenVideo> section in remote.xml and map title button there - I believe that this is how Samsung's Return button is mapped. There is a thorough guide here: HOW-TO:Modify keymaps - Official Kodi Wiki