Posts by HiassofT

Dont do that, you are bricking your LibreELEC installation.

Only replace start.elf and fixup.dat, eg with the script or instructions in the linked post, and make sure no other start/fixup files are present.

It may work for you now but if you have other start/fixup files on your SD card your RPi won't be using the one needed for LibreELEC and on later LibreELEC updates you'll still be using that old version which can cause a lot of headache for you.

USB boot is working fine here with the May 27 firmware and bootloader versions.

so long,

Hias

Be very careful, don't touch any dtb files and make sure you only change start.elf and fixup.dat (which are start4x.elf and fixup4x.dat in the RPi firmware repo). Otherwise chances are high you'll brick your LibreELEC installation.

Read more about it here: Pi4 USB Boot is coming soon!!!! YAAAY

so long,

Hias

Please wait with testing, we just noticed a bug (probably in the RPi firmware) that causes issue and prevents kodi to start on RPi0/1 - quite certainly Slice is affected, too.

I'm terribly sorry about that, seems I missed it in final testing

so long,

Hias

Yes, 9.2.3 will contain the fixed firmware and the manual steps I posted are no longer needed.

The changes aren't in our repo yet, we are currently working on it.

so long,

Hias

Please post the full output you get in putty, not only the commands you typed/copied in. wget will show some info/status and that's important.

And, again, no, vcgencmd bootloader_version is not the correct command to check the version of the firmware. vcgencmd version is the right command.

I already posted all of this in detail here Noise / artefacts when playing back 4K HEVC video on RPi4 + LE 9.2.1 (no problems on LE 9.2.0)

TBH if you can't follow these steps and don't understand the difference between bootloader, RPi firmware and VL805 firmware I think it's better you stay away from beta-testing and wait until the final version is released.

so long,

Hias

Quote from harun-cuk17

When I do the steps in LE with putty and after all reboot and check

Code

vcgencmd bootloader_version

I see still the april 16 2020

Which steps exactly did you do and what was the console output?

The script I posted in this thread and the instructions I posted in the artefact thread are for updating the RPi/VideoCode firmware. It won't affect the bootloader.

so long,

Hias

No, the steps I posted are specific for LibreELEC, they won't work on Raspbian (they'll just mess up the firmware files for RPi0-3 there).

If you have issues with Raspbian please post in the thread on the RPi forum.

so long,

Hias

The instructions I posted are for updating the RPi/VideoCore firmware on the SD card / USB device. On Raspbian "rpi-update" takes care of that step. Without that updated firmware the bootloader will refuse to boot from USB media.

The bootloader eeprom on the RPi has to be updated separately to the beta version. This is done via "rpi-eeprom-update". While LibreELEC contains the rpi-eeprom-update/rpi-eeprom-config tools it doesn't include the beta bootloader - you'd need to manually download that from GitHub - raspberrypi/rpi-eeprom: Installation scripts and binaries for the closed sourced Raspberry Pi 4 EEPROMs . Or boot Raspbian on the RPi and follow the official instructions Raspberry Pi 4 USB mass storage beta (beta means it not ready yet, and not officially released!) - Raspberry Pi Forums

The same warning as in the RPi thread applies to LE, too - even more so as LE is a bit different than Raspbian.

Quote

This is a beta release. If you aren't already comfortable with manual firmware updates then please wait until this is available in a standard release.

so long,

Hias

Please read again through what I posted in this thread,I already told you what our plans for the LibreELEC 9.2.3 release are.

so long,

Hias

This is the thread about the artefacts: Noise / artefacts when playing back 4K HEVC video on RPi4 + LE 9.2.1 (no problems on LE 9.2.0) - you posted in it less than a day ago, did you forget?

LE 9.2.3 isn't out and when we release it it'll contain the latest firmware, with both the artefact fix and initial USB boot support (except for rpi-eeprom update, which is still early beta).

so long,

Hias

Quote from harun-cuk17

and that update of the firmware, what does it fix exactly then?

Ah, sorry, thought I was posting in the other thread. The fix is for artefacts with some 4k HEVC files and was added yesterday to the firmware repo.

Initial USB boot support was added to the firmware a couple of days before.

LE 9.2.3 will ship with a firmware that has the early USB boot support, so you'll only need to update the rpi-eeprom firmware to test it.

Keep in mind that RPi4 USB boot is in early beta testing so there will very certainly be several newer versions with fixes/enhancements/... in the weeks to come.

so long,

Hias

Yes. see my post here Pi4 USB Boot is coming soon!!!! YAAAY

Quote

We're already preparing for a LE 9.2.3 release, with updated kodi and fixed RPi firmware

so long,

Hias

Keep in mind that for RPi0-3 you need to download start_x.elf/fixup_x.dat (and store it as http://start.elf/fixup.dat), for RPi4 it's http://start4x.elf/fixup4x.dat.

so long,

Hias

Quote from myrpi

do you recommend to upgrade also other files from /Flash ?

Only if you want to brick your LE installation

The dtb/dtbo files from RPi firmware repo are for the 5.4 kernel, LE is using the 4.19 kernel. So keep everything else as is, only swap out the start.elf and fixup.dat files.

We're already preparing for a LE 9.2.3 release, with updated kodi and fixed RPi firmware, no ETA at this point though.

For now it'd be good to get some more feedback how LE 9.2.1 with the updated firmware works.

so long,

Hias

Good news, RPi devs found the issue and fixed it in the latest firmware. I've just confirmed that the sample plays without artefacts with it.

Please switch to LE 9.2.1 again and run these commands to update to the latest firmware:

mount -o remount,rw /flash
wget -O /flash/start.elf https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/raw/a6c9b6b/boot/start4x.elf
wget -O /flash/fixup.dat https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/raw/a6c9b6b/boot/fixup4x.dat 

After rebooting the firmware version should be May 22 2020:

xbmc:~ # vcgencmd version
May 22 2020 21:12:25 
Copyright (c) 2012 Broadcom
version 4da3e1264076308eda90652cb98b553ae0586390 (clean) (release) (start_x)

Please also check with your other problematic files that showed artefacts if they are fine, too.

so long,

Hias

Quote from myrpi

The problem is that LE will no boot from SDCard or USB if I replace old start.elf and fixup.dat with newer version.

Any idea ?

LE is a bit nasty in that regard, that http://start.elf/fixup.dat files for RPi4 are actually start4x.elf and fixup4x.dat.

I'm using this script (I named it "get-rpi4-fw.sh") when I need to manually test RPi4 firmwares:

#!/bin/sh
if [ $# -ne 1 ]; then
    echo "usage: $0 githash"
    exit 1
fi

set -e

wget -O /tmp/start.elf "https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/raw/$1/boot/start4x.elf"
wget -O /tmp/fixup.dat "https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/raw/$1/boot/fixup4x.dat"

mount -o remount,rw /flash
cp /tmp/start.elf /tmp/fixup.dat /flash
mount -o remount,ro /flash

Just pass in a githash from Commits · raspberrypi/firmware · GitHub (eg 27ba5b9 for latest version as of today) and then reboot.

I tested USB boot with LE master (and an alpha version of the firmware) a couple of days ago and LE booted fine both from the SD and when I put the SD card into an USB SD card reader. Haven't tested with LE 9.2 yet but I guess that should work, too.

so long,

Hias

The kit you linked isn't quite ideal as it only seems to contain an IR transmitter LED, without a transistor/FET and current limiting resistor to drive it.

Hooking up the IR LED directly to the GPIO isn't a good idea as the current output of the GPIO is too low so the range (distance to the TV/IR receiver) will be rather limited.

See also this thread on the RPi forum for background info on how to hook up IR LEDs Extend IR Led Range - Raspberry Pi Forums

If you are not into soldering/electronics stuff search for breakout boards with IR LED and driving transistor - I've seen several of those in various shops but don't have any links or recommendations.

The configuration / software side isn't too hard, ideally use the pwm-ir-tx dtoverlay with the IR-LED/driving circuit connected to GPIO 18 (pin 12 on the header) or, if you need to use another GPIO, use the gpio-ir-tx dtoverlay. To transmit IR signals use the ir-ctl command.

Just search this forum for ir-ctl, I posted info on how to use it in several threads.

so long,

Hias

Current theory is that the vc_image change to add 16 lines in the Jan 30 firmware is causing the issue. With the firmware before that (Jan 22) the video is rendered without artefacts.

I regularly test with a couple of HEVC videos and all these played fine on 9.2.1 and also current 9.2 development versions with latest firmware/kernel. Could be that the issue is triggered by some video properties (10bit vs 8bit / height etc) so these things can easily be missed.

One problem with the RPi video dirvers used in LE9.2 is that too many things are handled in the closed-source RPi firmware so only the RPi devs can really debug these things. As that's not ideal the current development effort is to move away from that to a fully open source video driver where everything is handled in the linux kernel. It's not finished yet but already working quite good and current LE10 test builds with it also don't have the artefact issue.

I'll report back when we get something to test from the RPi devs, until then just keep using LE 9.2.0.

so long,

Hias