Posts by chewitt

  • Your thoughts on the future of Raspberry Pi as a LE platforrm

    *THE* thing that differentiaes RPi in the ARM/SBC world is the software ecosystem around the boards. Users (of all kinds) can achieve more with average hardware that is excellently supported, than with excellent hardware that is averagely supported. As a general rule, no other SoC manufacturer 'gets' this, and while some SBC vendors do an okay job with better than average support, it's only better than average and not the A1++ support in the RPi ecosystem. The x86_64 world has similar levels of support, but generally with a higher price tag.

    NB: RPi Trading (the for-profit bit that raises funds to the non-profit Foundation) openly recognises that their primary audience these days is more interested in industrial use than education or the hobbyist sector, although things like Home Automation (and Kodi) are still strong; but nowhere near the percentage they were a few years ago. So RPi4 is already more industry friendly than previous generations and I would expect RPi5 to continue that trend. There is still a strong desire to hit the $35 price-point (or the principles behind it) but it's just not possible in the current screwed-up supply-chain post-covid ukraine-war world.

    Despite the current short-supply.. I would expect RPi boards to continue being the best supported devices in our line-up.

  • Mpv as secondary external player/library decoder

    Using alternative players is possible in some OS (Windows, maybe Desktop Linux) because there's a Windowing environment that handles the display of things and the instruction to play something can be somewhat delegated. LE has more complicated distro packaging and we run on the DRM framebuffer so there is a VERY tight integration between Kodi and FFMpeg and the display hardware; so you would first need to compile mpv into the LE image (as we have no package manager or means to simply install it) and then you can configure it as an external player; at which point you'll almost certainly find that mpv is not the solution to whatever problem you think it might solve.

  • Odroid C2 - no connections

    SMB is active by default and visiting the \\ip-address\logfiles share will generate a zip file with logs from the system. If you can share this we can have a look. If you can't .. the description suggests a cable issue or perhaps a port/speed conflict that prevents Ethernet from working properly on the board.

  • Wireguard Struggles

    WireGuard itself only operates on IPs (NIC interfaces can have an IP, but not an FQDN) hence in the current ConnMan-VPN implementation this is also a hard requirement. The wg-quick script that some WireGuard implementations use to create and tear-down WireGard interfaces has the advantage of being able to resolve an FQDN to an IP address before creating the interface. I haven't tried wg-quick on LE for aeons but it probably works, or you can create your own up/down scripts for systemd to make connections if you like; WireGuard support is in the kernel and making connections is not tied to ConnMan. The advantage of using ConnMan (and reason our default support uses it) is you can see and enable/disable connections using the LE settings add-on in the Kodi GUI.

  • No Signal after upgrading to 10.0.2

    Kodi is probably crashing repeatedly due to incompatible add-ons (the Python2 to Python3 change that happens with 9 > 10). If you have an understanding of where things are in the filesystem it's quite easy to recover from:

    systemctl stop kodi && mv /storage/.kodi/addons /storage/.kodi/addons-old && systemctl start kodi

    This moves all (Python2) add-ons out of the way, allowing you to reinstall new (Python3) versions that are compatible. We generally advise a clean install as the majority of users with low/no Linux experience struggle to solve the problem and it's the easiest option to avoid teaching command line skills to a large group that resists learning them, but if you aren't in that group it's relatively simple to fix.

  • Libreelec 10.03 vs Android TV 9

    A72 in the RPi4 is and older design than the A73 in the TV, but the clock rate is higher and .. likely other stuff like RAM speed. I personally find the choice of remote and its repeat rate, which affects the scrolling rate in the GUI, have a larger effect on how the GUI 'feels' while being navigated than CPU clock rates. I find an RPi4 just fine. Others don't.. /shrug

  • Wireguard Struggles

    If the server is using some random port and not listening on 51820 how do you expect client and server to connect?

    NB: ConnMan will create the connection and wg0 interface regardless of what you put in the files (as long as the content is syntactically valid) but the ends need to have basic connectivity else the data doesn't flow.

  • Raspberry Pi 4 RAM benefits?

    RPi4 1GB = For an LE only setup with 1080p but not 4K media. RPi4 2GB = For 1080p/4K in an LE only configuration. RPi4 4GB/8GB = For people that want to run additional services, i.e. Docker containers in the background, or perhaps want to swap SD cards and boot a full Linux desktop OS that benefits from more RAM on the board.

  • Libreelec 10.03 vs Android TV 9

    I'd expect Sony to do a half-competent job of supporting ATV9 on hardware that will be technically equivalent or superior to an RPi4 so the playback performance on the TV (using Kodi) shouldn't be bad and the TV likely supports more codecs etc. - and doesn't require another box purchase so I'd always recommend you explore the limits of that before adding something more. That said, all 'smart' TVs want to monitor your media consumption habits to provide an advertising opportunity or additional revenue stream for Sony. LE offers a potentially more private way to consume the same media through Kodi. If that appeals, or you invitably reach the point where Sony stopped supporting the OS and providing updates, running an RPi4 (or maybe RPi5 by then) via LE will be an attractive idea. Again, I doubt the RPi4 can beat the TV on playback quality unless Sony dropped the ball on Android.

  • 0bda:b812 rtl88x2bu kernel module

    Any Realtek vendor driver will NOT be accepted into our codebase (this one has already been submitted and refused). Once the upstream patches I've flagged are accepted into the kernel we will happily backport the driver onto whatever kerrnel we're working with at the time (if technically possible) .. but not before.