Just wondering if anyone has tried running Linux on one of the android tx box? Arm A53 cpu quad core. Been reading lots of installs, just need to set a box up. I have a Q-Box with S905x, which seems a little better then a pi4. Anyone try this? PS the box has 2gb ram, 16gb eMMC.
Android tv box for SDR
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lwvmobile
DSD-FME
Probably just a matter of finding out whether or not anything like Armbian or similar supports that particular SOC board, or better yet, finding out which SOC board is inside that Android TV Box specifically. Other than that, its just about finding an ARM based distro that will support that device. My experience with a Recon Sentinel Rock64 RK2238 is that you'll be able to find a few different distros that may have varying levels of support, but you might also be stuck with an old Linux Kernel from the chip manufacturer in China because it may have proprietary firmware to run the SOC properly. Also, I seem to remember reading that setting up on an SD card, then flashing that set up to an eMMC can be hit or miss, and also pretty drawn out so make sure to review all instructions and user comments on their experiences as well.
Are you going to try to run this as a CLI headless box, or a desktop environment? A few suggestions to things to look into include Armbian and DietPi. Maybe even Ubuntu aarch64, but to be honest, I kind of got tired of messing with these SOC boards, not enough horsepower for me. Outside of the RPi 3b+, haven't given SDR appliations an honest try on them either. Your mileage will probably vary extremely.
Armbian running on my "Icon Sentinel" RK2238 Rock64. Sellers were hawking these off on Amazon for $14 back last year or so, I somehow ended up buying two of them. The other one had retropie on it. Overall performance was 'meh', hit or miss depending on what it was doing.
Are you going to try to run this as a CLI headless box, or a desktop environment? A few suggestions to things to look into include Armbian and DietPi. Maybe even Ubuntu aarch64, but to be honest, I kind of got tired of messing with these SOC boards, not enough horsepower for me. Outside of the RPi 3b+, haven't given SDR appliations an honest try on them either. Your mileage will probably vary extremely.
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Armbian running on my "Icon Sentinel" RK2238 Rock64. Sellers were hawking these off on Amazon for $14 back last year or so, I somehow ended up buying two of them. The other one had retropie on it. Overall performance was 'meh', hit or miss depending on what it was doing.
I was hoping to run OP25 from it. Usb LCD...Hackrf or RTL
lwvmobile
DSD-FME
Its kind of hard to find an exact match for your device, but this may be close enough, it has the Amlogic S905x chipset in it, so if you check this link, you should find the relevant information you'll need to get going, but I can't promise anything will work. Seems like there will be some caveats to getting the device to boot from the SD card instead of the eMMC (I'm assuming your box has one, maybe even hidden inside of the casing if its not visible) and also the first image you try may not be suitable or stable. I ran into those kinds of issues getting that RK2238 Recon Sentinel to work.
As far as which image to try, I would suggest using the Focal xfce desktop if you want a desktop environment to work with, or if you just need a command line interface, I would recommend the Buster image with the additional caveat being you will have to most likely do extra configuration steps including setting up networking manually and maybe even audio manually.
Have fun, and good luck.
As far as which image to try, I would suggest using the Focal xfce desktop if you want a desktop environment to work with, or if you just need a command line interface, I would recommend the Buster image with the additional caveat being you will have to most likely do extra configuration steps including setting up networking manually and maybe even audio manually.
Have fun, and good luck.
lwvmobile
DSD-FME
Also, just to clarify, you should be able to run OP25 perfectly fine IF you can get one of the arbian debian/ubunutu distros to go on it. That will be the hard part, building OP25 should be the easy part.
The box I have was bricked, no reset, no usb. Short two pins and started working with usb. Loaded an image for the box, it works but green screen problem. Not to worried it's green as I will load linux when I have all the setup files. AmLogic S905x seems to be a 64-bit so I hope it runs ok.
Update: Loaded Armbian_20.10_Arm_64_bulleye_curennt_5.9.0_desktop.img
Works great with op25 installed for RTL. Didn't try web GUI yet. Was just so surprised that it ran op25. The unit is a Q tv box with 2g mem, 16g emmc. 2 usb ports, hdmi, optical out & and analog, net port. Cpu is amlogic S905x, mpu450. I'm going to try the GUI part soon and see how it runs. Don't notice any kind of slow down of this system. Loads & runs linux from usb stick, android still on emmc. Best of both for now!!
Works great with op25 installed for RTL. Didn't try web GUI yet. Was just so surprised that it ran op25. The unit is a Q tv box with 2g mem, 16g emmc. 2 usb ports, hdmi, optical out & and analog, net port. Cpu is amlogic S905x, mpu450. I'm going to try the GUI part soon and see how it runs. Don't notice any kind of slow down of this system. Loads & runs linux from usb stick, android still on emmc. Best of both for now!!
op25 is very light on resources, so i am not suprised. At least you're not part of the crowd that "needs to run SDR# to see the signals".
lwvmobile
DSD-FME
You would be surprised how little memory things need and how fast they can perform when the environment is well optimized. I'm glad to hear your project is up and running. I had completely forgotten about it. Did you have any issues finding an image that would boot on your Q tv, or did it take to the first one you tried?
I needed to do a lot of reading and loading of different images to get it working. Have an S802 chipset I want to get working next when I get more time to play with it.
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