H3 Based Android TV Boxes

Hawk

@guidol , I saw this post in another forum;

Oct 17th 2021

9

BASIC Engine NG also boots on my Sunvell R69 "Android TVBox" with Allwinner H2 + CPU
The R69 has 1GB of RAM compared to the 512MB of the Orange Pi One ....

It would certainly start on my Orange Pi PC (H3) with 1GB Ram 🙂

Did you do anything special to get BE NG to boot on your Sunvell R69?

As you can see from my previous posts, my R69 arrived, but I have been unable to get it to do anything but boot Android.

Any assistance you can provide would be appreciated.
Cheers,
Mike

MC10Guru

Ahoy,
I also have an R69 box as well as a T95 Super box that will not boot anything from uSD card. I made a rather long post about my continuing efforts under a different topic.

If Android is running and hooked up to the web on your R69 then try installing AIDA64 in Android as it gives accurate info on most of the hardware. My 2 non-EB NG-booting boxes both have an Allwinner H3 as the reported SOC. Today I received my last box, a Longyi T95 Super, and it boots EB NG fine.

I have more thing up my sleeve to try, A/V port switch recovery boot options. There may be an option to set uSD card boot from that. If that deosn't work then I'll be at a loss...
daveyb

Hawk

I'm resigned to the fact my R69 box is not a Sunvell R69. With a Rockchip RL3229, it is not going to be running BE NG anytime soon. I could maybe try booting Armbian on it, but that's really not where my interest is for these small SBCs. I have plenty of Linux boxes and even RPis if I want to play with them.
I have been scowering Aliexpress and Alibaba looking for a reliable source of cheap H3 smart TV boxes and have come up empty handed.
I've got one more tv box ordered that will hopefully arrive in the new year, but it's a long shot if that turns out to be a H3.
If I really want another different H3 SBC there are a couple of H3 RPi copies that are more expensive than the TV boxes, but for now I think I'll work with what I have.

Hawk

Orange Pi with uSD to SD extension
My new uSD to SD adaptors arrived. I'm very happy with them. I'm planning to use them for my case design.

[I wish I knew how to post photos here!]

MC10Guru

Ahoy,
Hawk: Please check your personal messages at the Tauon Forum.

I have started to do teardowns/photos of some of my Android boxes. The R69 H3 box just pops apart so it was 1st. I took a front & rear photo of that board. The first thing I noticed was the 1GB of RAM used 8 chips whereas the Tauon PC-1 board uses 4 chips for 1GB. And unfortunately I can't boot anything except an Android 7.1.2 restore uSD card with that box so it's not working with EB NG so far.

As I take the other boxes apart I'll take photos of each one. I have one poor quality photo of the top of the Tauon PC-1 board. The next time I have one apart I'll take some better photos.
daveyb

Hawk

I'll have to get into the habit of taking photos of my boards when I have them apart also. For my R69 board I had to send some photos to the reseller just to show them that it was not what was advertised.

Hawk

I finally received my MXQ Pro that is fitted with an Allwinner H3. Unfortunately it does not boot straight into EB NG from SD card straight away, so I'll have to do some research to find out what I need to change to make it work. I think getting Armbian installed might be a good start.

Hawk

The price of Allwinner H3 Smart TV boxes has started dropping again.

Has anyone tried one of these versions?

AU $13.53 70％ Off | 2022 New IPTV V88 Smart TV Box Android 12 Allwinner H3 Quad Core 2.4G WIFI 8K Set Top Box 8GB+128GB Media Player H.265 TV BOX
https://a.aliexpress.com/_mLy42DC

Dmian

From all I’ve read, the chip market won’t go back to normal until the last quarter of 2023…

It’s a bad time to be in any hobby that needs microcontrollers.

Hawk

I couldn't help myself, and had to order yet another H3 based Android TV box. It's a V88 Mini.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004921209551.html
This one booted into BASIC Engine straight away. Very happy.
The only down side is that the case has been plastic welded shut, so to extract the PCB I will have to destroy the case.

Hawk

Here's the same box even cheaper.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005282137546.html
I finally worked out how to pull the box apart last night. The top is held on by friction and small internal clips. It needs a thin plastic wedge to open it.
It turns out that the board ports look very similar to the Tauon PC-1. I'll open up the Tauon this weekend and take some photos of them side by side. The only obvious difference externally is the size of the 5v power jack.
This PCB looks like a perfect candidate to make into an all-in-one, Boot-to-BASIC mechanical keyboard computer.

Willard

Hawk Were you able to to compare the PCB of the V88 Mini.Android TV box and the TauonPC computer and take side by side photos of them? I am interested in knowing what you found comparing them.

Dmian

Sorry for being off-topic, but I keep thinking what could've happened to the project if instead of relying on these H3 boards, the original ESP8266 was updated to ESP32, or switched to RP2040...
Seems like there's now an explosion of similar projects using these micros, and I feel sad and nostalgic for the original idea Uli had when he designed that initial board.

Hawk

Dmian
As you know, that was my first idea when I came across the FabGL board. It seemed like the perfect target. It could even have been implemented similar to the PicoMite VGA, but instead of one core driving the video, it could have been a second ESP32 board. They are not particularly expensive. I think this is the approach that the Argon uses. It has the Z80 compatible CPU (and also soon the 6502 compatible one) and then uses an ESP32 as the video chip.

One of the good decisions Uli made in the first version of the BASIC Engine was the choice of the SNES controller. It uses a lot less I/O lines to give a lot of buttons, and only and extra 1 I/O line for extra controllers.

I keep an eye on as many of the similar projects as possible.

Hawk

Willard I did, but there was no way to upload them onto this forum. They have to exist on the interwebs somewhere. I'll work out a place to put it and then link to the photo.

Willard

Hawk Since we are discussing the TauonPC computer, can you upload the photo to the TauonPC forum. We might have a discussing with tauonpc about his post on this forum.

Hawk

Willard Check this out.
Tauon PC-1 vs V88 Mini Smart TV Box

Dmian

Continuing with the H3 devices, I saw a SBC on AliExpress called Banana Pi BPI-M2 Zero. It seems to be one of the cheapest boards out there. It's around €20.

Dmian

And look at this ridiculous thing: https://wiki.seeedstudio.com/Quantum-Mini-Linux-Development-Kit/ 🤣
It's a pity the only video out is that LCD through SPI.

Hawk

I keep searching for the cheapest BE compatible board and currently it seems to be this on.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005481635574.html

Dmian

Hawk Look at the shipping charges! 😱 (Though there are some with free shipping for a little bit more https://a.aliexpress.com/_EHRbIcr )

Regarding SBCs, maybe the cheapest is the NanoPi Neo, with the Banana Pi M2 Zero very close.

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