H3 Based Android TV Boxes

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.

Hawk

Came up with free shipping for me after I selected the plug that I wanted. Maybe because of where we are in the world.

Hawk

Is it possible to flash Engine BASIC to the built in Flash memory of the TV boxes in place of the default Android OS, so that it boots to Engine BASIC without an SD card fitted?

uli

Technically that should be possible, but not without rebuilding the system. I believe everything related is in the buildroot component:

You need to have a correct device tree for your STB, or at least one of a similar board with which the eMMC memory device works. Since consumer electronics do not come with schematics these days, you will probably have to use trial and error. Boot and see if an MMC device shows up in /dev other than mmcblk0.... (Once you have a working configuration, save it as you will need it to write the new system to the eMMC.)
u-boot is compiled for the Orange Pi Lite, which does not have an eMMC device, so the u-boot configuration needs to be changed from orangepi_lite to something that supports eMMC (BR2_TARGET_UBOOT_BOARD_DEFCONFIG option in buildroot .config; configs can be seen in output/build/uboot-2021.10/configs once you have built the buildroot system once.)
The root file system is hardcoded in the u-boot boot.cmd file (board/orangepi/orangepi-lite/boot.cmd) and needs to be changed. It seems eMMC devices are usually attached to mmc2, so it should be something like root=/dev/mmcblk2p2.
The boot file system is hardcoded in the /etc/fstab file in the rootfs overlay in buildroot (board/basicengine/common/rootfs_overlay/etc/fstab) and needs to be changed to /dev/mmcblk2p1 or so.
Probably something else I forgot.
Rebuild the entire system (instructions are on the homepage), copy the image file to the SD card from step 1 (BASIC partition, to make it easier), boot it and and dd the image to the eMMC device (#dd if=sdcard.img of=/dev/mmcblk2 status=progress).

You have twenty minutes. Your time starts now. 😃

uli

Two more things:

1.5. Build the system as described on the homepage to make sure that all files referenced show up, and to check if the requirements are met.

and

5.5. The next step will wipe your Android installation. If you want to preserve it, run dd if=/dev/mmcblk2 of=/sd/android.img status=progress. Make sure your SD card is large enough. (This may or may not work; proceed at your own risk.)

Hawk

Wow, that is a more detailed answer than what I was expecting. So sounds like it potentially possible, but certainly not straight forward.
The only other OS that I’ve played with on my non-Allwinner STB is LibreElec. I was able to get it to boot, but it was also running from SD, but from memory, it came with tools to allow manipulation of the eMMC. It was a while ago, and my memory is not what it use to be.

CityAceE

Especially for Basic Engine, I decided to find and buy the most inexpensive TV BOX with H3 SoC. And I found the V88 mini model on Aliexpress.

https://aliexpress.ru/item/1005005101971648.html

Of course, fake parameters are indicated there. In fact, there is 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of flash. But the best part is that all three versions of the Basic Engine - NG, RX, LT - are running on this device. There are, of course, nuances - after turning on the power, not every time there is a launch from SD and you have to restart the device. But if it started, then it works stably.

So keep this in mind if you are looking for a suitable device for the Basic Engine.

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