New Homeseer Box - Omni Plugin - in OP2 can server Part II

[Pete]

Switched from the Rock chip to an Amilogic S912 Octocore CPU computer. This is called a TV box and comes with Android preinstalled.

Very impressed with it. It is smaller than an RPI and much faster.

Originally purchased the TicTid X9T Pro as a K box. Footprint is smaller than an RPi and it runs fast and the price is right at around $50.

This box will fit better inside of my OmniPro 2 media panel than an RPi sized box.



There are a few TV boxes today posted on Amazon. They all come by default with rooted Android.

I do not utilize Android here much such that I switched the box over to running Ubuntu 18.04 and a lite desktop.

Basic specs for the TicTid X9T Pro are:

- 3Gb of DDR3
- 32 Gb eMMC
- Amlogic S912 with an Octa-Core CPU
- WiFi Dual band
- Bluetooth 4.1
- Gb LAN port
- GPU which does 4K HD fine

Included Hardware:
- 5VDC power supply (short cord)
- IR basic remote control
- HDMI 2.0 cable
- dimensions: 4.13 x 4.13 x 0.59 inches tall

You have the option of installing new OS on microSD card or built in eMMC. To test purchased a fast 32Gb micro SD card.

Installation of Ubuntu 18.04 Armbian OS.

1 - write OS image to SD card
2 - copy DTB file "" to root of boot renaming it to dtb.img

First time booting of Ubuntu on SD card. Press the reset button while booting and the device will boot from SD card. Note you only have to do this once. Cold boot with SD card will always boot to SD card. You can remove the SD card and boot from Android if you wish.

First time boot reconfigures root password and creates a new sudo user.

Noticed an issue with sudo here so did a :
1 - apt purge sudo
2 - apt install sudo

Updated and did a distal upgrade.

There is a utility called arbian-config which does some basics for you including providing a desktop.

For server you do not need to configure a desktop.

/ ___|/ _ \/ |___ \
\___ \ (_) | | __) |
 ___) \__, | |/ __/
|____/  /_/|_|_____|


Welcome to ARMBIAN 5.77 user-built Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS 5.0.2-aml-s912  
System load:   0.00 0.00 0.00      Up time:       1:51 hour        
Memory usage:  18 % of 2841MB     IP:            192.168.244.190
CPU temp:      43°C              
Usage of /:    9% of 29G        

[ General system configuration (beta): armbian-config ]

Last login: Thu Apr  4 05:07:48 2019 from 192.168.244.231

Screen shots of armbian-config utility.



Note the addition software adds of Home Assistant and OpenHab. Noted the default lite desktop comes up in 4K HD mode. 3840 X 2160.

For KODI here was using Aopen Digital engines except that they do not do HD 4K. Switching over to these for KODI now and maybe will use these for the CarPCs. Current carpc is DIN mounted small mITX case using an Atom computer. Switch carpc OS over to Ubuntu and KODi these days.

These devices would be great for HS Touch Android Based touchscreens (large) if you could POE power the device and touchscreen.

[Pete]

I have settled on using this device as a new Microserver for Homeseer 3 "lite" inside of the OmniPro 2 panel. It is the size of my palm. Tiny device. Runs Ubuntu / Mono aarch64 version fine and fast with the Octocore ARM CPU. Looking maybe to do an RTC / battery modification to it (bit banging) although I am now seeing some of these devices with RTC battery backup now. Average temperature of CPU is 65 C.

[gregoryx]

Looks good, Pete. Thanks. Will they accept putting Armbian on the eMMC? If I were considering it for Kodi (only 1080P), which build would you think might work best?

[Pete]

For running Kodi on the 4K HD television running with Coreelec which works fine with the GPU Mali-820.

I have Kodi configured to boot in 1080P and it'll stream 4K HD from the Internet, NAS and internal memory just fine.

IE: it switches from a 1080P display to 4K HD display when playing 4K movies. Sound 7.1 works great via HDMI to AVR. Getting used to the CEC pieces.

Runs Netflix / Amazon AOD (with subscription) just fine here on Kodi 18.X.

Now too there is a Coreelec optional service to control the clock display (which you can have display stuff like temperature too).

The Coreelec build is pure Linux and it is not suggested to install it on the eMMC. I am running it on a fast 64Gb microSD card right now.

This is the fastest and smalled Kodi box that I have had to date. I am transitioning here from the Aopen Digital Engines now to the tiny TVBox Kodi (running Linux - NOT Android).

No desktop is running and the OS is thin and only for Kodi. Within the KODI OS you can update Coreelec and Coreelec utilities.

##############################################
#                  CoreELEC                  #
#            https://coreelec.org            #
##############################################

CoreELEC (official): 9.0.1 (Amlogic.arm)
ICS-X9T:~ #

For the Microserver headless Armbian Ubuntu build currently testing it on a fast 32Gb microSD and moving it to the 32Gb eMMC on the same device.

Just finished the microserver build and it is working well now. Going to move it to the OmniPro can this next week.

Welcome to ARMBIAN 5.82.190423 nightly Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS 5.1.0-rc1-aml-s912

root@ICS-TX9:~# uname -a
Linux ICS-TX9 5.1.0-rc1-aml-s912 #5.78 SMP PREEMPT Fri Apr 12 11:16:06 MSK 2019 aarch64 aarch64 aarch64 GNU/Linux

This one is running headless with no monitor connected to it.



It will auto clock up to 1.5Ghz per CPU and you can overclock it if you want.

It is configured to run Homeseer 3 (Zee2 version), OmniPlugin, Home Assistant, Mosquitto, Node Red, and OmniLinkBridge (MQTT).

It does not have an RTC like the Pine64 computer. Looking maybe to mode this box for RTC.

It is hardly working at this time. Moving the automation from the Pine64 to the Amilogic S912 today.

The MQTT OmniLinkBridge sees everything and I have tried to tweak down the display a bit. So the following pictures show a collage of what is running on the TVBox. Note now there is integration here to using the Omni Panel, Russound, Speaker clients, Alexa Clients and Squeezeplayer clients. Goofing around a bit here mixing the hourly chime with Homeseer and Alexa weather and news events. There is one Alexa DOT here sound being mixed with the speaker output going to the Russound. A bit too much (low on the WAF) chatty kathy stuff. So relating to Alexa using VR and making the Alexa become media devices. IE: you can execute scripts now to tell alexa to run automation scripts or TTS if you want.



xxx