CoreElec on X92 Android TV box

Hardware notes

X92 is S912 based-on Soc Android TV Box. The main software issue is Amlogic has not released a GPU open source drivers yet. That means you need to stuck with the propietary blobs that need a 3.14 linux kernel.

The differences with anothers S9 family models of AMLogic (source 1 and source 2):

• S905x = VP9 Profile 2 & HDR10 & 100M only Ethernet
• S905 = no VP9 Profile 2 & no HDR10 but Gigabit Ethernet
• S905D = DVB Support and VP9 + Gigabit Ethernet
• S905W = a S905 minus the Gigabit Ethernet and limited to 4K@30fps only. There is no HDR or VP9 Profile 2 hardware decoding.
• S912 = VP9 Profile 2, HDR10, Gigabit Ethernet & Dolbyvision

The new generation of S9 models of AMLogic like S905X2 and S922X add lower power comsumption, USB 3.0 and more features.

Libreelec vs Coreelec

Coreelec is a fork from Libreelec focused on the AMLogic devices. It has the correct Linux ARM Mali GPU drivers so I have moved from Libreelec to CoreElec. The following instructions should be similar for both projects.

Installation

• Download the latest version (image file) from CoreElec github.

• Write the image with Libreelec installer in a USB pendrive or Micro/SD card.

• Pick the DTB file required gxm_q201_3g_1gbit.dtb, included in the device_trees folder so it’s not needed to download them. Just copy it to parent folder and rename to dtb.img.

• Create an empty zip file in the SD Card. Open the “Update” app pre-installed in Android, insert SD card with LE and choose the ZIP file in the app for update. Your box should reboot to LE.

Alternative method when SD Card reader doesn’t work fine:

Insert a paper clip in the AV input to presh and hold the button and power on the device (hardware reset). Release the button when the CoreElec image appears and the installation starts.

Further info: Coreelec install.

LCD Display

Frontal LCD Display works like in Android OS but it requires two steps 2:

1. Download the file x92-vfd.conf from (https://github.com/arthur-liberman/vfd-configurations) and copy to the path /storage/.config/vfd.conf.
2. Install OpenVFD addon from Coreelec official addon repo (available in the Services section).

Remote conf

X92 modified remote with longpress buttons, thanks to boot2k3 from libreelec forum. Mirror of required files.

Keyboard

Check the Kodi keyboard table for advanced control and monitoring when you plug a physical keyboard. Specially useful are the codec info or PlayerProcessInfo (only available from Kodi 18). Check also the shortcuts differences between Kodi 17 and 18.

Hardware Video Acceleration

Navigate to the Kodi menu: Settings -> Player -> Videos -> [Render method]:

I prefer:

• Accelerate MPEG4: [Always]
• Accelerate MPEG2: [Always]

Enable whitelist resolution and refresh rate

Navigate to the Kode menu: Settings -> System -> Display:

In the whitelist, I would prefer to choose all resolutions with 60/50/23.9 Hz for TV.

Note: this whitelist menu is only available in Expert settings level.

How to update

Leave the .tar file in the /storage/.update folder and reboot. 1

How to get WLAN link speed

iw dev wlan0 link