Volumio 2 on TV box Amlogic S9xxx S8xxx

You can try all the files in turn, it will not break the TV box.

Hi, I Installed volumio on my MXQ PRO 4K, but I cannot see any audio devices available to play sound.
I should like to use the SPDIF output on my box, is this possible?

Regards,
Piero

1 Like

What version are you trying ? What is the dtb file is used ?

The version is 0.6-2018-04-10 and I used the gxbb_p201.dtb for my mxq pro.

For this version, need to build a new version of dtb (with audio support). I’ll try to do it during the week. If you are familiar with Linux and the DTC utility, you can do it yourself.

@balbes150 Really appreciate your work! I have an Android TV box, with AMLogic S912 chip and 2G memory. I once installed openelec on external SD card to boot this TV box, and using a device tree named as, gxm_q200_2g.dtb, the HDMI audio output worked perfectly, so did the SPDIF output. Now I’m using the same device tree file with Volumio, it hangs there and never get successfully booted. Without the device tree file, I can successfully boot Volumio with my TV box, but it can not find any audio output device. By reading the thread, I guess you may need to modify the device file, is that right? Hope you can help me out here, thanks in advance!

Try dtb from khadas_vim2 model.

I tried to copy kvim2_volumio.dtb from /boot/dtb to /boot, and rename it to dtb.img. Unfortunately the load was hung there again. I waited for 15 minutes but nothing happened.

I have uploaded several test DTBS to the Volumio directory. Try them yourself.

You need to try all the files starting with gxm* to find the option where the system starts. This is to determine which dts you want to make changes to.

I’ve tried most gxm* dtb files, the only dtb file that lead to a successful boot is gxm_q201_2g.dtb. With this dtb file, the box was successfully boot, and I was able to login with keyboard. But unfortunately the eth0 device is not working properly, so the box can not be connect to any network. Is that requires your change to the device tree?

BTW. I’ve tried another approach, replace the kernel for volumio image, with the kernel you built for armbian 5.44. The armbian kernel I believe contains all the required driver, and it did work as I expect pretty well. When I was trying to play music with the onboard AML sound output device, I got the error “snd_pcm_hw_params_set_buffer_time_near() failed: Invalid argument”. With some research I found out that this error was related to the default parameter buffer_time that MPD used for audio_output. As MPD document explains this parameter is default to 500000, which seems to small for AMLM8AUDIO, I modified it to 5000000, and then it works pretty well.

That’s very interesting. I’m not a sounds specialist. Describe in detail what and where you changed in MPD settings. I found the problem with this error right at the first build of Volumio, but the solution was not found at that time. I want to go back to this question again to try building a Volume version with new MPD settings and a standard kernel (from Armbian).

I saw you post no khadas forum, but thought you’ve already found a way out. Well here’s part of my current /etc/mpd.conf[code]

Audio Output

resampler {
plugin “soxr”
quality “high”
threads “1”
}

audio_output {
type “alsa”
name “alsa”
device “hw:0,0”
dop “no”
buffer_time “5000000”

}
[/code]
“buffer_time” is the parameter that manually added by me. You may need to do the same change and restart mpd.
Please pay attention each time you modify the output parameter from Volumio’s web interface, it will re-write mpd.conf, which may cause your update lost.

Version 0.7 20180520 for S9xxx.

Changes in the config file MPD that fixes the buffer when using the standard HDMI output. Now audio output works through HDMI with all the dtb from the kit image (no Assembly required special versions of the dtb).

Thank you joysteed for hint decisions.

Always with pleasure. Again really appreciate your great work!

Thanks again for the solution joysteed.

In the near future I hope to test this solution on S805 and S812, If everything is OK, new images will be released with a fix.

Hello,

once I get it to boot successfully from SD card is there a way to permanently flash the image to my S905X box so that it boots from the memory?

Br
Krunoslav

Theoretically yes, but this is not something we have a fixed procedure for.
Balbes150’s work is of very high value for Volumio on the amlogic platform and focusses on a ‘one for all’ approach at the moment. We need to see how this develops.

Maybe I got something wrong here. If the SD card with the Volumio image is inserted into the device will the system boot from it automatically? Is that how “dual boot” feature works? How do I enable dual boot on my Android box?

it can be flashed to emmc, look at the manual method described earlier in this topic.
What i meant is that there is no volumio supported way via a menu (like on X86).

On first page it says I should check if “multi boot” option is enabled. How do I do that?

When I insert SD card do I have to press the reset button before powering up the device?

I’m sorry, I was not able to find the manual method you mentioned.