iPazzPort SY-20-19RS TV Box Doubles as an Air Mouse Holder and Charger

iPazzPort SY-20-19RS is yet another Amlogic S905X powered Android TV box. But it sells with an air mouse with qwerty keyboard and touchpad by default, and includes a slot right in the middle to hold and charge the air mouse / remote control. iPassport SY-20-19RS TV box specifications: SoC –  Amlogic S905X quad core ARM Cortex-A53 processor @ up to 1.5 GHz with  penta-core Mali-450MP GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 8GB eMMC flash + micro SD card slot up to 32GB Video Output – HDMI 2.0, AV Video Codecs – 1080p/4k2k H.264, H.265, VP9; HD AVC/VC-1, HD MPEG1/2/4, RM/RMVB, Xvid/DivX 3/4/5/6, RealVideo 8/9/10 Audio – HDMI, AV, coaxial S/PDIF Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet (N.B.: Sellers mention GbE, but S905X does not support it), dual band 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports Power Supply –  DC 5V/3A Dimensions – 124 mm ∅ x 80.7 […]

NanoPi K2 Board Gets Ubuntu Core Firmware Image

FriendlyELEC NanoPi K2 is a board powered by Amlogic S905 processor, just like ODROID-C2 board, so while only the Android image was available at launch, it was expected to also support Ubuntu or other Linux distribution shortly after. This was put in doubt by comments on the company’s forums claiming the board would not get Debian images, and only Android was supported. One alternative would be Armbian, but right now they only have ODROID-C2 images for download, no other Amlogic S905 hardware platform is supported either through stable or experimental builds. One user did manage to run Armbian on K2 with balbes150 help, but I’m not sure what’s the status of those firmware. Balbes150 also have a list of image for Amlogic platform in Github, which may be adapted to most hardware by using your board’s device tree binary (DTB) file. The good news today is that FriendyELEC did not give […]

Le Potato Development Board Review – Part 1: Hardware and Accessories

Libre Computer launched AML-S905X-CC “Le Potato” board on Kickstarter last month, and since then there have been some updates such as worldwide shipping, so the board will now ship to most countries, not only in Europe or the US, and various designs of the case have been proposed. You can check the updates on Kickstarter for details. Libre Computer Le Potato Kit Unboxing The company also sent me a Le Potato board, but not only, as I received a complete kit… … similar to the $99 “2GB eMMC kit” reward on KS with a board with 2GB RAM, a 64GB eMMC flash module, a HDMI cable, and a 5V/2.5A power supply with on/off switch, but a different case, cooling fan, and corresponding rubber pad and screws. The case exposes all external ports, and has holes on top for the fan. The other side includes the micro SD slot, plenty of […]

H96 Pro Octa Core TV Dongle Runs Android 7.1.1 on Amlogic S912 Processor

That one will be confusing as H96 Pro is already a TV box, but somebody must have thought that model number was so good, it had to be re-used in another products. So I present to your H96 Pro TV dongle powered by the same Amlogic S912 processor running Android 7.1.1 Nougat. It’s not the first octa-core HDMI TV stick, as we’ve seen MeegoPad A02 (Allwinner A83T) and NEXBOX 809VI (Rockchip RK3368) in the past, but AFAICR I have not come across Amlogic S912 sticks before. H96 Pro HDMI TV stick specifications: SoC – Amlogic S912 octa-core ARM Cortex A53 processor @ up to 1.5 GHz with ARM Mali-820MP3 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 8 GB eMMC flash, micro SD slot up to 32GB Video & Audio Output – HDMI 2.0a male connector with HDR support Video Codec – 4K H.265 and VP9 @ 60 fps, 4K […]

How to Use Octoprint on Orange Pi Lite Board, Amlogic S905X and S912 TV Boxes

Karl here. This was article originally going to be how to setup Octoprint 3D printer server on an Orange Pi Lite. But after looking and running through the instructions it seemed like it would be too much so I created an img to simplify things. I also explored running Octoprint on an Amlogic S905x or S912 device and it turned out to be an even better solution. You get a case, power supply, and eMMC flash storage. What is Octoprint? I use Octoprint mainly for its ability to start and stop prints without having to use an sd card. Time lapse is also a nice feature. And one last thing is that I setup a pushbullet notification when it is complete. For a full list of features check out http://octoprint.org/. What is needed? Orange Pi Lite board provided by GearBest for the article, or an Amlogic S905X or S912 Android […]

Ebox T8 V Octa-core Android TV Boxes Giveaway

Entertainmentbox.com has contacted me asking whether I’d be interested in hosting a giveaway for two Ebox T8 V TV boxes with S77 Pro air mouse on CNX Software, and I thought it was a good idea, so here we are. EBox T8 V is an Amlogic S912 TV box running Android 6.0 with some pre-installed apps specifically geared towards to UK market like BBC iPlayer, and FilmOn, as well as a 2.5″ SATA bay. It also comes with IPVanish app which I successfully tried to watch UK programs, and I had overall a positive experience with the device as I reported in Ebox T8 V review, with the main problems being the lack of audio license and support for HDMI pass-through. I also know somebody who uses the previous model – Ebox T8 IV – as their main streaming device, and he was pretty happy about it after several months […]

Linux 4.12 Release – Main Changes, ARM & MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds has just released Linux 4.12: Things were quite calm this week, so I really didn’t have any real reason to delay the 4.12 release. As mentioned over the various rc announcements, 4.12 is one of the bigger releases historically, and I think only 4.9 ends up having had more commits. And 4.9 was big at least partly because Greg announced it was an LTS kernel. But 4.12 is just plain big. There’s also nothing particularly odd going on in the tree – it’s all just normal development, just more of it that usual. The shortlog below is obviously just the minor changes since rc7 – the whole 4.12 shortlog is much too large to post. In the diff department, 4.12 is also very big, although the reason there isn’t just that there’s a lot of development, we have the added bulk of a lot of new  header files […]

The First Amlogic S912 Development Board is Coming Soon with Khadas VIM2

We have a decent choice of Amlogic S905 development boards like ODROID-C2 or NanoPi K2, but I was recently asked whether I knew of any Amlogic S912 development boards. I’m sure Amlogic has one for internal development, but those are hard to get, and probably expensive, and while you could probably get an S912 TV box board those lack I/Os, and software support may truly be a challenge. So I’m pleased to announce that Shenzhen Wesion will soon provide an update to their Khadas VIM Pro board with Khadas VIM2 powered by Amlogic S912 octa-core processor. The company will actually offer three variants of Khadas VIM2 boards (Basic/Pro/Max) specifications with highlights in bold showing differences with Khadas VIM Pro board: SoC –  Amlogic S912 octa core ARM Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.5 GHz with ARM Mali-820MP GPU System Memory Basic – 2 GB DDR4 Pro/Max – 3 GB DDR4 Storage […]

UP 7000 x86 SBC