firmware News - Page 29 of 31 - CNX Software

March 25, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 29 Comments

Ubuntu 11.10 Image for Hi802 / GK802 is Now Available for Download

About 2 weeks ago, Jasbir released an Ubuntu 11.10 image and installation instructions for GK802 and Hi802 mini PCs based on Freescale i.MX6. I could only find time to give it try yesterday and today. I’ll provide the steps I followed to install the image, and my quick first impressions of the stability and performance of this image. Installation Instructions I mainly followed the instructions provided by Jasbir, and run GParted to increased the partition size on my micro SD card. The image is for a 8 GB micro SD, but those instructions should work on 4GB SD card and greater, as the rootfs partition is only 3GB large. Download the Ubuntu 11.10 image, uboot, as well as the kernel image and modules in a Linux PC:

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/ubuntu_gk802.img.gz
wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/u-boot.imx
wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq
wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/modules_3.0.35-02695.tar

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/ubuntu_gk802.img.gz

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/u-boot.imx

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq

wget http://dl.miniand.com/jas-hacks/gk802/modules_3.0.35-02695.tar

Copy the image, uboot and the kernel to the micro SD card by typing the commands below:

gzip -d ubuntu_gk802.img.gz
sudo dd if=ubuntu_gk802.img of=/dev/&lt;sd_device&gt;
sudo dd if=u-boot.imx bs=1k seek=1 of=/dev/&lt;sd_device&gt; &amp;&amp; sync
sudo dd if=uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq of=/dev/&lt;sd_drive&gt; bs=1048576 seek=1 &amp;&amp; sudo sync

gzip -d ubuntu_gk802.img.gz

sudo dd if=ubuntu_gk802.img of=/dev/<sd_device>

sudo dd if=u-boot.imx bs=1k seek=1 of=/dev/<sd_device> && sync

sudo dd if=uImage_3.0.35-0269_cpu_freq of=/dev/<sd_drive> bs=1048576 seek=1 && sudo sync

Replace /dev/<sd_device> by your […]

March 19, 2013March 19, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

MK808 mini PC gets Android 4.2.2 Beta Firmware

Last week, Geekbuying announced the first release of Android 4.2.2 for MK808, with support for MK808B coming soon. They warn users that it’s still beta since this is the first time Android 4.2 is available on Rockchip RK3066 mini PC, however I could not find user’s complains in the comments section, but at least one users in ARMTvTech is disappointed by this release. You’ll find three download links: Android 4.2.2 for MK808 (dropbox) – Currently unavailable due to heavy traffic Android 4.2.2 for MK808 rooted (Gdrive) – Same version as above but rooted by deadhp1 RKBatchTool 1.5 (dropbox)- Windows tool to perform the upgrade. Currently unavailable but there are alternate links. Once you get the files, you can follow the instructions showing how to upgrade MK808 firmware, or watch the video showing the upgrade process. MK808 is another device I don’t own, so I haven’t been able to try it […]

March 12, 2013March 30, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Latest Tronsmart Prometheus Firmware Features Android 4.2 and XBMC with Video Hardware Decoding

Last month I reviewed Tronsmart Prometheus, and I was pretty satisfied with the device except some bugs. There’s no a firmware update that should fix AC3/DTS static noise issues in this set-top box. Prometheus also becomes one of the first set-top boxes to support the latest Android Jelly Bean 4.2, and comes with an XBMC version supporting hardware decode using XBMC user interface, and not an external media player such as DicePlayer or MX Player. You can download the firmware ( 2013-3-08(4.2_root_ac3_dts_market_xbmc).zip), and install it using the upgrade procedure on Tronsmart website. I’m on the road, so I can’t try the firmware myself right now (which also explains why I haven’t posted in the last few days), but Geekuying has upload a short video showing XBMC with video hardware acceleration on the device. (Previous firmware in Android 4.1.2). Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, […]

March 4, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Measy U2C Gets Finless ROM and PicUntu Support

A few weeks ago, I reviewed Measy U2C, a Rockchip RK3066 mini PC with a webcam using the stock Android firmware. Since then other people received the device, and started to work on improving it notably by releasing a Finless ROM and providing instructions to install PicUbuntu on the device. Bob Finless is Freaktab.com administrator., and he has released popular custom ROM for the most commonly RK3066 mini PCs, and this time it’s Measy U2C turn! Measy U2C Finless ROM This first custom ROM is based on the latest ROM released on Geekbuying (March 1st, 2013) that fixes the CPU frequency, and let the device now achieve 9200 Antutu score. The Finless ROM brings the following improvements: Fully rooted with the latest SU and SUperUser.apk. All Google apps updated to latest, except Google Search. Deleted unusable and junk apps. Cleaned up the file system with tune2fs. Increased “system” space for […]

February 12, 2013February 12, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

How to Display dd Progress and dd.sh Script

Upgrading software on Linux / Android boards or devices often involves copying images to an SD card or microSD. In Linux, you’d usually do that with dd, a utility that provides binary copy of data to files or block devices. A typical command would be:

sudo dd if=new_firmware.bin of=/dev/sdc

1	sudo dd if=new_firmware.bin of=/dev/sdc

However, during the copy, dd does not show a progress bar by default. But dd actually supports progress report, as indicated in the manpage: you can run dd, and send USR1 signal to display the current progress once, and resume copying. Linux commando explains how to continuously return the progress. First run the dd command:

sudo dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/null bs=1K count=100

1	sudo dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/null bs=1K count=100

Open another terminal window to find out the process id:

pgrep -l '^dd$'
10152 dd

1 2	pgrep -l '^dd$' 10152 dd

And use the watch command to send USR1 at regular interval.

watch -n 10 sudo kill -USR1 10152

1	watch -n 10 sudo kill -USR1 10152

You should see dd progress in the first window every 10 seconds. It works, but the output is not very nice because dd will just […]

February 2, 2013February 3, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 50 Comments

Droid Stick A2 Firmware With Google Play Fix

If you have read my previous review of the Droid Stick A2, I was pretty upset about Google Play since I could not install most of the apps. This is now fixed, and Kimdecent has released a firmware upgrade. Here’s how to upgrade: Download g02refDongle-ota-20130201.rar Extract it in your PC, and copy the files (g02refDongle-ota-20130201.zip and uImage_recovery) to the root of your microSD card (Formatted as FAT32) Insert the microSD into Droid Stick A2 Boot the mini PC normally, and launch the “Upgrade” app Select Local Upgrade, then select g02refDongle-ota-20130201.zip and click on Reboot and Install Package Droid Stick A2 will reboot, and it should start upgrading Android. Done Since I’ve been messing up with Android and broken something, “Reboot and Install Package” does nothing for me (some permissions issues with /cache/recovery/command), so I could not verify this works or not. Finally, I could install it on the first version […]

January 21, 2013November 8, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 37 Comments

GeekBuying Releases Firmware 1.65.4 for GK802 mini PC

Geekbuying has released a new version of the firmware (1.65.4) for Zealz GK802 mini PC that fixes NTFS and Bluetooth issues, but you may instead want to use deadhp1 version which also provides root access, and fixes “this item is not compatible with your device” issue in Google Play. There are 2 files available (Deaphp1): rooted_fixed_rt-M500a_v1.65.4_20130118a_updated.7z (link down) – Firmware Update 1.65.4 (127 MB) rooted_fixed_rt-M500a_v1.65.4_20130118a_updated_FULL_IMAGE.rar (link down) – The full SD card with 1.65.4 (747 MB) Normally, you would just use the firmware update file that contains the system, boot, u-boot and recovery partition (in this release) by following those steps in a Linux or Windows PC [Update: this method does not appear to work for anybody, please scroll down to use dd / Win32DiskImager method]: Extract rooted_fixed_rt-M500a_v1.65.4_20130118a_updated.7z Copy the files to a microSD card Insert the microSD card into GK802 microSD slot. Insert the microUSB cable halfway in GK802 […]

January 16, 2013January 16, 2013 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

Upgrading Embedded Linux Without Bricking – ELCE 2012

Arnout Vandecappelle, senior embedded software architect at Essensium/Mind, talks about ways to greatly decrease the risk of bricking your board/device during upgrade thanks to gubies scripts and tools at the Embedded Linux Conference in Barcelona, Spain, on November 6, 2012. Abtract: Embedded systems are often modified remotely, e.g. to upgrade the firmware or change the configuration. This may however break the system and render it inaccessible, which is a major problem if the device is hard to reach physically. Unfortunately, no catch-all failsafe solution exists to make sure that the device stays accessible remotely even if a modification goes wrong. Instead, the possible failures have to be anticipated and covered. This talk discusses some of the frequently occurring failures, how they can be detected and handled. These include power failure, kernel crashes, network failure and data corruption. We include examples of concrete use cases. Finally, there is room for discussion about […]