openelec for MXIII-G (amlogic S812) ?

[wilro_6276]

Have you considered opening up the m3g's case and having a small fan blow over the CPU heatsink? This could help dramaticlly imo, I should have my M3G within the next 2 days so I hope this isn't a problem I will have but if it is, I wonder if it is possibly to mount a small fan inside the case connected to the boxes power???? not sure about that but it would be a cool mod!

I consider this a last resort (I'm more inclined to pull the board out of it's case, rather than introduce yet another fan around my home entertainment system - I'm also not 100% sure that the CPU heat alone is the culprit in my case...

[wilro_6276]

I have my unit now. Using Android, I am not seeing heat issues or lockups. Unfortunately, the pvr plugin pvr.wmc is not working in one way or another with all versions of Kodi I have tried. I will attempt Openelec when I get time.

Hi Haba,

Curious as to which version of android is not giving you problems (all The Lollipop versions I've run are extremely unstable (101-106, MXIII-G & MXIIIPlus variants, the 4.4.2 rom is mostly OK, but has a few other issues I'm not happy about - I will be making an update release shortly which *might* help with your pvr issues.

[Haba]

Hi Haba,

Curious as to which version of android is not giving you problems (all The Lollipop versions I've run are extremely unstable (101-106, MXIII-G & MXIIIPlus variants, the 4.4.2 rom is mostly OK, but has a few other issues I'm not happy about - I will be making an update release shortly which *might* help with your pvr issues.

I am using what the box shipped with 103 I think. I have not done a lot of testing execpt trying to see if the pvr plugin would work using Android. I did the Kodi 15.x fix for smooth video, hardware acceleration. Pvr is my core use, I must have it working or box collects dust. I checked the box temps, never that warm. Unfortunately, I was using the Zbox Intel cpu box with Openelec 6 tonight and noticed playback issues (studdering) and missing Closed Captions. Comcast has partially changed to h.264 for some hd channels which has broken captions for those channels on Kodi. I changed deinterlacing settings which has fixed the studdering. I am very surprised my Xbox 360 extenders are working nearly perfectly including captions with the new h.264 hd channels. I now must ask myself if I have a use for these Kodi boxes. After Thanksgiving, I'll try Openelec on the MXIII-G.

[nighthawk1975]

I updated my mxiii-g box to openelec 6.0. Only one thing is missing or is not working.

Please can someone add cec setting like the one that are used in a raspberry pi with openelec to our amlogic devices. See picture.

Originally posted by Condorello View Post
That linux rom make these box the perfect htpc!
any chance to have the tv remote wake up the box from standby through cec? In that way we can hide the amlogic device behind the tv or similar!

Now when i shut down my tv with te remote control te box stays red end will not turn on. Only by pressing the power button.. Now i can't hide it behind my tv.
Any sollution? On android it works like a charm.. But i prefer openelec

[wilro_6276]

I am using what the box shipped with 103 I think. I have not done a lot of testing execpt trying to see if the pvr plugin would work using Android. I did the Kodi 15.x fix for smooth video, hardware acceleration. Pvr is my core use, I must have it working or box collects dust. I checked the box temps, never that warm. Unfortunately, I was using the Zbox Intel cpu box with Openelec 6 tonight and noticed playback issues (studdering) and missing Closed Captions. Comcast has partially changed to h.264 for some hd channels which has broken captions for those channels on Kodi. I changed deinterlacing settings which has fixed the studdering. I am very surprised my Xbox 360 extenders are working nearly perfectly including captions with the new h.264 hd channels. I now must ask myself if I have a use for these Kodi boxes. After Thanksgiving, I'll try Openelec on the MXIII-G.

Hmmm... Tried 103, still no good here - I do believe I've isolated some of my problems with OE however, & will be pumping out an update as soon as it finishes uploading. Sadly, the sub-standard excuse for "HD" broadcast here, leaves me with little reason/need to replace the 'ol beyonwiz DPP2 (Just replaced the HDD, so it should be good for another 5 years - My plan is to replace it & use the MXIII-G+USB tuner (need to find a good OE compatible one), as I like the idea of driving everything through a common interface (ie. kodi).

Unfortunately, much like my PS3, the XBox360 generates far too much heat (it's a gen 1 with the brick powerpack, which gets obscenely hot after a few hours of operation - I've got a "graveyard" of various stb's I've tried as replacements over the years - I'd all but given up until the S805's came along (almost, esp. the x265 support), & the MX3G ticks all the boxes for me spec wise. I'll be investing a bit more time/effort on yet, as it is sooo close... (either that, or I'll end up frying it)

[Haba]

Hmmm... Tried 103, still no good here - I do believe I've isolated some of my problems with OE however, & will be pumping out an update as soon as it finishes uploading. Sadly, the sub-standard excuse for "HD" broadcast here, leaves me with little reason/need to replace the 'ol beyonwiz DPP2 (Just replaced the HDD, so it should be good for another 5 years - My plan is to replace it & use the MXIII-G+USB tuner (need to find a good OE compatible one), as I like the idea of driving everything through a common interface (ie. kodi).

Unfortunately, much like my PS3, the XBox360 generates far too much heat (it's a gen 1 with the brick powerpack, which gets obscenely hot after a few hours of operation - I've got a "graveyard" of various stb's I've tried as replacements over the years - I'd all but given up until the S805's came along (almost, esp. the x265 support), & the MX3G ticks all the boxes for me spec wise. I'll be investing a bit more time/effort on yet, as it is sooo close... (either that, or I'll end up frying it)

I looked up your unit, they didn't give that away in 2010 $999 in AU. I am using an HTPC with Windows MEDIA Center, 7 tuners with 1 TB recording drive Xboxes on each t.v. for whole home pvr or live t.v. Clarkss12 is using an s805 with Openelec and pvr backend plugin recording to a NAS for whole home pvr and live t.v. The MXIII-G has very good hardware specs that can replace my Xboxes if the software is there. They have patched Kodi 16 nightly for the h.264 Caption issue. I am watching a mpeg2 t.v. recording now with captions via Openelec Kodi on my zotac intel box without issue. Comcast my cable t.v. provider uses variable bit compression mpeg2 and mpeg4 now with 480i, some weird resolutions, 720p and 1080i so getting it all to work on any box without issue is difficult.

[stannoplan]

yes wilro_6276 , there are prices to pay to live in the best country in the world cobber techprices, FTA TV and upload speed are all a pain.

BTW what improvements are you making? my second MXiii-g has just arrived and am playing with some heavy custom builds eg: the Beast, Andys Build and Spinztv, seems to handle it all ok but on some days its as slow as a wet week particularly wireless. Will be getting up in the roof tomorrow with some cheap CAT6 from MSY i forgot to reflash the firmware when changing OE builds which caused me some dramas but all good now, thanks for the earlier post that twigged my memory.

[wilro_6276]

Howdy All,

Another update - Mostly Kerber based (hence the naming), with a few reverted/added patches cherry picked from various places:

http://5.189.137.29/Openelec/MX3G/OpenELEC-Amlogic.arm-MX3G-6.0.0.2b.zip

http://5.189.137.29/Openelec/MX3G/OpenELEC-Amlogic.arm-MX3G-6.0.0.2b.tar

I am still concerned about the temp. of the CPU's, & personally use this autostart.sh:

---snip---
#!/bin/sh

echo conservative > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
echo 1992000 >/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq
---snip---

The "conservative" scaling governor functions similar to the default "ondemand" one - Due to issues with ondemand & hotplug noted in my previous post, I found the above actually keeps the box a little cooler, with no noticable impact on overall performance

[stannoplan]

well i know what i'll be doing tonight

[nighthawk1975]

Howdy All,

Another update - Mostly Kerber based (hence the naming), with a few reverted/added patches cherry picked from various places:

http://5.189.137.29/Openelec/MX3G/OpenELEC-Amlogic.arm-MX3G-6.0.0.2b.zip

http://5.189.137.29/Openelec/MX3G/OpenELEC-Amlogic.arm-MX3G-6.0.0.2b.tar

I am still concerned about the temp. of the CPU's, & personally use this autostart.sh:

---snip---
#!/bin/sh

echo conservative > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
echo 1992000 >/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq
---snip---

The "conservative" scaling governor functions similar to the default "ondemand" one - Due to issues with ondemand & hotplug noted in my previous post, I found the above actually keeps the box a little cooler, with no noticable impact on overall performance

Maybe you can help me out..

I updated my mxiii-g box to openelec 6.0. Only one thing is missing or is not working.

Please can someone add cec setting like the one that are used in a raspberry pi with openelec to our amlogic devices. See picture.



Originally posted by Condorello View Post
That linux rom make these box the perfect htpc!
any chance to have the tv remote wake up the box from standby through cec? In that way we can hide the amlogic device behind the tv or similar!

Now when i shut down my tv with te remote control te box stays red end will not turn on. Only by pressing the power button.. Now i can't hide it behind my tv.
Any sollution? On android it works like a charm.. But i prefer openelec

[wilro_6276]

I looked up your unit, they didn't give that away in 2010 $999 in AU. I am using an HTPC with Windows MEDIA Center, 7 tuners with 1 TB recording drive Xboxes on each t.v. for whole home pvr or live t.v. Clarkss12 is using an s805 with Openelec and pvr backend plugin recording to a NAS for whole home pvr and live t.v. The MXIII-G has very good hardware specs that can replace my Xboxes if the software is there. They have patched Kodi 16 nightly for the h.264 Caption issue. I am watching a mpeg2 t.v. recording now with captions via Openelec Kodi on my zotac intel box without issue. Comcast my cable t.v. provider uses variable bit compression mpeg2 and mpeg4 now with 480i, some weird resolutions, 720p and 1080i so getting it all to work on any box without issue is difficult.

Yes, the 'wiz was a very pricey kit (let's see, my youngest is 6 now, & I had it for a couple of years before he was born - I guess the investment paid off - I used it extensively to digitise many hours of home movies at the time, but rarely use it myself these days (for previously mentioned reasons) - I don't allow any tech being connected to my network or the internet for that matter, that I am unable to "get under the bonnet of" so to speak - Everything I currently use gives me that flexibility (The smart TV was "just for fun" however, I use it purely as a dumb display

While the wiz is a great pvr (I can live with 1080i for broadcast), it's a pretty mediocre playback device, so we only use the pvr functions these days (Everyone's kinda use to it's navigation, so I face an uphill battle when the time comes to replace it - I certainly appreciate dealing with weird resolutions/frame rates - Had a nightmare of a time dealing with ntsc film -> pal only tv's in the 'bad old days' - It's good to see kodi making solid progress in this area, I still have a few really old video's (no DVD/Bluray release), which I've never been able to cleanup to a respectable level.

[wilro_6276]

I updated my mxiii-g box to openelec 6.0. Only one thing is missing or is not working.

Please can someone add cec setting like the one that are used in a raspberry pi with openelec to our amlogic devices. See picture.

Originally posted by Condorello View Post
That linux rom make these box the perfect htpc!
any chance to have the tv remote wake up the box from standby through cec? In that way we can hide the amlogic device behind the tv or similar!

Now when i shut down my tv with te remote control te box stays red end will not turn on. Only by pressing the power button.. Now i can't hide it behind my tv.
Any sollution? On android it works like a charm.. But i prefer openelec

Hi Nighthawk,

My understanding is that this particular addon is pi specific, as the pi implements far more of of the CEC spec than these amlogic boxes do - I use hdmi-cec on the one TV I have that supports it, however, the config is very specific to my box/tv/remote, with several functions talking directly to the MX3G, as I haven't found a way to pass them via CEC - I plan on exploring this further as time permits, but I have quite a few other things that are of higher priority at the moment. (If it was a simple task, I'm sure someone would have already done it - Sorry I can't do more with this at the moment...

[wilro_6276]

yes wilro_6276 , there are prices to pay to live in the best country in the world cobber techprices, FTA TV and upload speed are all a pain.

BTW what improvements are you making? my second MXiii-g has just arrived and am playing with some heavy custom builds eg: the Beast, Andys Build and Spinztv, seems to handle it all ok but on some days its as slow as a wet week particularly wireless. Will be getting up in the roof tomorrow with some cheap CAT6 from MSY i forgot to reflash the firmware when changing OE builds which caused me some dramas but all good now, thanks for the earlier post that twigged my memory.

Hi stannoplan,
Yeah, I know - Wouldn't live anywhere else (been there, done that - I guess if I can figure out how to transport internet via coal (or even better transform coal into quantum computers), we could re-join a more forwarding thinking society, rather than dwelling on/protecting the past

As far as the MX3G is concerned, my goal is to get it running as smoothly as my other s805 boxes. I kind of expected some heat issues (known s812 problem), & while I primarily want to use Gig-E, it irks me how poor both 2.4/5Ghz perform compared to the 2.4Ghz only devices which use the same chipset/drivers. My tweaks thus far are mostly to try & improve heat,wifi & kodi smoothness - involving rolling back to older versions of apps/drivers, porting patches from other devices etc. The only significant changes are the poweroff patch + rollback on libnfs (+ newer patchset's upstream for kodi + new kernel)

[ilfrance]

Howdy All,

Another update - Mostly Kerber based (hence the naming), with a few reverted/added patches cherry picked from various places:

http://5.189.137.29/Openelec/MX3G/Op...G-6.0.0.2b.zip

http://5.189.137.29/Openelec/MX3G/Op...G-6.0.0.2b.tar

I am still concerned about the temp. of the CPU's, & personally use this autostart.sh:

---snip---
#!/bin/sh

echo conservative > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
echo 1992000 >/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq
---snip---

The "conservative" scaling governor functions similar to the default "ondemand" one - Due to issues with ondemand & hotplug noted in my previous post, I found the above actually keeps the box a little cooler, with no noticable impact on overall performance

Hi wilro_6276, thanks for your great work, i'm using your builds on my mx3G box and so far it's working really great, it can even manage the kodi interface at 4k, and looks gorgeous.
I have one question about the cpu scaling, where do i have to put the autostart.sh to have it work automatically? I've i run it manually it works correctly and i can see the cpu temp going down, but i need to launch it everytime i reboot the box.
Also if you somehow manage to support box wake up using hdmi-cec it will make this the perfect htpc box (at the moment i can control the interface with my tv remote, but i cannot power it up so i always have to keep the box remote at hand)
Francesco

[wilro_6276]

Hi wilro_6276, thanks for your great work, i'm using your builds on my mx3G box and so far it's working really great, it can even manage the kodi interface at 4k, and looks gorgeous.
I have one question about the cpu scaling, where do i have to put the autostart.sh to have it work automatically? I've i run it manually it works correctly and i can see the cpu temp going down, but i need to launch it everytime i reboot the box.
Also if you somehow manage to support box wake up using hdmi-cec it will make this the perfect htpc box (at the moment i can control the interface with my tv remote, but i cannot power it up so i always have to keep the box remote at hand)
Francesco

Hi ilfrance,

Place autostart.sh in "/storage/.config", make it executable (ie. chmod 755 /storage/.config/autostart.sh), & the changes should be applied during bootup.

Thanks for confirming that 4k works (It's a hard sell justifying to the wife to spend a $2K on a new TV, just to confirm that my $50 mediaplayer works at this resolution