[ROM Image Firmware] MXQ PRO 4K - p201 - android TV (ATV) - by cOOLio

[SplitAtom]

Just wanted to say thanks for the ROM Coolio. A true ANdroid TV rom for the mxq pro 4K is exactly what I was looking for.
I believe this ROM is the only working true Android TV out there?

I do have an issue with my box freezing though. I installed kodi and when scraping the videos it randomly freezes up. I felt the box and it is burning hot, like super hot. I have made a small fan from a rapsberry pi and that seems to make the freezing last longer but it still freezes after some time. Does this happen with anyone else?

Also, I use an airmouse, after some time the box no longer receives input from the mouse. The mouse still thinks it is connected but cannot do anything on screen.

FYI, downloading V2.0 now to test,

EDIT: No more freezes Seems V2 is running smoother as well. Although Netflix won't play, even installing the patched versions you posted coolio...

[lonegreyride]

First of all THX guys for testing and reporting … not only the good thinks also the bad things.


I‘m sorry but this can‘t be disabled. Get yourself a mini USB mic for few bugs and your fine.

Just ordered one on Amazon, will actually be cool to use voice search.

"I got also two different mini Keybords with touchpad. But non of them has menue button!? But I added my own keylayout files to the rom. Maybe thats the reason why they are different than before? If you want I can tell you how to remap those wrong keys. Just let me know if you need help or not."

I'm doing a little googling right now, but if you have a good link with clear instructions or something, it would be greatly appreciated.

Will be backing up some stuff and trying 2.0 later today. Will report back.

[cOOLio]

... I'm doing a little googling right now, but if you have a good link with clear instructions or something, it would be greatly appreciated.

I did the same already and there are a lot of source you have to check, to get the result you need. So a lot to research a and a lot to read. But so far nothing like a swiss army knife, that has it all in one source.
But In the meanwhile I decided to make my own tutorial that can now be found here

[minixfreak]

i do liek your firmware and will try to port your newest atv to s95 meta with your permission that is ..... well ill port it regardless for my box but will post your rom for everyone else that has the box ... credits to you

[SplitAtom]

Any chance to get xbox360 controller support with this ROM? Would love to play my PC games in the living room through Remotr

[lonegreyride]

Thanks for the guide cOOLio, I already found the functions I need (or whatever they're properly called), so I just need to take some time to do that, certainly looks doable.

I'll also say that 2.0 is working perfectly for me. A little laggy sometimes when updating suggestions on the home screen I think, but overall no real problems. Reboot works every time now. Thanks again, this adds a lot of value to these little boxes IMO.

[scooter2014]

I find 2.0 seems to not be as quick on ui... May be just me but seems lot slower accessing apk ect. All in good though. Still no play store recs on the suggestions (no idea why) in google movies no video in that apk. Testing others.

[cOOLio]

i do liek your firmware and will try to port your newest atv to s95 meta with your permission that is ..... well ill port it regardless for my box but will post your rom for everyone else that has the box ... credits to you

Sure, feel free to do whatever you want to do with my rom. And I would really appreciate any credits.

Any chance to get xbox360 controller support with this ROM? Would love to play my PC games in the living room through Remotr

First of all I have to say ,I do not have a Xbox360 controller. But in theory I think this should work. Because it is also working 100% with the latest PS4 controller. That one with the light bar on the touch pad (shipped with the PS4 slim/pro). This new version of the PS4 controller supports the USB HID protocol. You just have to use a USB cable and you are nearly good to go. You just have to reassign once all the buttons and analog stick. Because they are all mixed up. But my ROM has already two apps included, where you can easily reassign them for any USB HID game controller.

The first app can be found in my ROM at: Settings > (Ugoos Settings) System > Gamepad Settings




And in case you get problems with assigning the analog triggers and the analog sticks when using the first app. You can also use the alternative app, I already added to my ROM
Go to: App Drawer > Gamepad Tester (root must be enabled to save once you own config file)




As far as I know, the xbox360 controller also supports the USB HID protocol when using a USB cable. But to be 100% sure you have to test it on your own.

And finally, when it comes to use a wireless game controller. I recommend the Xiaoji Gamesir G3f. This gamepad has a wireless USB mini dongle with USB HID protocol support. And for this gamepad my ROM has already a 100% working setting included. Created with the help of the Gamepad Tester app (a free app @ Google play store) . So you just have to Plug & Play.

And in case somebody is interested in the android keylayout mapping file for this gamepad, feel free to download and use ist in your own rom >> Xiaoji_Gamesir-G3f.kl.zip (see attachments)
Just copy the extracted kl file to the folder /system/usr/keylayout/ and change the file permissions to chmod 660
BTW more infos on editing keylayout files can be found here.

[cOOLio]

…. Still no play store recs on the suggestions (no idea why) in Google movies no video in that apk. Testing others.

suggestions on play store … I said already all I could say. And finally I don‘t care.
Google Play Movies & TV … I tested it with a free short movie > Shaun the Sheep – The Big Chase. And yes, also for me only a black screen, but voice. I don‘t know why, but it looks like a video codec issue!? Does anybody knows which video codec Google use in this app? Or has anybody made similar experience with local video files, where he could check the used video codec? To get a starting point.

... I'll also say that 2.0 is working perfectly for me. A little laggy sometimes when updating suggestions on the home screen I think, but overall no real problems. Reboot works every time now. Thanks again, this adds a lot of value to these little boxes IMO.

I find 2.0 seems to not be as quick on ui... May be just me but seems lot slower accessing apk ect. All in good though. Still no play store recs on the suggestions (no idea why) in google movies no video in that apk. Testing others.

First of all, I don‘t use this box. This custom rom is only a side project to me, to learn and to see what is possible when you put modern software on old hardware. And I learned already a lot, for my main projects on much better hardware (RK3368 & S912 devices). So its good and also needed to get some feedback from you. This helps me and you as users of my ROM as well. A pretty good win win situation for all of us.

Let us now talk about the hardware. This box is what it is. Old low power (compared to modern boxes) and the most important, it has a slow NAND flash memory and a big bottleneck called only 1 GB of ram.

The load time of any app depends on the speed of the NAND flash memory. So mostly nothing a rom developer could change. The only thing a rom developer could do, is to optimize all those system apps he added to a rom. While he export all those library from its Apes permanently, so the system must not have to do this each time, during the start of the app. What I already did, in case the app had any library included to the apk file. BTW for each app you install, android will do this automatically if possible. So we don‘t have to take care about that anymore.

Now lets talk about the main bottleneck, the 1 GB of ram. Only 0,8 GB can be used by android (this is by design). When you start my rom without any additional installed apps, you will have 0,42 GB of free ram. You can easily check this on your own with a terminal (it‘s already included to my rom). Just type the following command.

su
procrank -r

More infos on procrank can be found her: http://www.2net.co.uk/tutorial/procrank

So at the beginning more than 0,5 of your physical RAM is free. Android 5.1.1 has its own, lets say solid, RAM management. But sometimes this management cleans up also all suggestions from its RAM. This is also the moment when the ROM gets a bit laggy, because the leanbbck home launcher start immediately to refresh all suggestions, from all apps that supports this feature.

To enhance this behavior you have two options.

1. To speed up the suggestions update process, you should disable all those apps you don’t need to see any suggestions from. Play Store should be one of them. Because as I already mention here in another post. I never saw any suggestion of the Play Store. Even not on my Sony 4K (stock) Android TV.
   
   To do so, go to: Seetings > Home screen > Recommendations row
2. Disable all system apps you do not need, for now , ever, what ever … to get more free physical RAM. To get finally less suggestions cleanups by the android RAM management.

[Should be safe to disable]


Here are some suggestions of system apps you should safely disable, if you do not need its features.

• Google App (only needed to get enhanced search results while using the global search function & for voice typing as keyboard)
• TTS (only needed in case you need HQ voice output)
• Camera (not needed in case you do not use a USB web cam)
• Clock (will only be used as as one of the Daydream plug-ins)
• Download Manager & Downloads (as long as ES File Explorer is installed you can use its build in function, to download files from the Internet)
• Gallery ( as long as ES File Explorer is installed you can use its build in function to show images)
• Google Play Music (only needed to listen to music. ES File Explorer can also play music, and Kodi and many other apps as well)
• Google Play Games (only needed to save your game data to the google cloud, if the app supports this function)
• Music (like Google Play Music)
• Photo Screen-saver (will only be used as as one of the Daydream plug-ins)
• Sound Recorder (will only be needed when using a USB mic)
• SuperSU (this will turn root into silent mode (note recommended because of security. It’s better to disable root and re-enable it only when needed)
• Android System WebView (The pre installed Opera web browser has its own web engine. But some apps need this to show web content. So it depends on your installed apps.)
• Android Keyboard AOSP (when disabling this additional keyboard you will disable also the its “Settings > More settings > Language & input” function. The Leanback Keyboard has no settings at all. But in case u use a external USB Keyboard like a mini USB dongle based remote Keyboard. You need these settings to set once the keyboard layout language. Afterwards it is save to disable, because the setting of the USB keyboard stays.)

To disable these apps go to: Settings > Apps > Running apps > (select the app) > Force Stop > OK > Disable > OK

After you disable all those non needed system apps I recommend to reboot once your box.
In case you system is getting unstable after you disable one of the system apps, just re-enable the app. Because of that I also recommend to disable these apps in steps.


Important Additional Note:
I absolute do not recommend to uninstall any system app, with the help of a root explorer. Because in case the system gets unstable while removing system apps, they are gone. When you just disable these apps, you can easily re-enable them. And finally removing system apps will free up 0 bytes to install normal apps to the data partition. Removing system apps will only free up space on the system partition. The size of the system partition will not change. This can only be done while crating your own ROM partition sizes.


Please report if this hints and tricks helps or not.

If I find the time to do this, it will create a additional V2.0 edition. With only the minimal needed ATV functions (system apps). But for now I will go on with my main ROM projects, for my Z4 RK3368 & Yundo Y1 S912 boxes. But I will still check this threat for your feedback and to give hints, tipps and tricks.

[scooter2014]

Hi Coolio

Just a comment re ui. Yes better then crap stock on older device. Glad i got in one so i could test. (Dont really care what works or not just wanted to test and feed back. )

I know how to remove apks and how sd partions and firmware work and space ect. I testing some firmware on 3368 but ill down yours and give it a wirl on the geek box.

[cOOLio]

Hi Coolio

Just a comment re ui. Yes better then crap stock on older device. Glad i got in one so i could test. (Dont really care what works or not just wanted to test and feed back. )

I know how to remove apks and how sd partions and firmware work and space ect. I testing some firmware on 3368 but ill down yours and give it a wirl on the geek box.

He he he ... that was more or less written to all of the users who use my ROM already, or think about to use it in future. Not in person to you. When it sounds like that, I have to say sorry. Was not my intention. And once again BIG thanks for testing and giving also feedback. And finally you named the big important point .... the Stock ROM for this BOX is a peace of crap ... all of them . I tested them all. But after a few month I gave up and decided tothrow the box into the corner and buy a new better one. Until I found it as a good starting point on creating your own ROM. Because it is always harder to make gold out of shit. Than to make shit out of gold.

[lonegreyride]

Thanks for the explanation. I might try to disable some of those apps, but overall my comment on the slight lagginess was just commenting on any observations I made. Really, it's a million times better than stock, and works perfectly for me now. Just makes this box much better than it was overall. Also looking forward to getting my usb mic so I can try out voice search. Again, thanks for all your work, it is appreciated.

[thenut2014]

coolio,
please help..... I am trying to install the 2.0 rom on my mxq pro 4k p201 and i keep getting this fault (key failure).....any ideas?

[cOOLio]

coolio,
please help..... I am trying to install the 2.0 rom on my mxq pro 4k p201 and i keep getting this fault (key failure).....any ideas?

It looks like you missed the following step 1 of my installation guide at all. Or you copied those license & conf files to the wrong folder!?
Please copy them again to the installation folder of the burning tool and try again.
Please let us know if it helps or not.

.

[thenut2014]

It looks like you missed the following step 1 of my installation guide at all. Or you copied those license & conf files to the wrong folder!?
Please copy them again to the installation folder of the burning tool and try again.
Please let us know if it helps or not.

.

Thanks for the help. It works great. My only issue is my Logitech F710 gamepad will not work. Is there anyway to get it to work on this rom?