[ROM] Mecool M8S Pro Stock & Nano Nexus ROMs (Android 7.1)

[ClarkKent]

Guest who is the hardware pro around these parts? What a component is and does?
Side note: Goog's search bar recently expanded to cover entire top of screen l to r (1x5 format), which is new to me!?
Any hack to replace with microphone widget, as in phone u.i. It's obtuse, and useless

Sorry, I'm afraid I'm not aware of most of the phone hacks. As for hardware pro, I'm at a loss there too. I have an electrical engineering degree, but have squandered it on software development since leaving the Navy. It's been awhile since I got my hands dirty working with PCBs and solder.

[ClarkKent]

Your funny too, an excellent attribute @ the statehouse, I'm sure.
I just meant it is a simple substitute fix in phone ui. Nothing available here though? Correct me... Its closed source code, and cannot be tweaked, or features deleted. I'm cross-eye searched out.
Yes, schematics identification is what I wanted. I bruised my q201 board when the hood was open. Looking for a opinion if repairable, or fatality. Oops, grrr!

Well, parts of the firmware are open source, such as the AOSP bits, but not the bootloader, kernel or framework. That constrains us greatly.

Fortunately, the Khadas folks have been posting VIM source here: http://docs.khadas.com/develop/Downl...oidSourceCode/

That won't give us the ODM and OEM customizations, but it's a good snapshot of the Amlogic SDK 7.1.

[ClarkKent]

Clarifying for me pls...
11/09 shows as my build... Even though I've updated to most recent 11/16.
Build date doesn't change with updates, 0nly when rom is...? What, fully rebuilt?

For Burn flashing, is a laptop with Win10 the minimum HW?
I've had great pita trying to get Dell tab 8.1 to work. Never happened.
Is the alfawise x5 (win10), or z83 Ubuntu platform a viable / desirable option to use for Android atv/ nexus ROM operations?

Whatever it shows in About->Build is the OEM firmware build date, which the foundation upon which the Nexus custom ROM is built. The date in the filename of my ROM releases are the release dates, which are by necessity at least a few days following the OEM build. Sometimes I refresh in between OEM releases, in which case the build date won't change, but my release date will. In the release notes, I'll indicated what OEM firmware has been used for the foundation and provide a link to it, should you want to revert back to stock OEM firmware.

For ROM flashing, I use Windows 10 and USB Burning Tool. Unfortunately, that tool doesn't exist for Ubuntu or Mac, so you're forced to use OTA updates if you don't have a Windows box. In theory, you could use Burn Card Maker to flash burn packages, but I've found that very temperamental and it won't help you recover in Mask ROM mode if you corrupt the bootloader.

Yes, you could use a mini PC like the X5 or Z83 to flash these burn packages, and they're pretty cheap. If you're going to use it for anything else, though, I'd considering bumping up to the Apollo Lake boxes (e.g. AP42, AP34) which generally have at least 64GB eMMC that's about 3x the speed of the Cherry Trail storage. I started with the Z83 and Z83 II and have phased them all out for the AP42 and AP34 now, giving the old boxes away or making them headless servers running Ubuntu.

[zenix]

@Magendaz.
I use your nano rom and i have a 4k tv.
The settings are configured for the best screen resolution and this is 4k/60hz. It is also confirmed by the lg tv. But when i use some apps like antutu, kodi and many others apps like them, they say there is a fhd resolution. I wonder what is the true. For an example the main screen is 4k or fhd? If the above apps say the true then why the mecool does not change the resolution to 4k as it is asked by me?
Thank you.

Well, the user interface is running in FHD (1900 x 1080), and on UHD (4K) the TV hardware is scaling. However, for video playback some apps can take advantage of codecs that drive higher resolutions. Those may hit bandwidth limitations from the video server or HDMI cable/controllers, though.

[zenix]

Ah, ok. Because the 4k videos play ok. The only difference i can notice when i have FHD or UHD resolution in user interface, is the size of the airmouse pointer. Big in fhd and small in uhd . I cant see any difference in the apps icons or when i run them. Anybody else can confirm this?
So the option in settings for 4k resolution is for what?
Thank you very much!

Actually, there's a setting in Accessibility for "Large mouse pointer". For some reason, it's not showing when I navigate to the Accessibility section, but a search for "mouse" in Settings reveals it.

[rreiner3]

Guest, I'm happily using your ROMs (Stock variant) on the several M8S Pro boxes in my home and office. There is just one thing I'd love to solve: the unpleasant sleep behavior.

Namely:

1- The boxes go to sleep if let unused for a short time, and no setting seems able to prevent this

2- Making matters worse, there is the known bug that they often require a full restart after sleep rather than resuming quickly.

Ideally, I'd like to disable the sleep behavior entirely -- I really don't see a need for the boxes not to be on all the time.

Any thoughts on how this might be accomplished? I've tried several of the "keep the box from sleeping" apps in the Play Store, with no useful effect...

Thanks!

Guest, have you by any chance had an opportunity to look into this sleep behavior (sleeping even when Developer Options, Stay Awake is turned on)?
It's very frustrating having to watch the box boot up every time we want to use it...

Actually, Nick Stekovic and I have been going back and forth with the VideoStrong team on this exact issue. They've insisted that the current behavior is a feature, saying "About the sleep issue, we don’t think it’s a bug. We make it for better customer experience, after the box goes to sleep, it restarts when it comes back, that will make the box run more smoothly without opening many apps background. In addition, it’s low-power design for standard."

Having been an OS developer for 20 years at Microsoft, I was quick to point out that you don't just change the behavior of sleep/standby (ACPI S1/S3) like that and call it a feature. Users expect that when they put a device to sleep that the user state is maintained, and they're no longer doing that. In addition, apps and devices have certain expectations for behavior when they receive events that the device is entering sleep, and they may not save state and flush changes if they believe the OS will be saving it for them per the ACPI spec.

[rreiner3]

Guest As a former divisional CTO at Intel (as well as similar roles at McAfee and other Fortune 1000 companies, and as a several-times CEO of venture funded startups), I agree completely with your perspective -- they are imposing a non-standard behavior on users for idiosyncratic reasons of their own.

If they want to offer sleep-always as a feature, fine ... but it is NOT a reasonable default behavior, and making it a default that cannot be turned off and in fact OVERRIDES an explicit user setting is just pointless and wrong. If nothing else, they should at least fix the fact that the developer Stay Awake option doesn't work.

[DaMeZ]

Hi i installed the firmware installed fine having problems i select english (australia) next screen doesnt matter which i choose i get setup wizard has stopped , i resinstalled firmware still does it. am i doing somthing wrong?

sorry just realized wrong firmware i got mecool bb2 pro..

[ClarkKent]

Guest. -- "they are imposing a non-standard behavior on users for idiosyncratic reasons of their own"

...seems the way they roll.
Maybe, default reasoning?

[Guest]

Guest As a former divisional CTO at Intel (as well as similar roles at McAfee and other Fortune 1000 companies, and as a several-times CEO of venture funded startups), I agree completely with your perspective -- they are imposing a non-standard behavior on users for idiosyncratic reasons of their own.

Well put!

Back at Microsoft I literally published the book on Windows User Experience when I was a Lead Program Manager on the Windows User Experience Team (a.k.a. Windows Shell) and gave keynotes with Bill Gates at WinHEC to thousands on best practices for hardware user experience design. Their response to my point: "You're right in your tech side. The more you think about is technology. We think about more about the customer and user experience."

And earlier they said, "The sleep, it's useless for customers. And if customers open many apps, if the box enter sleep mode then it come back, the box might not run smoothly."

But if customers are in KODI and put the device to sleep, how is it better if they have to wait another 20 seconds to power-up and then have to relaunch KODI and find their location again in the app? Instead, they're just going to leave the device powered up, which is a complete waste of energy. Android is also fairly aggressive at suspending background apps so that they don't bog down the UI.

[rreiner3]

Their response to my point: "You're right in your tech side. The more you think about is technology. We think about more about the customer and user experience."

Wow. They think about the customer so much that they want to take away the customer's freedom of choice about whether their device goes to sleep or not? Just wow.

So you figure there's no possibility of persuading these dudes to allow the Developer Options / Stay Awake to function as designed? May be time to dump these boxes and buy ones that are not built by crazy people, in that case.

Well, if they're going to remove the option to sleep entirely, they should also remove all timers that might trigger sleep, right?

Honestly, I've been pretty discouraged by our Skype conversations. Right now the only thing keeping me on their hardware is the Widevine L1 cert, but I hear that many others will be offering that shortly. It might be time to flip the bit on VideoStrong.

[tombraga]

Wow. They think about the customer so much that they want to take away the customer's freedom of choice about whether their device goes to sleep or not? Just wow.

So you figure there's no possibility of persuading these dudes to allow the Developer Options / Stay Awake to function as designed? May be time to dump these boxes and buy ones that are not built by crazy people, in that case.

Guest you said: .It might be time to flip the bit on VideoStrong.

Sure you are quite angry about VideoStrong, but this would be bad for all people who bought this box like me and it´s very frustrating to hear this.


Sorry, i have the version L, but mght be the same problem, yes?

[rreiner3]

Guest you said: .It might be time to flip the bit on VideoStrong.

Sure you are quite angry about VideoStrong, but this would be bad for all people who bought this box like me and it´s very frustrating to hear this.

Maybe if hundreds of users wrote to them saying "Fix the sleep issue!" then they would do it? Guest, what do you think? And do you have an email address for them that people might use?

Yes, a write-in campaign might help them reevaluate what's in the best interest of their customers. What would be even better is if a major retailer brought the issue to their attention. For example, we could all make an effort to report the problem in customer reviews on the GearBest and GeekBuying sites.

[tombraga]

Maybe if hundreds of users wrote to them saying "Fix the sleep issue!" then they would do it? Guest, what do you think? And do you have an email address for them that people might use?

some time ago i had already mail contact with Videostrong, i attach my mails here, no problem for me to public.

one person who responded me is Miranda ([email protected])
she put always this mail address in copy: [email protected]

[tillaz87]

I used the whole framework / apps from this stock firmware for one of my GT1 releases and it didn't have this issue. i only replaced the global action on power menu for sleep with recovery, but sleep still worked from single power button press.

will check again as not sure if this is a kernel thing.. if its framework only i'm quite confident i could fix it.

shorting pins if I soft brick puts me off though

Yes, I believe the wake from sleep problem is in the VideoStrong bootloaders.