Sancho

Also if anyone wants to test the Home Assistant helper on your boxes be my guest https://github.com/luisdosreis/armbian-ha-app

New version available, now with server and desktop versions: https://github.com/luisdosreis/linknlink-isg-box-se-armbian/releases Check the readme for all the details.

Will soon be adding/testing an ha-app that makes managing Home Assistant on the iSG Box SE straightforward, with commands to control services, update active containers, create safe backups, and tune Wi‑Fi power behaviour. Functions: ha-app status — Shows installed services and their current state. No sudo required.* ha-app logs [service] — Shows recent logs for Home Assistant or a selected service. No sudo required.* sudo ha-app enable <service> — Enables and starts a service or optional integration. sudo ha-app disable <service> — Stops and disables a service. sudo ha-app restart <service> — Restarts a service. sudo ha-app update — Updates currently running containers without starting disabled services. sudo ha-app backup — Creates a safe full-stack backup; briefly stops active services. sudo ha-app backup --live — Creates a full-stack backup without stopping services. sudo ha-app backup --homeassistant — Creates a safe backup of Home Assistant configuration and data only; Home Assistant is briefly stopped. (Planned) sudo ha-app backup --homeassistant --live — Creates a Home Assistant–only backup without stopping Home Assistant. (Planned) ha-app wifi-power status — Shows the selected Wi-Fi firmware power policy. sudo ha-app wifi-power performance — Disables Wi-Fi firmware deep sleep for lower latency. sudo ha-app wifi-power powersave — Enables Wi-Fi firmware deep sleep to reduce power use. * status and logs need sudo if the user is not in the docker group.

@Caleb Gilmour well the antenna inside is pretty weak also... thanks for the feedback! Regarding afptool I will update the repack flow to: use the latest upstream afptool-rs on every build; let afptool-rs generate and validate the parameter partition itself; remove our old custom PARM wrapper, which could cause the parameter partition to be wrapped twice; retain only the separate RK3528 compatibility adjustment required by this device. (maybe they could add this as well on their side) This aligns the image generator with the upstream fix and avoids reuse of an outdated cached afptool-rs binary. Note - the issue with this board and why I had to repack afptool-rs: afptool-rs receives the chip family explicitly: --chip RK3528 It then writes a “support type” byte into the RKFW header. Upstream maps RK3528 to 0x39, which is the normal RK3528 value. This iSG Box SE’s vendor FactoryTool/loader accepts 0x38 instead—the legacy value also associated with RK3566/RK3568 boards. One upstream-friendly solution could be afptool-rs to offer an explicit compatibility choice, for example: --chip RK3528_LEGACY or something like: --chip RK3528 --support-type 0x38 That keeps standard RK3528 output as 0x39, while allowing boards with this vendor-specific legacy requirement to request 0x38 without patching source. Anyway I will probably as soon as I have some time be publishing a new version with these fixes and including a Home Assistant management tool "ha-app" that will allow users to easily install and maintain Home Assistant using docker containers.

Nice job tracing the afptool issue! @Caleb Gilmour I will try to reproduce and introduce a compatibility mode if I am able to sort it out. Regarding the wifi, can you try setting power save off and do some testing to see if the pattern remains? iw dev wlan0 set power_save off

@Caleb Gilmour are you trying to flash using Rockchip Loader mode or Maskrom mode? Regarding wifi I will need to to do some performance testing when I have some time, I did not test it widely. Thanks for your feedback!

@rosic shared it on MEGA, to flash use the instruction provided on my github. MEGA links: Rom - https://mega.nz/file/10wE1I6D#kMIPehB7qj5D9j6I1hw4aIUhGXMs7ZJsQgUnVFQfNEA Checksum - https://mega.nz/file/koh3HSJL#tbUEWwE-cNw1eo9HM4m15Qu0ax9D057HFTgoXd9wvmA

After many weeks of research, testing and debugging I managed to put together an Unofficial Armbian Linux build for LinknLink iSG Box SE. Version: v26.05 Rolling Kernel: 6.1.115-vendor-rk35xx Flashed and booting from eMMC. All hardware working and tested, including Ethernet, WiFi and Bluetooth. Source, build and flashing instructions here https://github.com/luisdosreis/linknlink-isg-box-se-armbian If anyone is interested I can share a test image ready to be flashed or you can (and should) build it yourselves. I plan to add a Home Assistant flavor to the build system in the future.

Hey @rosic thank you for sharing, nice find as well. What image did you use to flash to emmc? After rebooting my filesystem is read only and I can't update packages.

Hello! @rosic Yes I took a look at the components of the board and eventually managed to find the resistor that interferes with the emmc clock. Shorting it will put the box in Maskrom mode and enable you to flash the original firmware using the official tutorial from the Linknlink wiki even if you cannot get into Loader mode by pressing the reset button insode the audio jack. I used a metal clamp to short it while I plugged the USB-A to USB-A cable into the 2nd usb port. You can see images here Official instruction here

Finally managed to restore the box to stock official Android firmware, everything works as expected. I also tested a firmware for the H96 Max M1, with this one the WiFi is not working, they seem to use a different wifi chip. Any recommendations on where to start with flashing Armbian on this device?

I recently did some trying to boot Armbian on this box and eventually got it not to recognize "Loader" mode using the reset button. It was working before I eventually flashed an not so compatible u-boot. I knew the risks, sh1t happens I was trying to boot Armbian from USB by the way, that is why I tried to do this. I discovered that the original firmware is the same as a H96 Max M1 PLUS as we can see from the official firmware file naming: rk3528_l001_H96_Max_M1PLUS_6621_64BIT_TAR-20251112.2200.img My question, as anyone had experience with this board? The idea is to ditch the original firmware and run HA on Armbian (I previously did this with another box using docker). I know the only option now is to "short" the eMMC in order to achieve "Maskrom" mode but there are no obvious pin points on the board.

@SteeMan thank you for the help! Well it is what it is, will look for the possible alternatives.

Hello everyone! I am trying to boot armbian on a Tanix X4 Pro 4GB/64GB - S905X4 cpu and can't figure out what u-boot file to use. Anyone had any success with a similar box/cpu? I managed to run Debian from here https://github.com/devmfc/debian-on-amlogic without issues using "meson-sc2-ah212-generic.dtb" config. I am trying to do the same with armbian but it seems boot config is a bit different, can someone point me into some resources or ideias? Thank you.