yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[Miscellaneous Android Development] RayWalton:
Not had any problem with the date/time since I have used this edited ntp.conf file. It has totally cured it and for a dozen or so other users here locally who have now had this simple mod applied to their boxes.

I think it may well be a bad laggy local internet connection with you Wotzit and in fact Australian internet services are well known to be very poor generally (I have many friends and relatives over there who confirm this) so something you need to take up with your Government representatives telling them it is unacceptable in a modern successful nation like Australia. This is another classic reason why main comms links and all public utilities should IMHO ideally be state run for efficiency and not for maximum profit making of greedy privatised corporations !!!

Did you try pinging your Au ntp servers ??

Did not need to change any attributes here either, just edit the file in Notepad and save it to a usb or SD card and transfer it using file manager to your /root/Config folder as per the instructions. It has to work then or you must have a local poor laggy internet connection so still not getting a response back in time from your Au ntp servers.

Note that there are many ntp servers in each continent and they will be chosen at random by the internet url routing, so maybe sometimes you get a nearby ntp server chosen and of course it then gets a quicker response and works other time maybe in a distant Australian state from you and the lag is too great. So search for some ntp servers that are actually in the state where you live, look it up on a Google search, and add those more local ntp urls instead to the edited ntp.conf file and try again.

Have to say that is importantly why there are 4 identical url sources in the amended conf file so at least one of them you would think would work well, so can I assume you left it with 4 au sources in your file ?.

---------- Post added at 11:33 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:27 AM ----------

This only applies at boot up as I understand it and I am pretty sure of that. It is when the Config folder is interrogated for any commits like this edited ntp.conf file. So do you mean rebooting after the box has been on a long time? That should in theory make no difference and indeed it does not on mine, which now works solidly giving me the correct date/time at every boot up :)
[Miscellaneous Android Development] FireBall959:
Trying to install EmbER on a g-box mx2 (midnight if memory serves me right) and have been having little success. I tried a year or so ago with no luck and had to revert back to android. Trying it now and it won't pass the update verification. Do i need to be on a certain firmware before upgrade. I am currently on firmware v1.2.2 and recovery v1.8. Also the auto update doesn't work on toothpick method just goes to recovery for a manual update. Any ideas?
[Miscellaneous Android Development] Wotzit:
This is excellent news, I am pleased to hear that those with hardware that the script method is ineffective on, have another alternative :good:

The time and date are always correct, and instantly available, on all three of my boxes prior to using the MX linux builds. My network / internet has been the same for many years, so the change has come with the later builds. Perhaps in the quest for a real fast bootup, there is less time allocated for a network to be established. If I put an old linux build back onto the boxes the time and date are instantly correct once more, reinforcing the theory that it is a software related issue ;)

Turns out the file attributes was a red herring, just something I tried while I was attempting to get a consistent result

Tried with both au and asia, makes no difference to the reliability of this method (for me)

No I mean that if the box is not used for a few hours, and therefor in a shutdown state, when it is turned on this method fails (for me).

I know there are many that do not completely shutdown the box and so can understand that this method will work fine with that setup

I wouldn't concern yourself too much about this Ray. The script method works for me and never skipped a beat on my MX2.

A slightly different script,( I found that different hardware required slightly different syntax) but fundamentally the same for the G-Box Midnight 2.2 again, works perfectly.

My third box, a RasPi has OpenElec with the "wait for network before starting kodi" option checked also presents the correct time/date instantly, without problems.

So it's a great day for workarounds, as there are now two possibilities available pending a permanent fix, which I still believe can only come in the form of a "wait for network option" as this would naturally benefit everyone that might experience this minor irritation (regardless of why) :highfive:
[Miscellaneous Android Development] FireBall959:
Regarding my problems with install, I've resolved them. Downgraded firmware to v1.6 then EmbER installed no problem. Now to get everything setup but so far I like what I see.
[Miscellaneous Android Development] RayWalton:
Hi Wotzit. Well firstly I have to say that clearly it is not a minor problem as it is causing lots of problems with almost all local users here in Thailand. It is a major problem because many KODI add-ons will not work or will not work suitably well enough with a 1970 system date. For example if you search on many latest and excellent popular add-ons for say recent or popular movies and TV series it will only return those that apply if in 1969 or earlier !!! Add-ons like live TV with EPGs just will not work etc etc and these are hugely popular add-ons. So this is an important fix for those who have this significant problem.

Sure it may well be the drive to boot up faster but remember that this problem does not seem to happen with our US and European users and only come across it so far with customers in Asia and Australia and in particular since the subterranean cable break between Singapore and Hong Kong and the well known poor Australian internet service in many areas there.

Could not get your Setclock script to work even changing the ntp server it calls to Asia. From what I can gather, and it seems for sure with the latest versions of KODI, the ntp daemon is only actually called at boot up using the relevant ntp.conf file and can only be recalled by a restart command for this service. So that was why I found unless the Setclock script file worked at boot up time when the scripts in the/root/ Run folder were called then I could not get it to work. Even tried running the Setclock script after full boot up using the Idle Action add-on but it would not cure the date problem as did not seem to want to run although the idle action add-on was working if I called different scripts or services??? Sure Setclock script will it seems work on some systems and may help you there in Australia where you have a vast continent with some distant ntp servers being laggy and some not so probably hit and miss though as I said I am no expert on this Wotzit.

Anyway good news is there is this edited ntp.conf reliable fix as so far it just has not failed for anyone here in Thailand and I know of at least 10 customers here who have now had this ntp.conf fix I got from Josh applied to their EmbER 3.0.1 firmware MyGica ATV1200 and 1220 MX boxes. Not sure why the Setclock script does not work for us here as it seems it should if the ntp servers are changed to Asian based ones but no joy. Apparently this has been fixed for EmbER 4 with Jarvis which is probably due out next month :)

So sure folk with the 1970 boot up problem can and should try both fixes and certainly report back how it goes to help others here fix this issue. Either way that works for you is of course good news :good:.
[Miscellaneous Android Development] Wotzit:
Yup, it does have major knock-on consequences. My reference to a 'minor irritation' was what it becomes after one of the workarounds is found to be successful. ;)

It is understandable that countries with superior fibre networks would not experience this issue, which is why the option to "wait for a network connection" would be invaluable to unfortunates, like us, that are still waiting for our countries' to catch up. :o

As we've discovered, the band-aid fix is not so universally successful and requires different methods / syntax for different hardware. (A potentially long and tedious task to track down the correct instructions, for the non-programmer). :(

/root/Run (not to be mistaken for /run) is where it is supposed to be run from, where it does run at boot time for the Matricom MX2 box :D

Excellent news indeed :fingers-crossed:
[Miscellaneous Android Development] Wotzit:
Thanks for the info Josh.

It appears that you are much closer to solving the problem for all, than I led you to believe. After re-checking the build date, it seems that I was on 08Mar2016 and not the latest, as first thought :eek: :o

After loading the 20Mar2016 build of 3.0.1, I am indeed able to use the /root/Configs/ntp.conf successfully :victory:

I have left the box disconnected for over an hour, on two occasions, and it has booted up with the correct time/date :good: tests continue . . .

. . . :mad: Just threw up the 1970 date again! I must admit, I do feel better knowing the problem wasn't because I didn't have the latest build ;)

Adding a pause in S49ntp does help but, long pauses noticeably delay the boot and, I vaguely recall when I was first dabbling with this file, it's difficult to calculate the correct pause since the network availability seem to fluctuate from time to time, so a short 1-2 sec delay will inevitably fail, later on. (This is why I resorted to waiting for the correct year to be returned, after setting the clock, before moving on)
[Miscellaneous Android Development] frizby1066:
[Bugfix] Disabling eth connection was preventing system settings from opening

Josh suggested I hit the forum for some advice...so here goes.

Running an ATV1200 and cant get in to recover at all (tried the pin short 2 & 3 on U13) and with no network connection. I can't download anything or ftp in to the box to do an update. Also cant run the ember setting app on the box either so pretty much stuffed. Is there a file or flag somewhere in a file I can set which would enable eth and get the Ember Settings working again so I can try and upgrade. I am running 2.0.2 and see on the Ember site there was a bug fix in 2.0.2 "[Bugfix] Disabling eth connection was preventing system settings from opening" but thats exactly the issue I have and am running 2.0.2 (I disabled eth when I switched to wifi and no connection).

Sorry, found post which mentioned issues and deleted the settings.xml file and got the network back :)
[Miscellaneous Android Development] Josh.5:
That is fine. Ultimately the fix will not end up in the ntpd startup script. Its just that editing the network "on up" scripts require maintaining correct strict file permissions. So I'll do that from my end in a fw release rather than explain it. Editing the ntpd init script with a delay will at least give me a proof of concept that it does work and then I can apply delay that to the next firmware update.
[Miscellaneous Android Development] Wotzit:
Thanks Josh. :good:

(As happy as I am with a workaround, it would be nice to see the issue fixed properly).
[Miscellaneous Android Development] Russell_S:
S805 M12 Box First Impressions

Hi, today I received my M12 (Amlogic S805) TV Box from AliExpress and I have updated it to EmbER and wanted to report my findings. Bear in mind that this is only after a couple of hours running EmbER on it and so is not an exhaustive test.

The Upgrade Itself

This went without a hitch with the EmbER 3.0.1 M12 download from the EmbER site. Just be aware that these boxes use a MicroSD card as opposed to the standard SD card that the MX2 boxes used. The whole update process took only a few minutes and at the end it rebooted straight into EmbER as it should.

The only issues at this point were purely cosmetic and do not effect the operation at all. When the box boots up the EmbER loading splash screen is a small box in the middle of the screen and then moves to the top left corner as shown in these screen shots. The MX2 boxes on the other hand had the splash screens filling the display.

As I say this is only cosmetic and the box still boots into EmbER without issue.

The actual operation of Kodi once booted is really smooth and quick. Videos seem to play very smoothly without any stuttering. Having said that I have never seen any real problems with my MX2 boxes in this regard either. The menus are very quick to respond and both the wired and wireless network seem to work well. I did have a little issue getting the the system to accept the wireless key where it kept saying disconnected but on the third attempt it worked fine so I don't know why that was. I was expecting these new boxes to have 5ghz WiFi but it appears this is not the case and only appears to have 2.4ghz WiFi. The network connection to my media server worked flawlessly and it imported my media without issue.

Remote Control

I must admit I do not like the remote control that comes with this box. I doesn't have any media control buttons (play, pause, stop etc) and so you have to use the onscreen controls in Kodi to control playback. I far prefer the MX2 style remote control which has media control buttons. The good news is that the MX2 remote does appear to work with these boxes and seeing as I have a few bricked MX2 boxes laying around I have a few spare remotes. However, there is one problem I have found with the remote control operation in EmbER and that is the button mappings appear to be wrong. The 'Home' button and 'Vol+' are reversed and the 'Menu' button and 'Vol-' are reversed. Also, if you do use an MX2 remote some other buttons are mixed up as well.

Video Playback

There does appear to be an issue playing back MPEG2 video which are mostly ripped DVD's that the MX2 boxes have never had any issue with. When I play back one of these files I get the sound but no video and if I bring up the Kodi on screen menu the playback time counter does not move and stays on 00:00:00 but the sound is playing correctly. All other videos appear to play back correctly.

I shall investigate these issues further and report back with any other findings. Obviously, the major concern is the video playback issue because a lot of my content are ripped DVD's.

If you need any more information then just ask.

Russell
[Miscellaneous Android Development] Russell_S:
Just a quick update on the video playback problem with the M12 box. If I disable the setting 'Allow hardware acceleration - amcodec' then the mpeg2 videos will play back but they are not smooth and the lip sync is off. With the hardware acceleration setting enabled then the audio plays but there is no video and the playback counter stays on 00:00:00.

I have found references to this problem before on earlier Android Kodi releases but in those cases there were three hardware acceleration settings:

Allow hardware acceleration - amcodec

Allow hardware acceleration - libstagefright

Allow hardware acceleration - MediaCodec

.....and it was the disabling one or other of the last two that would sort the problem out while leaving the first one enabled. However, we don't have those options.

Is this a problem others have experienced with EmbER on the M12 box or is it just me.
[Miscellaneous Android Development] charlie_mtl:
Hi Russell,

Try this /etc/kodi/remote.conf:

# test ARNU Box Remote
factory_code = 0xfe010001
work_mode = 0
repeat_enable = 1
release_delay = 121
debug_enable = 1
reg_control = 0xfbe40

key_begin
0x4e 2 ;NUM1
0x0d 3 ;NUM2
0x0c 4 ;NUM3
0x4a 5 ;NUM4
0x09 6 ;NUM5
0x08 7 ;NUM6
0x46 8 ;NUM7
0x05 9 ;NUM8
0x04 10 ;NUM9
0x01 11 ;NUM0
0x16 103 ;UP
0x1a 108 ;DOWN
0x51 105 ;LEFT
0x50 106 ;RIGHT
0x13 28 ;OK
0x4c 46 ;MENU
0x41 66 ;MUTE
0xf5 78 ;VOL+
0xf4 74 ;VOL-
0x11 1 ;HOME
0x19 14 ;EXIT
0x42 14 ;EXIT
0x40 31 ;POWER
0x5c 52 ;MEDIA_NEXT
0x5a 51 ;MEDIA_PREVIOUS
0x58 33 ;MEDIA_FORWARD
0x53 19 ;MEDIA_REWIND
0x0f 57 ;MEDIA_PLAY_PAUSE
0x43 45 ;MEDIA_STOP
0x1b 15 ;TAB
0x00 23 ;INFO
0x18 104 ;PAGE_UP
0x10 109 ;PAGE_DOWN
0xf2 62 ;SETTINGS
0x55 44 ;ZOOM
# 0x0f 20 ;SUB
# 0x43 30 ;AUDIO
0x5d 35 ;PVR
0x52 145 ;FAV
0x4b 146 ;RELOAD_SKIN
0x56 147 ;HELP
0x57 148 ;WIFI
0x1f 149 ;SYSTEM_SETTINGS
0x5b 150 ;CLOUDWORD
key_end

Charlie
[Miscellaneous Android Development] croniccorey:
Hi all,

We have a method to fix NTP and will be adding it in next builds, for anyone who has logos that are not proper size, this happens when the android ENV does not wipe correctly during conversion, the aml_autoscript should run and erase the ENV completely, since it seems to have failed for some reason I'd recommend redoing conversion, the OEM uboot might not be reading this script correctly and by redoing conversion it should allow our custom uboot to run it and correct the issues with ENV. Also if anyone has a issue with remote configuration on the m12 please pm me and let me know what's wrong, I will fix it asap.

Cheers

Sent from my ONE A2005
[Miscellaneous Android Development] Russell_S:
Hi Charlie, thanks for that.

Your remote.conf file went someway to correcting the remote button mappings but unfortunately there are still quite a few mismatches. I have checked the remote.conf file from one of my MX2 boxes and used some of the codes from this file in the M12 one and I am gradually getting there.

I'm going to be away for most of this week so I will not be doing any more until later in the week. I will post back next weekend when I will hopefully have a fully working example.
[Miscellaneous Android Development] FireBall959:
In one of the earlier posts someone confirmed that p2p streams work, but i have been unable to get them working. Can anyone confirm that p2p works or more specifically do they work with Plexus?
[Miscellaneous Android Development] DancesWithChickens:
http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=62333831&postcount=1301

This is still not implemented. :\
[Miscellaneous Android Development] RayWalton:
Thanks Russell for your review of the M12 box with the new compatible EmbER V3.0.1 installed. I had two of these M12 boxes arrive last week from two different sources with one of them AliExpress, as I wanted to see that they were identical and no bad clones around that may cause problems. Anyway both were absolutely identical.

I flashed the first one that arrived from the Chinese source and no problem it went into EmbER KODI 15.2 with the same small boot up logo screens that you reported and the badly mapped remote keys too. All going well and then I went to the EmbER Restore function and restored my latest back up from my dual core ATV1220T box that I use on all new boxes so I had my usual set of add-ons and basic KODI configurations.

Normally as you know although a different EmbER version and different hardware you can normally restore a KODI set up from any box or PC with no problem. Alas all seemed good with the shortcut icons now displaying normally as well, but when I tried a power off reboot then nothing at all just a blank screen and what seemed an apparently bricked box. :( However I could reinstall the firmware again with no problem, so obviously it was thankfully not bricked. However, even without restoring the old EmbER backup, and although it appeared to work okay, once again it would not reboot after a power down so some memory partition corruption appears to have occurred.

The second box arrived the next day and this was before I had deducted that the problem I had with the first box was the fault of the restored back, up so I did exactly the same again just in case the boxes were different with maybe the first one a good appearance wise clone but with different circuitry. But as I thought it soon proved that they were both identical boxes, so the same problem arose. I also checked the box would power down and reboot fine before I restored the old EmbER back up and indeed it did. So without doubt the problem I have is caused by restoring an EmbER backup from a different type of box to teh newly EmbER installed M12 box.

So appears you must not restore an EmbER backup from a different system to these M12 boxes with the latest EmbER build installed. SO once it is running in EmbER then you need to rebuild a suitable configuration with all the add-ons you require and then EmbER back that up for installing to any future M12 boxes. Not sure if installing first Rob Weber's backup add-on and then restoring an old M6 box Rob Weber type back up would work, but try that at your own risk of course.

I have already mentioned this to Josh who I realise is currently very busy, so as yet not got a reply or fix. I think he is working on the forthcoming EmbER 4 so understand he has to prioritise his workload.

Can anyone else here shed any light on this problem with the new M12 boxes and EmbER V3.0.1 as I would like to get these new M12 boxes working and thoroughly tested ?? Teething problems for sure but once this is working solidly then it does look very promising and those M12 boxes are really very good value indeed.
[Miscellaneous Android Development] Wotzit:
Ray, Does it make any difference if you restore only the .kodi directory as opposed to the complete EmbER backup ?
[Miscellaneous Android Development] RayWalton:
Hi wotzit. Thanks for the reply mate.

Well I do not think that there is an option for selective restore with EmbER backup utility, though I stand to be corrected as have not really checked into that as yet but there is only options to create a new backup, restore an dexisting backup and change the backup storage location.

Usually Ember Backup feature is great and works flawlessly when restoring to the same type of box and I have even used it to restore a G02Ref box EmbER Backup to a G18Ref box and had no problems with that.

Of course I cannot even experiment now until I get rid of the bootup corruption I have in my two M12 boxes. Somehow I need to clear the corrupted area of memory but do not know where that corruption can be or how to do that, but most likely to be in the bootup loader area of course. So will have to wait until Josh and/or Cory have more time to look at this.

I am sure others will fall into this trap as we all like to be lazy and simply restore our favourite add-ons and settings and why I wanted to post this to save others falling into this easy trap.
[Miscellaneous Android Development] Wotzit:
You are correct, I was thinking more along the lines of pulling the .kodi folder from the EmbER backup and using WinSCP (or equivalent) to copy it to the new box via SSH
[Miscellaneous Android Development] RayWalton:
Good point Wotzit. I use Puty but same thing of course. Firstly though this won't help until I can correct the power off and cold boot up corruption problem though which is certainly NOT cured by reinstalling the EmbER S805 M12 firmware even after ensuring a full cache and data wipe takes place.

I wonder if the /root password to SSH into these M12 boxes is still "letmein" ???

I think I will instead create a new set of add-ons and settings for these M12 S805 boxes and use that exclusively for these boxes after flashing them to EmbER, could be safer and of course will get rid of all the inherited old past deleted add-on left overs too. A nice clean new setup for these new boxes.
[Miscellaneous Android Development] Wotzit:
The box I've just received is an MXQ, so no EmbER rom yet. I'm flashing OpenELEC on it for now (certainly not staying with Android).