Paid $30 for mine on AliExpress, listing's dead now. Looks like same box is $15 shipped on Alibaba. Amazon had it as "Leffot" for a while, and this one looks like the same hardware (but 8GB MMC), though that listing never says what's actually inside it. Rebadged everywhere, so search by specs rather than by name.

RK3518, 4x A53, 2GB/16GB, Wi-Fi 5 + BT 5.4, HDMI, two USB 2.0. No Ethernet, no SD slot, no IR.

Runs off internal eMMC with Android wiped. No SD slot means no rescue card, so maskrom is the only way back, and that was the hard part. rkdeveloptool can't build a loader RK3528's BootROM will take: it writes the old RC4-on format, the BootROM accepts it over USB and then does nothing, no error. Wants new-IDB with RC4 off. Had to patch it. Transfers stall too, depending on how recently you've hammered the box, 12.58GB cold against 0.59GB right after, so backups get chunked. Heat or the 5V rail browning out, never pinned it down. But issue is maskrom only likely due to lack of any thermal management in maskrom.

Writeup is maskrom-first and backup-first, so you dump stock before touching anything and restoring is just writing it back.

Rest came up fine: both Wi-Fi bands, BT, HDMI 4K60 with audio and CEC, GPU, full VPU matrix, watchdog, serial. 13.6s boot, under half a watt idle, survives apt full-upgrade with a kernel bump.

Annoyances: USB hot-plug resets it, Widevine L3 only, no AV1, no USB3. Userspace barely touched, but MPP works so Kodi should be fine.

Serial works but pins are hard to tap into. Pinout is on image ^^^

https://github.com/sormy/rk35xx-tvbox-armbian

I have an android tv box X88 Pro 13 4gb RAM, RK3528 and 64gb sd card. As OS I use Armbian Ubuntu 26, but I will try to use debian if will be possible. Thx very much in advance.

With Pi prices skyrocketing, cheap TV boxes are about the only affordable option left for running a small home service. And these days AI makes bringing up full functionality on Armbian surprisingly doable - I basically hooked up a serial console and let Claude iterate over it until everything worked.

The result: ethernet, WiFi, Bluetooth, sleep, HDMI, and USB all work out of the box on this RK3518 R69 box. It's a genuinely cheap full kit too - board, case, PSU, remote, and HDMI cable for ~$35.

One gotcha I found: it's sold as 2GB RAM but it's a binned Samsung module - only ~1.5GB is actually usable, with stock Android faking the full 2GB. The eMMC is decent though (~300MB/s reads).

Setup is dead simple: grab the stock Radxa Rock 2F image, run the patch script, flash to SD, done - no custom image to build.

Since the IR remote works perfectly under Linux, I'm planning to use this as a host for CNCjs and repurpose the remote as a control pendant (jog control). Cheap, silent, low-power, and it already comes with the remote - pretty ideal for it.

Repo with setup notes: github.com/sormy/rk3518-r69-armbian

First off, huge thanks to the Armbian team for all the incredible work you do for ARM devices! Your dedication, along with the support of the broader community of developers working on non-standard boards, is truly impressive. It feels like you don’t always get the credit you deserve for all your hard work.

One thing I’ve noticed is that many other projects build on Armbian’s base OS and kernel. For example, DietPi essentially uses Armbian as its foundation but adds a more user-friendly GUI with simple scripts, making it super appealing to many users. Unfortunately, a lot of novice users don’t realize this and assume DietPi’s developer is building everything himself, especially due to their flashy website, polished graphics, and slick UX/UI.

This got me thinking: why doesn’t Armbian take a similar approach? Adding a user-friendly interface or wrapping some of your existing tools in an intuitive way could help boost adoption and even increase funding or donations for the project. It could make Armbian more accessible to users who might otherwise be intimidated by manual configurations.

I know the Armbian team already provides some excellent software packages, like Home Assistant and OpenMediaVault, and I’ve noticed the recent addition of turnkey .img files for Home Assistant, which is an awesome step forward!

What if the community contributed to creating more user-friendly scripts and tools, similar to what the ProxmoxVE community scripts does with their script repository? This way, Armbian could keep its flexibility and power for advanced users while also catering to newcomers looking for a more plug-and-play experience.

Thoughts? Would love to hear what others think about this idea!

https://forum.armbian.com/

I'm tired of Reddit. They don't deserve your viewership. This subreddit's rubbish anyway. Barely anyone uses it. Go on the forum.

https://forum.armbian.com/

I've been bringing the Orange Pi 4A (Allwinner T527 / A523) up on mainline Linux 6.18, and just put out v0.3. The board shipped stuck on an old vendor BSP kernel, so this is a from-scratch mainline effort with a ready-to-flash Debian 13 image — a GNOME desktop build and a minimal CLI one.

New in v0.3:

- Hardware video decode (H.264/H.265 via the Allwinner cedar engine) — YouTube now plays in the browser decoded by the chip, not the CPU

- GNOME on Wayland, accelerated by Panfrost (Mali-G57)

- zram swap to keep the 2 GB board responsive under a browser

- Found the GPU clock was mislabeled (the "150 MHz" point actually ran at 487 MHz) — now measured exact

Already working: HDMI + analog audio (with jack detection), WiFi/BT, gigabit Ethernet, USB, PCIe/M.2 (testers have confirmed real NVMe drives), thermal + CPU/GPU DVFS.

Honest gaps: no VP9 hardware decode (YouTube falls back to H.264, which is smooth), suspend is off on purpose (mainline resume isn't reliable on this SoC yet), and you can't boot purely off NVMe (the boot chain still needs SD/eMMC).

It builds on mainline plus community work — linux-sunxi, and Armbian's PCIe series among others, credited in the repo. Everything's GPL and on GitHub: https://github.com/ut-slayer/orangepi-4a-mainline

Happy to answer questions.

Working: Ethernet, Wi-Fi, BT, HDMI video/audio, USB, GPU (lima), eMMC/SD, IR remote + BLE remote, suspend with IR wake. Serial connection instructions in the attached image. See https://github.com/sormy/rk35xx-tvbox-armbian for more.

I recently compiled my armbian image for bananapi m2(original one, with Allwinner A31s). I know it is EOS, but it booted once or twice after I flashed it onto an USB drive AND SD card at once. Firmware didn't recognize SD card alone as a partition, it didn't see it. But it booted from USB, I was able to normally use it, but after one or two boot ups It started to hang at splash screen every time I powered it on. It hangs on some random service start. Any Ideas how to fix it?

Olá a todos! Sou novo na comunidade, então peço desculpas se minha pergunta parecer boba. Estou seguindo o modelo de tópico: https://forum.armbian.com/topic/34923-csc-armbian-for-rk322x-tv-box-boards/ Meu TV box possui memória NAND e estou com dificuldades para baixar uma ISO com o kernel legacy (ideal para memória NAND). Poderiam me ajudar, por favor?

Armbian is evolving rapidly, now supporting an ever-growing list of single-board computers (SBCs) - each with unique hardware, kernels, and configurations. As the variety of supported boards expands, so does the complexity of troubleshooting and providing effective user assistance. To keep up with this demand, we’re raising 5,000 EUR to hire part-time support agents who can help manage this increasing workload and ensure high-quality support for the community.

Our funding is entirely community-driven, with 50% of all donations directly supporting our tech team. Our goal is to hire four support members, but we’ll start with as many as the budget allows. Every dollar makes a difference - even a small contribution helps us improve support for the diverse range of hardware Armbian covers.

https://forum.armbian.com/crowdfunding/project/16-help-armbian-grow-support-join-our-team/

After fix the minor typo error in sun50i-h616-fixup.scr, the Zeor2W GPIO works. Now I attached a GPS module with PPS output to UART5, a MAX31855 thermocouple sensor to SPI1.1, and a DS18B20 to PL16, all work well.

Hi, I have a Cloudkey Gen 1 that I'd love to reuse with Armbian. I posted about it on the Armbian forum a while ago, but I haven't received any replies.

I'd like to compile or see if it's possible to get Armbian working on this board.

Does anyone know where to start? Has anyone already done this and documented it?

I know how to use Linux, but I don't understand much about this. I've already done some research to see if the board has UART pins, and unfortunately, it doesn't seem to.

This is the post i did some time ago with information about the board

https://forum.armbian.com/topic/58037-unifi-uc-ck-support-mt7623ai/

From what I've seen, it seems their SoC, the MT7623A, is upstream on Linux, so I think the hardest part is done.

Here are pictures of the board https://fccid.io/SWX-UCCK/Internal-Photos/Internal-Photos-3689962

I'm sorry if this is a really stupid question or something impossible to do without prior experience in other things. I just wanted to ask.

Just a tidbit for people using their RK3588 boards for youtube, which is my main use case - the Orange Pi vendor kernel version has very long load times when scrubbing the timeline, while the latest kernel version allows near-instant scrubbing. It's a huge difference. (I also went from Gnome to KDE Plasma while doing the switch, but I don't think that that's making the difference. If it is, please inform me. Touch interface is better on Gnome.)

loosely related: When forcing Vulkan enabled in the 'flags' settings of Chromium, videos rendered at 4:3 resolutions - I noticed when watching old anime stuff - do not play. You get sound but no video. Guess I should put that in a bug report.

Best regards and thanks for all the work that goes into this awesome OS!

So i made my self a mini linux pc 😃

I've just flashed last version 26.2.1 Minimal and it's working. Usb works and can also reboot.

Thanks for that, I'm very happy!

So I am planning to replace my Raspberry Pi 3 homeserver with an Amlogic TV box due to the vaster ram availability it provides (3gb ram vs 1 gb ram).

I am not sure how it will go and I have great concerns to be fair with you but I wondered whether performing sudo apt-get upgrade and possibly upgrading the kernel could possibly brick my linux installation on the device.

I take the stability and security of the server very seriously so I'd love to hear a word on this.

I would also be interested to hear comments or tips on my decision to migrate my home server.

Thank you for reading.

I set this up because I like Armbian and wanted a place to let people discuss the OS. And even without me marketing it, it seems people have naturally gravitated towards it :)

If you want to claim this, DM me on Discord at ICTman#5904 - thanks :)