[fritsch]

Have to add something, from your argumentation:

RPi2 works fine on the same switch because it is only a 100Mbit Ethernet controller! Set the Vero interface to 100Mbit and it too will work fine on the same switch with broken flow control.

That comparison is not good to make, cause other gigabit ethernet devices obviously work in Gigabit mode. So - we can conclude: Gigabit yes, but there are shortcomings, that might kick you in the back.

[DBMandrake]

Thanks for this correction.

Concerning, this statement:

The initial workaround for this was to drop to USB 1.1 mode, (great...) later on the USB driver was rewritten a couple of times to try to work around hardware deficiencies in the USB controller in the Pi. Although I have not tested it recently last time I checked this problem was not 100% solved and may never be, due to hardware limitations. I have never seen any problems with lost USB packets (USB keyboard lost keystrokes etc) on the Vero during high network activity.

You can make an easy test. Scrape your videos from scratch, or write something onto the sdcard. While doing so try to watch 1080i50 content. You will see blackouts of the screen, which happens when there is huge load on network in combination with busload of gpu decoding.

How is this test relevant to lost USB packets ? Scraping videos is also not network intensive, but is very SD card write intensive, on a card with slow random 4K write performance it may choke a bit on any device due to SD card contention.

A better test would be to play a test video from the local SD card, perform iperf throughput tests in the background while similtaneously trying to use the Kodi UI via a USB connected keyboard - any lost USB packets would show up as missed key strokes.

[fritsch]

Just described a common scenario that make the hw unstable.

Your test sounds nice. You want to do that? Also I'd be interested in iperf performance, while copying files from one usb disk to another or from esata to the other.

My usecase for this little box is: network server for 1 to 2 clients. Videos are stored on an external esata drive.

[thansen]

The Vero has a Gigabit Ethernet controller attached to a 480Mbps USB2.0 hub

This is not true. At least according to Sam himself. The limitations is in the system bus on the Atheros 8035, not the USB2 bus.
https://discourse.osmc.tv/t/vero-network...thansen_dk

[droidelec]

@ned Scott,

Thanks for nice words about WeTek Play, and here all people at WeTek appreciate everybody's opinion and critics about our product, which in end will help us to improve and deliver better products in future.

Regarding the price, I would like to add just few things, as anybody can say that WeTek is really overpriced but we should keep in mind that WeTek Play have almost all licenses such as HDMI, MPEG-LA, Sisvel, DTS, Dolby (In process), Google GMS/CTS, support for Google Widevine DRM. In fact, when user receive device it is already with all licenses included such as MPEG-2, VC-1 and so on, so there is no need to buy any additional license.

Device is shipped with quality RCU with IR and RF, which is as well custom design as whole WeTek Play project, which I think distinguish WeTek Play from other OEM Android TV boxes. As well there is Security USB Token inside WeTek Play, which protects some part of Hardware and Software to be sure that it can be only executed at WeTek Play, and of course that have price as well.

Probably as many of you know, there is ton of other android devices on market with non or very limited support, RMA or any kind of after sales service/support. From beginning we focus on opensource communities and we are fully committed on colaboration with projects and teams such as Kodi, OpenELEC, Volumio, Lakka and others.

We also admit that HW can be outdated for some specific usage such as HEVC or 4K content, but this doesn't mean that we are not working on new products which will offer this features in near feature. On the other way, if You take a look on Set-Top-Box market for Satellite, Cable and Terrestrial/ATSC, you will see that price of this devices are much higher than WeTek Play.

And yes, we have many employed developers here in Europe, which are working mainly on Kernel and Driver development and bug fixing, but in same time we are fully open for cooperation with other devs, which I think can be confirmed by several Kodi Team members, with which we shared our knowledge, documentation about AMLogic SoC's.

Once more thanks for great support and wonderful job you guys are doing to make millions of people happy, as we are sure once when somebody get in touch with Kodi/XBMC it is for whole life

I am so sorry for OT, original WP thread here at Kodi Forum is http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=213747

[Koying]

My usecase for this little box is: network server for 1 to 2 clients. Videos are stored on an external esata drive.

My usecase exactly Definitely a worthwhile NAS/Openvpn "home server" combo.

[DBMandrake]

The Vero has a Gigabit Ethernet controller attached to a 480Mbps USB2.0 hub

This is not true. At least according to Sam himself. The limitations is in the system bus on the Atheros 8035, not the USB2 bus.
https://discourse.osmc.tv/t/vero-network...thansen_dk

Sorry you're right, the Ethernet controller is connected directly to the SoC (unlike on the Pi where it's connected to the USB controller) however the bandwidth to the SoC is also limited to 480Mbps.

[thansen]

I have some Wifi issues with the Vero, and from the first time i took it apart (Vero inside) I could see that the antenna was a tiny PCB antenna.
One of the reasons I bought the Vero was because of the built in Wifi. I made some tests with an external antenna and that improved the Wifi range a lot. Now I want to mount an external antenna, and took The Vero apart to see how it could be done, took it a bit further apart than i did last time and here is a picture of SOC.

[thansen]

Thought i would post the result :-)

The alu frame acts as an heatsink for the SOC, so I did not want to remove any of it to make place for the RP-SMA connector, instead I made a cut so I could bent it inwards.


The U.FL mini PCI to RP-SMA Pigtail mounted in the case.


And yes it still fits in the box .


Well it did not make the Vero prettier, but the Wifi have improved dramatically.
The white antenna is 18cm long, but i have a black one which is only 9cm long, and it performs almost the same, so might buy a white 9cm.Think it will look a little better.

[fritsch]

Well done :-)

[jjd-uk]

Well that confirms beyond any doubt it's a Cubox i2w in a white case as I don't see what else "I2W Rev02" on the barcode label could mean.

[fritsch]

@thansen: Could you post a howto somewhere? Tools you used and so on? And could you also add "howto enlarge the spdif hole" or something? Hardware Parts and so on?

"A howto pimp my cubox"? Perhaps in another thread? That will help other users a lot.

Thanks much in advance.

[thansen]

@thansen: Could you post a howto somewhere? Tools you used and so on? And could you also add "howto enlarge the spdif hole" or something? Hardware Parts and so on?

"A howto pimp my cubox"? Perhaps in another thread? That will help other users a lot.

Thanks much in advance.

No problem, I will see what I can do :-)

[fritsch]

Some bad news at the end, imx6 in general related. So it's obviously not only the vero that is affected.

mk01 from xbian wanted to implement a reference clock on imx6 and found out some really bad things.
It seems the chip is neither able to display 50 fps / 60 fps over a longer time, but does internally just throw the pics away as it gets overloaded.

So whenever a vblank should come, normal hw would swap buffers to display the new picture, but imx6 is not fast enough to do so (at the above rates). So the HW itself just skips that frame entirely. It even does not report this vblank ... when another next frame is ready and hw feels like rendering it it swaps and reports this vblank.

I think you figured what would happen if you would sync on the vblank ... :-(

mk01 has found the place where the skips are force introduced and now could echo the vblank signal never the less ... but yeah ... getting 60 vsync signals, while the hw only renders ~ 40 ... just sucks. This can even explain slow menus and currently I don't see any fix for this, probably running the display in no more than 30 hz?

[Koying]

IMO, as far as we (Kodi) are concerned, imx6 is basically history. We, as many, had great hopes for the platform, and up to a certain point, it was a great one...2 years ago (at least the higher end versions).

Now, rpi2 came in, and it objectively obsoleted imx6 instantly in terms of bang-for-the-buck, from a pure Kodi perspective (the esata port on the i4 still makes it a great small server device for me, and I don't plan to replace it anywhere soon). Furthermore, I don't see any evolution on the platform, while the likes of Amlogic, Rockchip, nVidia, Intel are evolving steadily.

The code might survive 16, but i see it follow the ways of xbox and Apple TV for 17, so, as far as I'm concerned, investing any time in imx6 is just wasted time.