[dhead]

@RockerC

Personally I would stay away from the TBS Matrix, it scream amature bad design all over the place.

First of all this supposed to be an end user device so why the ugly laser cutted acrylic case ?a big company like TBS can afford proper injection molding.
What about a proper hdd slot or even USM port ? even the hobbiest Cubietruck got a proper solution to attach 2.5" hdd.

Volume buttons ? are you kidding me ? why one would need these on a pvr server or even on a XBMC client / HTPC ?
My guess is that TBS just took an off the shelf design of a development board from some Chinese pcb design house and rebranded it without even an after thought.

I recommend also to enter the TBS forum and see how the developers connected the pcie tuner, what a joke, they could easily design the board to accept a full pcie addon card properly as a dual board solution but they didn't as my guess is that they didn't even design the board.

And the active cooling just shows that they don't know even how to design a pcb with proper heat dissipation.

I don't see any reason to go with this device, I would wait for SolidRun's Carrier One / HummingBoard or get one of the available quality development boards.

[piotrasd]

About Matrix ARM - they already send me 1 pcs i give here review

And already on website of TBS is

Mini linux with XBMC and VDR

[mijanek]

I placed an order for one too. I like the availability of GPIO which is missing on utilite. I don't care about the case, so far it is keeping the price lower a I hope to deal with the fan too.
I don't like to wait for Solid-Run and their weird way of processing orders, so it can take some more months until they will be ready..

Edit: They shipped it today, that is really quick :-)

[mijanek]

Fist impressions:

So, I just unpacked the Matrix TBS and conected it to the TV. They allready did preload XBMC onto the buld in flash. And I love it, how flawless it is running, very fast chanel switching (using xvdr) and I think it is faster than my Atom N330/4GB Ram....

BUT how Stephan did allready wrote, the fan is really NO GO! It is blowing with maximum speed and very very loud for this device. And I think even useless ....

Do you know itf there is possibility to read internal cpu/gpu temerature, it is showing to me 0 ... :-(

[wolfgar]

Hi mijanek,

Thanks for this feedback.
I still cant see any source for matrix but now a few images are available.
For temperature, do you have the file /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp ?
If so, you can read core temp here...
To stress the device, play with XBMC GUI (GPU activity is the worst heat generation use case I am aware of)
Of course be careful not to damage your device : my advice would be to stop everything when you can see core temp over 80°C (you should have a protection at 90°C if I remember correctly but I would avoid to play with fire )

Regards
Stephan

[mijanek]

Thanks Stephan, inbetween I found it to:

so with Fan running is the temperature showing:
[root@matrixtv /]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
49
I disconnected the fan and now after 5 minutes idle:
[root@matrixtv /]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
63
playing xvdr hdtv (zdf hd at about 12Mbps) for additional 2 minutes:
[root@matrixtv /]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
60

so it seems the fan is not realy necessary all the time, I need to test some cpu burn in later... (hard to find some for this buld):

Edit:
playing usb powered HDD (2,5'' elements 500 GB) 1080P AVHC (thanks it prowides enought power with the included 3 A adapter) after 5 minutes
[root@matrixtv /]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
57

so it looks really stable with xbmc without the fan... I think I found my replacement for the rapsberry Pi :-))) I will occasionally poste some updates..

[wolfgar]

You should follow my advice and play a lot with the XBMC GUI : It is likely to generate more heat on the imx6 than cpuburn as surprising as it may sound...
Stephan

---

As a side note, when you say idling : Is XBMC running or not ? If XBMC is running 63°C is an acceptable value otherwise it is a quite poor value...
Stephan

[mijanek]

ok, I did as much I can, leaving the HD video in background, than letting play musing wit openGL equilizer and very fast chaning all the menus and temporary achived this maximum:
[root@matrixtv /]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
72

but just after 5 sec without moving trough the xbmc (leving the music playing) it dropped down to:
[root@matrixtv /]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
61

so if the sensor is working, the attached heatsink does good job (but I wasn't able to utilize more than 30% of the cpu (over all cores)

[wolfgar]

OK this is a very good news : thanks for all your tests !
The conclusion seems to be that the fan is useless and has to be unplugged for good so that this device becomes attractive lol

At the end, it may be an interesting choice (internal emmc, optical spdif, working CEC -yes it is- ,3 USB host, sata) : not that bad ...
I hope that they will release the source code soon so that I can play with it

Stephan

[mijanek]

I hope to, there is still planty to do.., for example missing deinterlacer, or I have sometimes problems with syncing AC3 (downstream to stereo) over hdmi, but liveTV is really amazing.
(by the way, there are also background processes like oscam and onboard vdr, you my start setup on start and configure wireless too.) I don't see for now any bluetooth option now..

watch gallery

[wolfgar]

Just a remark : I speak about the kernel & uboot source code of course.
As the included XBMC is nothing else but a build of my source code and the lack of proper deinterlacing is also my fault (but I am currently trying to solve it)

Regards
Stephan

[mijanek]

Oh ok, sure..:-)) Anyway,I didn't know, that you are the only one source for all these devices.. I do really appreciate, well done!

P.S.now it's on Idle (With blank Screensaver) using 40% of one core and it is again on 72 C... I leave it now all the time runnig and see if it's still alive

[mijanek]

Here more tests for the Matrix TBS

Starting 4x following processes produces 100% load:

dd if=/dev/urandom | bzip2 -9 >> /dev/null

Here Load over all cores:

Mem: 241552K used, 1561948K free, 0K shrd, 22300K buff, 65500K cached
CPU0: 100% usr 0.0% sys 0.0% nic 0.0% idle 0.0% io 0.0% irq 0.0% sirq
CPU1: 16.6% usr 83.3% sys 0.0% nic 0.0% idle 0.0% io 0.0% irq 0.0% sirq
CPU2: 100% usr 0.0% sys 0.0% nic 0.0% idle 0.0% io 0.0% irq 0.0% sirq
CPU3: 100% usr 0.0% sys 0.0% nic 0.0% idle 0.0% io 0.0% irq 0.0% sirq
Load average: 9.31 8.15 6.58 7/118 6179

And top temerature achieved by this after 10 minutes
(going to be critical, env. temp is 23C):

[root@matrixtv ~]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
84
[root@matrixtv ~]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
85
[root@matrixtv ~]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
86
[root@matrixtv ~]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
87
[root@matrixtv ~]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
88
[root@matrixtv ~]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
85
[root@matrixtv ~]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
88
[root@matrixtv ~]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
86

Immediately after killing the processes:
[root@matrixtv ~]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
77
[root@matrixtv ~]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
77
[root@matrixtv ~]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
78
[root@matrixtv ~]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
77
[root@matrixtv ~]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp

After 1 minutes more (xbmc still running consuming 30% of 1 core):
[root@matrixtv ~]# cat /sys/devices/virtual/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp
74

Conclusion: I would be nice to have some contorl over the Fan, just in case the temeprature goes so high, to turn it on (or leave it very low blowing). But I don't think xbmc would utilize all cores to 100%

[mijanek]

I hope that they will release the source code soon so that I can play with it

Hi Stephan, I looked in the download section for the matrix, and they published some source.. I don't know if it is containing all the stuff you are looking for but here the direct link:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/matrixtv/

[mijanek]

Personally I would stay away from the TBS Matrix, it scream amature bad design all over the place.

Volume buttons ? are you kidding me ? why one would need these on a pvr server or even on a XBMC client / HTPC ?
My guess is that TBS just took an off the shelf design of a development board from some Chinese pcb design house and rebranded it without even an after thought.

Yes, you are partialy right.. The took over the Freesale design (including the buttons)... http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site...X6SABREBRD