Wasnt happy with the screen problems so I flashed the 200628.084 Teams & Others firmware, you can find it on xda. Got rid off the Kiosk launcher and debloated, now its more or less an Android surface. You need Magisk to update the webview (which you should do before flashing with a modified boot file)
My observation with Fully Kiosk:
Wake/Sleep works, but… The start page was unresponsive after the very first wake, even when manually reloaded (swipe down). Played around with the settings but had no luck. Im not familiar with Fully and the settings are overwhelming, I could not find a solution.
Wallpanel:
Wake/Sleep works. Dashboard is responsive after sleep. Tested now for 24 hours. It works splendidly. Wake/Sleep is very reliable. Passed by as often as I could lol Just connected mqtt and send some tts, worked fine, too. No problems with volume.
The system runs quite smooth imho, really impressed! After 24hours everything still very fluid. Super happy here, now I hope they will be back to amazon for a reasonable price.
I was able to figure out that part by following video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxEIS-8OQBg where zadig is used to install it, you should be in this end state
plus install drivers from the packages provided from edl github page, driver isn’t here if you download install files with git
This is awesome! I received my device earlier this week and spend about 1-2 hours today on flashing it. I will keep an eye on the open-source ROM development thread as well, but in the meantime I can use this existing build.
I have a question though, I’m running Mealie at home, I’d like to have the webpage as a PWA icon on the homescreen. Am I not seeing something or does this version of Android 8 not support that functionality?
For a true pwa the dev of the web page needs to implement a couple of things, if that’s not the case, you can still use the browser feature “add to home screen”, which will result in a similar experience for your use case.
If the web dev HAS implemented it, the menu item in the browser will be named “install app”
I know there’s a difference between the 2, but the option just didn’t show up. I have now installed Nova Launcher and the option is there, fully working. I think the default included launcher is just a bit too limited, it also doesn’t have a lot of the Android 8 features, such as the pull down menu, the app drawer and such
When I set screen timeout in android settings then open HA app, it successfully turns off the screen one time. But any subsequent times, the screen stays illuminated.
If I close HA, so back to the Home Screen, timeout works properly and screen turns off after 15 seconds.
Anyone know why? Is this in line with the issues others are seeing?
Planning on doing this in the next day or so. Safe to say that the instructions in the first post are generally current?
I’ll read through the thread and search as well so not being completely lazy but any tips for someone without a functioning Windows or Linux system? I have a Mac mini m1 but also an older MBA l that’s not doing anything.
Planning on using a usb bootable Linux which something I’ve done many times but it’s been a while. Any recommended distro?
Sorry for the n00b questions. Excited about trying this out and hopefully contributing in some way.
Thanks to all of the work everyone has done on this.
You should be fine on the M1. That’s what I have and the tips in this post is also what I did. Got a second one recently and had it flashed in about 15 minutes.
Another couple points for folks who’ve never used Android dev tools (like myself)…
All these adb... commands are things you run on your computer while it has a USB connection to the device. This seems very obvious in hindsight, but I just assumed there would be some sort of terminal on the ThinkSmart.
For MacOS, install adb using Brew: brew install android-platform-tools
Installing HomeBrew itself will take a while if you don’t already have it, but running the adb commands didn’t work for me until I tried using that.
I also placed the download files inside and outside of the folder they come in (in the same directory as EDL), not sure which it actually used.
I used the bkerler’s edl linked in the installation instructions. To get it to actually flash I had to navigate to the EDL directory within terminal first, then run ./edl qfil bin/rawprogram.xml bin/patch0.xml flash/ --loader=bin/prog_emmc_firehose_8953_ddr.mbn
**AttributeError: type object ‘req’ has no attribute ‘version’ running,./edl ** ANY IDEAS? Ubuntu 22.04 followed instructions provided.
ken@ubuntu-ha:~/edl$ ./edl qfil ~/edl/bin/rawprogram.xml ~/edl/bin/patch0.xml ~/edl/flash --loader=~/edl/bin/prog_emmc_firehose_8953_ddr.mbn
Qualcomm Sahara / Firehose Client V3.62 (c) B.Kerler 2018-2023.
main - Using loader ~/edl/bin/prog_emmc_firehose_8953_ddr.mbn …
main - Waiting for the device
main - Device detected
main - Mode detected: sahara
Traceback (most recent call last):
File “/home/ken/edl/./edl”, line 386, in
base.run()
File “/home/ken/edl/./edl”, line 294, in run
version = conninfo[“data”].version AttributeError: type object ‘req’ has no attribute ‘version’ ken@ubuntu-ha:~/edl$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS
Release: 22.04
Codename: jammy ken@ubuntu-ha:~/edl$ edl --version
3
Check whether you have correct permissions on the device. Maybe you missed installing the udev rules (and then either rebooting or reloading udev using udevadm control --reload && udevadm trigger) as specified in the installation steps for edl
Check if you disabled and stopped ModemManager as mentioned in the edl installation steps.
You waited too long after booting into QDL mode to start the flashing with edl.
Check if the device actually is in QDL mode.
Incorrect mode:
❯ lsusb -d 05c6:
Bus 005 Device 019: ID 05c6:900e Qualcomm, Inc. QUSB__BULK
Correct mode:
❯ lsusb -d 05c6:
Bus 005 Device 020: ID 05c6:9008 Qualcomm, Inc. Gobi Wireless Modem (QDL mode)
If not in QDL mode: power off the device, hold both volume buttons and then power on again. Make sure to keep holding the buttons until the device shows up in QDL mode. Then start the flashing process as soon as possible.
Just as a data point, I followed the instructions in the top post and successfully running the HA Android app for my dashboard. Not seeing any of the sleep/wake issues mentioned in the thread with my setup…
I have the screen timeout set to 5 minutes and the screen goes dark at that time. I’m able to wake the screen at anytime with an HA automation triggered by nearby motion using the following action:
