Is this the perfect standalone tablet for HA?

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102

adb push extras/wallpaper.png /sdcard/Download/

Download not Downloads

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@mattmon Thank you for all the work you have put into this. It is truly awesome.

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I wonder if thereā€™d be a way to containerize some or all of this. Like, I have no idea how thatā€™d work on Windows or MacOS (since I only used MacOS for 2 months, 3 years ago, and itā€™s been 10+ years for Windows, and containers are a hacked together mess on both of those platforms). However, a highly privileged container on Linux (in the hostā€™s net, ipc, and pid namespaces) seems like it should work, and it might reduce the number of requests for help youā€™re receiving. Itā€™d just remove all of the ambiguity about file paths and merging the install of edl with your stuff. Someone else who knows more about the other platforms could then try to port the Linux solution over.

It all seems easy except for the udev rules that edl installs when it tells you to sudo python3 setup.py install. I really wouldnā€™t want the container to install udev rules, but I also feel like there must be other containerized things that have solved this problem. Iā€™ll have to ponder on it.

EDIT: wow, thatā€™s one crazy udev rule! The other rule is much more tame. I wonder if it could be modified to only evaluate when the container is running.

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Not necessarily specific to this device, but posting it here as my specific use-case would be on this device: has anyone been able to utilize the speaker as a media player? I havenā€™t actually played any media on it locally, but I assume itā€™s a decent speaker (based on its original intended purpose). Iā€™m thinking like a Google Home Mini quality level - good enough for notifications, listening to podcasts or background music. Ideal would be able to have it recognized as a Google Cast device for grouping with other speakers (I have a ton of CC audios in my house), but as long as it allowed casting from apps (and was visible to HA as a media player) itā€™d be perfectly acceptable.

Iā€™ve done some general searching and tried out some apps, but everything Iā€™ve found either seems sketchy, doesnā€™t work for DRM content or just doesnā€™t work at all. It also seems like most if not all of them would interrupt the use of the screen as a HA dashboard too.

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What about using vlc or mod mpd or squeeze player on the device?

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Maybe Iā€™m wrong, but I couldnā€™t see how to do this on an Android device; seemed the app doesnā€™t have that functionality versus a desktop install.

I havenā€™t found a reason to buy and use browser mod yet (yet to find something the native HA app doesnā€™t do just fine), but if this is it I donā€™t mind doing so. Just donā€™t want to go down that rabbit hole if it wonā€™t do what I want. :slight_smile:

Also SEEMED like squeeze player might work, but itā€™s also not free and wasnā€™t 100% sure it would do what Iā€™m after.

And then thereā€™s also the question of whether a given solution will actually work on this device. Itā€™s running such an old version of Androidā€¦ Just figured surely someone else has already done this?

Edit: I was confusing/combining browser mod and fully kiosk in my head. :slight_smile: Theyā€™re both things everyone seems to use but Iā€™ve never found the need. Seems like browser mod might be the most straightforward, assuming it works on this?

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Oops mpd not mod ā€¦

I paid for https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.bluegaspode.squeezeplayer years ago, and my one payment runs it on many android devices. When i get the lenovo device iā€™ll test it for you.

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So do you have to also have a server setup or does that work by itself? Also, can you for instance cast Spotify to it or is it local media only?

Completely unrelated, but I decided to cover up the ThinkSmart logo to better match my decor. :slight_smile:

1000005491
10000054911920Ɨ1440 232 KB

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Confirmed. First post updated.

This seems to make things work regardless of the state of userdata partition. Installing the ROM should go much smoother for everyone now.

Thanks to @Badabinski for figuring this out.

I :heart_on_fire: everything about that pic!

I havenā€™t used it much outside of just streaming audio from YouTube music. I will say that for such little device, it has pretty big sound. The speakers are rated for 10w and the chassis acts as an enclosure, so it can bump as good or better than your average portable BT speaker.

Would be awesome to see the community do something cool with audio on this device. If thereā€™s a community that can do it, itā€™s us!

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Interesting. I tried playing some music from my HA server via the app and it didnā€™t work. It kind of acted like it was playing, but no sound and the track/song position just stayed at 0 instead of progressing. I wonder if some additional service is required?

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Havenā€™t tried to stream anything to the device as an endpoint.

Anything using local audio has worked flawlessly for me. YouTube, games, music, even streams played through system webview.

Maybe the ha app needs some permission from android? Or maybe move it from a user to system app?

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I had the same issue when trying to play a media file from HA, i also couldnā€™t get any audio when playing a Youtube video from a browser. On a whim installed Spotify and it worked like a charm, I plan on using this on my desk as a sort of heads up display and the ability to control Spotify through my HA dashboard on this device is a huge bonus

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Maybe it is a webview issue. Iā€™ll look into it.

What browser were you using?

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Unzip the rom to a usb stick

Boot the edl live distro

Plug the usb stick

Read my post about paths.

Iā€™m sure you can make it work.

@cladkins can you post your syslog while attempting to stream to the ha app?

  1. On your host, run:
    adb logcat

  2. Then try streaming to the client, try a few times, even if it fails.

  3. Look for a pattern in the log output, then post any relevant lines here

You might find it more convenient to access adb over tcp:
adb shell setprop persist.adb.tcp.port 5555
adb connect x.x.x.x

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Iā€™m running into some issues - mostly because I am very unfamiliar with compiling anything myself. I run Windows, and tried to follow the instructions listed in the EDL Repo but I have no idea how to install / compile EDL. I was able to install Git and Python. I was able to clone the repo and the submodules. But I donā€™t know what to do next. I tried installing UsbDkController but the installers runs and then nothing happens
(so I donā€™t know if it installed or not) and then I also donā€™t know what to do with the uncompiled EDL that I have in a folder. Any chance someone can create a step by step for the steps under Prerequisites? Thank you!

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It took me all evening but I finally got the edl install process to work on Windows 11. @mattmon your instructions on your github repo and files on Google Drive differ a little from those in this post FYI.

Things I had to do to get it to work on Windows

Install git and bash for Windows

From here. While you can probably do this entire process with command prompt, I did so using git bash.

Install libusb-win32 drivers for the device using Zadig

  1. Open and download Zadig.
  2. Plug the device in to power and USB to your PC.
  3. In zadig, click Options > List All Devices.
  4. In the dropdown select the device named Android (given that you do not have another generic Android device plugged in).
  5. In the target driver window select libusb-win32 and then click Replace Driver.
  6. After the driver has successfully installed unplug the deviceā€™s power cable.

Replace libusb-1.0.dll

Iā€™m not sure why it hasnā€™t been fixed given that thereā€™s a closed bug that describes this as the fix, but the copy of libusb-1.0.dll that comes with edl doesnā€™t work on my machine.

  1. Install edl as described for Windows, including installing UsbDk.
  2. Download libusb-1.0.26.7z from this release and unzip it with 7zip.
  3. Navigate to libusb-1.0.26\VS2015\MS64\dll and copy libusb-1.0.dll.
  4. Paste libusb-1.0.dll at edl\edlclient\Windows, overwriting the copy that came with edl.

Copy the rom bin folder into the flash folder

Iā€™m not sure why, but edl on Windows running in bash expects bin\rawprogram.xml to also appear in the flash folder. Just copy (not cut) this folder to the flash folder.

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And right as I was getting ready to transfer my fully kiosk license to this device the screen died. I can still connect via adb and take screenshots that show the home screen my HA dashboard but the screen just displays a flash of the boot logo and then black. What an infuriating massive fucking waste of time. Hopefully this one is just a dud and Lenovo or the seller will replace it.

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Thanks! I was getting absolutely nowhere trying to make this work via WSL2ā€¦ edl would just go forever and not notice that I had plugged the dang thing in.

additonal notes:

  • I needed to connect through a USB hub on a surface laptop studio for the lenovo device to be recognized.

  • I also needed to install the driver via Zadig a second time (it was called QUSB_BULK) after booting with both volume keys depressed.

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Hi

Thnx for the image and works very nice.

2 questions.

  • I see that the screen timeout you only can standby only 30 min, and would set it to off.
  • The device on my network is named kingston, is this somewhere to change?
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@mattmon most things worked pretty well for me- however:
adb push extras/wallpaper.png /sdcard/Downloads/
gives me this error:

adb: error: failed to copy 'extras/wallpaper.png' to 'C:/Program Files/Git/sdcard/Downloads/': remote secure_mkdirs failed: No such file or directory

Also, for the horizontal versus vertical splash screen, it was unclear if the horizontal one can be added after flashing. It appears not-

.\adb.exe shell mv /system/media/bootanimation.zip.horiz /system/media/bootanimation.zip
mv: bad '/system/media/bootanimation.zip.horiz': No such file or directory