Lenovo ThinkSmart View ROM/OS Development

[etch-a-sketch (ben)]

Anyone have a working link for ‘pmos-lenovo-cd-18781y-testing-latest-rootfs.img.xz’ ? seems down to me.
EDIT: i see now the latest are in this location: thinksmart

[etch-a-sketch (ben)]

I’ve installed and rebooted the device. I see the time and a ‘Slide to Unlock’ note. No matter how i slide the screen, I’m not able to unlock it.

[FelixKa (Felix Kaechele)]

@etch-a-sketch

No matter how i slide the screen, I’m not able to unlock it.

Are you sure you installed the latest image (20240422)? Because only that image includes the Himax touchscreen driver.

[etch-a-sketch (ben)]

Ok. Using the current version fixed the issue. Thank you.

[Chillman]

Sorry to bother you again. I’m now getting stuck at two postitions and I do not know, how to move on…

Short background: I’ve been using linux for smaller projects now for years (on raspberry pis, etc. so trouble shooting on debian/ubuntu is something I’m a little more used to). Alpine is new for me.

So I’m trying to setup a voice satellite and localwakeword on the Thinksmart.

I’m following a tutorial from “FutureProofHomes” on youtube (based on wyoming-satellite/docs/tutorial_2mic.md at 962b2f5dc6ed0d8b05671f1ade092407ed6251cd · rhasspy/wyoming-satellite · GitHub) and got the satellite set up and I’m able to record and play my recording using “arecord” and “aplay”. My call for the satellite service looks like this. I would say, that looks good.

First problem:
Home Assistant is not able to find my satellite - even if I try to add it manually (by adding it as a Wyoming integration providing the IP and port…). Do you have an idea what could be wrong?

Second problem:
I’ve tried - following both manuals - to add local wake word detection to the Thinksmart. But I’m immedaitely getting stuck at installing “libopenblas-dev”. If I try to ignore this, the installation (step: “script/setup”) gets stuck with

ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement tflite-runtime-nightly (from versions: none)
ERROR: No matching distribution found for tflite-runtime-nightly

Do you have another link to a tutorial for that?

Have a nice Sunday!

[mrhand]

Hey coming back to this, taking a cue from Felix and batching up replies…

@FelixKa

Functionally, for my devices, it’s the same as downloading the [email protected] from @deadman96385’s XDA Thread and running that through edl qfil.

The one piece I haven’t tracked down yet on the android side is how the mac address gets set, and something I’ve only been able to restore using the RSA tool. By default NetworkManager creates a random but stable mac for each network, so you may notice it gets a new one after a fresh install. I found the macchanger tool which shows the current one and the “permanent” hardware one.

With Android, many people have ended up with the default 000AF58989FF mac from /vendor/firmware/wlan/qca_cld/WCNSS_qcom_cfg.ini. Then multiple devices with the same mac can have some trouble So the RSA is doing “something” additional, possibly writing to nvram outside the usual partitions? There’s 64M of unpartitioned space at the beginning of the drive so maybe they access that early in the boot process.

@FelixKa

It’s possible to replace the devinfo partition with one from another ThinkSmart and just edit the serial number in a hex editor to restore world order.

Haha nice, I found there’s also a fastboot oem set-serial-num option for this.

@FelixKa

But I am starting to feel it’s very likely impossible to irreversibly brick the device by messing with the eMMC storage. But I have yet to test messing with some of the other unique partitions.

I messed the partitions up so bad early on that I couldn’t even get it in EDL mode. Luckily an EDL cable (which has a button that shorts D+ to ground) got me back in business. Still no bricks!

[mrhand]

@Chillman

So should I try reflasing with my dumps and your patch0.xml? I would expect if I’m using all files provided by you it will not boot again.

Those partitions still don’t look quite right. You’re missing userdata which is where pmos is installed so it’s “working” but still has the CRC errors. Depending on how much you’d started updating before taking the backup, you still might want to try the RSA tool for a full fresh install (then take a new dump of that for good measure).

[mrhand]

@Chillman

Home Assistant is not able to find my satellite - even if I try to add it manually (by adding it as a Wyoming integration providing the IP and port…). Do you have an idea what could be wrong?

I do! Try disabling the pmos firewall

@Chillman

I’ve tried - following both manuals - to add local wake word detection to the Thinksmart. But I’m immedaitely getting stuck at installing “libopenblas-dev”.

Yeah there’s a github issue for this one. I started by changing the requirements.txt for wyoming-openwakeword to try tflite-runtime (removing -nightly). Then I went way down the rabbithole attemping to cross-compile it because there’s not a prebuilt version for python 3.12. Eventually I ended up compiling it on the device directly - here’s that wheel file!

[Chillman]

Thanks for the replies, again . Did a backup first, restored with the rescue tool and used your files with the latest versions of Felix’ files.

Again only the lenovo logo for a short moment in stead of booting.

Flashed both of Felix’ files again, still the same behavior. I’m away again, could test further tomorrow or on Saturday.

[mrhand]

@Chillman

Thanks for the replies, again . Did a backup first, restored with the rescue tool and used your files with the latest versions of Felix’ files.

Very welcome! And sorry I was hoping to get a clean view of your default partitions to check if there’s any differences with the himax version. Here’s what I’m thinking:

• Reset with the RSA tool
• Take a backup (optional but gives you a pure stock copy)
• Flash pmos with the regular edl w commands, not my qfil version. This will leave the partitions intact
• Now run gdisk -l to see what we get

Thx!

[Chillman]

Got home a little earlier than expected. Let’s see:

• Reset with the RSA tool 
  

→ Done!

• Take a backup (optional but gives you a pure stock copy) 
  

→ Not done as already done before my initial flash (pure stock).

• Flash pmos with the regular edl w commands, not my qfil version. This will leave the partitions intact 
  

→ Done! Updated using apk update and apk upgrade, installed gptfdisk

• Now run gdisk -l to see what we get 
  

→ sudo gdisk -l /dev/mmcblk0 → Result:

Old ones for comparison:

Lenovo ThinkSmart View ROM/OS Development

So flashing the backup back was successful, reinstalling PMOS, too, so please find below the output of sudo gdisk -l /dev/mmcblk0. Also to you: thanks a lot for explaining what’s currently up and for having a look into the partitioning. [image] Are the errors to worry about?

Lenovo ThinkSmart View ROM/OS Development

So I have just fired up the device and SSH again (maybe tomorrow or on the weekend I’ll be able to start installing wyoming/the satellite) but it still looks the same. Currently I have just used the backup from my dumps, only using patch0.xml from the stock teams android. So should I try reflasing with my dumps and your patch0.xml? I would expect if I’m using all files provided by you it will not boot again. Willing to test again but I need some guidance what a next step would be that has a cha…

That’s quite a difference!

[stone]

i think i hosed my thinksmart trying to put android 11 on it.

it just shows a black screen and will not let me get it back into EDL mode.

when i plug is back in, i just sits at the sahara. see image.

is there anything i can do?

[Chillman]

Did you try Lenovo’s rescue tool?

Lenovo ThinkSmart View ROM/OS Development

Played around with the Lenovo Rescue and Smart Assistant tonight. Mainly to find out whether it would be able to recover a device that lost all of its flash memory. Functionally, for my devices, it’s the same as downloading the [email protected] from @deadman96385’s XDA Thread and running that through edl qfil. It will not restore a corrupted devinfo or any other device-unique partitions, such as DDR, oem, persist, resource, ssd. Only devinfo seems to contain device specific infor…

[stone]

i have no windoze.

mac/linux guy.

[Angelo_Santagata (Angelo)]

Im a little confused, is this thread for a andoid 11 variant for our thinksmart views?

[mattmon]

@Angelo_Santagata

is this thread for a andoid 11 variant for our thinksmart views?

It kinda started out that way. However, most of the recent effort has gone into PMOS (thanks to @FelixKa).

Searching through the other thinksmart thread will probably yield more results regarding A11.

[Angelo_Santagata (Angelo)]

thank you,

Im currently running the android 8.1 rom and find it sluggish and freezes regularly. I may give pmos a go. Is there a android11 thread?

[mattmon]

@Angelo_Santagata

sluggish and freezes regularly

You might have some success troubleshooting this over in the other thread. The community has found work arounds for a lot of the problems people come up against in deploying these.

@Angelo_Santagata

Is there a android11 thread?

I believe there is a discord for a11 on the thinksmart.

[mrhand]

@Chillman

That’s quite a difference!

Indeed! The good news is those are at least the same partitions I have as far as sector size etc. Now to figure out what we’re missing… Looking at a link I got from deadman, the config partition is “needed during display panel initialization”. Sounds promising, mine was fine without it but maybe the himax needs something in there. So let’s try this:

Grab an updated partition config, then pretty much the same as before but we’ll relocate config too. You could also skip the next step and use the files from your backup (rename them from .bin to .img):

edl r cache cache.img
edl r persist persist.img
edl r misc misc.img
edl r config config.img

And now for the moment of truth… being sure to include the new patch0.xml:

edl qfil rawprogram0.xml patch0.xml .

If that doesn’t work we can try leaving almost all the partitions except the large ones like system and vendor.

Good luck!

[Chillman]

Hi again,
I’m really sorry to tell that this did not change anything. Still only the splash screen (lenovo logo) appearing for a short moment of time.

But on the plus side - I had everything set up yesterday and tested your advice from here Lenovo ThinkSmart View ROM/OS Development - #311 by mrhand. Thank’s a lot, that was working great!

I’ve made a step-by-step guide (as I was expecting to have to set it up again ) that I will share here after I have followed it myself to see if everything is working.
But - I would prefer to solve the partitioning topic before following my guide again.

What I did not get working yesterday was HA’s music assistant with voice control. The difference to the guide for the Raspberry Pi was bigger than expected so I stopped half way through.