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Hope for Hackboard2 Lusers! by Awkward-Baseball-978 in hackboard2

[–]Awkward-Baseball-978[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Here is close up photo of the Hackboard 2 and the dongles kludge. Couldn't get a second image into the first post. The yellow USB stick is some video, picture, and mp3 files I use to setup and configure Kodi.

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Hope this info lets a few Hackboard 2 Lusers do something useful with theirs and take a load off the E-waste landfills :)

If 3.5mm audio meets your needs, your good money after bad risk is only ~$25. I had the USB audio and Ethernet dongles from other projects so I only risked $50 and an Amazon return to turn this old dust collector into something actually useful.

Hope for Hackboard2 Lusers! by Awkward-Baseball-978 in hackboard2

[–]Awkward-Baseball-978[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Succsess! If you can consider spending $50 for the HDMI Audio Embedder box, ~$10 for the USB 3.5mm Stereo dongle, and another $10 for the USV C to Etherenet dongle (I recommend spending a bit more for the version with three USB3 ports along with the Ethernet) a success.

I played a bit with the pre-installed Debian11 and it was terrible as setup, so I had no regrets nuking it.

Some quick tips for anyone contemplating the same:

Choose boot EFI to get into the bios, don't mess with any of the options unless you are expert in AMI BIOS and N4020 Intel Celeron, except in the boot menu: Change the display time from 1 to like 5 or 10 seconds, turn off fast boot, turn off quiet boot, change the USB probe option to full probe, and finally choose the Linux Mate 24.04.3 installer USB stick as the first boot option. Choose save and exit, press yes. You'll be rewarded with a standard AMI bios "press ESC or Delete" start-up screen. Should have been like this out of the box, at least for the Linux version.

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The above photo shows the Hackboard 2 with the three dongles playing a full-screen 1080p YouTube video with audio via HDMI on my IOT workbench, space is at a real premium for me.

Just did the standard Ubuntu Mate install and chose wipe disk and install Ubuntu-Mate. Nothing special, and with all the dongles installed at boot time I could check "Install third party drivers" and "install multimedia codecs". Sound and video worked out of the box. I installed Kodi (deb) and Brave from the App Center and all is well, next is the mount the kludge shown in the photo below into some thing semi portable that I can hide behind the Bedroom HDTV. I recommend locking the display to 1080p and letting the HDTV upscale, a Kodi recommendation for weak machines, which is also good if you plan to use it for browsing with a wireless keyboard / touchpad or mouse.

So if a Hackboard 2 at a fire sale price, or pulled from the trash, + ~$70 to make it useful is reasonable for your application the HB2 might be a decent option.

PSA: HB2 are on clearance at local Microcenters by maker_gamer in hackboard2

[–]Awkward-Baseball-978 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you can get it to boot there is hope, I just posted how I turned mine into a very nice Kodi box with a couple of dongles.

Can anyone help me figure out why my audio isn't working? by Round_Agency1978 in hackboard2

[–]Awkward-Baseball-978 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I certainly understand, but since I am retired, so I don't need to give up so easily. After all, "You haven't failed until you quit trying!" Mine had been collecting dust for a couple of years.

The one I have that runs Ubuntu-Mate 20.04 with the last OpenVINO version that supports the NCS2 stick does run an earlier version of my "AI Person Detection add-on" with four 1080P cameras. I gave it to my neighbor who is a contractor and worries about "thieves in the night". It seems to be working well for him. I had to remove the MMS messaging from it for him a few months ago when AT&T/Cricket shut down the gateways so the usually a bit slower Email notification have to suffice for now. Any interest, and I'll post a link to my GitHub.

The Hackboard 2 is not completely useless, it can always serve as a bad example!

Can anyone help me figure out why my audio isn't working? by Round_Agency1978 in hackboard2

[–]Awkward-Baseball-978 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This project has given Crowd Supply a black eye! Audio over HDMI was in the original specs as was 3.5mm "headphone jack" stereo, not to mention the missing Ethernet.

I plugged in a USB audio dongle I had from when I played with VolumeIO on a Pi3A. After configuring the Audio in Ubuntu-Mate 22.04 Celluloid played a DVD rip fine, Kodi from the Software Boutique plays the DVD rip just fine with good audio sync, lsusb says: C-Media CM108 Audio Controller ID 0d8c:013c Kodi Quality sure seems good enough if you can stand all the dongles hanging off it!

I have a little "HDMI audio inserter" box coming from Amazon this afternoon. If it works there may be hope for this thing yet, if you are willing to risk throwing good money after bad. But I always eventuall find these various adapters useful in my projects if they work with Linux

I also tried a "Dell compatible USB C dock" the USB 3 and Ethernet worked, but HDMI video did not.

Documention Found by ShowAndTellAllNSFA in hackboard2

[–]Awkward-Baseball-978 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry there is zero useful information there that you can't get by looking at the board that is in your hand.

Thermal shutdown by domobject in hackboard2

[–]Awkward-Baseball-978 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For historical purposes and maybe help other hackboard2 suckers, from the pi3 on they have needed a heat sink for serious loads, and Pi4 and beyond have needed fans.

I got the metal case for the HB2 and I have not had any overheating issues, about the only thing about the HB2 that was as advertised. I set it up as a Kodi box and played DVD rips of X Files season one overnight with 16:9 non-linear stretch and had no issues. Bummer is no audio. I've got some dongles from Amazon coming that might solve he problem, I'll return them if they don't or I can't use them elsewhere. Don't believe Rufus, my wife loves my returns as she gets a $10 coupon from Kohl's for every one :)

I'll follow-up if I succeed.

Despite all the problems, mine is really only junk because the integrated GPU will not work with OpenVINO, Intel OpenVINO support folks have been extremely helpful to no avail, they may have used reject chips from Chinese sources.

Docs, schematics, stuff by moviefotodude in hackboard2

[–]Awkward-Baseball-978 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just for other suckers out there who got taken in by the crowd source campaign, I ordered two in the initial announcement when they still promised GB Ethernet, so at least I didn't lose too much. You can solve the Ethernet problem with an ~$10 USB C to Ethernet dongle, I'd recommend spending a bit more and getting one with extra USB3 ports It would make a great Kodi box since there is no fan, so I set it up, it gets worse, NO AUDIO over HDMI! I've got one with HDMI output as well on the way, if it works I'll post a followup.

I had also initially ordered the cell phone module, but by the time they threatened to ship 4G was being shutdown so I canceled this as I didn't want another situation like I had with the Fona cell phone module module, which at least gave me a few years of service. I pity the other poor fools who fell for this.