Installing Armbian on Allwinner H6 Android TV Box (Tanix TX6)

I love the idea of the Raspberry Pi, but there are some cheaper alternative single board computers that offer a similar experience for a fraction of the cost. While the community support isn't quite what it is for the Pi, there are a ton of projects you can accomplish on the cheap with these little hidden gems. Keep an eye on AliExpress and Amazon and you can find SBC's sporting quad core ARM process with 2-4 GB of RAM for under $30, including a power supply and IR remote control.

The box used in this video is a Tanix TX6 I picked up on Amazon for $22.71 shipped. It sports a quad Core Allwinner H6 @ 1.5GHz and 4 GB of DDR3 RAM.

UPDATED 6/9/20 with direct links to the downloads used in the video

Things You Will Need

Downloads and Flashing to MicroSD

  1. Download Armbian Download
  2. Download u-boot Download
  3. Download Balena Etcher Download
  4. Run Balena Etcher
  5. Burn Armbian image to microSD card
  6. Safely remove microSD and re-insert
  7. Ignore/close the Windows dialogs to format the inserted microSD card
  8. Burn u-boot image to microSD card
  9. Safely remove microSD and re-insert
  10. Ignore/close the Windows dialogs to format the inserted microSD card

Configure MicroSD Card for Armbian

  1. Open the readable partition of the microSD card in Explorer
  2. Edit uEnv.txt in a text editor
    1. Comment out rk-3399 lines by adding #
    2. Uncomment aw h6 lines by removing #
      # aw h6
      FDT=/dtb/allwinner/sun50i-h6-tanix-tx6.dtb
      #APPEND=root=LABEL=ROOTFS rootflags=data=writeback rw console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0 no_console_suspend consoleblank=0 fsck.fix=yes fsck.repair=yes net.ifnames=0 mem=2048M video=HDMI-A-1:e
      APPEND=root=LABEL=ROOTFS rootflags=data=writeback rw console=ttyS0,115200 console=tty0 no_console_suspend consoleblank=0 fsck.fix=yes fsck.repair=yes net.ifnames=0Save
    3. Save
    4. Close
  3. Rename the following files, adding .orig to the filename

    Rename boot.cmd to boot.cmd.orig
    Rename boot.scr to boot.scr.orig
    Rename boot-emmc.cmd to boot-emmc.cmd.orig
    Rename boot-emmc.scr to boot-emmc.scr.orig

  4. Rename the following .aw files, removing the .aw extension

    Rename boot.cmd.aw to boot.cmd
    Rename boot.scr.aw to boot.scr
    Rename boot-emmc.cmd.aw to boot-emmc.cmd
    Rename boot-emmc.scr.aw to boot-emmc.scr

  5. Safely remove microSD
  6. Insert microSD card to Android TV box

Booting to Armbian for the First Time

  1. Plug the power adapter into the Android TV box
  2. You should see the Armbian terminal running startup scripts
  3. When prompted, login with username: root password: 1234
  4. Input a new root password
  5. Confirm the new root password
  6. When prompted, input a username
  7. Input a password for the new user
  8. Confirm the password for the new user
  9. Follow any additional the prompts
  10. Armbian will boot into the desktop environment

Special thanks to the developers and forum members over at Armbian.com for making this possible