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 Sunvell T95x I picked up refurbishesd on Amazon for $21 shipped. It sports a Quad Core Amlogic S905x @ 2GHz and 1 GB of DDR3 RAM.
Things You Will Need
- A microSD card at least 8 GB https://amzn.to/36CpShC | https://amzn.to/3CXJngt | https://amzn.to/3JqyxSP
Downloads and Flashing to MicroSD
- Download Manjaro ARM Download | Alternate
- Download Balena Etcher Download
- Run Balena Etcher
- Burn Manjaro image to microSD card
- Safely remove microSD and re-insert
- Ignore/close the Windows dialogs to format the inserted microSD card
Configure MicroSD Card for Manjaro
- Open the readable partition of the microSD card in Explorer
- Edit uEnv.ini in a text editor
- Update the FDT line to point to a working .dtb file for your device
# For AML
FDT=/dtbs/amlogic/meson-gxl-s905x-p212.dtb
APPEND=root=LABEL=ROOT_MNJRO rootflags=data=writeback rw console=ttyAML0,115200n8 console=tty0 no_console_suspend consoleblank=0 fsck.fix=yes fsck.repair=yes net.ifnames=0 bootsplash.bootfile=bootsplash-themes/manjaro/bootsplash - Save
- Close
- Update the FDT line to point to a working .dtb file for your device
- Safely remove microSD
- Insert microSD card to Android TV box
Booting to Manjaro for the First Time
- Plug the power adapter into the Android TV box
- If the device has never booted from external storage before the stock Android OS will load
- In Android, navigate to the application drawer > Run Update & Backup
- Select Local > Navigate to the microSD card > aml_autoscript.zip
- Select Update
- The system will reboot and should then begin booting Manjaro from the microSD card
- You should see the Manjaro terminal running startup scripts
- When prompted, set the keyboard layout
- When prompted, input a username and password
- Then when prompted, set a root password
- Confirm the root password
- Follow any additional the prompts to setup
- Manjaro will boot into the desktop environment