Tinkering with Asus Tinker Board 2S

[Subbu68]

Had posted earlier to get suggestions for a DAC as my iFi Nano DSD now some 7 yrs old seemed to be misbehaving. Got it working. That turned my curiosity to make a streamer with RPi and a HAT DAC. Members such as @mbhangui , @Kannan had urged me to try it in my earlier thread.

Now RPi is rarer than rarest metal, turned to look for alternatives. Stumbled upon ASUS TINKER BOARD (TB) A few models on Asus website to confuse. After a lot of research decided to burn a little money on it. Went in for a TB 2S. S models have 16GB eMMC on it to flash the OS so it is faster than booting on Micro SD.

Link below for those who like more details.

Tinker Board 2S

ASUS Tinker Board : Industrial Mini IPC , Embedded Arm based SBC ( Single board computer ) ; ASUS IoT The Asus Tinker Board is a new ARM-based single-board computer (SBC) which stands out from the crowd. It’s tiny, affordable, with strong performance, and targeted at the DIY/hobbyist market...

tinker-board.asus.com

Planned to try iFi on TB's USB with Volumio.

Was excited to receive it..Worked on it last afternoon and was in for a shock. Volumio does not support TB 2 series!!! A big disappointment though Volumio's streamer is with a TB in it.

Then tried TB Debian but could not make the default media player to play an album. I could play only one song at a time. I am not adept at running terminal or install new application on Linux, Debian etc. Yet to learn.

So flashed the TB 2S with Android 11. Mounted a 128GB micro SD card with my favorite songs WAV and FLAC files.

Fired it up with iFi DAC connected to TB2S USB 3.2 port with a USB 3.2 type A to type B cable. No issue to detect the DAC.

Even without Volumio it was so much better with TB2S - iFi combo than PC with iFi feeding Elekit preamp > ACA > Klipsch Heresy IIIs or my little Harman Kardon Nova 2 with analog in from iFi DAC or even BT. YT Music or from the SD card, it beat the PC with iFi DAC.

Seem to hear something more. The soundstage seemed wider. Many unheard nuances in the songs listened to many times earlier were audible now. Or an illusion?

How do I get to my NAS with Android 11 on it? No Playstore. The TB calls itself a tablet. But cannot see much of the options and apps I can see on a Samsung tab we have.

 

[jaiwant_alex]

This is interesting and could open up a new way of playing streaming sources with Android apps like Radio Paradise, Idagio, or even the Android version of Apple music. Could you elaborate on 1) how you are interfacing with the Asus ie can you control it wirelessly through another Android device 2) Is the output getting resampled to 48Khz like most android devices ?

 

[Subbu68]

This is interesting and could open up a new way of playing streaming sources with Android apps like Radio Paradise, Idagio, or even the Android version of Apple music. Could you elaborate on 1) how you are interfacing with the Asus ie can you control it wirelessly through another Android device 2) Is the output getting resampled to 48Khz like most android devices ?

I am still getting around this Tinker. have not dabbled into unknown frontiers other than converting a Win 8 laptop to Chromebook. That is also exchanged for a new laptop two years back. So I am a plain Jane. Not sure how I can control it with another Android device. Could you elaborate?

With the FLAC files from SD card on Tinker I find the iFi DAC indicating 88/96kHz with it's LED turning Yellow. It used to be Green (44/48kHz) with the laptop or my Pixel 6 phone. So I presume it is outputting unsampled. Can it? But definitely I can perceive better sound than using PC.

In 2020 had converted an old laptop into a Chromebook and that was much easier than this Tinker on Android 11. No Playstore on Tinker (so was Chromebook).

On Older TB it was possible to run ADB and install Playstore. That is not even connecting to TB 2 . Volumio runs on TB but not TB 2. Had downloaded APK for ARM 64 of VLC Player and installed it but the sound was crap compared to the in-built player.

 

[jaiwant_alex]

Not sure how I can control it with another Android device. Could you elaborate?

So for example, my RPI is running Jriver, and I can control playback of local files etc with an Android app on another device. Also, i can interface with the Raspbian OS on RPI either through command line using SSH or through GUI using VNC viewer from another Android device or any laptop. My question was how you are managing the same with the Tinker.

 

[Subbu68]

So for example, my RPI is running Jriver, and I can control playback of local files etc with an Android app on another device. Also, i can interface with the Raspbian OS on RPI either through command line using SSH or through GUI using VNC viewer from another Android device or any laptop. My question was how you are managing the same with the Tinker.

I understood what you said earlier but am a newbie to SBC and their control etc. Would like a pointer to apps that can communicate between two android devices. TB is running Android 11 but a skeleton version I would say. No Playstore in it. I have virtually no experience running commands etc. (Only the DOS some 32 years back).

 

[Kannan]

@Subbu68
https://github.com/topics/asus-tinkerboard

Check these out

 

[jaiwant_alex]

I understood what you said earlier but am a newbie to SBC and their control etc. Would like a pointer to apps that can communicate between two android devices. TB is running Android 11 but a skeleton version I would say. No Playstore in it. I have virtually no experience running commands etc. (Only the DOS some 32 years back).

I have never run Android on an SBC before, not sure how one would proceed. I guess this is a case for the experts like @mbhangui , @Kannan to step in and throw some light !

 

[bobbyprajan]

Things would be easier if you install the Tinker OS (Debian) on it and manually installed LMS / MPD

Link for the download is here

 

[Subbu68]

Things would be easier if you install the Tinker OS (Debian) on it and manually installed LMS / MPD

Have to learn how to do it. A newbie. Expected Volumio to work but should have read closely and got TB S not TB 2S.

 

[jmascreen]

Have to learn how to do it. A newbie. Expected Volumio to work but should have read closely and got TB S not TB 2S.

Its pretty straightforward steps like apt install mpd mpc mplayer alsa-utils and then vi /etc/mpd.conf and add your dac under alsa config and the path to music library

 

[Subbu68]

Its pretty straightforward steps like apt install mpd mpc mplayer alsa-utils and then vi /etc/mpd.conf and add your dac under alsa config and the path to music library

More terms to learn...

It's interesting.

 

[mbhangui]

More terms to learn...

It's interesting.

Subbu, The most interesting player is mpd. You have to install mpd on the tinker board. once you do that you can install any client that speaks to mpd on your android, windows laptop, ios device, linux laptop. I was on vacation and back just today and missed all your posts. I wish hifivision had a chat feature. I see that you have put android instead of debian. That will limit your choices to apps available on android. Also you can't install something like mpd on android. Android will also play your music at a fixed sample rate. With Linux the whole world would have been available at your feet, though there is some learning curve involved here.

 

[jaiwant_alex]

The most interesting player is mpd

Have used mpd and can second this. It's the cleanest , lightest, most stable and versatile player on Linux. There is a bit of a learning curve, but it is not a big challenge. There are loads of tutorials on the internet which can help you set up.

 

[Subbu68]

Subbu, The most interesting player is mpd. You have to install mpd on the tinker board. once you do that you can install any client that speaks to mpd on your android, windows laptop, ios device, linux laptop. I was on vacation and back just today and missed all your posts. I wish hifivision had a chat feature. I see that you have put android instead of debian. That will limit your choices to apps available on android. Also you can't install something like mpd on android. Android will also play your music at a fixed sample rate. With Linux the whole world would have been available at your feet, though there is some learning curve involved here.

Have used mpd and can second this. It's the cleanest , lightest, most stable and versatile player on Linux. There is a bit of a learning curve, but it is not a big challenge. There are loads of tutorials on the internet which can help you set up.

It is not difficult to reflash the TB to Debian. It is already done. The media player included is simply a crap - like old Lotus 123 you can just open one file at a time. No playlist or album or anything.

Anyways, @bobbyprajan was helping me to install LMS. That failed last night due to dependency issue with perl.

Bobby has sent another script to try on. Would try mpd also.

 

[mbhangui]

It is not difficult to reflash the TB to Debian. It is already done. The media player included is simply a crap - like old Lotus 123 you can just open one file at a time. No playlist or album or anything.

If you install mpd, you don't require any media player to be used from TB. Advantage of MPD is that it is the lowest latency player out there. You just need to do the following
1) Decide where your music lies (IIRC, it is on a NAS device that you have).
2) Create config on your TB to automount the NAS device whenever the NAS is avialable online
3a) install mpd
3b) configure mpd to use your NAS device for the music
4) Install any media player that works with MPD on your mac mini (cantata preferable), android (many choices here). Windows (choices here). Linux (cantata). IOS (max mpd player).

Anyways, @bobbyprajan was helping me to install LMS. That failed last night due to dependency issue with perl.

Bobby has sent another script to try on. Would try mpd also.

Advantage of LMS is the skins and it will bridge your chromcast, chromecast audio, android tv too as endpoint devices. LMS also works like mpd. The audio renderer and the media player are separate. The only downside I found was the hiccups with first time building of library. It takes much longer than mpd and few perl depedency problems during initial setup. Once you set it up, You can use the web browser as a media player

 

[mbhangui]

It is not difficult to reflash the TB to Debian. It is already done. The media player included is simply a crap - like old Lotus 123 you can just open one file at a time. No playlist or album or anything.

This is just one of the kind of media player interface available if you install mpd.


Let us tackle the two issues that you have one by one. You decide which you want to go for first. Since you are a first time user, let's not do multiple things together.

1) installing configuring mpd on TB and some media player on your device that you will use to control playback on TB.
2) installing configuring lms. Once you select a skin, you will get everything including a media player

To avoid dependency problem the first thing that is needed is to know is that where is your linux distribution being pulled from. You need to run two commands as below on the terminal and paste the output for us to see.

cat /etc/os-release
cat /etc/apt/sources.list

 

[jaiwant_alex]

I would also recommend installing Diet Pi as the OS, it's the 'kindest' distribution for those who are new to Linux. Important packages like mpd, raspotify etc will be easy to install and get up and running on Dietpi

 

[Subbu68]

I would also recommend installing Diet Pi as the OS, it's the 'kindest' distribution for those who are new to Linux. Important packages like mpd, raspotify etc will be easy to install and get up and running on Dietpi

I doubt if it would install. dietpi download is available for Tinker Board only and not Tinker Board 2. The hardware is different in the two and TB is older version.

Not sure if it will install even on TB R2.0 that is on same SoC as TB, the former being a revision with a slightly enhanced RK3288 on it.

I maybe wrong.

 

[mbhangui]

I doubt if it would install. dietpi download is available for Tinker Board only and not Tinker Board 2. The hardware is different in the two and TB is older version.

Not sure if it will install even on TB R2.0 that is on same SoC as TB, the former being a revision with a slightly enhanced RK3288 on it.

I maybe wrong.

The problem with SOC without any community support (like Tinker board) is that the OS is always behind something like RPI which has a solid community behind it. e.g. Asus is still running Debian 10 (buster) on tinker board and is almost 2 years behind RPI. Now dietpi is not a OS like debian. It is a set of scripts and programs packaged with the original OS. To make dietpi work on tinker board 2, one will have to download a 2 years old images to make it work with TB. Even if you manage to somehow install an older image one will face the following issue

Let;s say you are now going to install logitech media server or music player daemon. The software available today have been updated to use the latest library available as of today. So if you install mpd, lms, etc you will most probably hit dependency problems because the OS is 2 years old with lot of the libraries 2 years old, but mpd, lms, etc are as of today expecting the latest libraries. This is the reason I asked for the content of the file /etc/apt/sources.list. I'm pretty sure it will be pulling software for 2 years old buster instead of the current bullseye debian distribution.

This can be fixed only by ASUS by releasing their SOC for the latest linux kernel or mainlining their SOC code. Most of these hardware companies don't have software engineers who are kernel developers and hence this situation.

 

[Subbu68]

The problem with SOC without any community support (like Tinker board) is that the OS is always behind something like RPI which has a solid community behind it. e.g. Asus is still running Debian 10 (buster) on tinker board and is almost 2 years behind RPI. Now dietpi is not a OS like debian. It is a set of scripts and programs packaged with the original OS. To make dietpi work on tinker board 2, one will have to download a 2 years old images to make it work with TB. Even if you manage to somehow install an older image one will face the following issue

Let;s say you are now going to install logitech media server or music player daemon. The software available today have been updated to use the latest library available as of today. So if you install mpd, lms, etc you will most probably hit dependency problems because the OS is 2 years old with lot of the libraries 2 years old, but mpd, lms, etc are as of today expecting the latest libraries. This is the reason I asked for the content of the file /etc/apt/sources.list. I'm pretty sure it will be pulling software for 2 years old buster instead of the current bullseye debian distribution.

This can be fixed only by ASUS by releasing their SOC for the latest linux kernel or mainlining their SOC code. Most of these hardware companies don't have software engineers who are kernel developers and hence this situation.

Manavendra you explained the situation that I was reading in bits and pieces on the net clearly.

At work now . once back home and ran the errands for the day, i will run the command you sent and post the result.

New to SBCs and learnt that it's not like Win and in a hard way.

TB (S) of 2017 has Debian 10 V3 while TB 2 (S) of 2020 has Deb 10 V2 !!!. Developed perhaps depending on demand. TB 2 seems to be made for industry while TB for hobbyists. TB 2 S 4GB was cheaper by $30 than TB S R2.0 2GB or so from a local vendor and just jumped at it