Giuseppe "IT9YBG" Grasso Saves an Old Android Set-Top Box From Landfill — and Puts an SDR Online
Long abandoned by the manufacturer on Android 4, this set-top box lives a new life as a web-connected SDR base station.
Radio ham Giuseppe "IT9YBG" Grasso has found a new use for an outdated Android TV set-top box, replacing its operating system and turning it into a network-connected base station for radio reception.
"[I have been] installing Armbian 20.10 Bullseye (with Linux 5.9.0) on an old A95X Android TV Box," Grasso explains of the project. "Everything went well. Afterwards I installed OpenwebRx Plus with [an] RTL-SDR V.3 dongle."
The Nexbox A95X set-top box was originally launched as a way to run Android-based apps on a connected TV, and features the Amlogic S805 system-on-chip. As time has gone on, though, the software — a custom version of Android 4.4, built atop the Linux 3.10.33 kernel — has lost support for the latest versions of many streaming apps, leaving the hardware adrift.
Rather than seeing it go to landfill, Grasso replaced the stock Android operating system on his A95X with Armbian — a customized version of Debian Linux built for Arm-based single-board computers. Once upgraded, the device became a general-purpose Linux box — and a host for an RTL-SDR software-defined radio dongle, providing access over the network through OpenwebRX Plus.
"Now my SDR receiver is online, so I replaced my Raspberry Pi 3," Grasso explains, with the dongle attaching to one of the box's USB ports originally designed for external storage or USB flash drives. "The performance of this Amlogic S805 is exceptional, I was very surprised."
More details on the project, including links to guides on replacing the OS on your own A95X set-top box, are available on Grasso's blog.