H96 Max X3 or any Amlogic S905x3 TV Boxes may not seem special at all. However, they are actually very versatile. Apart from using as a cheap emulator for classic game consoles such as SNES, Game Boy etc using Emuelec, it can also be made into decent OpenWRT router. With its stronger encryption performance, it is actually a cheaper and a better alternative compared to Raspberry 4.
S905x3
aes-128-cbc 187342.31k 569070.57k 1097803.43k 1441047.89k 1590397.61k
aes-256-cbc 173451.30k 460776.90k 764922.79k 927822.85k 988708.86k 993421.99k
Raspberry Pi 4
aes-128-cbc 62939.79k 76141.21k 82262.20k 84452.51k 83872.20k 85103.02k
aes-256-cbc 50539.15k 59910.77k 62406.19k 64276.14k 64574.81k 64840.09k
(figures borrowed from https://www.reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/cf2c32/raspberry_pi_4_4gb_openvpn_performance_tested/ as I don't own a rpi 4)
Here is how I transform mine into an OpenWRT router. Before, getting any further, it is important to note this tutorial uses software vlan to split the single LAN port for WAN and LAN. Hence, you need a managed switch for this tutorial to work.
S905x3 is not officially supported by OpenWRT, hence you need to use a forked version such as https://github.com/ophub/amlogic-s9xxx-openwrt in this article.
1) Download a suitable image for S905x3 from https://github.com/ophub/amlogic-s9xxx-openwrt, such as
openwrt_s905x3_v5.10.26.TF_2021.04.10.0350.img.gz (for running from an external drive)
or
openwrt_s905x3_v5.4.108_2021.04.11.0845.img.gz (if intended to install onto emmc)
2) Extract the image file and write this file either to a SD card or a USB 2 pen drive using an utility such as Rufus
3) Open the /boot/uEnv.txt file, and point the FDT to the dtb file for your hardware, e.g. meson-sm1-h96-max-x3.dtb for H96 Max x3. Possible dtb files can be found in /boot/dtb/amlogic
LINUX=/zImage
INITRD=/uInitrd
FDT=/dtb/amlogic/meson-sm1-h96-max-x3.dtb
APPEND=root=LABEL=ROOTFS console=ttyAML0,115200n8 console=tty0 no_console_suspen
d consoleblank=0 fsck.fix=yes fsck.repair=yes net.ifnames=0 cgroup_enable=cpuset
cgroup_memory=1 cgroup_enable=memory swapaccount=1
/boot/dtb/amlogic# ls
meson-a1-ad401.dtb meson-gxl-s905d-phicomm-n1-thresh.dtb
meson-axg-s400.dtb meson-gxl-s905d-phicomm-n1.dtb
meson-g12a-gt1-mini-a.dtb meson-gxl-s905d-sml5442tw.dtb
meson-g12a-rockpi-w2.dtb meson-gxl-s905w-p281.dtb
meson-g12a-sei510.dtb meson-gxl-s905w-tx3-mini.dtb
meson-g12a-tanix-tx5max.dtb meson-gxl-s905x-hwacom-amazetv.dtb
meson-g12a-u200.dtb meson-gxl-s905x-khadas-vim.dtb
meson-g12a-x96-max-rmii.dtb meson-gxl-s905x-libretech-cc-v2.dtb
meson-g12a-x96-max.dtb meson-gxl-s905x-libretech-cc.dtb
meson-g12b-a311d-khadas-vim3.dtb meson-gxl-s905x-nexbox-a95x.dtb
meson-g12b-gtking-pro.dtb meson-gxl-s905x-p212.dtb
meson-g12b-gtking.dtb meson-gxm-beelink-gt1.dtb
meson-g12b-odroid-n2-plus.dtb meson-gxm-khadas-vim2.dtb
meson-g12b-odroid-n2.dtb meson-gxm-nexbox-a1.dtb
meson-g12b-s922x-khadas-vim3.dtb meson-gxm-octopus-planet.dtb
meson-g12b-ugoos-am6.dtb meson-gxm-q200-n1.dtb
meson-gxbb-kii-pro.dtb meson-gxm-q200.dtb
meson-gxbb-mxq-pro-plus.dtb meson-gxm-q201.dtb
meson-gxbb-nanopi-k2.dtb meson-gxm-rbox-pro.dtb
meson-gxbb-nexbox-a95x.dtb meson-gxm-s912-libretech-pc.dtb
meson-gxbb-odroidc2.dtb meson-gxm-vega-s96.dtb
meson-gxbb-p200.dtb meson-gxm-wetek-core2.dtb
meson-gxbb-p201.dtb meson-sm1-h96-max-x3-oc.dtb
meson-gxbb-vega-s95-meta.dtb meson-sm1-h96-max-x3.dtb
meson-gxbb-vega-s95-pro.dtb meson-sm1-hk1box-vontar-x3-oc.dtb
meson-gxbb-vega-s95-telos.dtb meson-sm1-hk1box-vontar-x3.dtb
meson-gxbb-wetek-hub.dtb meson-sm1-khadas-vim3l.dtb
meson-gxbb-wetek-play2.dtb meson-sm1-odroid-c4.dtb
meson-gxl-s805x-libretech-ac.dtb meson-sm1-sei610.dtb
meson-gxl-s805x-p241.dtb meson-sm1-x96-max-plus-100m.dtb
meson-gxl-s905d-libretech-pc.dtb meson-sm1-x96-max-plus-oc.dtb
meson-gxl-s905d-p230.dtb meson-sm1-x96-max-plus.dtb
meson-gxl-s905d-p231.dtb
4) If it is a SD Card, insert it to the box's SD slot. If it is an USB drive, plug the drive into the device USB 2 port.
5) Hold the rest button of the box while plugging in the power supply, the release the button after approximately 10 seconds. With H96 Max X3, the reset button is locate inside the AV jack.
6) The device should boot into OpenWRT from external storage rather than its internal emmc drive.
7) Once successfully boot into OpenWRT, edit its /etc/config/network file to split its eth0 interface into two vlan interfaces, e.g. vi /etc/config/network
config interface 'wan'
option ifname 'eth0.5'
option proto 'dhcp'
option peerdns '0'
list dns '9.9.9.9'
list dns '8.8.8.8'
config interface 'lan '
option type 'bridge'
option ifname 'eth0.10'
option proto 'static'
option netmask '255.255.255.0'
option ip6assign '60'
option ipaddr '192.168.1.1'
8) Configure the managed switch as below:
port 1 => truck (for the TV Box LAN)
port 2 => Untag for VLAN ID 5 (for WAN)
port 3 => Untag for VLAN ID 10 (for LAN)
e.g.
9) Reboot the TV Box using instructions in (5)
10) Plug the TV box to port 1 (trunk), your WAN connection to port 2 (vlan 5) and your computer to port 3 (vlan 10).
11) The DHCP should be on by default, i.e. you computer should have assigned an IP within the 192.168.1.0/24 subnite. However, if it didn't get an IP automatically, you need to manually give your computer a static IP within the 192.168.1.0/24 network, e.g. 192.168.1.50
12) Log onto the your TV Box/OpenWRT router by going to https://192.168.1.1 using your favorite browser. The default username is root, and password is password.
13) Change language. The default language is Chinese, and hence you may want to change it back to English. You can find the option as shown below:-
14) If you are happy with the setup, you may want to make OpenWRT as your primary system. You can install OpenWRT to the emmc drive of the box by running
openwrt-install
