Piaratebox on Android TV box with 128GB storage

Hi,
After reading a recent post about running Piratebox on an Android TV box, I bought a new Android TV box just to run Piratebox.
My box is a stand alone unit, rather than a USB stick style package, and has an external aerial and is the cheapest unit, of this style, that I could find on Ebay. Cost under £20.
The box was set up and had Piratebox installed within minutes. No problems.

My box has a micro SD style slot and 4 USB slots. I know that the micro SD specification has an upper limit of 32GB, but I had a spare 128GB card, so, out of curiosity, I plugged it in and it was recognised by the Android 4.4 operating system.

The title of this post is accurate, since my Piratebox is running happily with 128GB storage, but misleading because it could take a lot more storage. As another experiment, in the 4 USB slots, I plugged in 3x 64GB and 1x 16GB memory sticks. Once again, recognised by Android, and not a maximum, just the most that I had available.

Finally, The specs don't mention Bluetooth, but Android shows it in settings.

Hi Ultrix

I'm glad you got your Android TV box working and it sounds like there's plenty of room for files.

I haven't got a battery option sorted for mine yet, as I've been a little lazy.

I have a question about the external storage options, my "Enjoy TV" is an older model, with only an SD card, but at the time I couldn't locate an SD card to try so I tried a USB flash drive, sadly I couldn't get USB storage to work, so I'm using the internal storage, which is limited to 4GB.

Did you try USB storage? If so did you do anything special to get it to work?

Were the settings easy enough to change to get the microSD to work? I still haven't located a spare SD card yet so I haven't tried. I may be forced to ~~*shock horror*~~ ...buy one. :-)

and lastly are you getting a decent range on yours? Mine seems to drop off about 50 meters (LOS).

Thanks.

Hi DeadEyesOpened,
I bought ny TV box on Ebay and while I was waiting for it to be delivered from China, I formatted a 32GB SD card and downloaded the Android PirateBox App on to it.
When my box arrived, I plugged in the SD card and connected a USB mouse and keyboard and plugged in a flat screen tv using the HDMI cable. There wasn't much that needed setting up. I had to choose a desktop, out of a choice of 2, then set the date and time. The box loses the date and time when the power is switched off.
The PirateBox App was very easy to install, just like on an Android phone. after installing, I just set it to start when the box is switched on.
When I had got PirateBox running, I began to experiment. I replaced the 32GB SD card with a 128GB card . Looking in the storage settings, it showed up as 125GB, which is what I would expect after allowing for formatting. My box has 4 external USB ports. 2 were being used by the mouse and keyboard, so I plugged two 64GB memory sticks into the remaining ports and they showed up in the storage settings. Running the box as a PirateBox without a mouse and keyboard, would give 4 empty USB ports. Using 4x 64GB memory sticks and 128GB SD card would give 384GB storage. This probably isn't a physical limit, it's just what I had available.
A final word about USB ports. Android settings showed my box had 6 USB ports, numbered 0 to 5, but there are only 4 external ports.

About signal range. My box is running Piratebox and is sitting on a first floor window sill. It has an external aerial as a standard. An external aerial was the most important specification, when I was looking for a TV box. In a simple test, I estimate a signal range of at least 75 metres, which is better than my previous tests with PirateBox on an IBM Thinkpad T60 laptop and a LG P360 Android phone. I will do more tests when I get a portable source of power for my TV box.

Finally, I also haven't done anything about a battery option yet, but I've had a couple of ideas;
1) I have an estate car which has 2x 12volt power sockets, I would like to try my box through one of these using a 12volt to 5volt converter. I could put the box on the car roof for extra range (when stationary).

2) I have a new unused 12volt motorcycle battery. I would like to try my box through this using a 12volt to 5volt converter.