Craig CVD601 Android stick

I got a Craig CVD601 Android stick at the XS Cargo closing sale for $30. Android devices which are designed to be hooked up to a TV interested me, but I didn't have enough faith in the idea to actually order one. This was cheap and a good deal even compared to ordering from China, so I decided to try it out.

The device came with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and worked, but the WiFi is terrible. At the same location, my laptop gets a good signal but the CVD601 can only occasionally connect with a terrible transfer rate. Best results were on channel 2, but even that was not usable. I created an access point on my laptop, but that's not a permanent solution.

Rooting

I quickly decided that rooting is necessary, because I don't want to keep running into obstacles where I can't do something because I don't have root access. This wasted a lot of time because various methods I tried didn't work. Some rely on security bugs which were fixed in earlier versions, or are designed to only work with particular devices. Eventually I found Cydia Impactor, which rooted the device quickly and easily. I used Impactor_0.9.14.zip, with MD5 162761dcbe0b2c0ac08cfb86dea8d715. Then I manually installed SuperSU.

After rooting, I edited /system/default.prop, removing tethering and developer_options from ro.wmt.ui.settings_remove to enable those settings. ADB access was available before, but this makes some things more convenient. I will also enable Ethernet settings when I get the USB adapter. Note that /system is normally mounted read-only, so it needs to be remounted via "mount -o remount,rw /system" before making changes. When done with  changes, use "mount -o remount,ro /system" to make it read-only again.

Reverse tethering

Reverse tethering provides better network performance than wireless, but I had too much trouble getting it started, and I don't recommend wasting time on this. First, tethering needs to be enabled. If the option is greyed out, enable USB debugging first. Then, on the Android side, the rndis0 interface needs to be reconfigured. I never got "netcfg rndis0 dhcp" working, so I had to configure manually, with ifconfig and route. Windows contains the driver but requires an INF file. I used Microsoft's template customized with USB\VID_18D1&PID_0003.

Google Play

I also decided I had to install Google Play Store, because many apps are only available there. It's possible to download APK files and then install them, but that makes things more complicated. If simply installed like any other app, Play Store runs fine at first but crashes as soon as I try to download anything. After that, it keeps crashing on startup. This is because it doesn't have permission to install apps. The solution is installing it as a system app, by copying its APK to the /system/app folder with chmod 644. The app will also crash if its version is incompatible with the version of Google Play Services that is already installed. I installed FirmwareInstall/GoogleApp/system/app/Vending.apk from cvd601_602_firmware4.1.zip available on the Craig site. Then it updated both the store and the services app to the latest version, and everything worked fine after that.

Internals and the WiFi issue

Due to the WiFi problem and my curiosity I decided to open up the device:

 Here is a closeup of the RTL8188ETV based WiFi module. It is a USB device, but with 3.3V power. You can find PDF documentation for similar devices online. The pins below and to the left connect to the antenna. Their top narrow part is spring loaded.

Here is the antenna, note the indentations from where the pins connected. The left black part of the sticker has no metal underneath, and the right part is one solid sheet of metal. Antenna and ground are shorted together, with only that little slot between them. I wonder what kind of antenna this is, and how it works. RF seems like magic sometimes.

After experimenting with various wires connected to the pins, I found I got the best results with two quarter-wavelength wires placed 90 degrees apart. Then I cut the sticker in half lengthwise and glued the parts back on 90 degrees apart. This gave me a reliable connection to the router which was good enough for the web at least, but it didn't work the next day. Then it worked again after I squeezed the device near where the pins are. Maybe the pins don't make good contact? In any case, I don't want to waste more time on this, so I'll wait until I get the USB Ethernet adapter.

Kernel source and config

The 3.0.8 Linux kernel for WM8850 is available on GitHub. It includes binary modules from WonderMedia. The configuration file can be extracted from the kernel on the device. Here is the kernel config for your convenience. The kernels in the boot image, recovery image and cvd601_602_firmware4.1.zip are identical.