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Against my strong objections, my better half purchased an Android TV box from China - and I could not be more dubious of it. I am wanting to connect to it via ADB to sniff around the filesystem before I even give it (highly restricted) Internet access, but I am failing at the first hurdle.

The specific box I am dealing with is an iMetbox M3 running BigDroidOS 2.0.1

(I've played around with ADB and regular cellphones, flashing quite a few, but never a TV Box)

[How] can I connect an Android TV box (which exposes only USB-A USB ports) to ADB?

(I do have an old USB Y Cable, but plugging this in does not produce any information in /var/log/syslog on my system, regardless of which USB port combination I use. I've enabled USB debugging in the TV Box - and I also can't seem to find a way to enable ADB over WIFI - or at least I can't do anything that allows me to connect to tcp port 5555 on the TV box from my computer)

It also appears I can boot the box up to Recovery mode, but still can't see any ADB devices. I do wonder if this might, however be able to provide me with some kind of shell which can help me further my endeavors?

davidgo
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  • Have you tried to open the case and see if the mainboard has additional connectors, not accessible from outside? – Robert Feb 09 '24 at 08:26
  • @Robert I did not get very far when I tried this - there are no visible screws and I did not want to apply excessive force on the edge of the device to try and pop up something (I did not find disassembly instructions on the net). How common is it to have a hidden header on a TV board? – davidgo Feb 09 '24 at 18:18
  • The question about hidden headers may be better answered on a hardware related site, but in my understanding that a lot of devices that are not as compact as smartphones have such headers or at least soldering points that may allow access e.g. to a serial console or something like this. An open case would also allow to check if all the USB port you have are connected to the same chip so if they are supposed to behave equally or if one may be different and may allow to operate as USB client as it is required for adb. – Robert Feb 09 '24 at 19:23

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