I have a spare Z69 4K Android TV box here and no use for it at the moment. It served for a few years as exactly what is was sold for, later I flashed Kodi on it for a while and after that it served as a WFH RDP Client for another while with Armbian flashed on it.

The box has a S909X SoC, 3 GB RAM and 32 GB Flash, 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth, LAN, USB and HDMI.

I have a homelab already and I wondered if I could use it as a Zwave or Zigbee gateway maybe. But this does not seem to be possible in “software” only. I thought because we have overlaps in Frequencies between WiFi and Zwave (~860/~900 MHz range) and Zigbee (2.4 GHz range) it might be possible on Software, but I was not able to find such projects.

So I wonder… if you had this thing sitting around being useless, do you have any clever ideas what you would use it for?
It would be sad to scrap it since it is working fine.

  • @TheInsane42English
    1•1 year ago

    I think I’d bring it a thriftstore. (Or donate it to somebody that could use it ;) )

    I’m having the same issue with and RPi 1, 2 and 2 bananapies. (R1 and R2) I’m not sure if the BPi R2 is good enough for a kodi setup, the rest is to light.

    • buediOP
      2•1 year ago

      That’s a good Idea too. If I find nothing else, before it sits here any longer, I will ask around my friends and colleagues and ultimately it will go to a thriftstore. I do not like to throw away stuff that still works, so this is a really good idea. Thank you :-)

      • TOR-anon1English
        1•1 year ago

        I could put it to use ;)

        In seriousness, have you consider using it as a DNS filter (Pi-Hole) or Samba share (32GB)?

        I also could recommend running wireguard/openvpn, and Port Forward to the outside would for a secure connecton.