You just did it, you found an amazing deal on a digital touchscreen with an Android OS embedded on it. Its 22″ and you’re stoked thinking how nice it will be to final have that Homeassistant or maybe Grafana dashboard up in a useful manner.

Not much to your surprise you get the screen booted up, everything seems great, and then you realize the OS is Android 4.4.4; heck you can’t even get the Google Play store to connect. You then do some more research and realize that most modern dashboard and streaming functionality isn’t going to work on the device because you can’t update webview as you can’t update Android!

Now you dive into the internet searching for a way to update this relic. You’re likely going to stumble upon this thread:

https://xdaforums.com/t/help-needed-updating-mediawave-mw22-a32-from-4-4-4-to-os6-0.4369051/

Suddenly your hope is renewed, you think to yourself surely someone has devised a way to flash a new Android OS on the device. You’d be wrong. I spent two days trying every possible method I could find to get that Rockchip Board to accept a new ROM. The manufacturer, now Techland PC, does not provide any sort of tools or information to upgrade old devices. When you inquire with them, others have reported your only offered the opportunity to buy another device with Android 7+ on it. Your newfound hope is dashed and now your contemplating how to best get rid of your newest piece of e-waste.

So now that you’ve exhausted your search for updating the existing Rockchip Board, you read further into the thread posted above. You see that an attempt to gut the device and install a raspberrypi, but the touchscreen remains an issue. Well today, I solved that issue! So let’s walk-thru how to gut the internals from this machine and get it up and running with a new sleek OS running on a Raspberrypi.

First lets talk about what parts you need:

• LCD Controller Board https://www.ebay.com/itm/163716126973
• Raspberry Pi (in my case I went with a 4 – 4 GB)
• SD Card for the Raspberry Pi of appropriate size and quality for your chosen OS
• DC Male Barrel Adapter (https://a.co/d/6iCFwnX)
• Micro HDMI to HDMI Cable (6″)
• FFC to FPC 10-Pin Connector Board (https://a.co/d/erH19Vh) <- The secret ingredient
• Double Sided Tape for remounting everything
• Quality Female-Female Dupont Cables (min 6″ in length)
• One pair of 12″ Female-Female Dupont Cables

Tools you’ll need:

• Small Philip’s Screwdriver
• Small Flathead Screwdriver
• Old Credit Card or Spudger Tool
• Wire Strippers
• Quality Electrical Tape (Super 33)

Your first step is going to be to get this bad boy open. Start by removing all the small Philips screws around the parameter of the rear of the unit. Take the spudger or your used CC, and slide carefully between the front and rear cover where they join at the side. Slowly work the card down the edge to separate the plastic clips. Go slow and don’t over force it, they will work loose with a bit a effort. As soon as the front and rear separate STOP! You need to slowly open the unit and carefully document the orientation and position of the wiring in case you need to put something back together. I have some pictures in this article, but please take your own. I’ve seen different internal variations on this unit in different posts. Be particularly careful of the ribbon cable tied from the mainboard to the touchscreen.

Carefully disconnect all the connections to the Rockchip mainboard and remove the four screws holding it in place. Remove the board and set it aside. Remove the existing usb/ethernet expansion board, and remove the existing LCD inverter board. You can leave the speakers.

I don’t recommend modifying the case in any way just yet. Let’s get everything connected for a trial run.

You’re going to connect the small two pair wire from the inverter to the back of the screen, attach the FFC to FPC converter board to the end of the ribbon cable. Pay attention to the orientation of the ribbon cable, it must go in with the contacts facing down into the board (black film side facing you). Install the new invert, connect the HDMI cable between the PI and the LCD controller board. Connect the LCD to the controller board. In my case the red wires on the LCD connector went to pins 1 and 2 when I was reconnecting it.

Now on the corner of your new LCD driver board you will see a connector for “IR”. Look at the underside of the board and you’ll see conveniently that this connector has +5V and GND. After testing I’ve determined this connector has sufficient supply for the Raspberry PI, at least without any USB devices. Take your 12″ dupont connectors from the +5V and GND pins to the 5V and Ground pins of the PI as illustrated below:

Now connect dupont connectors to the Raspberry PI pins 1, 3, 5, 7, and 9. You will connect these to the FFC to FPC converter. PI pin 1 (3.3v) will go to Pin 8 of the converter, PI pin 3 to Pin 7 (SDA) , PI pin 5 to Pin 6 (SDC), and PI pin 7 to Pin 4 (INT), and PI pin 9 to Pin 9 (GND). You have just connected the touchscreen via i2c to the raspberrypi.

Once all these connections are complete, you’ll have to cut the end off the stock power supply to connect to the new LCD controller. The wire is not a pair inside the cable, but is a copper stranded core wire (+12V) surrounded by a stranded copper wire jacket (-GND). Very carefully strip back the outer jack, gather the stranded copper jacket wires and twist into a conductor. Use your strippers to remove the inner wire jacket enough to land into the barrel jack adapter. The inner cable to + the other jacket cable to -. Make sure you carefully separate the two and don’t have stray strands shorting between the + and – terminals.

Now look over everything and you should have something like the following:

Go ahead and flash your SD card with your OS. For this tutorial we are using Raspbian Bullseye 64-Bit Desktop, results for i2c protocols and drivers my vary with other Operating Systems.

Install the SD card into the PI and power up the LCD board which will in turn power the PI. Once the PI is booted you’ll notice you have no touchscreen at this time, you’re going to need a keyboard/mouse.

Firstly we need to add the ilitek touchscreen overlay. Open the terminal and enter the following:

sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Enter in the file:

dtoverlay=ilitek210x,interrupt=4

Use Ctrl+X, Save, and Exit.

Type raspi-config and proceed to Interfaces and Enable I2C.

sudo reboot

Now when your raspberrypi reboots, you should have touchscreen capabilities.

Reassemble the screen in reserve order, being very careful that nothing is able to short. I used a pair of knips to cut of many of the original plastic mounting posts and used double sided gorilla tape to mount the boards neatly in their final positions. I also widened the former ethernet port hole and slide the power adapter though it, alternatively feel free to make use of a chassis mount barrel connector for a cleaner install.

There you have it, the Mediawave M22 touchscreen formerly a $90 ebay brick, now a functional 22″ touchscreen interface. Please see my followup article for setup information for a homeassistant kiosk.