How to set up AviaMedia DVB-T HD USB Puppy 4.3.1

[John Lewis]

Hi edoc,
after you plug in the stick, wait a few seconds and then type dmesg in the console. At the bottom of dmesg you should see that the stick is live. Something like this. This is from Mepis as that's what I'm using at the moment but Puppy will be similar.

dvb-usb: found a 'AverMedia AVerTV Volar Black HD (A850)' in cold state, will try to load a firmware
usb 1-3: firmware: requesting dvb-usb-af9015.fw
dvb-usb: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-usb-af9015.fw'
dvb-usb: found a 'AverMedia AVerTV Volar Black HD (A850)' in warm state.
dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
DVB: registering new adapter (AverMedia AVerTV Volar Black HD (A850))
af9013: firmware version:4.95.0
DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Afatech AF9013 DVB-T)...
MXL5005S: Attached at address 0xc6
dvb-usb: AverMedia AVerTV Volar Black HD (A850) successfully initialized and connected.
usbcore: registered new interface driver dvb_usb_af9015

Now as regards xine. Have you installed gxine yet? It doesn't appear to be in spup but can be installed via the install icon on the desktop.

Note also that it is .xine that is (dot)xine. There should be a hidden directory .xine in root. Click the eye in the menu to see the hidden files. You need gxine installed for it to be there.

John Lewis

[edoc]

Xine complained of tons of missing dependencies but when called in Terminal it opened up fine.

However, scanaid is not working ....

# ./Create_Scanning_Table
Do you want to try every possible bandwidth/FEC combination possible? [n]
Enter bandwidth to scan [8MHz]:
Enter FEC to scan [2/3]:
Do you want all channels to be scanned? [n]

Now please specify the channels by number, hit enter to end list.

Channel number:

Thank you very much for using dvbt-scanaid. A list of channels you may feed to 'scan'
has been generated in the file Scanlist.txt.
# scan Scanlist.txt >/root/.xine/channels.conf
scanning Scanlist.txt
using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0'
main FATAL: failed to open '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0': 6 No such device or address

[John Lewis]

Ok edoc,

I got a new USB stick. The old one was causing problems. This is being written on spup and I have the AverMedia card working perfectly. I'm using frugal install on the stick.

1) Go to Install>Package Manager.
Choose Woof and Multimedia.
Choose gxine-0.5.9-1-p4 and click Examine Dependencies.
Click Download-and-Install selected packages. Choose to use ibiblio. You will download and install the libs and Gxine.
(I used ibiblio as some of the other repos fail.)
You should get a successful install. Trim the fat if you wish.

Note Gxine doesn't show in menu but that doesn't matter. Check for gxine in teminal if you wish.

Now to install the rest.

2) Copy dvb-usb-af9015.fw to lib > firmware.
3) Install linuxtv-DVB-apps-1.1.1.pet.
4) In terminal run MAKEDEV-DVB.sh

Now plug in AverMedia stick. If already in then unplug and replug.
In terminal run dmesg. You should see at the bottom that the stick is working.

5) Install GtkBasic 003 pet
6) Install PuppyBasic-2.6.pet
7) Install the Gtb-DVB.pet
Untar dvbt-scanaid-0.03.tar.bz to a suitable location. I used root.
9) Run in terminal
cd dvbt-scanaid-0.03

then

./Create_Scanning_Table

I answered yes to all

Then

scan Scanlist.txt >/root/.xine/channels.conf

(This takes for ever.) If you are lucky you will find channels.conf in the .xine directory. If channels.conf is empty then it never found any channels.

If all is well go to menu and click Gtb-DVBT TV Viewer. You'll know if it works.

Part 2 of this I will suggest what to do if scanaid fails.

Heres mine running.

John Lewis

[John Lewis]

Part 2

If the Scanaid doesn't work it is likely that you are either not getting enough signal or the channels and frequencies listed in Channel-Frequency.txt do not include your TV stations. This was the case for me.

If you look in ~/my-applications you will find a swag of pre made files. If yours are there simply copy and paste to your Scanaid directory. Rename to Scanlist.txt and then run .
scan Scanlist.txt >/root/.xine/channels.conf from the Scanaid directory.

In my case for the ABC channels here I had to look up their details on the net. I then copied one of the above files that was nearest to mine and edited the entries to match what I'd found.

John Lewis

[John Lewis]

I should have included this in my last post. This is the ScanList.txt I made for my local channels as Scanaid didn't cover them . Also a copy of the resulting channels.conf from the.xine directory created when you run the scan with
scan Scanlist.txt >/root/.xine/channels.conf

Please let me know how you get on edoc. Hope you didn't mind the probably too detailed explanation.

John Lewis

[edoc]

Sorry for the delay - I am hoping to get back to testing these tomorrow. Sure appreciate all of your efforts!

My wife was away visiting her mom in the hospital and we've been making do without her here ... just picked her up at the airport ... the Mr. Mom thing really messes with the geek-time!

[edoc]

Now to install the rest.

2) Copy dvb-usb-af9015.fw to lib > firmware.
3) Install linux-apps-1.1.1.pet.
4) In terminal run MAKEDEV-DVB.sh

John Lewis

Is this supposed to be

"3) Install linuxtv-DVB-apps-1.1.1.pet."

I cannot find a "linux-apps-1.1.1.pet." anywhere.

[edoc]

Is this expected output?

# MAKEDEV-DVB.sh
Creating DVB devices in /dev/dvb/adapter0
chown: unknown user/group root:video
Creating DVB devices in /dev/dvb/adapter1
chown: unknown user/group root:video
Creating DVB devices in /dev/dvb/adapter2
chown: unknown user/group root:video
Creating DVB devices in /dev/dvb/adapter3
chown: unknown user/group root:video
#

And is this expected for "dmesg" after pulling and replugging the AverMedia stick?

usb 1-1: USB disconnect, address 2
usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3

And then this?

# scan Scanlist.txt >/root/.xine/channels.conf
scanning Scanlist.txt
using '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0' and '/dev/dvb/adapter0/demux0'
main FATAL: failed to open '/dev/dvb/adapter0/frontend0': 6 No such device or address

[John Lewis]

Now to install the rest.


Is this supposed to be

"3) Install linuxtv-DVB-apps-1.1.1.pet."

I cannot find a "linux-apps-1.1.1.pet." anywhere.

Sorry I've not got back to you sooner.

Yes that is correct. It should have been as you say. I missed out "DVB" .

John

[John Lewis]

If MAKEDEV-DVB.sh didn't create the device nodes for some reason. I think that may have caused the fatal when running scanlist.

And is this expected for "dmesg" after pulling and replugging the AverMedia stick
usb 1-1: USB disconnect, address 2
usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3

That seems about right but it should mention a "live" device and quite a bit more..

I'll need to get out of this distro and start spup and have a look.

I'll get back to you. Sorry for the delay.

John

[John Lewis]

Ok edoc,
I'm back in spup. Here is the result of unplugging and plugging the DVB stick.

usb 1-4: USB disconnect, address 4
dvb-usb: AverMedia AVerTV Volar Black HD (A850) successfully deinitialized and disconnected.
usb 1-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8
dvb-usb: found a 'AverMedia AVerTV Volar Black HD (A850)' in cold state, will try to load a firmware
usb 1-4: firmware: requesting dvb-usb-af9015.fw
dvb-usb: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-usb-af9015.fw'
dvb-usb: found a 'AverMedia AVerTV Volar Black HD (A850)' in warm state.
dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
DVB: registering new adapter (AverMedia AVerTV Volar Black HD (A850))
af9013: firmware version:0.0.0
DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Afatech AF9013 DVB-T)...
MXL5005S: Attached at address 0xc6
dvb-usb: AverMedia AVerTV Volar Black HD (A850) successfully initialized and connected.

If MAKEDEV-DVB.sh was successful you should be able to go to the dev directory and find a dvb folder there. inside the dvb folder you should see folders adapter0 adapter1 and so on. There should be a number of icons in each folder.

I just deleted the dvb directory and reran MAKEDEV-DVB.sh. I got the same result as you posted. When I looked in dev I found the dvb directory and its contents were recreated exactly as before.

lsmod shows the following.

dvb_usb_af9015 20263 0
dvb_usb 10428 1 dvb_usb_af9015
dvb_core 62022 1 dvb_usb

nouveau,drm_kms_helper,drm,i2c_algo_bit,mxl5005s,af9013,dvb_usb_af9015,dvb_usb,i2c_i801

I have only shown the parts referring to dvb.

John

[edoc]

I have switched over to Lucid 5.1 as I was having wifi troubles with spup 040 and development/support is on hold there.

I just plugged-in the AVerMedia device and dmesg in Lucid 5.1 produced pages of output but these were the last three lines:

usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 2
usb 1-1: USB disconnect, address 2
usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
#

[John Lewis]

Ok edoc,

I have downloaded Lucid and have it running on DVD. I'll put it on a USB stick and try setting up the TV.

I think it should work just the same. I'll let you know how I fare.


John

[John Lewis]

Gee wiz. I've been very remiss.

I promised to get back to edoc on this way back in August.

Had some time in hospital and surgery and it clean slipped my mind until I read the posts again yesterday.

Sorry about that.

Anyway to wrap it up. Following the steps I provided worked fine with Lucid.

I also have it working with jemimah's puppeee 1.0 . Nice thing was I didn't need to install the drivers or xine. Did all the other steps and it worked straight up.

hope you managed to sort yours too edoc.

John Lewis

[edoc]

Thanks John!

I had to set the project aside and deal with some problems with our home addition project.

Hopefully I can get back to it in a week or so ...

Sure appreciate all of your efforts, they are sure to be helpful to others who read the thread.

[arfon]

Hi John

Can you take a look at this posting - (not sure where I should have posted it)

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=75101

Trying to get Volar Red working on puppeee

Thanks

Arfon

[John Lewis]

Hi arfon.
Gee, I don't know what happened there. My reply got lost. You are lucky as I haven't looked in here in a while.

Questions.
Puppy version?

Unplug and plug in your stick then run dmesg in terminal. Down near the bottom you should see something about the stick being plugged in. Copy and paste that here so I can see it.

In terminal type lsmod and look to see if drivers are loaded. Should be something like
dvb_usb_af9015 20263 0
dvb_usb 10428 1 dvb_usb_af9015
dvb_core 62022 1 dvb_usb

You may have different drivers in the red version.
Mine sometimes won't work due to I think a bad connection in the small end of the USB. I wiggle it a bit and all comes good. Its a bit old now though 2007.

The supplied antenna was useless for me . The stick won't work if it can't see stations.

Flash. DVB is Digital Video Broadcasting. The T as in DVB-T stands for terrestrial.

John

Edit. I'm a mug. It was in a different section. as below. We'll keep it there I guess.

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=75101