DigitalNow TinyTwin and Linux, reports from end users indicate it now works...... Options

[Frank21]

Amazing..

Thanks for such a prompt and helpful response biggrin.gif

I thought that there was something complex I was missing. I will give this a go tonight, and let you know !!

Regards

Albert

_____
Pret immobilier

[Steve A]

Just found this thread late in my Mythbuntu 9.04 setup process.

I already have it detecting and have configured the 2nd tuner without having run
http://stryd.schickt.de/mbuntu/TinyTwin.sh.

Is this script still necessary?

To enable the tuner I only updated the firmware and created /etc/modprobe.d/tinytwin.conf with the line 'options dvb-usb-af9015 dual_mode=1' as described elsewhere. Seems there is more than one way to set that option.

This results in being able to switch to the second tuner but it doesn't lock onto any channels. It has also resulted in noise both aural and visual on the first tuner where there used to be none.

In the hope that http://stryd.schickt.de/mbuntu/TinyTwin.sh might fix it I tried that today.
It fails with a 404 on the line

CODE

hg clone http://linuxtv.org/hg/~anttip/af9015/archive/tip.tar.gz

Oddly if I paste that URL into Firefox I get a file download called af9015-32bba41e7337.tar.gz

Any idea why the 404? Can I just download and unzip the file and proceed with the script?

TIA
Steve

[Nigel]

Hello everyone, I am hoping someone on here has got digital now pci dual digital tuner to work in ubuntu.
I am really stressed trying to find a way of using this tuner in my new htpc. Seems to be plenty of support for the tinytwin but I can't find anything for the pci card.
If this has been answered somewhere else please post a link or email it to me

[Dortamur]

I've recently purchased a TinyTwin, and while it works fine under Windows 7, I'm having problems getting it running on my Linux htpc.

I'm running Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic), and all I get in dmesg is:

[ 1841.597931] usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 7
[ 1841.732191] usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

...and nothing beyond that.

lsusb shows:

Bus 001 Device 007: ID 1b80:e402 Afatech

I've tried compiling new drivers, from the main v4l site, or the /~anttip/af9015/ site, and both fail to compile over some other module. However, I don't think this USB ID is listed in them either.

Did something change in recent hardware releases of the TinyTwin, that hasn't made it into the Linux drivers yet?

[renura]

Did something change in recent hardware releases of the TinyTwin, that hasn't made it into the Linux drivers yet?

The current TinyTwin has different hardware ID, the hardware components are the same.

[Drizztd]

Dortamur,

The card id (lsusb) does not directly relate to the usb ids in the dvb-usb-ids.h file and it does not make a lot of sense when you try to match it up either. The following is a hack to get it working - I have no idea what the correct process should be or how to communicate this to someone who would know - but it does work.

ID 1b80:e402 Afatech

dvb-usb-ids.h
#define USB_VID_AFATECH 0x15a4
#define USB_VID_KWORLD_2 0x1b80

As you can see the first part of the usb id is not Afatech but Kworld - played with this but left it alone in the end (see following)

The second bit of the usb id did not exist in the file - found the closest Kworld id and changed it to match.

#define USB_PID_KWORLD_399U_2 0xe400 Changed to be #define USB_PID_KWORLD_399U_2 0xe402

recompile the v4l-dvb stuff, reload etc. and it will find it.

[Dortamur]

The second bit of the usb id did not exist in the file - found the closest Kworld id and changed it to match.

#define USB_PID_KWORLD_399U_2 0xe400 Changed to be #define USB_PID_KWORLD_399U_2 0xe402

recompile the v4l-dvb stuff, reload etc. and it will find it.

I tried this and it did detect and worked for a while. It identified itself as the "KWorld PlusTV Dual DVB-T Stick (DVB-T 399U)" though...

Since I was having some stability issues, I also tried changing dvb-usb-ids.h as follows:
#define USB_VID_VISIONPLUS 0x1b80
#define USB_PID_TINYTWIN 0xe402
... this required commenting out the USB_VID_KWORLD_2 chunk in another .c file, but also worked and resulted in it identifying itself as "DigitalNow TinyTwin DVB-T Receiver" (albeit at the cost of sabotaging KWorlds and the older TinyTwin).

I can get the Dual Tuners to work, and have recorded from both at the same time. However, it seems that after a period of time they stop working, and require the TinyTwin to be pulled out & put back in to get it to work again - or a system reboot. The unit still seems to tune in, but the software I'm using shows all the MUXes drop to 0% quality.

I haven't tested if the problem over time is only caused during idle time, or if it happens while recording as well.

So it could be:
*A problem with the v4l-dvb driver
*A problem with Ubuntu Karmic
*A problem with the dvb software I'm using - tvheadend (http://lonelycoder.com/hts/)
*A problem with the firmware I'm using with the TinyTwin (currently using 4.95)

I'm continuing more tests, but if you have any ideas it would be appreciated.

[Drizztd]

I am also running Karmic but with mythtv as the dvb bit. Karmic has been updating its kernel lately which requires recompiling of the v4l-dvb driver. In mythtv, I see the tuner lights as 1 x green and 1 x orange. The orange (much bigger light) was heating up the stick so I made green tuner I and orange tuner II and activated the Mythtv option of keeping the tuners in warm state but not active until a scheduled recording triggers (or live tv is requested). The importance of the ramble - I have not had the tuners stop or both drop in quality and they have been pounded in testing, triggered at odd hours of the night etc.

I have also noticed that other software treats the tuner lights differently e.g. tuner 1 is small orange. Do we have a map of what is supposed to be what?

I am still testing as I do sometimes have a quality problem with both tuners recording simultaneously - the recording of the first tuner never has problems but the second can have slight "break up" - enough to be annoying for short periods (the program overruns into other channels which was my main reason for getting a dual tuner in the first place) and not acceptable for long periods. I am currently looking into the mythtv part of the equation to see what is impacting what.

The recordings are a mixture of 1080 720 and "others".

The firmware (4.95) is the latest and the ~anttip/af9015 branch of the v4l-dvb driver has not been updated for 7 weeks. Contacting the owner of this branch with the issue of adding the new lsusb details might be the best next step but I am unsure how to do this.

[Dortamur]

I've done a few more tests, but I'm *cough* at work, so can't see the LEDs from here.

If I queue up a run of shows, then tvheadend uses Tuner 2, and the recorded channel MUX is sitting at 100% the whole time, while other MUXes on Tuner 2 are between 1% and 25%.

Meanwhile, for a while, Tuner 1 had all MUXes on 100% - I tried recording something on a different channel, and the MUX I was recording on Tuner 1 dropped quickly to 0%, with the rest on 100%. When I cancelled that record job, the other MUXes on Tuner 1 dropped gradually until all are 0%. Trying now to record something extra fails.

But Tuner 2 is still happily recording away.

Update: It recorded 4 hours straight, then Tuner 2 died between swapping recording one program to another (same channel, but recorded to new file) and all MUXes went to 0%.

[The J Man]

I've had serious stability issues with my TinyTwin on 9.04 even though it has the older 'standard' vendor/product ID
Even upgraded to Linux 2.6.31 with no real improvement -- what kernel is Karmic running?

Mind you I've also had very similar stability issues (error -110 ... -ETIMEDOUT) with a different brand of tuner with no resolution there either

As a result I now own 5 tuners (one of them a double) -- none of which work sufficiently well -- with another 3 'on the way' (which supposedly work 'out of the box')

I also have a new (powered) USB hub, an addon USB 'controller card' (NEC chip) and an amplifier - none of which have made much of a difference


3 things I've done have helped

1. upgraded the motherboard BIOS
2. set up a cron job to reboot at 4am (usually nothing recording then ... no point in being clever and scheduling reboot when nothing is recording because this is only a workaround)
3. I run the TinyTwin as a single tuner only ... but 2 of my other 4 tuners give me a total of 3 tuners (the last 2 are not supported by linux even though they are identical to the other 2 single tuners)

I've had 5 simultaneous recordings going on only 2 tuners without a hitch
I even recorded the Bathurst V8 'preshow' and race with other recordings kicking in every now and then without a hitch

... but other times I just get bad (missing) recordings or gigabytes of grey screen (running about a 3% failure rate)


BTW - How is it possible to view the muxes signal quality?

[Dortamur]

BTW - How is it possible to view the muxes signal quality?

It depends on what software you're using, AFAIK.
tvheadend has a section under the configuration where it reports the signal strength of each MUX.

Then again, I did some more tests last night, and I think my flakiness problem is related to tvheadend. It works for a while, but after it fails, I can still use the tzap command line tool to record, so the TinyTwin still seems to be working - but stops working with tvheadend for some reason.

[Drizztd]

Dortamur,

I downloaded and ran tvheadend to see the MUX situation you were describing - started strong, decreased to zero as stated. I am not sure what the software was actually trying to show but it is very different from a Mythtv setup. I think this just helps confirm your suspicions that the not finding a tuner on program switch is somehow related to tvheadend.

[boohbah]

@ Dortamur and community

I'm trying to do the exact same thing as you with the TinyTwin and tvheadend.

I've trawled for what seems like forever and have found lots of info - however I'm now actively asking for help from the community.

The various v4l compile solutions and the 4.95 firmware so far have not worked for me.

The IDs on my Tinytwin device are different to those which are covered by the possible v4l compiles.

lsusb -v

Bus 001 Device 006: ID 13d3:3226 IMC Networks DigitalNow TinyTwin DVB-T Receiver

So..

ID 13d3:3226

According to dvb-usb-ids.h

#define USB_VID_VISIONPLUS 0x13d3
#define USB_PID_TINYTWIN 0x3226

Note: There is no PID for a VISIONPLUS device in the file either – so I can't butcher it.

So the ids appear to be strange on this device.

I'm on Karmic Koala with 2.6.31-16-generic

Any thoughts anyone towards a path of action?

I tried this and it did detect and worked for a while. It identified itself as the "KWorld PlusTV Dual DVB-T Stick (DVB-T 399U)" though...

Since I was having some stability issues, I also tried changing dvb-usb-ids.h as follows:
#define USB_VID_VISIONPLUS 0x1b80
#define USB_PID_TINYTWIN 0xe402
... this required commenting out the USB_VID_KWORLD_2 chunk in another .c file, but also worked and resulted in it identifying itself as "DigitalNow TinyTwin DVB-T Receiver" (albeit at the cost of sabotaging KWorlds and the older TinyTwin).

I can get the Dual Tuners to work, and have recorded from both at the same time. However, it seems that after a period of time they stop working, and require the TinyTwin to be pulled out & put back in to get it to work again - or a system reboot. The unit still seems to tune in, but the software I'm using shows all the MUXes drop to 0% quality.

I haven't tested if the problem over time is only caused during idle time, or if it happens while recording as well.

So it could be:
*A problem with the v4l-dvb driver
*A problem with Ubuntu Karmic
*A problem with the dvb software I'm using - tvheadend (http://lonelycoder.com/hts/)
*A problem with the firmware I'm using with the TinyTwin (currently using 4.95)

I'm continuing more tests, but if you have any ideas it would be appreciated.

[renura]

Hi Guys,

Anyone using or wishing to use the new TinyTwin under Linux, could you please contact support@digitalnow.com.au if you are interested in trying new Linux drivers for the TinyTwin.

Cheers

Renura

[gshcarter]

Hi all. It's been a while - my old DNTVLive and DVICO Fusion cards have served me well but my Dell GX270 system is reaching it's used-by date so I've purchased an EB1501 EeePC and one of these shiny new TinyTwins.

Here's my experiences so far (I've only had it 24 hours) :

The files provided by Renura are not compiling for me (Vanilla Ubuntu 9.10, Kernel 2.6.31-18-generic).

CODE

chaumurky@geobuntu:~/build/renura/32bit/AF901x_MXL500x_SRC$ make
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.31-18-generic/build SUBDIRS=/home/chaumurky/build/renura/32bit/AF901x_MXL500x_SRC modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.31-18-generic'
  CC [M]  /home/chaumurky/build/renura/32bit/AF901x_MXL500x_SRC/af901x-core.o
In file included from /home/chaumurky/build/renura/32bit/AF901x_MXL500x_SRC/af901x-core.c:10:
/home/chaumurky/build/renura/32bit/AF901x_MXL500x_SRC/af901x.h:6:21: error: dvb-usb.h: No such file or directory
.
.
.
.
You get the rest...

I had a go with the instructions HERE.
Apart from a couple of hitches (d/l tip.tar.gz and extract rather than clone hg, edit a line in .config in the v4l folder to 'CONFIG_DVB_FIREDTV=n' because it was bombing and I didn't need it), it installed and i have /dev/dvb/adapter0 and /dev/dvb/adapter1 after a reboot.

DMESG has lots of:

CODE

[  988.100337] af9015: command failed:255
[  988.100343] dvb-usb: error while querying for an remote control event.

I've yet to actually test it properly because I'm at work and this is all over an ssh session...

I'll keep you posted.



EDIT: I wasn't using the latest firmware which fixed the dmesg errors when updated.

Also, even though it compiled and installed on kernel 2.6.31-17, the drivers wouldn't load when the device was connected. On 2.6.31-18 it works well, even PIP. There seems to be an occasional audio judder every 30 seconds or so.

Finally, and more worrisome, my DNTV Live! and DVICO Fusion (cx88) drivers broke after the install. Rolling back to the original Ubuntu headers/modules brought them back (but of course the TinyTwin stopped working again). I'll look closer at the .config and disable the modules I don't need to see if I can have my cake and eat it too. If not, it doesn't matter because I'll not be using the cards on the new machine anyway...

This post has been edited by chaumurky: Feb 3 2010, 03:23 PM

[Nakaleen]

Hi Guys,

Anyone using or wishing to use the new TinyTwin under Linux, could you please contact support@digitalnow.com.au if you are interested in trying new Linux drivers for the TinyTwin.

Cheers

Renura

dose that mean they have drivers for the new Tinytwin?

I just got one for my asrock 330ht. But only found out about the problems after spending a week of hair pulling (I'm a windows user diving into the quagmire that is Linux hehehe)

[renura]

dose that mean they have drivers for the new Tinytwin?

I just got one for my asrock 330ht. But only found out about the problems after spending a week of hair pulling (I'm a windows user diving into the quagmire that is Linux hehehe)

Support for the new ID has been added see here
http://linuxtv.org/hg/~anttip/af9015/rev/caf9c77213b0

This post has been edited by renura: Mar 31 2010, 07:18 AM

[Nakaleen]

It must know I am a windows user as linux is doing everything in its power to stop me from doing this hehehe.

5 hours after fiddleing around I FINALLY got it to compile (I think) but there is two things.

The first command in dubski's list of commands

sudo aptitude install mercurial linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential make dvb-utils

I get this

CODE

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Initializing package states... Done
Writing extended state information... Done
No candidate version found for dvb-utils
No candidate version found for dvb-utils
The following NEW packages will be installed:
build-essential dpkg-dev{a} g++{a} g++-4.4{a} libstdc++6-4.4-dev{a}
mercurial mercurial-common{a}
0 packages upgraded, 7 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 7,900kB of archives. After unpacking 27.6MB will be used.

Is dvb-utils needed? I can't find any info on this.

I can get all the way down to

sudo modprobe i2c-core

where it says

FATAL: Module i2c_core not found.

I again I googled this but only found posts of people also having this problem but no answers.

Well I am off to work, great way of spending time before work, headbanging the keyboard for 5 hours hehehe

[Nakaleen]

Ok... as noted I am not a Linux user... but I have found out what I am doing on my own....

trying to do sudo modprobe i2c-core wasn't working because my system didn't need it...

doing lsmod showed a mod called i2c_nforce2 so I used that (I think that was the right thing to do) so I did a sudo modprobe i2c-nforce2 instead (no errors showed when doing sudo modprobe i2c_nforce2 so I think it worked ok)

After that, I followed the rest of the commands and my Tinytwin now works in MythTV, haven't tested it fully (as in 2-4 recordings at once, but live TV works)

Hopefully tomorrow I will write all the commands I did to make this work, as I had to modified some of the commands to make my USB DVB card to work. But right now I wish to thank renura for pointing to a working link for my DVB's ID, 2 post back.

[renura]

Ok... as noted I am not a Linux user... but I have found out what I am doing on my own....

trying to do sudo modprobe i2c-core wasn't working because my system didn't need it...

doing lsmod showed a mod called i2c_nforce2 so I used that (I think that was the right thing to do) so I did a sudo modprobe i2c-nforce2 instead (no errors showed when doing sudo modprobe i2c_nforce2 so I think it worked ok)

After that, I followed the rest of the commands and my Tinytwin now works in MythTV, haven't tested it fully (as in 2-4 recordings at once, but live TV works)

Hopefully tomorrow I will write all the commands I did to make this work, as I had to modified some of the commands to make my USB DVB card to work. But right now I wish to thank renura for pointing to a working link for my DVB's ID, 2 post back.

Good work Nakaleen,
posting the steps for others to get it all working, I am sure, would be appreciated.
Cheers

Renura