August DVB-T210

derp derp

Hi. Was wondering if this was compatible with tvheadend as there's not much information from users about this device. Does anyone have one? Is it working well with DVB-T2 channels and HD channels?

please let me know! thanks!

dhead 666

I understand this is a rebranded Geniatech/Mygica T220 with the same usb ids (which sold for about 50$ on Aliexpress) and should fully supported in Kernel 3.14 (the patch already included in 3.14RC1).

I've got the device but I didn't had the time to build the Media Tree myself and test it on Linux (and the DVB-T2 service will be up starting on June in my area).

Edit: I've update the USB DVB-T2 table, see http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB-T2_USB_Devices

George Clegg

Greetings!

I have just purchased this USB dongle for use on a Rpi with OpenElec, however I'm getting nowhere.

lsusb sees a g-tek adaptor but I have no idea how to take things forward.

Any help gratefully received!

Many thanks.

Cleggy.

George Clegg

It looks like someone has written a driver for it here: http://www.mail-archive.com/linux-media@vger.kernel.org/msg67966.html

But I am a noob and don't know how to get this driver "into" my Rpi?

dhead 666

@Cleggy

As I already mentioned a driver already exist in the media tree (v4l-dvb) so you can just build an updated media tree (you don't need to build all the drivers, google 'make menuconfig') see

http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/How_to_Obtain,_Build_and_Install_V4L-DVB_Device_Drivers

Depending on your os, you might find an updated pre-built package.

And you can always wait for kernel 3.14.

George Clegg

Thanks folks, I'm impatient to make some progress and will check out that link :)

Wish I'd gotten into Linux when I was younger (and learned to skate, play guitar, speak French, etc, etc...)!

dhead 666

Please update when you'll get the device working in Linux, we don't have dvb-t2 service up here yet so I can't test it myself.
Keep in mind that kernel 3.14 may be out next week.

George Clegg

Will do, I would dearly love to contribute to a movement that had helped me so much! Stand by...

King J

I received this device the other day. I've spent tonight building up a new Ubuntu 14.04 system with the 3.14rc7 kernel.

Good news: the device is detected and shows up in tvheadend. I can add the local PSB1 multiplex and the rest are automatically detected. Tuning channels seems to work fine.

Unfortunately, the PSB3 HD multiplex is not detected. If I add it manually, tvheadend appears to try and scan it, but has 1 to 2 bit errors on the status page. No services are detected and tvheadend moves on to scanning other multiplexes instead.

I've run a w_scan and have attached the output. Interestingly, when the PSB3 HD multiplex is scanned, w_scan complains of garbage data. I've cut off the output after the 562000Mhz part as there are no further multiplexes from my transmitter.

The scan data is from the Crystal Palace transmitter.

George Clegg

Nice work! I've not tried as yet, don't have the skills nor the time to learn just now... Is your code something that could be dropped onto a blank memory stick and booted onto a RPi? :)

King J

Not sure if that was aimed at me George, but my attachment just lists the results of a scan performed using the August DVB-T210 stick and showing the problems with receiving HD/DVB-T2 muxes.

To get it working on the Raspberry Pi, you either need to be running kernel 3.14, for which the Raspberry Pi team don't even have a source build yet, or recompile the Linux TV module, which requires compiling an existing kernel too. I did want to run this on my Raspberry Pi, but gave up and decided to wait until at least I can compile the 3.14 kernel on there.

George Clegg

It was Mr. King, the fact you've got it working gives me hope! I don't mind waiting until someone or some group gets the Pi Kernel up to date, whichever way it's cheaper than buying a new telly with Freeview HD! :)

King J

While it 'works', unfortunately it does not work with the HD/DVB-T2 transmissions - only the SD/DVB-T ones, and unfortunately I don't know enough to figure out why. If anyone can provide any suggestions or if there's any further data I can collect, i'm more than willing to help.

King J

Here's a full w_scan along with the generated channels.conf.

I've updated from Kernel 3.14rc7 to 3.14rc8, but no changes (as expected). Next i'm going to try compiling the latest version of the linuxtv drivers from source. I know at this stage it's not really a tvheadend problem, but at least this is an easy place to discuss it.

dhead 666

@King J

If I rememeber this right then all the parts of this dvb-t2 dongle (tuner, demodulator, usb bridge) had already drivers in the kernel so maybe this is a generic issue not specific to this device.

It might be worth testing the PCTV Systems nanoStick T2 (290e) which also got the Sony CXD2820R demodulator with kerenl 3.14.

p.s. Keep in mind that I'm not a developer.

King J

@dhead

The 290e was my first choice actually, but after having ordered a 290e from two separate sites and receiving the recently released 292e instead, I gave up and went with the August DVB-T210 since there was no other model to confuse it with.

The 292e being so new has no driver support whatsoever. It is suggested that it has different internals but I have no way of knowing if this is correct and would rather leave it in a state where I can at least return it for a refund! If there was a site where I could buy the 290e from and be sure i'd receive a 290e i'd willingly do so considering that it seems to be the best supported USB DVB-T2 receiver out there.

Thanks for the suggestion anyway though :)

dhead 666

@King J

That's real bad if we can't get the 290e anymore.

If the info on linuxtv is right ( http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Silicon_Labs_si2168 ) then the demodulator used in the 292e is si2168 which doesn't got a driver in the kernel so it won't work in Linux (the eMPIA em28174 usb bridge got a driver, not sure about the tuner).

(a little bird told me there's an effort to reverse engineer the si2168 Windows driver)

Edit: Kernel 3.14 released today, so it might be time to recheck and maybe post at the linux-media mailing list ( http://linuxtv.org/lists.php ).

Edit2:

@King J

If I understand this right you're in the UK ?

From wikipedia I gather that DVB-T2 on the UK using QAM 256 modulation, while on your w_scan output it looks you set it to automatically recognize the modulation, it worth trying to manually set the mod' with the -Q switch (for QAM 256 it's "-Q 1"), see http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lucid/man1/w_scan.1.html

Same goes for Tvheadend, set the modulation to QAM 256.

King J

@dhead

Thanks for the information about the status of the 292e. I'm sure there's still going to be somewhere that's actually selling the 290e, but i've grown tired of trying to arrange replacements and refunds with retailers who unknowningly shipped the 292e.

Interesting to hear that it at least may be being worked on though!

I am indeed in the UK. I think i've tried forcing the frequency for that mux to QAM256 before, but without any luck. I've just given it another go, but again, no luck unfortunately.

I've also tried running my previous w_scan command with both -Q 1 and -Q1, in both instances w_scan still seemed to use QAM_AUTO rather than QAM256. The man pages seem to indicate that flag only applies to DVB-C so that may be why?

545833: (time: 03:41) (time: 03:44) signal ok:
QAM_AUTO f = 545833 kHz I999B8C999D999T999G999Y999
WARNING: received garbage data: crc = 0x0b075ef2; expected crc = 0xfcfc5b00
increasing filter timeout.
WARNING: received garbage data: crc = 0x9f8a89cc; expected crc = 0x210f7548
WARNING: received garbage data: crc = 0x065ec1e1; expected crc = 0x016cc001
WARNING: received garbage data: crc = 0x07bf1723; expected crc = 0x210f7548
Info: no data from NIT(actual)

554000: (time: 04:49)

I'll give the 3.14 stable kernel a go now. Thanks for all your suggestions!

dhead 666

dhead 666 wrote:
> @King J
>
> That's real bad if we can't get the 290e anymore.
>
> If the info on linuxtv is right ( http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Silicon_Labs_si2168 ) then the demodulator used in the 292e is si2168 which doesn't got a driver in the kernel so it won't work in Linux (the eMPIA em28174 usb bridge got a driver, not sure about the tuner).
>

> (a little bird told me there's an effort to reverse engineer the si2168 Windows driver)

Recieved an answer from PCTV Systems, the tuner is Silicon Labs si2157, AFAIK no driver in Linux.

PCTV Systems online web store does list the 290e, though I didn't tried to complete an order.

http://webstore.hauppauge.de/index.php?a=612&lang=eng

Jukka Pirinen

I have august and nanostick also. Seems that driver can't handle the traffic. In windows card works fine with HD, I can record whole TS stream and its perfect.

With nanostick
packets read: 199/(43574) d_time: 0.008 s = 37412.000 kbit/s (Avrg: 37384.653 kbit/s) [bad: 0]
with august:

packets read: 15/(41103) d_time: 0.001 s = 22560.000 kbit/s (Avrg: 28752.982 kbit/s) [bad: 2]

Here's some logs etc.
http://koti.kapsi.fi/~bogey/august_dvb-t210/