vdr

vdr@linuxtv.org

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6742 discussions

How to use /dev/lirc0 in VDR?
by Marko Mäkelä 06 Nov '22

06 Nov '22

Hi all, TL;DR: How could I connect VDR to the kernel-provided /dev/lirc0 device? Is there a dummy lircd implementation that would simply open /dev/lirc0 in LIRC_MODE_SCANCODE and relay its contents over a socket? As far as I understand, LIRC was first implemented as a user-space daemon that would decode a bitstream (via various bit-banging interfaces) into scancodes that would then be relayed over a socket to the final application. At some point (before I started to use VDR in 2005 or 2006), support for remote control units was expanded in the Linux kernel, and also a translation into input events was implemented. In VDR, the input event interface can be used via the "remote" plugin (vdr -Premote). I think that this is what I always used with VDR, first using the cx88 driver (Hauppauge Nova-T PCI 90002) and now trying to use a USB stick (rtl82xxu, Astrometa DVB-T2) on a Raspberry Pi. The input event interface is mapping the stream of IR messages to "key-down", "key-up" and "key-repeat" events, which adds some inaccuracy. For the rtl82xxu, the repeat logic is broken: key-repeat or key-down events for long key presses are only being sent intermittently. The fix in https://patchwork.linuxtv.org/project/linux-media/list/?series=7322 improves it a lot. The USB interface for delivering IR events in a 128-byte buffer is prone to race conditions, and that cannot be fixed without changing the device firmware. There is also a kernel-based interface (such as /dev/lirc0) that can provide scan codes to end applications. Both the input event interface and this one would be polled by "ir-keytable -t". I would like to use the /dev/lirc0 interface with VDR, so that VDR has a chance to react to each and every IR message that is sent by the remote control unit. I think that this would minimize the disturbance caused by the broken USB protocol of the rtl82xxu. It is OK if one LIRC scancode of a long keypress (say, browsing a list of recordings) would be lost; another one would be sent in 113ms by the RC5 protocol. With the input event driver, a lost IR message would result in a bogus key-up event, a bogus key-down event, and a long delay before key-repeat events are generated again. My initial attempt at using /dev/lirc0 did not work: vdr -v /var/lib/vdr/video --no-kbd --lirc=/dev/lirc0 -Prpihddevice That is, pressing any buttons on the remote control unit did not have any effect, and VDR did not start in the "learning mode" either, even after I renamed the remote.conf that it is opening at startup. It appeared that a read() on "/dev/lirc0" would block indefinitely, but I did not check that. I noticed that VDR's lirc.c is explicitly opening a Unix domain socket to the LIRC device, while "ir-keytable -t" would invoke open(2) followed by ioctl(lircfd, LIRC_SET_REC_MODE, &mode): https://git.linuxtv.org/v4l-utils.git/tree/utils/keytable/keytable.c My goal would be to use the Hauppauge remote control with the Astrometa DVB-T2 stick and for it to be as responsive as it was back in 2006 with my patched cx88 driver. My implementation back then directly mapped IR messages to input events: (1) produced a key-down event for the first IR message (2) discard the first repeated IR message (to have an initial delay) (3) produced key-repeat events for subsequent IR messages (every 113ms) (4) if any key-up events were produced, that would be after a timeout that would be reset in (1),(2),(3). I think that it should be possible to implement this behaviour in a dummy lircd that translates /dev/lirc0 into a socket. Before I implement that from the scratch, I would like to know if something similar already exists. Related to this, I submitted a fix to the kernel to set the "repeat" flag in the LIRC scan codes when appropriate: https://patchwork.linuxtv.org/project/linux-media/list/?series=8338 Without this fix, it should still be possible to detect repeat key events (long key presses) by comparing successive scancodes. For protocols that do not include a toggle flag (like RC5 does), it might be possible to compare timestamps to distinguish long button presses from multiple short presses. Best regards, Marko

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Getting started with Pi TV HAT and gpio-ir
by Marko Mäkelä 23 Oct '22

23 Oct '22

Hi all, Much of this message would probably belong to some wiki page, along with some photographs that I made. Before starting to write this, I checked https://vdr-projects.github.io and did not find any hardware projects. The hardware section of the VDR wiki at https://www.linuxtv.org does not seem to have been updated for years; it does not mention Raspberry Pi at all, despite it being a viable alternative for more than 10 years. I was an active VDR user from 2004 or 2005, when I built a PC based setup, using a "budget" DVB-T card (Hauppauge Nova-T PCI). That system was never upgraded to DVB-T2; instead, we got a flat screen TV with a built-in tuner. Gradually, as our children got older, recordings were made and watched less often. We mostly stopped using VDR about 10 years ago. Since then, I have made some attempts to "come back", initially, using a Raspberry Pi 2 B and an Astrometa USB DVB-T/T2 stick. This month, I purchased a TV HAT case and the DVB-T/T2 uHAT for my Raspberry Pi 2 B. As far as I understand, the plexiglass TV HAT case should fit the Raspberry Pi 2, 3, and 4. The LED holes next to the MicroSD card slot are on the wrong side for the Pi 2, but everything fits perfectly. I regret that I did not buy the Pi TV HAT earlier. The USB stick is simply garbage compared to it. The Astrometa USB stick switches channels very slowly and the tuner very frequently produces errors in the bit stream, when using a good outdoor aerial that other devices have no trouble with. By design, its infrared receiver will lose messages when a button is being held down, because a 128-byte buffer of the microcontroller would overflow, and there is no way to use it as a ring buffer (I tried). A kernel maintainer came up with some experimental patches that significantly improved the situation, but every few of seconds some key-repeat events were still being lost. Out of that effort, a tiny patch from me was included in the Linux kernel, to have the kernel's LIRC interface set the "repeat" flag for all IR protocols: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?… The Pi TV HAT is missing an infrared receiver out of the box. I soldered an IR receiver module to some thin wires, isolating the legs with heat shrink tube. The other ends of the thin wires I soldered to some pads next to the connector: 3.3V at pin 1, ground at pin 6 (or 9), and the signal output to GPIO 18 (pin 12). GPIO 17 at pin 11 would have worked as well. I made the IR receiver module stick out from a vent hole on the top, because my initial attempt of keeping the module inside the transparent lid of the case did not work that well. The module can pick up IR signal some 8 meters away. The software configuration was easy: (1) Add the following line to /boot/config.txt: dtoverlay=gpio-ir,gpio_pin=18 (2) Execute "sudo apt install ir-keytable" (3) Edit /etc/rc_maps.cfg to load a suitable table for your remote control unit. To reuse the old remote control unit that I had, I wrote an entry * * hauppauge.toml (4) Reboot for the config.txt change to take effect. For me, the remote control unit appeared in /dev/input/event0 as well as /dev/lirc0 and some buttons (such as the number keys) would directly work in the /dev/tty1 textual login prompt. For starting up VDR, I used a command like this: vdr -v /var/lib/vdr/video --no-kbd -Prpihddevice -P'remote -i /dev/input/event0' Yes, the Pi TV HAT was detected automatically; I did not have to do anything special. I had previously used the same VDR configuration with an Astrometa USB stick. This is with a copy of https://github.com/reufer/rpihddevice with some critical patches applied. (The issues and a pull request that I opened in January 2022 are still unattended.) The experience with the Pi TV HAT is simply great. The Sony tuner in the Pi TV HAT produces an error-free bit stream and switches transponders very quickly. The kernel GPIO IR driver is rock solid. I think that the user experience is at least as good as with my old PC setup. Some buttons on my remote control unit were unreliable. Using an expired debit card, I was able to pry open the grey Hauppauge remote control unit, starting next to the IR LED. I guess I should upload pictures of the internals somewhere, to help others open theirs. Next, I plan to attach some external storage for recordings. A USB 3.0 NVMe drive would allow faster backups (when detached from the Raspberry Pi 2) and an upgrade to a Pi 3 or 4. On the software side, I am thinking to apply my kernel patch and to write a "kernel LIRC plugin" for VDR that would allow me to use /dev/lirc0 for the input. I would prefer to use the lower-level interface where each IR message corresponds to an event. I do not like the key-repeat timer logic of the kernel's input event driver. And I never liked the user-space lircd. With best regards, Marko

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https://www.vdr-portal.de/
by Jürgen Schneider 16 Sep '22

16 Sep '22

Hi, does anybody know what´s up with https://www.vdr-portal.de ? Jürgen -- Diese E-Mail wurde von Avast-Antivirussoftware auf Viren geprüft. www.avast.com

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projects.vdr-developer.org might come to an end
by Tobi 31 Jul '22

31 Jul '22

Hi! Over the last years, the projects.vdr-developer.org site was hosted on a server sponsored by Xeatre.tv. This server will now go offline on June, 7'th. Currently there are about 10 projects with activity in the last 12 months. I haven't made a final decision on how to proceed, but I'm leaning towards taking the site offline. In this case I will archive the git repositories on gitlab or github and possibly keep a read-only instance of Redmine on my private vServer for a while. Let me know, what you think. If there are many comments in favor of keeping the site online, I'm sure I can find a solution. BR, Tobias

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EPG table 0
by Richard F 17 Jul '22

17 Jul '22

I've just updated to VDR V2.61 after a long time on V2.2, using the same config and the epgtableid0 (2.4.0) plug-in. The issue I'm seeing is that when VDR is restarted, it doesn't seem to be reading/respecting the epg.data file. It's starting an EPG scan and seems to be overwriting table 0 entries from the OTA EPG. So for example this (via xmltv import) E 42885 1657987200 3600 0 FF T The Great British Bake Off S Biscuits and Traybakes D The remaining eight bakers offer Mary and Paul their twists on everything from bakewells to banoffees and brownies, as they face the biscuit and traybake challenges.|Director: Scott Tankard|Producers: Samantha Beddoes, Anna Beattie|Presenters: Mel Giedroyc, Sue Perkins|Category: Reality, Cooking|Episode: 3.4.|Episode: EP013163930033|Stereo: stereo|Subtitles: teletext|Repeat: No G A5 is becoming something like this from the OTA EPG (not same ID I know, just an example) E 18475 1657987200 3600 50 13 T The Great British Bake-Off D Almost halfway through, the remaining eight bakers are faced with biscuits- and the Signature Challenge requires them to produce their favourite traybake. S4/Ep5 G A0 X 2 03 eng X 1 03 und X 3 10 eng Is there something else I need to import into table 0, or some other issue ? Thanks

2 1

Recording an event on BBC4 HD this Sunday
by Reinhard Nißl 23 Jun '22

23 Jun '22

Hi, is anyone willing to record this event: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0018s20 Bye. -- Reinhard Nißl

1 0

Termination of ftp.tvdr.de
by Klaus Schmidinger 02 Mar '22

02 Mar '22

Since all versions of VDR are now available at git.tvdr.de, new versions will be distributed exclusively through the GIT, and FTP in general is considered "legacy" and frowned upon (Firefox, for instance, doesn't even support it any more), I intend to shut down ftp.tvdr.de. If you still need something from there, please download it now. If you are mirroring this server you may want to stop doing so, to prevent your local copy from disappearing when files vanish from the server. Klaus

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[ANNOUNCE] VDR version 2.6.1 released
by Klaus Schmidinger 02 Feb '22

02 Feb '22

VDR version 2.6.1 is now available at the official VDR GIT archive git://git.tvdr.de You can also get the latest stable version with git clone --branch stable/2.6 git://git.tvdr.de/vdr.git or as a tar archive with http://git.tvdr.de/?p=vdr.git;a=snapshot;h=refs/tags/2.6.1;sf=tbz2 This version fixes a few bugs that came up after the release of version 2.6.0. The changes since version 2.6.0: - Replaced strncpy() with memcpy() in strreplace() to avoid a compiler warning (reported by Marco Mäkelä). - Fixed starting replay after jumping to an editing mark. - Updated the Italian OSD texts (thanks to Diego Pierotto). - Added some missing "AUTO" values to vdr.5 (thanks to Winfried Köhler). - Fixed handling zero bytes in cH264Parser (thanks to Christoph Haubrich). - Fixed handling error conditions in the index file (reported by Markus Ehrnsperger). - Fixed a possible deadlock in cDevice::DetachAllReceivers() (thanks to Helmut Binder). - Clarified some potentially mistakable code in cSectionHandler::SetStatus() (pointed out by Onur Sentürk). - Official release. Homepage: http://www.tvdr.de Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/VideoDiskRecorder Have fun! Klaus

1 0

vdr with softhddevice
by Josce 18 Jan '22

18 Jan '22

Thank you Klaus for the new 2.6 version! What is currently the best ( most updated? ) plugin to use with vdpau or cuvid. Trying to install vdr on an unused vivobook with NVIDIA Corporation GP108M [GeForce MX150] Josce

1 0

VDR packages in Debian and e-tobi.net
by Tobi 15 Jan '22

15 Jan '22

Hi! To my shame, I have rather neglected the maintenance of the VDR and VDR plugin packages for Debian and e-tobi.net over the last 2 years. I am in the process of catching up. However, I would like to get rid of some plugins where nothing is happening upstream anymore. Which plugins do you consider indispensable and would like to see them continue in the official Debian and/or e-tobi.net Debian repositories? BR, Tobias

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