On Tue, Jul 08, 2014 at 05:01:15PM +0200, cedric.dewijs@telfort.nl wrote:
OK, I see. I would prefer an all-in-one solution (HDMI output, DVB-T input, Ethernet and hard disk in a single device). This would seem to be doable with an ARM board that supports SATA devices. On the RPi I would not expect it to work, due to everything sharing the single USB bus.
I am also building an all in one box based on the olinux allwinner A20 board. I have everything working (DVB-T, digitenne decoding, SATA, HDMI playback). I have connected 3 DVB-T receivers via a hub on one USB port, and the board happily recorded 3 shows, one per receiver.
I wonder if the recently announced Raspberry Pi Model B+ would work as an all-in-one solution. While the hardware is almost identical (same SoC, same amount of RAM), the USB side got improved a little. It looks like it now got an integrated 4-port USB hub that can supply enough power for a 2.5" hard disk and a DVB-T tuner, provided that you use a strong enough power supply. This would eliminate one box (powered USB hub) from the setup.
Other changes between the Raspberry Pi Model B and B+ are that the GPIO connector got extended, the circuit board grew a little, and the analog AV output was removed). The changed circuit board dimensions will probably mean that it will take a while until cases become available. And you would still need at least 2 cases: one for the Raspberry and another for the USB hard disk.
But, the question remains if it is possible to record something and watch something else at the same time, or if the single USB bus of the Raspberry gets congested too easily?
I am still struggling howto get accelerated video playback going. Now the A20 uses 70% CPU to playback a SD stream. I will look into using the android driver with a linux wrapper around it. It should be doable, somebody on this list reported success (but I didn't ask him for a howto)
Good luck. Do you have a case for the A20 where you can install a SATA disk?
The board can be clocked from 90MHz .. 1GHz. I have yet to measure the power consumption, but the chip gets quite hot (about 80 degrees) when running at 1GHz continuously without heat sink.
Have you considered glueing a small heat sink on the chip? Is there any metal case for the A20 board that would act as a heat sink for the SoC? I guess that this would already improve things, even if you do not install a fan.
Marko