Re: Getting started with Pi TV HAT and gpio-ir

Hi,

AFAIK the rpihddevice plugin does not work on RPI4, so consider this on 
making hw upgrade. I'm using 3 VDR clients in my home, all 3 are 
different RPI3 versions, and they are running rock solid for at least 4 
or 5 years.

Upgrading from Pi2 to Pi3 does make sense, as -at least in my case- it 
improves the user experience.

best regards,

István

10/22/2022 22:11 keltezéssel, Marko Mäkelä írta:
> 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/?id=b464763cc3489af406437a7650de8575a0973235
>
> 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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