Just a short bit of speculation.

Hi all,

If anyone has read some of my previous threads, I was running Freevo on my Dockstar hooked up to a Hauppauge HD PVR and serving up the captures to my PS3 with Minidlna.

Some of the issue's I ran into were the inability to get a working IR blaster device (still haven't sorted that out) as well as the only moderate stability the HD PVR has on my fairly poor cable company system. Even with it's downsides, the system was workable enough and streaming the captures works very well.

Then of course something has to go wrong and the power adapter for the HD PVR decides that it's had a good life and it's time to move on (at least that appears to be the issue). While I was deciding what to do since the unit was past it's warranty and not yet discovering that the adapter was at least part of what died, I bought a USB HD DVR from Avermedia. While this unit doesn't have optical audio input, the rest of the specs seemed very close to the Hauppage unit and they even added a HDMI output that the HD DVR can play files back from. The HD DVR even manages to learn whatever remote you use and properly IR blast that to control set top box channel switching (the Hauppauge uses a built in set of codes, it doesn't learn).

Now we come to the problem. The Avermedia unit has no Linux drivers, it's Windows only. The Hauppauge unit has to be fairly close hardware wise and it does have Linux drivers. The thing is, if drivers were available something with the minimal "horsepower" of a Dockstar could become a fully featured DVR with television playback. True, you'd need a phone or tablet (or whatever internet browser device you had) to control and schedule recording, but I don't see that as a downside. I used my tablet for that task previously and it's much easier than a remote.

Unless (or wishful thinking "until) Linux drivers come into existance what I'm talking about isn't possible. The only reason I bring this up, is that the Dockstar could be capable of doing so much more if we could just get functional drivers for all the many USB devices that exist. Until that happens, I guess I'll just be stuck using a power sucking definately audible Win7 Laptop to fill in for the job that a Dockstar should be doing.

DaveD

I guess you are still using the "old" 2.6.32-5-kirkwood kernel, right?

If that is the case, then it could be possible that drivers for your Avermedia HD DVR are included in the new kernel(s).
You should look into that. Normally you don't really need many standalone drivers in linux. Eventually nearly everything should be included in the kernel sources. To use it, you sometimes just have to compile your own kernel, or the corresponding modules to make it work. ;)

In the meantime, what does "lsusb" say when you connect your DVR?

Well, I suppose I can find out which Linux distro has the newest kernel and see what it does, but I turned up absolutely nothing about Linux support for the Avermedia HD DVR anywhere on the web. Shouldn't be too hard to cut a live disk and see what the result is on the laptop. The Hauppauge HD PVR that was on the Dockstar did require me to compile drivers, but I don't know if they included that in a new kernel or not.

I'll get back to you on the lsusb details in the future, it's rather a pain under my tv set to swap cable's around to hook it up to the Dockstar. Sadly my laptop is Win 7 only, no multiboot so I can't just get the answer from there.

DaveD

You probably won't find much on the specific Avermedia HD DVR.
The key is to find out what chipset your Avermedia part uses. ;)
When you know that it will certainly be easier to tell if it is supported by newer kernels, or not.

Bus 001 Device 007: ID 07ca:c874 AVerMedia Technologies, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 07ca:c875 AVerMedia Technologies, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0409:005a NEC Corp. HighSpeed Hub
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0781:5530 SanDisk Corp.
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0bc2:2120 Seagate RSS LLC
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 05e3:0608 Genesys Logic, Inc. USB-2.0 4-Port HUB
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Had to install usbutils to get the command to work, but that's what I get as output.When the DVR isn't plugged in, I get this. So 5-7 are what is present on the HD DVR.


Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0781:5530 SanDisk Corp.
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0bc2:2120 Seagate RSS LLC
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 05e3:0608 Genesys Logic, Inc. USB-2.0 4-Port HUB
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

DaveD

Doesn't really help much. I should have told you before to run dmesg, too. That could get more info. As an alternative you can also just have a look into the syslog.
Maybe that will reveal the information about the chipset.

I'm afraid dmesg doesn't give much of use either. Here is the relevant part including it showing when I disconnected it.

[293178.825912] usb 1-1.4: new high speed USB device using orion-ehci and address 5
[293178.936013] usb 1-1.4: New USB device found, idVendor=0409, idProduct=005a
[293178.943017] usb 1-1.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=0, Product=0, SerialNumber=0
[293178.951047] usb 1-1.4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[293178.957144] hub 1-1.4:1.0: USB hub found
[293178.961402] hub 1-1.4:1.0: 2 ports detected
[293179.245788] usb 1-1.4.1: new high speed USB device using orion-ehci and address 6
[293179.376625] usb 1-1.4.1: New USB device found, idVendor=07ca, idProduct=c875
[293179.383809] usb 1-1.4.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[293179.391429] usb 1-1.4.1: Product: USBHD SO
[293179.395635] usb 1-1.4.1: Manufacturer: AVerMedia
[293179.400361] usb 1-1.4.1: SerialNumber: 303282900342
[293179.407226] usb 1-1.4.1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[293179.495778] usb 1-1.4.2: new high speed USB device using orion-ehci and address 7
[293179.626501] usb 1-1.4.2: New USB device found, idVendor=07ca, idProduct=c874
[293179.633675] usb 1-1.4.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[293179.641292] usb 1-1.4.2: Product: USBHD SI
[293179.645489] usb 1-1.4.2: Manufacturer: AVerMedia
[293179.650253] usb 1-1.4.2: SerialNumber: 303282900342
[293179.657191] usb 1-1.4.2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[294024.673632] usb 1-1.4: USB disconnect, address 5
[294024.678388] usb 1-1.4.1: USB disconnect, address 6
[294024.698112] usb 1-1.4.2: USB disconnect, address 7

Well, you could try a new kernel anyway, but there sure is no guarantee that it'll get the device to work. Especially considering that we don't even know what options/modules to enable (besides the obvious Avermedia, if present).

I googled some and chances are that the box uses a trident chipset. But, without you opening the device, there's no way of being sure about that, as I couldn't find any info on the net, too.

The thing is, that the newest kernel sources contain some trident stuff, but as I said, it's just speculation on my part and I don't even know if the "normal" kernel have support enabled.