TV on Joggler / Kernel Sources Required

[jimeney]

Feeling inspired to get TVHeadend up and running on a joggler running sqpOS v2 (eMMC), I came unstuck by the fact that my Realtek RTL2832 is not supported at present, there is a package available that builds a kernel module to get this working, but this requires the Kernel Sources (or is it headers?) in order to build. Any idea how I'd put these in place so the build process will work?

[roobarb!]

Kernel gubbins are here. Good luck!

[jimeney]

Silly question, but how would I go about installing these to the required location for building a kernel module?

Thanks,

James

[Juggler]

This will be awesome !

Having support for the rtl2832 in the kernel will help with using the Joggler for Software Defined Radio (SDR).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software-defined_radio

Those rtl2832 dongles can be used to receive 60MHz up to nearly 2GHz and all the fantastic tools from many SDR projects can be used.

Here's some more info :

http://www.amateur-radio-wiki.net/index ... le=RTL2832
http://gnuradio.org/redmine/projects/gn ... i/Hardware
http://www.rtl-sdr.com/
http://sdr.osmocom.org/trac/wiki/rtl-sdr
http://blog.opensecurityresearch.com/20 ... d-rtl.html

There may be some stuff in there related to building support into the kernel.

When you begin to see what can be done with SDR, it really is phenomenal. I think the only issue with the Joggler may be its processor speed for some of the more complicated stuff. But to give you some idea, I plugged my rtl2832 dongle into a low spec android tablet, and plugged the TV aerial on to the dongle, and with a free app I was able to listen into air traffic control. Then when you want to see another source of transmission, you can graphically look across many MHz and see where other transmissions are. You can then tune into this frequency and see if there is actually anything there or it could of course just be some noise from all the many sources that are around.

An awful lot has been done with this, and I've only just scratched the surface.

What I would really like to do is to use the Joggler as a kitchen radio so I can tune into some of the DAB and maybe DAB+ transmission (not sure if this is actually what it is called or if it is actually used in the UK).

So, I am extremely interested to see how things go with this. Would be great if you could share how you did it too. It's not something I've done, but for this I'd love to have a go myself and maybe be able to give something back.

[jimeney]

Yep, I originally sourced the rtl2832 with the ambition to use for AIS purposes using rtl-sdr and gnuais. The best I could achieve however was ADB-S because I didn't have a good enough antenna to isolate the AIS frequencies. None of this on a joggler however. I'll try and get the Kernel module built and will share where I can

[Juggler]

Wow - great stuff. I've still got a lot to learn with regards SDR.

Most of my listening was done a long time ago, and despite living near the sea at the time, I didn't really do much maritime listening. I mainly focused on short wave, and liked to do simple data decoding using a ZX Spectrum, which was particularly useful because you could feed audio straight into it through the tape input and conversely for transmitting, you could use the microphone socket. I remember decoding TASS (The Russian News Agency) Radio Teletype (RTTY) transmissions. At the time it was amazing to read about world events shortly after they had happened, and well before the days of the internet as we now know it. Of course news from TASS in the 80's had a particular lean to it ! But it was one of the loudest, strongest signals I could pick up, which was good for decoding. Particularly with a Spectrum, which generated just so much Electro Magenetic Noise. A project I never completed was to put a spectrum inside a metal box, to shield it and put an external, proper, keyboard on it. Had a nice Einstein keyboard too for this. But sadly other things happened...

I would imagine that getting the best possible aerial for rtl2832 will be very important as it probably isn't too selective, especially for narrow band transmissions where there is a lot of activity. Not what it was really designed for. But, if you have the will a good project to go along with this is to make your own aerials for the particular application you want to use it for. I'm wondering how well a simple dipole would work for reception of DAB ? Certainly should be a lot better that the little mag-mount aerial bundled with these dongles. What I really like though, is that with a suitable development board/device you can put the processor and the rtl2832 right next to the aerial, so there is only a small run of coax, and consequently a very small loss. Then the data/audio/whatever that is received and the control of the device can run over some network (wired would probably be better). Also it is all fairly low power, so could be used as a battery operated portable setup. But, Im getting carried away now.

For anyone that is interested, here are a few links I found to maybe explain some of the topics mentioned here :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_ ... -broadcast
http://www.rtlsdr.com/2013/07/receiving ... a-rtl-sdr/
http://www.satsignal.eu/raspberry-pi/AIS-receiver.html
http://hackaday.com/2013/05/06/tracking ... radio-sdr/
http://aprs.fi/#!lat=55.83330&lng=-4.25000
http://www.oz9aec.net/index.php/gnu-rad ... and-gnuais
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioteletype
http://en.itar-tass.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatio ... _of_Russia

[jimeney]

Sadly hit a brick wall with this, the Kernel Headers are not enough to build the driver, so we'll need to Kernel Source to do this.

Roobarb, can you help assist me in locating / installing the necessary files?

I'm presuming the linux-image .deb file is for the kernel itself, and the linux-header .deb file is the headers, so is the full source not published?

Kernel gubbins are here. Good luck!

[jimeney]

Some progress....

Ran out of space trying this on the eMMC version of SqueezePlay OS v2, so will need to start again on the external flash version.

This builds however...

Code: Select all

sudo su

apt-get --no-install-recommends build-essential git
apt-get install  patchutils libproc-processtable-perl

cd /root

wget http://birdslikewires.co.uk/download/openframe/kernel/3.10/3.10.29op1_precise/linux-headers-3.10.29op1_3.10.29op1_i386.deb

dpkg -i linux-headers-3.10.29op1_3.10.29op1_i386.deb

ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-3.10.29op1 /lib/modules/3.10.29op1/build

git clone git://linuxtv.org/media_build.git 
cd media_build 
./build 
make install

Now to figure out what I need to do to package up the compiled files (surely I can share these instead of everyone needing to build this)...

[roobarb!]

Sadly hit a brick wall with this, the Kernel Headers are not enough to build the driver, so we'll need to Kernel Source to do this.

Roobarb, can you help assist me in locating / installing the necessary files?

I'm presuming the linux-image .deb file is for the kernel itself, and the linux-header .deb file is the headers, so is the full source not published?

Kernel gubbins are here. Good luck!

Full kernel source is always available from kernel.org - this is the full listing - you need linux-3.10.29.tar.xz. However, it looks like support for RTL2832 was only added in kernel 3.11, so it probably won't do you much good.

You'll always need to compile on external memory - there's really no room at all on the internal storage (and it's sloooow).

Not sure what the Linux TV package you're compiling contains, but if there are drivers for your device in it, give it another whirl on external storage. In the meantime, I'll see if I can add RTL2832 support to the newer kernel when I finally get the next SQPOS release finished.

[dec]

Full kernel source is always available from kernel.org - this is the full listing - you need linux-3.10.29.tar.xz. However, it looks like support for RTL2832 was only added in kernel 3.11, so it probably won't do you much good.

You'll always need to compile on external memory - there's really no room at all on the internal storage (and it's sloooow).

Not sure what the Linux TV package you're compiling contains, but if there are drivers for your device in it, give it another whirl on external storage. In the meantime, I'll see if I can add RTL2832 support to the newer kernel when I finally get the next SQPOS release finished.

If you're adding support for devices, would it be possible to add the August DVB-T210/Geniatech T220? It's a (relatively) cheap DVB-T2 - Freeview HD - usb stick. Details are here:

https://tvheadend.org/boards/5/topics/1 ... sage-12747

It should be back in stock this month at Amazon, and was about £30 previously.

Might be useful/popular for others? Thanks!

[roobarb!]

If you're adding support for devices, would it be possible to add the August DVB-T210/Geniatech T220? It's a (relatively) cheap DVB-T2 - Freeview HD - usb stick. Details are here:

https://tvheadend.org/boards/5/topics/1 ... sage-12747

It should be back in stock this month at Amazon, and was about £30 previously.

Might be useful/popular for others? Thanks!

I do take requests!

Having had a read, it would seem that the drivers for this aren't going to make it into the kernel until 3.16 / 3.17. Do you happen to know where this 'crazycat' patch that's mentioned lives? I'm assuming that this is actually an open source driver that's been developed, but I can't find it.

[dec]

I do take requests!

Having had a read, it would seem that the drivers for this aren't going to make it into the kernel until 3.16 / 3.17. Do you happen to know where this 'crazycat' patch that's mentioned lives? I'm assuming that this is actually an open source driver that's been developed, but I can't find it.

Thanks. I'll try to hunt down the patch and get back to you.

[jimeney]

I have managed to compile Linux TV (media_build) which contains Kernel Modules for everything supported under Linux TV, including the RTL2832U - I was missing a Symlink in the Kernel Header directory that was stopping the build, but now this worked.

I'm trying to work out what I need to share for this to work, because as it stands, the build folder contains all of the GIT source and working files, so it over 600mb.

Using Make Install puts all the relevant kernel modules in place, then removing the source folder that I did the git clone on means I still have around 550mb free of the 1gb partition. The question is, is there an easy way to package up the .ko and firmware files so I can share this?

[jimeney]

there is an rtl2832u.ko file in amongst the compiled files, do you think that would be enough? (@dec - given I've compiled the entire device tree, I'd imagine it might contain the device you are looking at too!)

[jimeney]

I note the following post on the link you provided...

So no need to patch media_build any more if you follow these instructions ? : http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/H ... ce_Drivers

This is exactly what I compiled, so, bear with me, I'll zip up and upload the output and you can try and find the relevant bits.

James

[dec]

This is exactly what I compiled, so, bear with me, I'll zip up and upload the output and you can try and find the relevant bits.

James

That'd be great if it's now in there.

Thanks!

[jimeney]

Zip file is here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1wzsu ... sp=sharing

Its 230+ MB as it contains all the source too. If you have build-essential installed, you should just need to issue a make install command in the root of this extracted folder. Let me know how you get on.

This is compiled against sqpOS v2 kernel 3.10.29op1

Feel free to use any / all of this as you see fit.

James

[dec]

Just to resurrect this old thread.

I've been trying to compile the latest Linux TV (media_build) and I'm not getting very far.

I'm running SQPOS externally on a (16gb) USB stick, with the partition expanded to use the full space available. So storage shouldn't be an issue.

I want to get my Geniatech T220A & PCTV 292e USB DVB-T2 sticks working.

I've tried using the following commands:

sudo git clone git://linuxtv.org/media_build.git
cd media_build
./build --main-git

But I keep getting errors, "index-pack died of signal", "index-pack failed"

Is that a problem with my internet connection or is there something else I need to do?

[BuZz]

could be - or a problem between you and the server.

It is much easier/quicker to compile on a pc (using i386 linux chroot though or using virtualisation).

[dec]

Hmm, I was beginning to think that might be required.

The only problem is I don't have a clue how to do it!

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated!

I have tried searching google, but I've reached my limit.