Zgemma H2S - yes H2S - questions

Muahahaha wrote: »

Think I know the answer to this question but just checking if a Saorview box is also needed alongside the Zgemma in order to receive Irish channels from an aeriel? TV is old so it doesnt have a Saorview tuner built in.

No, you can add a USB tuner to the Zgemma and use that tuner.
It would be advisable to have it on a fairly short USB extension cable so that it does not strain the USB port.

I used a USB tuner I bought for about €8 delivered. I also tested a second USB tuner.

Both were
RTL2832U chip using dvb_usb_rtl28xxu driver
if I remember correctly

The driver had to be installed from plugins.

Muahahaha wrote: »

cheers, where did you get the USB tuner, ebay or elsewhere?

ebay or amazon ..... don't remember now.
Most likely the link, if I found it, would not be valid now.

Having failed with minisatip, I changed to use Satpi which is installed by default on the more recent images of OpenATV.

It was nice to have a GUI means of setting up Satpi through a browser.
Wiki pages have very helpful (if sparse) information.
It was sufficient for me to set up the Unicable II LNB inputs, which is all that I needed, and TVH had no problem seeing the output.
I was rather taken aback to see 4 tuners and not two as expected, resolved when I discovered from the WIKI that Satpi can generate virtual tuners if required.
https://github.com/Barracuda09/SATPI/wiki

Almost all good it seems ..... I have had a couple of instances when channels did not lock on, but am unsure what the cause might be. For now all is good.

This is really getting dragged out.
I continue to discover things I was previously unaware of.

I went back to basics yesterday, and instead of providing the two DVB-S inputs with separate feeds from the Unicable LNB, I used the 'Loop Through' connection to feed the second tuner.
Strangely, it seemed to me, Tuner B is the primary and Tuner A gets the loop feed.

OK, all good when testing tuners and recording.

Next came attempting to use minisatip to share those tuners, having first shut down Enigma, leaving the OS running (using init 5 from terminal).

I met with the same problems I had met before ..... difficulty in getting the expected result from commands I tried.

It was during this phase of my journey that I found minisatip has a GUI page available showing connections and other info!
(that should be a good indication of how little I know about this stuff )

minisatip -R /usr/share/minisatip/html -x 9090

makes the info page available at

http://<ip of Zgemma>:9090

This can be combined in the one command for the tuner set up

minisatip -R /usr/share/minisatip/html -x 9090 -j 1:21-1716,2:22-1752

The '-j' (jess) is because I use a Unicable II LNB.
I believe '-u' (unicable) would be used for a Unicable I LNB feed.

The details as I understand it are as follows:
A:S-F,A:S-F .... the separators are important.

Adapter number[B][COLOR="Red"][SIZE="4"]:[/SIZE][/COLOR][/B]Tuner slot number used[B][COLOR="Red"][SIZE="4"]-[/SIZE][/COLOR][/B]Tuner Frequency for that slot[COLOR="red"][B][SIZE="4"],[/SIZE][/B][/COLOR]<next tuner details>[COLOR="red"][B][SIZE="4"],[/SIZE][/B][/COLOR]<and another etc.>

I have yet to hit on the correct combination in the command which allows minisatip to share the tuners correctly and have them fully useable.

I did have partial success at one point, so I believe I am missing some essential command option.

If you know or have suggestion please post, thanks.

************
I realise that most of this is well known to many of you, but hopefully my ramblings here will be useful to those who know as little as I did and found it equally difficult to know where to start or even what to look for during searches.
************

EDIT:

It appears with minisatip running, the SNR drops off to such an extent that the channels cannot be used.

When using the box as standard, there is no problem with any of the channels ..... no breakup of video or other indications of low SNR.

So I conclude that I am doing something wrong with the command used, but what that might be I have no idea at this time.

This is the terminal output from a command I used this morning

root@zgemmah2s:~# minisatip -R /usr/share/minisatip/html -x 9090 -j 0:32-2148,1:31-2112
[14/04 11:44:43.412 main]: Setting jess adapter 0 slot 32 freq 2148 pin -1
[14/04 11:44:43.414 main]: Setting jess adapter 1 slot 31 freq 2112 pin -1
root@zgemmah2s:~#

.

I got mine free - they were unused as had been used as 'dodgy boxes' and people moved on to newer (smaller) hardware so they were being dumped.

Oh yes, I also changed to Satpi instead of minisatip.

Hi there ....... best wishes for the coming year. 😀

I found the Zgemma to be under powered running TVH for my use. Maybe I was just unlucky, not sure, but I was never satisfied.

For my Saorview use I picked up a used Zgemma H5.2TC which gives me an extra DVB-S tuner as well as the two DVB-T tuners. This has been exceptionally stable - OpenATV 6.4.20220616 (2022-05-26) is what it reports presently.

The low uptime is due to some electrical work I was doing. It is on 24/7 and I have not had to go near it since I commissioned it.

Minisatip had the habit of disappearing irregularly and needed to be re-launched. So I switched to Satpi which has been much more stable.

In addition it has a nice web interface on <ip address>:8875 which makes setup and changes simple.

In truth the DVB-S tuner on that is VERY rarely used as I still have other tuners, so it is a 'fall back tuner' in case of a failure. The two DVB-T tuners are in constant use. I still have a couple of cheap USB dongles (RTL2832) as fall-back for the DVB-T tuners.

I still use the cheap AMLogic device (Tanix) as the TVH server running CoreELEC, and a variety of devices as clients, including a couple more cheap AMLogic devices running CoreELEC (one of those is on Kodi 20 now).

Of course soon they will decide to quit broadcasting by Satellite and leave me stranded! 😀😁😀

Some/All? the BBC channels are changing so that is probably the cause.

Some information available on this thread

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2056038616/new-channels/p44