EPG plugin controlling a tuner?

[Mahoney]

I'd like to write an EPG plugin to get EPG data from a DVB-S stream. I'm wondering if I could use the existing EPG plugin mechanism to do this. I would need to query Sage to find out when it would next be using the DVB-S tuner, as obviously at that point I would need to let it tune to the station to be recorded, and I would need to query when Sage had finished using it so that I could take control of it again. Is that possible via the API? Via Studio? Looking around to try and work out what the most appropriate hook is, really.

[nielm]

off the top of my head:

You would need something (java thread within sage? Separate app?) which captures the EPG data and saves it to a temp file

You would a thread in Sage which can inform the tuner EPG grabber task when the next scheduled recording is coming on that device (there are normal API calls for this), so that the task can release the tuner to Sage before then.

There are no asynchronous calls to Java plugins (so you cannot be told a few ms before Sage starts using the tuner)

This would mean that LiveTV on that tuner may not be possible, but you could do things like schedule the EPG grab for 3am!

You would also need to write an EPG plugin which passes the on-disk info to Sage when Sage triggers its epg update every 24h...

[Mahoney]

I had a vague recollection that you could trigger an EPG update whenever you want, via the API?

There are no asynchronous calls to Java plugins (so you cannot be told a few ms before Sage starts using the tuner)

That would be an issue; I wonder if you could set up a watcher thread to check the next scheduled recording every second or even less and free the tuner up rapidly enough to stop Sage falling over?

Guess it's time to start playing around, anyway. Thanks!

[nielm]

Originally Posted by Mahoney

I had a vague recollection that you could trigger an EPG update whenever you want, via the API?

yes, kind of, you can simulate enabling and disabling a channel in the source setup: here is the code which does it from my webserver