FireWire in unRAID How-to

[Tomahawk51]

I have a Motorola DCH3200 cablebox (Comcast Xfinity).

I'll report back if I have any progress with the deeper investigation (but I'm not well equipped for it truthfully).

I'll then go back and see if IR blasting through my HDPVR is an option since I have it going on Win10 (which I'll likely give up on quickly). Finally, I'll probably buy a USB UIRT and follow your other post, Wayner, to set that up for Docker.

[EnterNoEscape]

Sometimes it's also just the card that's the problem. MythTV has a fairly exhaustive list of adapters and the reported experiences.

https://www.mythtv.org/wiki/FireWire...Firewire_Cards

[dstanley]

Originally Posted by dstanley

Newegg Canada had this one for $15.00 - VIA Chipset so I will have to see if it works!
https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produc...tem=15-166-018
I will report back with my results - might take me a bit as I have to learn about this unRaid and Linux systems.
I too have heard that the Texas Instruments chipset is best for compatibility.
Thanks for pioneering this route for me Wayner and Wrx4me - you WILL be hearing from me!

Dwight

My first attempt at SageTV in a Docker on Unraid and this firewire card appears to work just fine - hooked up one HD-PVR and an old Scientific Atlanta SA3250HD using firewire and the video source was a straight through choice - just worked!

I have a question about the server log but will create a new post looking for help.

Dwight

[rxnelson]

Originally Posted by wayner

Those of us that have had it work haven't had to do any troubleshooting.....

I tinkered with this tonight. I got to the point where I see the HDPVR but when I select firewire tuning it says "There are no firewire device IDs that can be used for tuning." Does this mean I'm screwed or is it that the hardware isn't being utilized by the docker?

I'm guessing that unRaid sees the card. I'm just not sure if that means the docker does automatically as well? That just means that the firewire port isn't turned on for my box?

I'd be happy with USB-UIRT but your other threads seem to indicate the zone stuff doesn't work and I have two boxes.

OMMU group 16
	[104c:823e] 01:00.0 PCI bridge: Texas Instruments XIO2213A/B/XIO2221 PCI Express to PCI Bridge [Cheetah Express] (rev 01)
	[104c:823f] 02:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments XIO2213A/B/XIO2221 IEEE-1394b OHCI Controller [Cheetah Express] (rev 01)

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by rxnelson

I tinkered with this tonight. I got to the point where I see the HDPVR but when I select firewire tuning it says "There are no firewire device IDs that can be used for tuning." Does this mean I'm screwed or is it that the hardware isn't being utilized by the docker?

I'm guessing that unRaid sees the card. I'm just not sure if that means the docker does automatically as well? That just means that the firewire port isn't turned on for my box?

I'd be happy with USB-UIRT but your other threads seem to indicate the zone stuff doesn't work and I have two boxes.

OMMU group 16
	[104c:823e] 01:00.0 PCI bridge: Texas Instruments XIO2213A/B/XIO2221 PCI Express to PCI Bridge [Cheetah Express] (rev 01)
	[104c:823f] 02:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments XIO2213A/B/XIO2221 IEEE-1394b OHCI Controller [Cheetah Express] (rev 01)

seeing the pci device doesn't necessarily mean it is loading drivers for it. Have you installed the latest dvb kernel build? That is the first to contain the firewire drivers required. Then, if so, you should have firewire device(s) present as /dev/fw*. if no /dev/fw* devices exist, than firewire drivers are not loading.

[rxnelson]

I installed the plugin selected the libraelec? build and rebooted. I'm new to Linux so I'll need to figure out how to see if the device is present.

[Fuzzy]

you'd need to log in to the command prompt and search for the 'folder'. Easiest way I've found for this is with the windows program 'putty'. With that, you connect via ssh to the unraid server, and it should present you with a login prompt. type in root and hit enter, and you'll be at the command prompt of your unraid server. type

ls /dev/fw*

and it should list out all fw devices found. If none show up, then there is something preventing it from loading the drivers.

[rxnelson]

It returned

/dev/fw0

[dstanley]

Mine just 'worked' the first attempt - but my STB's worked previously on Windows 10 so I knew that the firewire tuning was enabled and operable in my boxes before the Unraid setup.
This is what my server shows with the ls /dev/fw* command:

root@Tower:~# ls /dev/fw*
/dev/fw0  /dev/fw1  /dev/fw2  /dev/fw3  /dev/fw4

[rxnelson]

Is that one for each STB? It looks like 5 devices. Is it reading 5 connections or do you have 5 cards? I have one card with 3 ports. I've only plugged in one STB so maybe there is hope if that command is reading connected devices vs. the actual card.
To be clear, you had FireWire channel changing in Sage on windows 10? I may pull the card and try that for troubleshooting.
I'll wait and see what my Fuzzy has to say as well.
Thanks

[dstanley]

I thought that seemed weird to me as well - I have the firewire card listed above in my previous post.

There are two ports on the back of this card and one internal.

I believe I have three of four stb's hooked up to the server (I think I have one disconnected due to poor performance with my HDPVR and this one stb box but the firewire may still be connected.)

The units are 'daisy chained' EXECPT for the latest Cisco 4642HD box as it only has one mini-firewire port on it. So both external ports are in use at the moment.

I don't really understand much about Linux so I don't know why it returns all those devices.

I had previously used Windows 7 32-bit and then Windows 10 32-bit for my SageTV server so that I could use the firewire channel changing and it worked perfectly for me with my stbs' (see sig.)

Dwight

[rxnelson]

Thanks again for all the info.
I bought a Syba card on Newegg that has the "Ti" chipset so hopefully that part is working. I also have the 4642HDC x2 so maybe there is hope.

I looked up the manual and it looks like FireWire tuning is a legit end user thing, apparently some tvs have FireWire (didn't know that) so as a last ditch effort I may call them and see if they can turn it on if it looks like the port isn't enabled.
I was reading something on this as I went down the rabbit hole on the internet and I think I read that some FCC regulation made them put FireWire ports on there?

[wayner]

Regarding firewire - back about 15 years ago there was a thought that firewire may become a standard video connection. Many video cameras of that era use firewire to connect to a PC. And there was a Digital VHS standard that also used firewire. Some TVs of the time, especially Mitsubishi, had firewire connections. There was a hack available called R5000 where you could mod your satellite box so that it could output video and audio over firewire. Some folks here still use that as their tuner. But the main use of firewire, which was more reliable, was for changing channels.

Around this time the FCC mandated that all cable companies must make available a box with an active firwire port. I think that regulation went away a few years ago.

Firewire drivers for video or channel changing were never properly developed. I guy named Tim M Moore hacked together some drivers for windows that worked for most cable boxes but then he disappeared. This drivers would only work on 32 bit versions of Windows.

But to get back to your specific issue - you need an active firewire port on your box. If you don't get that then you are out of luck. Whether that is available or not can depend on a bunch of things, such as the specific box and your cable company.

As long as you load the DVB edition of unRAID then firewire should show up as long as your card is supported. Note that the DVB edition isn't really a plugin it is an alternate kernel build. But it sounds like you do already see drivers.

If you can try your cable box in a Windows PC then that might be a way to start. But you will need to download the drivers from here https://exdeusweb.github.io/stbfirewire/

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by wayner

Regarding firewire - back about 15 years ago there was a thought that firewire may become a standard video connection. Many video cameras of that era use firewire to connect to a PC. And there was a Digital VHS standard that also used firewire. Some TVs of the time, especially Mitsubishi, had firewire connections. There was a hack available called R5000 where you could mod your satellite box so that it could output video and audio over firewire. Some folks here still use that as their tuner. But the main use of firewire, which was more reliable, was for changing channels.

Not that it really matters to this conversation, but firewire was never used for the R5000HD mod. In fact, back then, before things were locked down, you didn't need a mod to capture the direct stream over the firewire port, as that was the actual original intent of the firewire ports to begin with. The R5000HD mod actually tapped into the digital stream between the tuner/demodulator/decryption chip and the decoder chip, so it was grabbing the unencrypted MPEG2TS stream, and it sent that to the computer over a proprietary USB protocol. Firewire being enabled or not really didn't matter at this point, and the only thing that stops it working today is newer boxes got rid of this vulnerability, and not decryption and decoding are done in the same chip, so the unencrypted stream is not longer electronically available.

[wayner]

Sorry, my bad. I always thought that it was firewire rather than USB. I guess USB makes much more sense.

[Tomahawk51]

Originally Posted by dstanley

Newegg Canada had this one for $15.00 - VIA Chipset so I will have to see if it works!
https://www.newegg.ca/Product/Produc...tem=15-166-018
I will report back with my results - might take me a bit as I have to learn about this unRaid and Linux systems.
I too have heard that the Texas Instruments chipset is best for compatibility.
Thanks for pioneering this route for me Wayner and Wrx4me - you WILL be hearing from me!

Dwight

FYI: for others w/Comcast -

I bought a TI Chipset card (posted that in this thread), and then the one mentioned above. I was forced by Comcast to upgrade my DCH3200 box and have 2 new boxes in testing; a Pace RNG150 (X1 menus) and a Motorola DCX3200 (old blue menus). I'm having all sorts of trouble, but let me stay focused on the point:

SageTV docker did recognize both boxes, as well as my old DCH3200 prior, with either of the FW cards. On all permutations, channel changes did something, but the wrong thing. I saw a Comcast menu (OnDemand) pop up or go away with channel changes. So, it didn't work out of the box as it did for others here. Only 1 of the ports on the card showed a box ID in SageTV - fyi. But perhaps I found that either both cards are fine for Unraid, or not fine since they didn't work! My assumption is that the problem is that Comcast has not enabled FW and that it's not worth more time trying to get this going.

I have not dug in to research and attempt to play with the GenericTuner or config files etc. It's not an area of expertise. Maybe I'll get the opportunity to look at that, but I'm currently just trying to get these new boxes to work with a UIRT on a Win10VM currently - as my SageTV channel changing stability is garbage now. Man I miss my old FW setup on the old box!

[rxnelson]

Fuzzy anything else I can try or report back with? As stated above the command returned
/dev/fw0

[Fuzzy]

If you have the /dev/fw0 device showing, yet sage is not returning any 'remotes', than I'm guessing the boxes are not talking over the firewire ports. I honestly have never done this myself, as I've never had a cablebox with an active firewire port, so i can't be of much help beyond that. You could potentially monitor the syslog while connecting the box, to see if the firewire driver is finding anything, but beyond that, I'm not sure.
To watch the syslog as it's being generated, you can once again get to a command prompt, and use the following command:

tail -f /var/log/syslog

That will print out each new line added to the log. Once that's up, you can plug in the first cablebox and see what comes up. It might give some indication of what is going on.

CTRL-C will exit the tail command.

[rxnelson]

Thanks for that. It looks like the boxes aren't enabled. I got nothing in the log when I plugged them into firewire. I plugged in a miniDV cam I have and I saw something pop up in the log. I guess that is it for firewire unless I can sweet talk them into turning it on remotely?
So with two boxes it would appear that USB-UIRT is out for the docker. My other choices???
1. A windows 10 VM with USB-UIRT
2. The docker setup with the HDPVR as a network encoder?

To be honest I'm not really sure what the second one entails. I saw another user saying they did this because the HDPVR recordings were corrupted or something under linux.

[Tomahawk51]

Check out this for #2 https://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=59707

But, I'm wondering what's the benefit of doing a network encoder on a WinVM vs. just doing it all with the WinVM. Better performance or something on Docker?