OSMC dongle on Vero - lost Sony tuner

Help and Support Vero 4K / Vero 4K +
1

Hi, TVH was working fine, rebooted the Vero and now only the Realtek tuner is appearing in Tvh webgui. Looked in dmesg and no mention of the two other (Sony?) tuners. I’ve stopped and restarted TVH, with reboots before, during and after, but still only the Realtek tuner is recognised. Tried different usb ports also.

The commands used were:

sudo systemctl stop tvheadend
rm ~/.hts/tvheadend/input/linuxdvb/adapters/*
sudo systemctl start tvheadend

Don’t know what to try next? Thank you.

Log is at paste.osmc.tv/qahuvebunu

2

Looks there is a USB 2.0 hub between the OSMC dvb-t stick and the Vero. Hope this is a powered one?
Give it a try to shutdown the Vero, disconnect the OSMC usb dongle, reconnect it and restart the Vero.

3

Yes thanks, it’s the official OSMC powered hub. Tried as you suggested before posting, but unfortunately didn’t help.

Will try again tomorrow when my friend is here (I’m disabled so can’t reach the hub) and report back.

4

Have you tried a cold boot instead of a reboot?

5

Hi, tried cold boot as part of the initial troubleshooting yesterday without success.

Tried again today whilst watching the TVH interface. The Sony adapter appears initially but isn’t marked as enabled. It then disappears.

6

Please post logs when the device is recognised and then disappears (from cold boot)

Thanks

Sam

7

From cold boot just now: paste.osmc.tv/yugoxojega

I assume the tuner is appearing and going there, couldn’t check, but that’s what it’s done before.

8

Hi,

The good news is that the tuner is detected and registered properly:

[    8.946439] i2c i2c-1: cxd2841er_attach(): I2C adapter ffffffc05c1880b8 SLVX addr 6e SLVT addr 6c
[    8.950689] i2c i2c-1: cxd2841er_attach(): attaching CXD2837ER DVB-C/T/T2 frontend
[    8.950704] i2c i2c-1: cxd2841er_attach(): chip ID 0xb1 OK.
[    8.950719] usb 1-1.4: DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 0 (Realtek RTL2832 (DVB-T))...
[    8.950742] dvbdev: dvb_create_media_entity: media entity 'Realtek RTL2832 (DVB-T)' registered.
[    8.950918] usb 1-1.4: DVB: registering adapter 0 frontend 1 (Sony CXD2837ER DVB-T/T2/C demodulator)...
[    8.950932] dvbdev: dvb_create_media_entity: media entity 'Sony CXD2837ER DVB-T/T2/C demodulator' registered.

There is a known issue with your kernel (3.14) where Sony tuners may not register with a warm reboot. But they will always register from a cold boot.

If you haven’t configured TVHeadend yet, I’d suggest reinstalling it. I can give you some instructions on how to do this.

9

Thanks. What happened previously was when I went to tick the box to enable the Sony tuner, it wouldn’t save, then when going to another menu and back again it had disappeared. The difference with this one was it had been off for several hours. Previously the cold boot was immediately after it had been on. Ie switched off via the onscreen menu, pull the power leads, wait a few seconds, put them back in.

So maybe just leave it for five minutes the next time? The only time the box is rebooted is when it does it itself after a power cut, so shouldn’t be a problem.

Can I also please check that I should have the Vero’s own power lead plugged in? It powers up from the hub, but I’ve then put in that lead also.

PS thanks for all your help. Makes such a difference going from my decade-old TVH box with fans and hard drives whirring away to the tiny Vero silently recoding to my NAS.

10

Yep, keep it plugged in.

11

Sorry, I must delete this message.

12

Hi, I lost the tuner again a few days ago, cold reboot and ok. Today it just stopped, tried multiple cold reboots, removing and repowering the dongle in the process, trying different usb ports in the Osmc powered hub and in the Vero, but it’s not showing up. Previously the Realtek tuner showed up, now the tab in tvh is empty.

If it helps I had the same behaviour in my old tvh box when a previous dongle was going faulty.

paste.osmc.tv/obomomudos

paste.osmc.tv/idijucawac

Edit: just tried the dongle in my old tvh box, neither the Realtek or Sony tuners are showing up.

13

Can you try a different port on the device itself?

14

Yes tried that multiple times. Tried the dongle on my old box again, not working, had a look with dmesg and it’s not appearing.

Just to help me learn: I’ve had the tuner a few weeks, it’s stopped at least five times. Three things could be faulty: the Vero, the usb hub or the tuner. Swapping ports on the Vero or hub doesn’t make a difference as it has stopped when it’s been in various ports. So it must be the tuner?

If you think it is I’d be happy to buy a new one, run it for a week, if it’s ok then send the old one back for a refund. And if there’s still problems then it’s either the Vero or me doing something daft, so when we solve that I’ll have two working tuners.

15

Hi

Sorry for the late follow-up.

Have you tried plugging it in to a computer to see if it’s recognised?

Have you tried connecting it directly to the Vero? It isn’t recommended to do this due to a lack of power for tuning, but you should be able to verify if the tuner is at least being detected.

Sam

16

Hi, no need to apologise thanks, I’ve been trying various things in the meantime.

  1. Tried it in the Vero itself without success. To check the Vero’s ports I attached a usb hard drive and that worked.

  2. Checked the usb hub was ok by attaching a hard drive and a keyboard.

  3. Had a couple of tries using my previous tvheadend ubunutu computer without success.

  4. Left it for a day then yesterday tried it again in the tvh computer, detected initially so left it idling, checked this morning and it’s failed. (That’s the same behaviour as my previous usb tuner which failed after working for at least six years without skipping a beat. It too now sort of works needing multiple reboots, etc. Seems to fail when it gets physically warm?)

  5. Just tried using a Windows laptop and nothing happens.

Got another tuner arriving soon, so assuming that works I’ll leave it for a couple of weeks to be certain. If not I’ve got another Vero so I’ll swap them over.

I should have mentioned that the times it’s worked for a few days then failed I’ve not been watching using that Vero, but instead in another room, but don’t think that should have made any difference? If there’s anything else I should try please let me know.

17

Let us know how it goes when you get the other receiver.

Thanks

Sam

18

Update: everything is fine with the new dongle.

Been experimenting with the first one and it definitely seems to be heat-related. From physically cold it’ll work, after a few days it stops. Reboots don’t help, but leave it unplugged until the following day and it’ll work. I assume they’re both from the same batch, so just one of those things? If you’d like me to take it apart to look if anything seems amiss please ask.

One possible interesting, albeit unimportant, bug: a storm dislodged my aerial, the next day the Vero gave no signal to the tv. Could ssh in but very slow to respond. Can replicate this by getting everything working then removing the aerial lead from the dongle. Give it a day and the Vero will lock up.

19

Thanks for providing an update.

if this happens again, can you run grab-logs -A?

Nothing obvious springs to mind from this unfortunately

Sam