Please fix support for Astrometa DVB-T2 USB stick

Feature Requests
1

This is a pretty cheap chinese stick that supports both DVB-T and DVB-C.

Actually it is almost supported, all I had to do is to download a firmware - not a big deal. But something’s still wrong:

[ 36.507157] mn88473 3-0018: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-demod-mn88473-01.fw' [ 36.818187] mn88473 3-0018: firmware download failed=-32

Please fix this error, or tell us how to do it for ourselves! :slightly_smiling:

Thanks.

2

Seems like a firmware bug when reading about it.

We will investigate and come back when we got an answer

3

I’ve got one of these and it works fine. First time I connected it I got the same error, a restart didn’t help but totally powering down both my pi and the usb hub the stick was connected to then powering it all back up again got it working and it’s been fine since through numerous power cycles, restarts, even disconnecting and reconnecting the stick.

4

C’mon, power cycle? Maaaan, it’s not Win95… but let’s see…

:scream:

[ 35.487913] usb 1-1.5: DVB: adapter 0 frontend 0 frequency 0 out of range (174000000..862000000) [ 36.078213] mn88473 3-0018: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-demod-mn88473-01.fw' [ 36.595489] mn88473 3-0018: firmware parity check succeeded=0x20 [ 36.774173] usb 1-1.5: DVB: adapter 0 frontend 1 frequency 0 out of range (42000000..1002000000) [ 36.862296] rtl2832 3-0010: i2c reg read failed -32 [ 36.936056] mn88473 3-0018: firmware already running

:confused:

Okay, I’m out of words.

And what about the rest of the log? Because tvheadend still doesn’t work… it sees the card, I enabled it, added a Network (DVB-C in my case), assigned it to the tuner, and nothing happens. Do you also have these errors? (damned -32, I’ve seen him already in the previous error message)

5

@Quonith did you reboot several times ? (kinda curious as to why it would just suddenly work, logs would be interesting to see)

as to adressing the matter im fairly certain that this is an upstream problem not a OSMC problem when googling these specific error messages we get hits from OE and upstream about this firmware so they are working on a fix, but when it will be fixed that its anyone guess.

in the meantime try what @Quonith suggested and if you get it working please put up a log again for my personal interest // Cheers Toast

6

Hi, i have the same hardware and want to test it, but i can’t find the mn88473 kernel module (OSMC December 2015.12-3 at Raspi2). Did you compile the module yourself or do you use an development version of osmc.

7

Hi, this is what I have:

NAME="OSMC" VERSION="December 2015" VERSION_ID="2015.12-3"

and the module was loaded automatically, I didn’t have to do anything:

osmc@raspi1:~$ lsmod | grep mn88473 mn88473 6051 1

All I had to do is to download the firmware from http://palosaari.fi/linux/v4l-dvb/firmware/MN88473/01/latest/dvb-demod-mn88473-01.fw to /lib/firmware/

8

Honestly I have no idea where the problem is, but if it works for @Quonith, then it should work for me too, I think… That’s why I think that there is NO problem, just something is not perfectly set on my side.

The logs:

  • only the DVB-C MN88473 is enabled in tvheadend, 1 empty network is created and attached to this adapter. And a simple reboot. (no rtl2832 errors, but a failed firmware download attempt)
    [ 35.882244] usb 1-1.4: DVB: adapter 0 frontend 0 frequency 0 out of range (174000000..862000000) [ 36.466427] mn88473 3-0018: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-demod-mn88473-01.fw' [ 36.811947] mn88473 3-0018: firmware download failed=-32 [ 36.988923] usb 1-1.4: DVB: adapter 0 frontend 1 frequency 0 out of range (42000000..1002000000) [ 37.165403] mn88473 3-0018: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-demod-mn88473-01.fw' [ 37.686958] mn88473 3-0018: firmware parity check succeeded=0x20

  • did no change anything in tvheadend config, but made a complete poweroff (even removed the power supply): (no firmware errors, but an rtl2832 error)
    [ 37.033030] usb 1-1.4: DVB: adapter 0 frontend 0 frequency 0 out of range (174000000..862000000) [ 37.762630] mn88473 3-0018: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-demod-mn88473-01.fw' [ 38.283117] mn88473 3-0018: firmware parity check succeeded=0x20 [ 38.464188] usb 1-1.4: DVB: adapter 0 frontend 1 frequency 0 out of range (42000000..1002000000) [ 38.551131] rtl2832 3-0010: i2c reg read failed -32 [ 41.135236] mn88473 3-0018: firmware already running

  • enabled the RTL2832 tuner in tvheadend, and rebooted. It solved the i2c reg read failed -32 problem, but the MN88473 disappeared from tvheadend :smiley: (Neither firmware nor rtl2832 errors, but MN88473 disappeared)
    [ 37.753149] usb 1-1.4: DVB: adapter 0 frontend 0 frequency 0 out of range (174000000..862000000)

My issue is no matter what I do, it does not start scanning… actually it doesn’t do anything.

How should a working dmesg look like?

9

Just had a look at the logs on my system and I get 1 rtl2832 i2c error followed by the mn88473 firmware already running message. But it all still works fine, and no other errors show up… but I’m using mine for DVB-T/T2 so maybe there is an issue with the DVB-C side?

@Toast I tried a few things including multiple reboots, disconnecting and reconnecting the tuner, re downloading the firmware before power cycling. nothing else worked.

10

Hi,

i found the MN88473 module in the staging dir, it was blacklisted because i used rtl_sdr :sweat_smile:

Same here:

[ 28.213942] usb 1-1.4: DVB: adapter 0 frontend 0 frequency 0 out of range (174000000..862000000) [ 28.803666] mn88473 3-0018: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-demod-mn88473-01.fw' [ 29.319505] mn88473 3-0018: firmware parity check succeeded=0x20 [ 29.506314] usb 1-1.4: DVB: adapter 0 frontend 1 frequency 0 out of range (42000000..1002000000) [ 29.603372] rtl2832 3-0010: i2c reg read failed -32 [ 29.677431] mn88473 3-0018: firmware already running

But, it works for me, maybe its a tvheadend configuration problem?!?
You have to scan for Muxes or set “Pre-defined Muxes” for your network.

test.png1600×1600 1.6 MB

greetz loltux

11

Okay, I have everything set up according to your screenshot. My logs are quite similar to yours:

[ 34.790253] usb 1-1.4: DVB: adapter 0 frontend 0 frequency 0 out of range (174000000..862000000) [ 34.885256] rtl2832 3-0010: i2c reg read failed -32 [ 35.380996] mn88473 3-0018: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-demod-mn88473-01.fw' [ 35.900333] mn88473 3-0018: firmware parity check succeeded=0x20 [ 36.077021] usb 1-1.4: DVB: adapter 0 frontend 1 frequency 0 out of range (42000000..1002000000) [ 36.163390] rtl2832 3-0010: i2c reg read failed -32 [ 36.238852] mn88473 3-0018: firmware already running

The only difference is that I have one more i2c reg read failed -32.

Okay, I will try DVB-T, maybe DVB-C is where my problems are from…

I’ll be back when I got somewhere.

12

I tried DVB-T. Set up a network in tvheadend, assigned to the DVB-T tuner, and it worked. Wow.

Then I started playing with cli dvbv5-* tools, started a scan on the DVB-C tuner, and… it worked. Wow again.

Set up everything in tvheadend again, aaaaaaaaaaaaand: SUCCESS!

So I can confirm that Astrometa DVB-T2 USB stick is DVB-C mode IS supported, even though it’s quite buggy.

  • You have to do a power cycle once before the firmware can be uploaded successfully
  • Even after that, firmware upload still fails sometimes
  • You have to mess with CLI tools before tvheadend starts working

Thanks for everything, I’d have given up on this without your help.

13

Thank you @guyee and everyone else that tried on this thread its users like you that makes this platform great :smile:

14

2 posts were split to a new topic: Realtek firmware issue

15

It’s the same dongle which has both DVB-C DVB-T and DVB-T2
I think the problem might be in tvheadend start which might be the reason why the dongle fails to start up.
here you can find a description of the problem we are having the adapter are out of range i wonder if triggering a manual scan as recommend guyee removes this problem.

It would be interested to know which command guyee dvb5-scan did to start the dongle and will try to see if it fixes the problem

16

I have never managed to get it to work. Can you confirm that you have both the panasonic and the realtek adapter working?

And if you have a how to because i am really struggling to get this dongle to work. I am getting exactly the same failures

18

Try all suggestions before saying stuff dont work.

19

This is what i am trying :slight_smile: would like to know which command i would need to parse to get it working.

For the moment i cannot get dvbv5-scan to work. I can only get dvbv5-fe-tools to work

21

Ok managed to get the panasonic channel to work and it looks like guyee is right you need to initialise the dongle before turning on Tvheadend.
How i did it i installed w-scan via
sudo apt-get install w-scan.
Triggered a scan on a fresh boot via typing w_scan and started Tvheadend and now i can see the channels on the dongle

22

Exactly, I did nothing special, the first time I tried to start scanning with dvbv5-scan it worked.

What I did:

  • I tried a scan with Panasonic DVB-T tuner in tvheadend, and it worked.
  • I used dvbv5-scan to inititate a scan with the Pana DVB-C tuner, and it worked.
  • Went back to tvheadend, set up everything again (the same way I did it a hundred times before), and worked perfectly (and is working since then)

So I have 2 possible suspects:

  • Using the DVB-T tuner in Pana does something that makes the DVB-C part work, or
  • dvbv5 sets up the Pana tuner correctly, but tvheadend does not.

The strage part is that whatever happened, it’s persisted across reboots, it has to be done once in the lifetime of the tuner…

I’ll try to put the stick back into the Windows machine it came from, maybe the Windows drivers will revert the stick to a non-working (or Windows-only :grin:) state.