[micha_L]

Hello everybody,

I'm using Kodi 17.4 (now) and tvheadend 4.2.2 on a raspberry pi3. I've got two idential DVBSky S960 V2 USB Boxes. (look here)

The two devices were working together some weeks ago, meaning I was able to record two different shows from two different bouquets/transponders at the same time. (I'm not sure of that, because troubles have been reported sporadically. But it worked at least sometimes.)
Now (for two weeks or so) I can only record one show at the same time.

I posted the problem at tvheadend forum without a satisfying solution. I believe, the problem may be solved by downgrading tvheadend to 4.0.9.
And that's my question: How can I use tvheadend 4.0.9 together with kodi 17 (.3 or .4) preferably without much ado?

Thanks in advance for any help.

regards

Michael

[rpcameron]

Kodi doesn't necessarily care about your TVH version. It only cares about the HTSP client, which is the middleware that allows Kodi to talk to Tvheadend. You shouldn't need to do anything in Kodi. Just get your Tvheadend set up and point the HTSP client to its IP address.

You will, however, need to redo your Tvheadend setup from scratch, as there were some significant changes in the configuration files.

(As an aside, are your devices externally powered? And are you using a suitable power supply for the Pi3? I would recommend at least 5V/3A for anything that's going to be using multiple USB ports on your Pi. Most power adapters for the Pi seem to only put out 2A, and that can easily drop under load. The larger power supply for the Pi should be in addition to using an externally powered USB bus or externally powered devices. Also, remember that the ethernet and USB all share the same limited bus bandwidth on the Pis, and I believe that bus also includes the wifi/BT, too.)

[micha_L]

Hello rpcameron,

thank you for your answer.

Kodi doesn't necessarily care about your TVH version. It only cares about the HTSP client, which is the middleware that allows Kodi to talk to Tvheadend. You shouldn't need to do anything in Kodi. Just get your Tvheadend set up and point the HTSP client to its IP address.

You will, however, need to redo your Tvheadend setup from scratch, as there were some significant changes in the configuration files.

Ok, but how do I get the older version without much ado?

(As an aside, are your devices externally powered? And are you using a suitable power supply for the Pi3? I would recommend at least 5V/3A for anything that's going to be using multiple USB ports on your Pi. Most power adapters for the Pi seem to only put out 2A, and that can easily drop under load. The larger power supply for the Pi should be in addition to using an externally powered USB bus or externally powered devices. Also, remember that the ethernet and USB all share the same limited bus bandwidth on the Pis, and I believe that bus also includes the wifi/BT, too.)

I must admit, that the power adapter only put out 2A, which I expected as enough. I'll change that. But the dvb-s boxes are powered separately. More precisely, they have their own power supply. I'm using two usb hard disks, which are supplied over extra powered hub. I would think, this should be sufficient, shouldn't it?

regards

Michael

[rpcameron]

Powerwise, that sounds sufficient, although something a little more powerful would probably be good for your Pi. Running 2 tuners and 2 HDDs over USB, and using the machine as a network DVR is probably not the best use case for a Pi as it is going to saturate your bus (incoming stream from tuner, data being written out to HDD, data being read from HDD and network stream out to clients, all in the same small shared bus, all at the same time?!).

As far as older version, which are you referring to? The current version of the HTSP client used in Kodi 17 should have no problem talking to a Tvheadend 4.0.9 server. However, check that your problem isn't related to your under-specced hardware first. 4.2.3 is much better than 4.0.9. If you are looking for older binary builds of Tvheadend, if your distro's repos no longer have that version, then it is up to you to either build it yourself or find it somewhere. But using outdated unsupported software is not really recommended,

[micha_L]

Hello again and thanks o lot.

Powerwise, that sounds sufficient, although something a little more powerful would probably be good for your Pi. Running 2 tuners and 2 HDDs over USB, and using the machine as a network DVR is probably not the best use case for a Pi as it is going to saturate your bus (incoming stream from tuner, data being written out to HDD, data being read from HDD and network stream out to clients, all in the same small shared bus, all at the same time?!).

I'm using kodi and tvheadend at (on?) the same machine (pi3), so network's only rarely used. But you're right: I'm searching a machine nearly as good as a pi. Small, quiet, able to decode mpeg as recorded. Any suggestions, by the way?

As far as older version, which are you referring to? The current version of the HTSP client used in Kodi 17 should have no problem talking to a Tvheadend 4.0.9 server. However, check that your problem isn't related to your under-specced hardware first. 4.2.3 is much better than 4.0.9. If you are looking for older binary builds of Tvheadend, if your distro's repos no longer have that version, then it is up to you to either build it yourself or find it somewhere. But using outdated unsupported software is not really recommended,

Thanks again. That sounds like much ado. :-)
I'm trying the power supply first.

By the way, what helps for a while:
* stopping tvheadend for some minutes
* starting tvheadend again and waitung for epg scan to stop

After that procedure, I can record two shows simultaneously. Sounds weird.

regards

Michael

[rpcameron]

Most grabbers do not handle any threading, and are quite resource hungry. If you run top while grabbing, you'll see one processor spike to 100% and your RAM usage increase considerably, and then drop after the EPG had been processed by TVH most likely.

Since the problems seem to happen while grabbing, my first guess is power and resource usage are likely culprits. A better power supply is a good first step. A second step would be enabling zswap, and possibly adding a swap file. Without knowing your OS, you may want to investigate those options. If your OS/distro is systemd-based, look into systemd-swap. By default it enables zswap, and with a single setting change (swap-fc=1), will also create incremental swap files on demand as needed.

As far as running Kodi and TVH on the same machine: you may want to look into the Odroid XU4. Gigabit Ethernet, USB3 (including SATA support), and 1-2GB RAM. Far superior to the Pi in basically every way, for not much more money. I don't have personal experience with this specific board, but it's probably a good place to start a search ...

[micha_L]

Hello,

[...]
Since the problems seem to happen while grabbing, my first guess is power and resource usage are likely culprits.

A short time after grabbing, recording simultaneously is possible. And possible again, if there is no long break between the recordings. So, grabbing doesn't seem to be the problem. It seems more likely to be a kind of solution to me. (But I must admit, not to be an expert.)

A better power supply is a good first step.

That will be tested today, after the new power supply will have arrived. :-)

A second step would be enabling zswap, and possibly adding a swap file. Without knowing your OS, you may want to investigate those options. If your OS/distro is systemd-based, look into systemd-swap. By default it enables zswap, and with a single setting change (swap-fc=1), will also create incremental swap files on demand as needed.

I installed osmc. Although I feel comfortable with Linux, I don't know, where to set this option. But I will investigate.

As far as running Kodi and TVH on the same machine: you may want to look into the Odroid XU4. Gigabit Ethernet, USB3 (including SATA support), and 1-2GB RAM. Far superior to the Pi in basically every way, for not much more money. I don't have personal experience with this specific board, but it's probably a good place to start a search ...

That's why I missed your posting yesterday: I was searching for an alternative.
In my family, it happens sometimes, that recording simultaneously is necessary. :-(
Hence I'm thinking about using a bigger computer (passively cooled) and installing a bigger distro like Ubuntu.

But thanks again for all your advices. I'll report...

regards

Michael


EDIT: Ok, change of power supply (3A) didn't solve the problem. I tried older versions of osmc, which made no change at all. openelec seemed to be running, but I was not able to install tvheadend, which seems much more preferrable than vdr.
With an older version of osmc (16.1, kernel 4.4.16) I get tuning errors while epggrab now, which I didn't realize with the current version.

Now, I'm more interested in taking a new machine. But, if the problems is caused by the driver, the machine to use will make no difference at all?!

regards
Michael

EDIT2: Hello again. I restord the ability to record simultaneously by changing one of the devices. I've got a Technotrend connect s2-4600 now. Seems to be a driver's problem.
Thanks for all your Help and suggestions.

regards

Michael