- Download up to 2 weeks of EPG data to supplement the 1 week that's broadcast over the air
- Update PVR software by FTP from my main computer
- Copy radio recordings from the PVR and convert them to mp3 format for listening to when out and about
- Backup various settings from the PVR
Preliminaries
The Raspbian operating system includes the "gphoto2 digital camera library" - a package that interfaces to a wide range of digital cameras. Unfortunately it thinks it can also connect to the Topfield PVR, so it has a "udev" rule to take ownership of it. Disabling this udev rule is quite easy, but will need to be done every time libgphoto2 is updated.Firstly, connect the PVR to the Pi, turn it on and then use
lsusb to check the "idVendor" and "idProduct" of the PVR:jim@firefly ~ $ lsusb Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9512 Standard Microsystems Corp. Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp. Bus 001 Device 004: ID 1a40:0201 Terminus Technology Inc. FE 2.1 7-port Hub Bus 001 Device 005: ID 1941:8021 Dream Link WH1080 Weather Station / USB Missile Launcher Bus 001 Device 007: ID 148f:5370 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT5370 Wireless Adapter Bus 001 Device 008: ID 059f:0351 LaCie, Ltd Bus 001 Device 092: ID 11db:1000 Topfield Co., Ltd. PVRThis shows the idVendor to be 11db and the idProduct to be 1000. Now we can find the udev "rules" file that contains the idVendor value:
jim@firefly ~ $ grep 11db /lib/udev/rules.d/* /etc/udev/rules.d/*
/lib/udev/rules.d/60-libgphoto2-2.rules:ATTRS{idVendor}=="11db", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1000", ENV{ID_GPHOTO2}="1", ENV{GPHOTO2_DRIVER}="proprietary", MODE="0664", GROUP="plugdev"
This shows the rule to be in /lib/udev/rules.d/60-libgphoto2-2.rules, so edit this file (sudo will be needed) and comment out the line by inserting a # character at the beginning.Now we can create a new group, add our user to that group and then create a new udev rule to assign the PVR to that group:
sudo addgroup --system toppy
sudo adduser jim toppy
sudo echo 'ATTRS{idVendor}=="11db", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1000", GROUP="toppy"' >/etc/udev/rules.d/10-topfield-pvr.rules
sudo udevadm control --reload
sudo udevadm trigger
The USB device corresponding to the PVR (e.g. /dev/bus/usb/001/092) should now belong to the "toppy" group.Install software
There are two programs used to communicate with the PVR - "puppy" and "ftpd-topfield". These can be downloaded from http://birdman.dynalias.org/cgi-bin/tdl.cgi/armv5tel/puppy-new_dev_scan-static and http://birdman.dynalias.org/cgi-bin/tdl.cgi/armv5tel/ftpd-new_dev_scan-static. I renamed the downloaded files (removing the "-new_dev_scan-static" bit) and put them in/home/jim/bin.A quick test is to use puppy to get the PVR's disc size and free space:
jim@firefly ~ $ /home/jim/bin/puppy -c size Total 976749568 kiB 953857 MiB 931 GiB Free 386535424 kiB 377476 MiB 368 GiBTesting ftpd-topfield is a little bit more complicated. On the Pi, start the ftpd-topfield daemon in debug mode:
sudo /home/jim/bin/ftpd-topfield -D -P 2021 -dThen on another machine FTP to port 2021 and get a directory listing:
jim@brains:~$ ftp jim@firefly 2021 Connected to firefly.tracy.island. 220 firefly FTP server (Topfield ftpd 0.7.7p) ready. 331 Guest login ok, type your name as password. Password: 230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply. Remote system type is UNIX. Using binary mode to transfer files. ftp> dir 229 Entering Extended Passive Mode (|||33252|) 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for 'file list'. drwxr-xr-x 1 none none 0 Jan 1 2003 DataFiles drwxr-xr-x 1 none none 0 Jan 1 2003 MP3 drwxr-xr-x 1 none none 0 Jan 1 2003 ProgramFiles drwxr-xr-x 1 none none 0 Jan 1 1970 firmware drwxr-xr-x 1 none none 0 Jan 1 1970 turbo 226 Transfer complete. ftp> bye 221 Goodbye.You should see some debug output on the Pi when you do this. Finally kill the ftpd-topfield program with <Ctrl>-C.
Using xinetd to start ftpd-topfield
We can't leave ftpd-topfield running all the time, as each time the PVR switches on it gets a new USB device number. The solution is to install the "xinetd" package which can start ftpd-topfield in response to an incoming FTP connection.Firstly install xinetd:
sudo apt-get install xinetdThen create a file
/etc/xinetd.d/ftp-topfield with the following contents:service ftpd-topfield
{
type = UNLISTED
socket_type = stream
protocol = tcp
port = 2021
server = /home/jim/bin/ftpd-topfield
server_args = --port=2021 --logging
wait = no
user = root
disable = no
instances = 1
}
and restart xinetd:sudo /etc/init.d/xinetd restartNow you should be able to FTP from the another machine again. Monitoring processes on the Pi (with
ps ax) should show an ftpd-topfield process running when the FTP connection is active.Running a script when the PVR switches on
The final step in automating transfer of files to and from the PVR is to run a script each time it turns on. This requires a simple modification to the udev rule created above, adding the name of a script to run:jim@firefly ~ $ cat /etc/udev/rules.d/10-topfield-pvr.rules
ATTRS{idVendor}=="11db", ATTRS{idProduct}=="1000", GROUP="toppy", RUN+="/home/jim/scripts/toppy-add.sh"
The script "/home/jim/scripts/toppy-add.sh" is run as root by udev, so if the user isn't my normal user it uses at to restart itself in the background. This allows udev to finish while the script is still running - vital to avoid blocking udev.The script creates a lock file (to ensure only one instance of it runs at any one time) and calls my Python scripts that use FTP to do all the things I want:
jim@firefly ~ $ cat /home/jim/scripts/toppy-add.sh #!/bin/sh # # toppy-add script # # run by hotplug when Toppy switches on # check lock file lock_file=/var/lock/toppy-add.lock if [ -f $lock_file ]; then exit fi # udev runs as root, so restart in background as user jim if [ "$USER" != "jim" ]; then echo "sudo -u jim /home/jim/scripts/toppy-add.sh" | at now exit 0 fi touch $lock_file # allow Toppy to settle and load TAPs sleep 60 log=/tmp/log-toppy-add rm -f $log python /home/jim/scripts/imagetoppy.py >>$log 2>&1 python /home/jim/scripts/mei2toppy.py >>$log 2>&1 python /home/jim/scripts/toppy2pod.py >>$log 2>&1 # mail the log file if [ -s $log ]; then /home/jim/scripts/email-log.sh $log "toppy-add log" fi rm -f $lock_file
