Some of my experiences with installing a (2nd hand)
Dreambox DM500 HD (v1);
It's setup to receive
Astra 2 E/F/G
at 28.2° East.
I did not connect an external hard-disc. Instead I record via NFS.
The dish is a Triax TDS 64cm and
the LNB an Inverto IDLH-SNL410-HMPRO-OPN Home Pro Single 40mm PLL LNB.
The coax cable is Hirschmann Koka 9. Which is a foamed-PE, triple shielded coax.
I use regular screw-on F-connectors. A friend of mine set up the box for
Astra 2 E/F/G before installation.
For this you need to;
The back wall of my house runs almost in a perfect east-west line. Almost but not quite. I tried to measure the angle in three different ways;
These yielded angles of 4, 9 and 7.5 degrees.
My initial impression was, that the Google satellite view based angle was the most accurate. So I used a box-cutter, a felt-tipped pen, a measuring tape, a ruler and a bit of trigonometry to create a large carton board triangle. I put one side against the wall and used a compass to check the direction of the hypotenuse, which now should point at the satellite. According to the compass, Google was a bit off. So I modified the triangle to match the city plan instead.
---------------- Wall
\ |
\ |
\ |
\ |
\|
.
.
.
satellite
Next I aligned the dish with the hypotenuse and then slightly turned the dish to obtain maximum SNR. As it turned out, the current direction is a close approximation of the Google satellite view. So a Google satellite view can in fact be used to align a satellite dish.
According to the manual, the arrow-left and arrow-right button can be used to delete characters during text input. This does not always work. When this happens, use the mute button instead.
When editing a file doesn't work or returns to it's original contents after a reboot, do:
init 4
Edit file.
init 3
On my LAN the Dreambox is called 'dreambox.int.sput.nl' and has a fixed IP address. The NFS server is called 'sput.int.sput.nl' and has IP address '192.168.1.1'.
In /etc/exports;
/data/dbox dreambox.int.sput.nl(no_root_squash,rw)
'/data/dbox/' is the exported directory. The Dreambox recordings are kept in
'/data/dbox/movie/' (edit / change to suit your needs).
After editing the file do;
/etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server reload
NB: This is on a non-systemd system.
Newer systems may have NFS via UDP disabled.
To enable UDP edit '/etc/nfs.conf'.
In section '[nfsd]' put;
udp=y
And restart nsf-kernel-server.
UDP should now show up in a netstat -a;
netstat -a | grep nfs tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:nfs 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN tcp6 0 0 [::]:nfs [::]:* LISTEN udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:nfs 0.0.0.0:* udp6 0 0 [::]:nfs [::]:*
In /etc/auto.net;
auto.network:sput -fstype=nfs,rw,nolock,soft,timeo=10,rsize=4096,wsize=4096 192.168.1.1:/data/dbox
'sput' is the directory in '/media/net/' where the NFS volume is mounted.
You need to create this directory first (edit / change to suit your needs).
After editing the file do;
/etc/init.d/autofs reload
During the day the BBC 4 data-stream contains CBeebies. Which has a service-id
which is different from BBC 4. Which in turn confuses the Dreambox a lot.
The Dreambox has the tendency to reboot after recording BBC 4. I'm not quite
sure if this a bug or a feature.
To 'fix' this, I record a bit from an other channel some time after the BBC 4
recording has finished.
Alternatively one can use a cronjob to switch to an other channel;
#!/bin/bash wget -q -O - "http://dreambox.int.sput.nl/web/zap?sRef=1:0:1:2876:800:2:11A0000:0:0:0:"
The above cronjob runs at 4:15 and switches to BBC News.
More information about the webinterface here:
Enigma2:WebInterface
The service references are different in lamedb and userbouqet. In '/etc/enigma/lamedb' it's;
2876:011a0000:0800:0002:1:0 BBC NEWS p:BSkyB,c:0013ec,c:0113ed,c:0213ef,c:0313ec
In userbouqet it's;
#SERVICE 1:0:1:2876:800:2:11A0000:0:0:0:
The service reference can be found with (on RC); Menu, Info, Stream info.
The script below pre-loads the EPG. It switches to the first entry in the favourites list. Stays there for 4 minutes and 16 seconds. And then switches to the second, etc.
#!/bin/bash
CHAN=""
REF=""
TM=256
# Set the IFS
IFS=$'\t\n'
echo "Preloading EPG"
while read CHAN REF
do
echo "Changing to ${CHAN}"
wget -q -O - "http://dreambox.int.sput.nl/web/zap?sRef=${REF}"
sleep $TM
done < alist.servrefs
# Restore the IFS
IFS=$' \t\n'
alist.servrefs contains entries from the userbouquet. The format is;
Channel_1<Tab>Service_Reference_1 Channel_2<Tab>Service_Reference_2 Channel_3<Tab>Service_Reference_3 ... Channel_n<Tab>Service_Reference_n
The is no need to put every channel in there. Just every transponder in the
favourites list once. You can find channels on the same transponder with
(on RC):
Menu, Channel_list, Satellites, Current_transponder.
I run this script once per day.
Edit / change to suit your needs.
The Dreambox is supposed to backup the EPG on a regular basis.
Furthermore, it is supposed to save the EPG on shutdown and load it on
boot. Somehow my Dreambox doesn't behave quite the way it should;
It will do an NFS mount on boot, download and then remove
'gemini.epg.dat' or 'gemini.epg.dat.autosave'. I don't know what happens
if it finds both. Perhaps it will try to merge data from the two files.
It should do a NFS mount to save the EPG as well, but it doesn't. This
means that it only saves the EPG during recording, when NFS is
already mounted! But as long as you make recordings on a regular basis,
this shouldn't be a problem.
I wrote a little shell script which runs from cron that copies 'gemini.epg.dat.autosave' to 'gemini.epg.dat';
#!/bin/bash
# Dreambox EPG backups
DIR="/data/dbox"
if ! [ -d "${DIR}" ]
then
echo "Dir ${DIR} not found"
exit 1
fi
cd "${DIR}"
if [ -f "gemini.epg.dat.autosave" ]
then
# Auto save EPG exists
if [ -f "gemini.epg.dat.autosave.bak.2" ]
then
rm "gemini.epg.dat.autosave.bak.2"
fi
if [ -f "gemini.epg.dat.autosave.bak.1" ]
then
mv "gemini.epg.dat.autosave.bak.1" "gemini.epg.dat.autosave.bak.2"
fi
if [ -f "gemini.epg.dat.autosave.bak" ]
then
mv "gemini.epg.dat.autosave.bak" "gemini.epg.dat.autosave.bak.1"
fi
# Make this the backup
mv "gemini.epg.dat.autosave" "gemini.epg.dat.autosave.bak"
# EPG for restart
if [ -f "gemini.epg.dat" ]
then
# EPG for restart exists
if [ "gemini.epg.dat.autosave.bak" -nt "gemini.epg.dat" ]
then
# Update EPG for restart
rm "gemini.epg.dat"
cp -p "gemini.epg.dat.autosave.bak" "gemini.epg.dat"
fi
else
# Create EPG for restart
cp -p "gemini.epg.dat.autosave.bak" "gemini.epg.dat"
fi
fi
Modify to suit your needs.
The Dreambox removes 'gemini.epg.dat(.autosave)' on (re)boot. So you have to copy 'gemini.epg.dat.autosave.bak' to 'gemini.epg.dat' manually after a restart. Or run a script from cron:
#!/bin/bash
# Dreambox EPG for restart
DIR="/data/dbox"
if ! [ -d "${DIR}" ]
then
echo "Dir ${DIR} not found"
exit 1
fi
if ! [ -f "${DIR}/gemini.epg.dat" ]
then
cp -p "${DIR}/gemini.epg.dat.autosave.bak" "${DIR}/gemini.epg.dat"
echo "Copied gemini.epg.dat" | mail -s "Copied Dbox EPG" Your_Email_Address
fi
Modify to suit your needs.