Installing a Dreambox DM500 HD

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.

Aligning the dish

For this you need to;

Know exactly where your satellite dish is (GPS coordinates).
Know exactly where the satellite is.
Calculate azimuth, elevation and skew. There are various sites which do the calculations for you.

Getting the azimuth right

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;

1. Draw a line on a (paper) city plan on the rear of my house.
2. Draw an east-west line.
3. Measure the angle between the two.
Do the same using a printout of Google maps.
Do the same using a printout of the Google maps satellite view.

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.

Editing

Using the remote control

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.

Editing files

When editing a file doesn't work or returns to it's original contents after a reboot, do:

init 4

Edit file.

init 3

Recording via NFS

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'.

NFS server

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.

UDP

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                [::]:*

Dreambox

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

Recording BBC 4

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 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.

Preloading the EPG

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.