USB capture card usage on the Pandora?


mmKALLL

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Alright, so I'll just cut to the chase and tell that I'm trying to use the Pandora as a backup screen for my gaming console. From what I've gathered during the searching of today, I already have the required hardware (I'm using the Magix "video saver" device for capturing) and the thing I'm missing really boils down on having a working driver. I'll also mention that I'm not as Linux-savvy as many users here, and that I don't completely understand what I'm talking about. (If I mixed any terms or the like, please correct me)

From my test with 'mplayer tv:// -tv norm=PAL', it seems that the pandora has Video4Linux 2 and that there is no device set as /dev/video0. I checked my hardware with 'lsusb', and although I don't recognize any of the data, it seems - and a few sources agree - that the card's chipset is equivalent to card 18 (USB 2861) on the bttv compatibility list. First thing that the Pandora lacks (or seems to, at least), however, is the bttv kernel module altogether, along with several other relevant modules. I lost the exact list already, but I recall that 'modprobe' didn't find bt878 and that it did find dvb_core.

This seems to lead to additional problems - firstly, if the some modules aren't present, I suppose I'll have to recompile the kernel? That sounds scary to me. :3 I'm not sure, but I think that there also may be a need to make a video device out of the /dev/dvb/ stream after that, and that sounds kind of difficult. After that is done, however, should the aforementioned 'mplayer' command (or opening the TV from the GUI) work without problems? What to do if the V4L driver doesn't do anything regardless of noticing the stream and the apparent similarity to the card with tag 18? Also, I only have my Pandora with no internet access and a Windows laptop with limited internet access with me currently.

Thanks for your help,

mmKALLL
 
Alright, so the Pandora seems to have the em28xx module, in /lib/modules/--/kernel/drivers/media/video. This is the module which, er, should be capable of processing the data stream from my capture device. Other required modules like v4l2_common already are loaded, according to 'lsmod'. However, even after loading the em28xx module with modprobe, there's no virtual video device at /dev/, which should be readable. I tried making one with 'mknod /dev/video0 c 81 n', as per the instructions at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/BTTV/hw.html#RECOMPILE. I couldn't manage to make a readable virtual device - I'm not sure whether this is because of something missing or because the minor numbers I tried were incorrect.

It seems that there is no i2c module, similarly to the lack of the bttv module (according to 'modprobe'). I'm not entirely sure what modules really are, and I'm not entirely sure whether either is necessary, but, er, it seems like they might be required. I'm really at a loss here.. I've managed to find all sorts of tidbits and tutorials, but seeing how the Pandora is stripped down of several seemingly unnecessary things, I can't manage to form a whole picture out of this. As I mentioned I don't even have another linux computer available - it seems like using an USB capture device should be more or less trivial on standard systems. Any help?
 
Boot a Live CD on your computer, plug your device and check which modules are loaded.
 
Thing is, I'm at a secluded place with no shops nearby and an incredibly slow 2G/EDGE connection, figuring out ways to pass the time and happened to come up with this.  :p

Therefore, I'm not really in a position to purchase a CD or other media, and even if I were, the connection is terrible enough to take too long to download a distro if it's over 15-20 MB (is there such an incredibly lightweight distro, preferably with a GUI?).

If I find a way to see which modules the computer loads when plugging the device, what can I do to include any missing modules on the Pandora?

- mmKALLL
 
I think that checking what's missing and compiling my own kernel after getting back home is the most viable solution. I'll post the results here.
 
I finally downloaded the most recent stable version of Puppy, but I'm having trouble making the computer boot from the HDD.. The BIOS recognizes the USB HDD just fine and powers it up, but when I choose to boot from it the system boots Windows from the internal hard drive. Judging from the lights on the HDD, it receives power during the BIOS setup. When I exit it to boot, the power cuts and turns back on (at which point the R/W light starts blinking) and the BIOS tells me that there is no USB HDD and starts Windows in a couple of seconds. The HDD I use is an USB-powered Seagate model. As far as I know, the partitions should be set up fine. The BIOS displays the size of the partition with Puppy, which seems to confirm that.

I'm not entirely sure if I've set up the files correctly on the HDD, but I have both the ISO and the extracted files in the root of the HDD, so.. The Puppy linux wiki didn't have anything on booting from USB without first booting with a live CD, but I figured that a setup like this should work or at least give an error.
 
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Burn the .iso as "burn image" or something like that, and boot from it.
 
So, my main computer didn't run it easily either - it didn't load some modules which I believe are required for my device. At least udev didn't create a video node. However, it did load quite a few modules more than Pandora automatically. After manually loading all the related modules and making a device node, the stream was still unplayable. I'm currently downloading the source of bttv and dvb-tools in order to attempt compiling specific working drivers myself. However, I don't think this will work either - especially coupled with my limited understanding of Linux.

I'm getting the feeling that just running Windows on the Pandora would be easier than this. <_< However, that's not clear-cut either - capture cards weren't popular around W95, and if I recall correctly, the first official drivers are for W98. I doubt W98 would support my device though, seeing how it requires additional driver installation even on Windows 7. I also doubt that the driver supplied by the company which sells these things will install on anything pre-XP either. So eh.

Helping me is probably difficult as well, without owning the related hardware.. -_- I'll gather any data that is asked for, though.
 
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