A Generic Tuner Plugin for SageTV

Description

The Generic Tuner Plugin is a tuning plugin for SageTV.

It was created to move the complexities of tuning your myriad of recording devices from a poorly understood C library to the language of your choice.

Currently it has only been tested on Linux, but may work on the other platforms supported by SageTV with modifications.

The plugin acts as a passthru to a script or program called gentuner. gentuner can be written in whatever language you desire. It needs to accept several simple arguments on the command line and return results on STDOUT. gentuner is responsible for handing off the actual tuning work to the appropriate software (LIRC, 6200ch, panelctl, etc).

gentuner

You must create a gentuner script that is appropriate for your setup.

There are several example gentuner scripts provided in the distribution. You might want to have one of them handy for reference as you read the following section.

gentuner needs to do several things:

• Report what "remotes" are available
• Report what "keys" each "remote" has
• Actually tune the recording device using the method of your choice

In addition, anything else you might want to do when tuning a channel could be included. See the section about gentuner.CUSTOM below for more details.

A "remote" need not be a physical remote. It merely refers to the device or mechanism used to tune the recording device to a specified channel.

gentuner must recognize the following command line arguments:

Command	Action for gentuner to take
REMOTES	Return a list (one per line) of available "remotes"
KEYS remote	Return a list (one per line) of "keys" that remote supports
SEND remote key	Transmit key to remote. How exactly you transmit this "key" depends on your setup.
TUNE remote channel	Use remote to tune to channel. channel is an integer. How exactly you tune depends on your setup.
CAN_TUNE remote	Returns string "OK" if remote can tune by channel (i.e. macro tune) instead of using individual keys.

Note that currently remote, key, and channel are strings that are expected to have no whitespace in them. For example "FiOS-TV-1" is a valid remote name, whereas "FiOS TV 1" is not. This limitation may be fixed in the future.

Tuning methods

The plugin supports two methods for tuning:

• Macro Tuning - The plugin will call gentuner with the full channel number (i.e. TUNE 123 for channel "123") and expect gentuner will do everything necessary tune the recording device to that channel.
• Keypress - The plugin will issue a SEND command for each keypress (i.e. SEND _remote_ 1 then SEND _remote_ 2 then SEND _remote_ 3 for channel "123") and expect that each keypress is sent to the recording device.

Before each channel tune, the plugin will call gentuner with the CAN_TUNE command.

If gentuner returns OK for CAN_TUNE, the plugin will only call TUNE ("macro tuning" method) for that remote - it will never call SEND ("keypress" method). Generally this would be used for a tuning method that doesn't have "keys" such as using FireWire to tune the channel on a set top box. It might also be used when you want gentuner to do all the tuning work. If a remote returns OK for CAN_TUNE, the list of "keys" returned by KEYS is ignored by the plugin since they are not needed.

If gentuner returns anything except OK for CAN_TUNE, the plugin will only call SEND for that remote - it will never call TUNE. SEND will be called multiple times, typically once for each digit of a channel, plus any pre or post keys you define within Sage itself. Generally if you use a tuning method that deals with key presses, like LIRC, this is the path for you.

The plugin remembers the answer to CAN_TUNE on a per remote basis, so some of your "remotes" could use the "keypress" method and some can use the "macro tune" method if necessary.

A gentuner script can be simple or complex. A simple script might be a thin translation layer to LIRC for IR based tuning (see gentuner.LIRC for an example) or 6200ch or panelctl for FireWire tuning (see gentuner.PANELCTL for an example).

A more complex gentuner might report OK for CAN_TUNE, and then send each digit individually so that you can control the timing between digits more precisely. Or you might want add code to do something important for your setup before or after each tune. See gentuner.CUSTOM for a more complex example.

Building

Pre-built Binary

Release tarballs pre-compiled for Ubuntu 18.04 (works on 16.x and 20.x as well) are available in Releases

Manual Build

SageTV 9 is released as 64 bit only, so the Makefile only supports building a 64 bit plugin.

You'll need gcc and make installed on your build host.

Once you have gcc installed, just:

make

And you should have a GenericTunerPlugin.so.

Installation

Install plugin from the official release

cd /tmp
curl -LO https://github.com/jwittkoski/GenericTunerPlugin/releases/download/1.4.0/gentuner-1.4.0.linux-amd64.tgz
cd /opt/sagetv/server
tar xvzf /tmp/gentuner-1.4.0.linux-amd64.tgz

Install the plugin (from manual build)

• Put the plugin in the right location

    cp GenericTunerPlugin.so /opt/sagetv/server/irtunerplugins/
  

Configuration

IMPORTANT NOTE: After shutting down the SageTV process, always create a backup copy of your Sage.properties file before making any changes! If you make any changes to Sage.properties that break your setup, you can always revert to the backup copy.

• Examine the sample gentuner.* scripts to see which one most closely fits in with your tuning needs, and make a copy. For example:

    cp gentuner.LIRC gentuner.LOCAL
  

• Modify gentuner.LOCAL as needed for your environment and/or tuning needs.

• Test your version of gentuner with your setup directly from the command line to make sure it's tuning the devices as expected before trying it with Sage. You could try things like:

    gentuner.LOCAL REMOTES
  

  or

    gentuner.LOCAL KEYS REMOTE_NAME_HERE
  

  or

    gentuner.LOCAL CAN_TUNE REMOTE_NAME_HERE
  

  or

    gentuner.LOCAL SEND REMOTE_NAME_HERE 1
    gentuner.LOCAL SEND REMOTE_NAME_HERE 2
    gentuner.LOCAL SEND REMOTE_NAME_HERE 3
    gentuner.LOCAL SEND REMOTE_NAME_HERE OK
  

  or

    gentuner.LOCAL TUNE REMOTE_NAME_HERE 123
  

  etc.

• Copy your version of gentuner to where the plugin expects it. Note that currently the Generic Tuner Plugin has the path to gentuner hardcoded to /opt/sagetv/server/gentuner. You can create a symlink or recompile if you need to put the plugin elsewhere.

    cp gentuner.LOCAL /opt/sagetv/server/gentuner
  

• Configure each video source to use the Generic Tuner Plugin. Unfortunately, SageTV does not provide any way to change the tuning plugin for a video souce after the source is initially configured. You must remove and readd the video source, selecting "Generic Tuner" when asked to select a tuning plugin. Note that removing and re-adding the video source will likely involve other work to get the configuration back to where you had it.

• Stop and start SageTV

• In SageTV, go to the Setup -> Setup Video Sources menu, select the video source that uses the Generic Tuner, click on "Tuner Control", then "Change Tuning Device". You should see the list of the remotes your gentuner script reports. Select it.

Note: Currently debugging is enabled and lots of stuff will get logged to /opt/sagetv/server/gentuner.log. You can disable that in the source if desired. An option may be added later.

History

The Generic Tuner Plugin is based on MultiDCTTunerDLL which is Copyright (C) 2004 Sean Newman and was licensed under the GPLv2 license.

This code was written and/or modified by by Jim Paris, Frey Technologies LLC, Sean Newman, Sean Stuckless, and John P. Wittkoski.

Thanks to Jerry Fiddler for the gentuner.PANELCTL script and the changes he made to panelctl to support multiple STBs.

Thanks to Joe Peled for the gentuner.IPSTB script.

Thanks to turak on the SageTV Forums for the gentuner.HR44 script.

Developer Details

Tidbits about why the plugin does what it does will be added as time permits.