webcamd: usb dvb-t tuner needs to be re-plugged (after boot/reboot) to work.

App Deb appdebgr at gmail.com
Sat Oct 30 09:24:34 UTC 2010


Great work on webcamd, I easily managed to get my usb dvb-t working with
VLC. It works great but there is a slight problem.

For it to work it needs to be unplugged and plugged again once after a
FreeBSD boot or reboot.

My usb dvb-t uses 2 firmware files: "dvb-usb-dib0700-1.20.fw" and
"xc3028-v27.fw" (I have them in /boot/modules of course).

Looking at the webcamd program output, The dib0700 firmware doesn't seem to
be loaded if my usb tuner was already connected when FreeBSD booted. The
result is that when trying to view TV, all channels have garbled video and
audio output (if they work at all).

Replugging it on a live system, correctly shows a webcamd message "Loading
dvb-usb-dib0700-1.20.fw firmware.." and from there on the usb tuner works
perfectly.

I don't exactly know the internal workings of USB tuners, but for some
reason the tuner itself seems to need a full power-cycle (replug) to be
initialized properly, or maybe webcamd "thinks" that the firmware is already
loaded when it is not (when FreeBSD boots).

Is there any workaround/solution for this? Is there any command that does
some virtual (software) re-plug of a usb device. I could use it in a startup
script to solve the problem.

Thanks, keep up the good work on webcamd, great project.


More information about the freebsd-multimedia mailing list