building with an orange pi 4 its this week

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dochawk
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building with an orange pi 4 its this week

Post by dochawk »

yet another rate increase from the cable company pushed me over the edge to get around to building a mythtv. almost everything we watch from the vivo is network, anyway.

We'll use an appletv as the front end, so I'm only building a backend.

The orange was not by preference, but as a matter of what's available. It's an orange pi 4 LTS with 3gb RAM and 16gb of EMMCC flash.

A 2tb usb ssd (crucial) arrived while I was writing this, along with a 4A dc plug power supply. Coming in the next couple of days are a 3A usbc supply, a 2tb sands micro (10), a couple of 64gb amazon micros (A2), and a Hauppauge dual tuner usb (https://www.microcenter.com/product/658 ... Dual_Tuner).

And in a few weeks, I should receive a raspberry pi 4b 16gb, which allegedly shipped from Asia today.

I assume that I install the OS and mythtv on the flash memory (and return the microsd?), using the ssd drive for recording. By using the DC plug for power, it leaves the lone USB-C connector free for the SSD.

the tuner will plug into either the regular usbc socket or one of the usb2 sockets.

I've noticed a *huge* discrepancy between what people talk about using here and both the mythtv and linuxtv compatibility pages--much of them appear to be a full decade out of date!

And many posts refer to products that don't seem to vibe available anywhere . . .

I'd *like* four tuners, but haven't seen a real option. It seems like the silicon dust quad might work, from other posts (even though I see no evidence from the compatibility pages that it would!), but I'm just not sure. At least it seems to be available (https://www.amazon.com/SiliconDust-HDHo ... B092GCN9NL).

any thoughts would be helpful, particularly with regard to whichlinux to use and any adjustments I need for my tuner. I very much not afraid of compiling; I learned unix on a PDP-11 back when, nd generally prefer building on freeBSD).
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jfabernathy
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Re: building with an orange pi 4 its this week

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There are 3 guides near the top of the Raspberry category that may help. 3 different OSs.
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Re: building with an orange pi 4 its this week

Post by jfabernathy »

I've been following the Orange PI stuff and will get a Orange Pi 5 at some point. I noticed that it supports Ubuntu and Debian. If you look at the guide of for Ubuntu 22.10 viewtopic.php?f=46&t=5225, that might work for you. It would be the easiest to test.

If you get your RPI 4 you'll have 2 other choices. For a backend only, the RPI4 is overkill except for Transcoding. On a RPI4 or Orange PI you can record 4 HD programs from a HDHR Quatro while watching a previously recorded program either on the RPI4 or streamed to a FireTV or other device running Kodi or Leanfront.
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dochawk
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Re: building with an orange pi 4 its this week

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thanks.

I've been to so many pages in the last few days that I was trying to find those guides in sticky topics in the pi forum, and running around in circles. a quick google found them.

The only quad hdhomerun that I'm finding that anyone actually has are the flex4k at amazon https://www.amazon.com/SiliconDust-HDHo ... B092GCN9NL and the Scribe Quatro at secondipity https://secondipity.com/new-hdhomerun-s ... dvr-black/. Both $199 with free shipping. secondipity would take 3-7 days, while amazon would get it here tomorrow .

I'm (dangerously?) assuming that either of these would work as the quatro you mention?

[does silicondust have an entire department dedicated to shuffling names?]

I assume that either of these would chat with the back end over ethernet, and that the front end tells the back end, which in turn tells the quatro, what to record?

I don't suppose I could use the storage on the scribe as yet more space for the mythtv?

[and there's a certain, I suppose more practical, part of my brain telling me I should just get the scribe and never mind the mythtv . . . but that offends my well-developed sense of "shiny!" . . .]

oh, and as a side note, if it has extra horsepower, it could host a pi-hole and monitor my garden arduinos in its spare time . . .
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Re: building with an orange pi 4 its this week

Post by jfabernathy »

The Flex 4K is like what I call the Quatro, except 2 of it's tuners can also do ATSC 3.0 which Mythtv can't deal with yet. So you can use it with Mythtv as 4 ATSC 1.0 tuners and if you get ATSC 3.0 in your area you can use the HDHR app on Android TV or Google TV, etc to view 4K TV when they every start that.
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dochawk
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Re: building with an orange pi 4 its this week

Post by dochawk »

this thing has me ready to pull my hair out!

I've burned several times using the raspbian imager, using raspbian bullseye, ubuntu 22.20 server, and ubuntu 22.10 core.

In each case, it still boots from EMMC (it's supposed to prefer the SD) into android. It can then *see* everything in the sd card.

I even used dd to write an image, same result.

these were a pair of 64gb amazon cars, of supposed rating A2 and U-1 (is that how you write it?).

I burned them in both the amazon and an old sandisk adapter in the slot on a 2012 iMac.

It *does* insert an Android folder into the root directory.

tomorrow I have some smaller sandisk cards arriving, and a hub that will let me burn them on this 2018 MacBook Pro.

and it takes a couple of days to get accounts approved on their forum!
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