Yesterday, I finally bought external storage for my Raspberry Pi based
VDR setup, a Samsung Portable SSD T7. It supports USB 3, but it also
works on the Raspberry Pi 2's USB 2.0 and does not consume too much
power. My old tower PC case based system that I had set up in 2004 has
now been replaced with something that is better in every thinkable
respect: power consumption, noise (passive cooling, no HDDs), speed, and
size (not much larger than the remote control unit).
Hardware:
* Raspberry Pi 2
* Pi TV hat
* TV hat case
* an IR receiver attached via soldered wires to the TV hat, at GPIO pin 18
* a remote control unit (from an old Hauppauge Nova-T PCI card)
* Samsung Portable SSD T7 (1 TB)
Software:
* Raspberry OS Legacy installed on a MicroSD card, with no GUI
* sudo apt install ir-keytable
* VDR 2.6.3 (or 2.6.2) compiled from source
* https://github.com/reufer/rpihddevice/ compiled from source
* "make install" to /usr/local
My /boot/config.txt includes the following lines:
dtoverlay=gpio-ir,gpio_pin=18
dtparam=audio=on
gpu_mem=256
In /etc/rc_maps.cfg (the configuration file of ir-keytable), ensure that
there is a line like the following that will match the remote control
unit that you are using:
* * hauppauge.toml
The above works for several RC5 based Hauppauge remote control units.
To prevent the Power button on the remote control unit from shutting
down the entire system, add the following to the [Login] section of
/etc/systemd/logind.conf:
HandlePowerKey=ignore
The default is HandlePowerKey=poweroff.
Use mkfs.ext4 to replace the FAT file system of the only partition of
the T7. There is no need to change the partitioning or specify a block
size or alignment, because the physical block size is reported as 512
bytes. Optionally, you may set a label by executing something like this:
tune2fs -L VDR /dev/sda1
You may create a mount point:
sudo mkdir -m 000 /video
Then, add a line like this to /etc/fstab to have the storage mounted
automatically:
LABEL=VDR /video ext4 defaults,noatime,nofail 0 1
You may replace the LABEL=VDR with whatever symbolic link you have in
/dev/disk/by-label (see also tune2fs above). On my system, I actually
wrote PARTUUID=33d32895-01 because there is a symbolic link
/dev/disk/by-partuuid/33d32895-01 that identifies the partition.
Once the storage is mounted, execute the following:
sudo mkdir /video/video
sudo chown pi:pi /video/video
The next step is to configure VDR to start up correctly. I have some
configuration files in /var/lib/vdr. For testing, I used to start VDR
manually from the command line, and shut it down by choosing "restart"
from the OSD menu. Now I want it to restart automatically, but only if
suitable USB storage has been plugged in:
sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/vdr.service << EOF
[Unit]
After=systemd-user-sessions.service plymouth-quit-wait.service
After=rc-local.service
After=getty@tty1.service
After=video.mount
Conflicts=getty@tty1.service
ConditionPathExists=/video/video
[Service]
User=pi
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/vdr --no-kbd --lirc=/dev/lirc0 -Prpihddevice -v /video/video -s /var/lib/vdr/vdr-shutdown.sh
TimeoutStartSec=infinity
Type=idle
Restart=on-failure
RestartSec=1s
TTYVTDisallocate=yes
[Install]
Alias=display-manager.service
EOF
This will replace the getty process on virtual terminal 1 (tty1). If the
storage is not plugged within 90 seconds from startup (I do not know how
to configure that timeout), then an error message will appear on the
console. No getty will be started on tty1 in any case; you can always
log in from tty2 by pressing Alt+F2.
The shutdown script /var/lib/vdr/vdr-shutdown.sh does not work as
intended yet:
#!/bin/sh
if [ "$5" = 1 ]
then
sudo service vdr stop
sudo umount /video
sudo udisksctl power-off -b /dev/sda
fi
The first step appears to terminate the shell script, because the shell
is a subprocess of VDR. So, the storage will remain mounted and powered
on. I guess that we need to launch a separate "vdr-shutdown" service
that would take care of the remaining steps. Has someone already
implemented something like this?
After the "umount" and "udisksctl" commands are executed, it is safe to
unplug the storage. The LED of the SSD will shortly change color and
then turn off during the execution of the "udisksctl" command.
What I am also missing is a udev rule that would automatically mount the
storage and attempt to start up VDR as soon as the storage is plugged
in. Currently, I have to manually execute the following if I plug in the
drive to an already running system:
sudo mount /video
sudo service vdr start
This configuration provides a rather simple user interface for VDR. No
keyboard or mouse is needed, just the remote control unit, a display,
and optionally the USB cable, if the system has other uses that are
independent of VDR.
For timed recordings, I think that on the Raspberry Pi, it is easiest to
let the VDR process run all the time. Starting up the Pi based on timer
would require additional hardware.
One thing that I'd like to improve in that regard is to let VDR shut
down all tuners when the system is idle. This could be based on an
inactivity timer or an explicit user action, such as pressing a button
on the remote control. The video output would shut off, and the tuner
would be powered off, except when needed for something (EPG scan,
recording). As soon as a button is pressed on the remote control unit,
the user interface would spring back to life.
Happy holidays,
Marko
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