Actuator-plugin

From VDR Wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Description

Author: Luca Olivetti

Controls a linear actuator or an horizon to horizon one through the parallel port.

Status

Last Update 2010

Detailed Description

These are the old fashioned traditional actuators, not to be confused with a Diseqc motor. A Diseqc motor takes its power from the antenna cable, while a linear actuator takes its power from a separate cable so it's usually stronger and moves faster. The downsides are that you have to use a separate cable with 2 wires for power+2 for position control, and that digital receivers only speak Diseqc, so you either have to find a model that can drive the motor (very expensive), use an external box that translates diseqc to 36v motor drive, ore use vdr with this plugin and a simple circuit.

Pictures

Position


Hardware Requirements

  • free parallel port
  • Interface parallel port <=> positioner

Schematics

Schematics

Installation

cd $SOURCEDIR/VDR
patch < PLUGINS/src/actuator/patches/vdr-<VERSION>.diff
cd PLUGINS/src/actuator/module
make
cd -
make all plugins

to be loaded with:

modprobe parport_pc io=0x378 irq=7

Versions-Historie

Version Date Description Link
1.2.1 2010-10-10
  • Bug fix release (version 1.2.0 didn't actually work without /dev/actuator)
1.2.0 2010-10-09
  • Version for current development version of vdr (>= 1.7.15)
  • DVB-S2 support (untested, I don't have DVB-S2 hardware)
  • Experimental seractuator module (uses a serial port instead of a parallel port)
  • Complete rewrite of the channel scanner
  • The plugin can now work without an actuator (i.e. as a channel scanner only) with the command line option "-s" or "--scanonly"

Current Version

1.2.1

Links

  1. Plugins Homepage