[linux-dvb] Re: Writing a DVB driver and some newbie stuff

[Holger Waechtler <holger@qanu.de>]

Mark Watson wrote:

> > > Would I be best off just writing a driver on the adaptor0/frontend0
> > > major/minor to reply to the standard ioctls?
> > >
> > >      
> > Can you please elaborate a little more in detail what your hardware is
> > able to do? The "frontend" is basically the thing that fetches the
> > signal from air or a network -- the frontend device is used to configure
> > it. A simple MPEG2-Stream-Sniffer has nothing to set up, so you don't
> > really need a frontend device.
> >    
> The hardware is taking a stream from a "digital interface" port on a
> Satellite STB. I had to do this since the DVB cards are not able to
> descramble the signal here:-( I can get the STB to tune to another
> transponder by sending commands to the box to change channel via LIRC.
>
> I can easily just use LIRC commands directly to retune the box. It would
> probably be neater to do it via the frontend device though. However the
> _real_ reason the frontend is useful is that almost all DVB software seems
> to expect it. i.e they can't handle having the demux/stream only. So if I
> could get the dummy device going that would do for now.
>  
mmmh...

maybe you want to implement some minimal frontend code like that just 
passes the frontend ioctls via a special device (e.g. a proc or sysfs 
device) to a userspace agent, this one then maps the frontend parameter 
set to the matching LIRC command. Tricky and dirty but may work, just an 
idea...

Holger