878 capture card setup - card not detected

[fluffykeith]

Hi
Apologies for what maybe a subject that has been visited before but I can't find much info.

I have a newly built ubuntu 23.04 PC with an 878 type capture card from ebay which I was hoping to use with some existing cameras I have.
However I can't get the capture card working.
Is this approach a lost cause or is it possible to work?
Some info on my progress, or lack of, is below.
Any help would be much appreciated.

Followed various instructions including PICO2000 wiki page, which include creating a bttv.conf file and adding bttv to the /etc/modules file (not sure if that is required as I got if from another web page).

bttv.conf contains the following - I initially tried it with just the options line.
alias char-major-81-0 bttv
options bttv card=77 tuner=4 radio=0 triton1=0 vsfx=0 autoload=0

I don't get a /dev/video0 created - or any /dev/video*.

Warning - I'm not a linux expert

From routing around various googled stuff. I gleaned the following info on the state the card / install is in:

dmesg shows:
[ 2.174055] bttv: driver version 0.9.19 loaded
[ 2.174058] bttv: using 8 buffers with 2080k (520 pages) each for capture

There is nothing that indicates the card has been found which I think it should show.

lspci shows:
03:00.0 Unclassified device [0080]: Packard Bell Device 036e
03:00.1 Multimedia controller: Packard Bell Device 0878 (rev 11)

The config options file is as per the PICO2000 wiki page with the card=77 but other web info indicates that the 77 is specific for particular card makes. Mine looks identical to the Brooktree878 but clearly branded as Packard Bell.

The Unclassified device I was expecting to say something like "Multimedia video controller".

Thanks for reading this far!
Keith

[mikb]

I have a Hauppauge WinTVPCI which shows up as

03:03.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt848 Video Capture (rev 12)

So it looks like your 03:00.1 entry might be the capture card?

Does "lspci -v" add any detail?

Once the kernel finds the card you should get a /dev/video or /dev/video0 device created.

[fluffykeith]

Thanks for the quick reply.

lspci -v gives this info for the card:

03:00.0 Unclassified device [0080]: Packard Bell Device 036e
Subsystem: Device 6494:0000
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 255
Memory at 80900000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=4K]
Memory at 80901000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=4K]
Capabilities: [04] Slot ID: 16 slots, First-, chassis 82

03:00.1 Multimedia controller: Packard Bell Device 0878 (rev 11)
Subsystem: Device 6494:0000
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 255
Memory at 80902000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=4K]
Memory at 80903000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [disabled] [size=4K]
Capabilities: [04] Slot ID: 16 slots, First-, chassis 82

Yes, it does seem the kernel is not finding the card.
I guess for your setup it says card found when you look at the output from "sudo dmesg | grep bttv" ?

[mikb]

I guess for your setup it says card found when you look at the output from "sudo dmesg | grep bttv" ?

I did do that before posting. Then realised ...

Code: Select all

18:23:33 up 139 days, .....

dmesg is rather overflowed and gone by this point.

There would be messages in /var/log/syslog or /var/log/messages that start with

Code: Select all

kernel: bttv:
kernel: bttv
kernel: bttv0: 

if it hadn't scrolled away

[Magic919]

Unload the modules and reload them. That’ll usually cause the system to log the activity now.

[fluffykeith]

just to close this if anyone is interested.
I could not get it to work. Not sure if it a Ubuntu23.04 issue or card issue but having spend some time on it, it's not really worth the effort. Especially as I just bought some ONVIF 2k cameras that seem to work well with ZM for £20 each.