4-Port Card HowTo (Star Imavision 4-Port Card)?

[bonnerchen]

Hi Guys!

ZM work's fine for me with a single camera (I've used a USB cam for a couple of weeks without problems).

Now my next "project" was to install a multi-port card, so I bought a very cheap BT878 card from eBay.

scanpci -v says:

pci bus 0x0001 cardnum 0x0a function 0x00: vendor 0x109e device 0x036e
Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture
STATUS 0x0290 COMMAND 0x0106
CLASS 0x04 0x00 0x00 REVISION 0x11
BIST 0x00 HEADER 0x80 LATENCY 0x42 CACHE 0x00
BASE0 0x40500008 addr 0x40500000 MEM PREFETCHABLE
MAX_LAT 0x28 MIN_GNT 0x10 INT_PIN 0x01 INT_LINE 0x0b

pci bus 0x0001 cardnum 0x0a function 0x01: vendor 0x109e device 0x0878
Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture
STATUS 0x0290 COMMAND 0x0106
CLASS 0x04 0x80 0x00 REVISION 0x11
BIST 0x00 HEADER 0x80 LATENCY 0x42 CACHE 0x00
BASE0 0x40600008 addr 0x40600000 MEM PREFETCHABLE
MAX_LAT 0xff MIN_GNT 0x04 INT_PIN 0x01 INT_LINE 0x0b

I've tried a couple of modprobes:

modprobe -v bttv
modprobe -v bttv card=77
modprobe -v bttv card=103

The last one looks quite fine:

Mar 25 17:00:05 bit kernel: bttv: Bt8xx card found (0).
Mar 25 17:00:05 bit kernel: PCI: Found IRQ 11 for device 0000:01:0a.0
Mar 25 17:00:05 bit kernel: PCI: Sharing IRQ 11 with 0000:01:0a.1
Mar 25 17:00:05 bit kernel: bttv0: Bt878 (rev 17) at 0000:01:0a.0, irq: 11, latency: 66, mmio: 0x40500000
Mar 25 17:00:05 bit kernel: bttv0: using: Grand X-Guard / Trust 814PCI [card=103,insmod option]
Mar 25 17:00:05 bit kernel: bttv0: using tuner=4
Mar 25 17:00:07 bit kernel: bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA9887 @ 0x86... not found
Mar 25 17:00:35 bit kernel: bttv0: registered device video0
Mar 25 17:00:35 bit kernel: bttv0: registered device vbi0
Mar 25 17:00:35 bit kernel: bttv0: PLL: 28636363 => 35468950 . ok

So, next was to access the card using ZM and there the story begins. I only got gray images. Is there any HowTo you can recommend how to access multi-port card's? How do I access the four different channels?

So next, does anybody know a 4-port card from "Star Imavision"? The WIndows drivers says something about this company.

[cordel]

I think you have the wrong card type in modprobe. I don't remember which one it was but neither of those that you listed look right.
You should aslo add
tuner=4
So that your config knows that there is no tuner.

[bonnerchen]

Ok, thanks. Now I've tried "modprobe -v tuner=4" and dmesg shows:

bttv0: Bt878 (rev 17) at 0000:01:0a.0, irq: 11, latency: 66, mmio: 0x40500000
bttv0: using: *** UNKNOWN/GENERIC *** [card=0,autodetected]
bttv0: gpio: en=00000000, out=00000000 in=00f360ff [init]
bttv: readee error
bttv0: using tuner=4
bttv0: i2c: checking for MSP34xx @ 0x80... not found
bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA9875 @ 0xb0... not found
bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA7432 @ 0x8a... not found
bttv0: i2c: checking for TDA9887 @ 0x86... not found
bttv0: registered device video0
bttv0: registered device vbi0

Doesn't look so good

[JimNoble]

Does the card look anything like the ones in these ebay auctions:

5739759604
5562033959
5764290694

If so, there is apparently a patch to the bttv driver that should work for this type of card.

The patch was posted to the video4linux mailing list. Digest Vol 11, Issue 6 subject "Patch: Support inexpensive 4 channel 878A 16 input board CS16".

I've not tried it with the card I have yet - I bought a different card shortly before the patch surfaced

HTH,

Jim

[bonnerchen]

Hm, well its one of these on ebay: 5764851703

[JimNoble]

Sorry, brain failure. It's a single device card.

This thread may provide some leads?

http://www.zoneminder.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=3953

You could also check the bttv gallery to try and identify the card (they're quite often badged/copied/cloned from other designs).

Jim

[bonnerchen]

Thank's, I've seen this topic last week but this didn't solve my problems

I try to get some help from the video4linux-list now ...

[bonnerchen]

Well, after doing "try and error" with modprobe and xawtv my card runs fine under xawtv.

I'm using: modprobe bttv card=77 tuner=4

Now I'm trying to access all fout composite ports but ZoneMinder. With xawtv I can choose one of those composite ports, but how do I access them under zone minder?

[zoneminder]

You choose the 'channel' in the monitor definition, pick 0-3.

Phil

[hrabe]

Chip BT8xx is very simple, it has 4 video inputs. Type of card you can select via parameter card=xx. The simplest way to run 4inputs card under your system is selecting id for any 4inputs card without tuner and svideo (for example card=0x4d) and type pll parameter for your board. You must see the crystal frequency on your board: 28 MHz => pll=1, 35 MHz => pll=2. i.e. "insmod bttv card=0x4d pll=2" (or pll=1) and card must work now OK.

Martin

[bonnerchen]

Thank's sometimes I'm stupid

Well, now I'm fine accessing all four ports using the channel option. But, I'm only able to fetch grey-pictures.

xawtv told me color encoding is done using "bgr4" which seems to be quite different to encoding shemes supported by ZM. I've tried all encodings but only got "funny" images.

Grey is ok, but color would be nice

[hrabe]

Select Capture Palette RGB24, the same resolution for all channels and try restart all zmc daemons on this device (or zmpkg.pl restart). On xawtv you have correct color picture?
Martin