Turn your Rpi into a Satelite TV media centre for under £20

Turn your Rpi into a satellite TV media center for under £20.

Most supported Usb satellite receivers for Linux are in the range of £60-80, here I will show you how to use an unsupported unit costing under £20.

The model used can be found here
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Digital-Satellite-DVB-S-USB-TV-Tuner-SDTV-HDTV-Receiver-Card-Box-Remote-Control-/171897944328?hash=item2805ea7908:g:uikAAOSw~gRV0qgV

You will also need the two attached files copied into your home folder.
US2B0D.sys https://www.filefactory.com/file/1gnnehdxamxl/US2B0D.sys
dvb-usb-lme2510c-rs2000.fw https://www.filefactory.com/file/qzyphpy5hdp/dvb-usb-lme2510c-rs2000.fw

Next we copy the files into our firmware folder lib/firmware/

We do this by opening a terminal window and enter the following commands

sudo cp ~/US2B0D.sys /lib/firmware ENTER/RETURN
sudo cp ~/dvb-usb-lme2510c-rs2000.fw /lib/firmware ENTER/RETURN
sudo reboot ENTER/RETURN

You have now installed the firmware for “unsupported” device

Next connect your unit into the satellite dish followed by the power adapter and finally connect the usb cable.

Now goto your package manager and search and install Me TV.

This should also install everything else that is needed.

Once everything is installed we do a quick update

sudo apt-get update ENTER/RETURN
Followed by
sudo reboot ENTER/RETURN

Once the system has rebooted we check everything is working as it should by entering the following

dmesg | grep dvb ENTER/RETURN

This should return the following

[ 6.499725] usb 1-1.4: dvb_usb_v2: found a 'DM04_LME2510C_DVB-S RS2000' in cold state
[ 6.530369] usb 1-1.4: dvb_usb_v2: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-usb-lme2510c-rs2000.fw'
[ 8.983522] usbcore: registered new interface driver dvb_usb_lmedm04
[ 8.985167] usb 1-1.4: dvb_usb_v2: 'DM04_LME2510C_DVB-S RS2000' successfully deinitialized and disconnected
[ 9.326196] usb 1-1.4: dvb_usb_v2: found a 'DM04_LME2510C_DVB-S RS2000' in warm state
[ 9.326805] usb 1-1.4: dvb_usb_v2: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer
[ 12.594634] usb 1-1.4: dvb_usb_v2: 'DM04_LME2510C_DVB-S RS2000' successfully initialized and connected

This shows firmware has been installed successfully and now ready to run Me TV and follow the set up to scan for channels.

I hope this mini guide is of help to people, I found it very difficult to find any information in one place so decided to share my learning curve with others in same position and put together this short guide.

3 Likes

Thanks for this post. I did something very similar with a Raspberry Pi2 (running Openelec) works a treat. Sadly in the UK this only works for DVB-S streams, not the new DVB-S2 streams (mostly HD!) those adapters cost around £60 but still a very worthwhile investment after ditching SKY!!!

Hi Mark

It will pick up S2 HD if you start off with the correct channel list in the correct format, If you find an upto date channel list for open box or dream box this will enable you to do so

Yours Faithfully

signiture

      Andrew G M Stancliffe

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Andrew,

Thanks for your swift response. I’ve only really ever used TvHeadClient and MythTv (ages ago though). I’ll have a quick google into Dreambox and OpenBox (Channel listings). I had to do various fiddling with transmitters and such for Terrestrial with my DVB-T stick as the frequencies supplied were out of date. But once done it worked a treat. However I realise that Satalite TV requires a whole other set of knowledge. I managed to pull the other settings together from around 4 different pages.

I’ve got the basics working for Satalite, however the one channel I’m desperate to get working is ‘NHK World HD’ (only available in the UK via Satalite / Freesat and ONLY HD), my previous research suggested this was only available via DVB-S2. You’ve given me hope and some great places to start.

Thanks again for taking the time.

Kind regards

Mark. :sunglasses:

Well now I’ve got some info to start with

New parameters:
(Astra 2, 28.2-5 East)
Frequency / Polarisation: 11.225 / V
Symbol Rate: 23.000 (23.0 Mbaud)
FEC: 2/3
Broadcast standard: DVB-S2, 8PSK

From here
and more info Here

I’ll have a play when I get home tonight and see how I get on.

Andrew,

Much fiddling been done, still no progress. I’ve tried manual settings for a variety of sources that confirm settings. I can’t seem to get any of the DVB-S2 Muxes to work. In Tvheadend they all just FAIL (only the DVB-S2 ones, infact, all the DVB-S2 ones!)

Any suggestions as to a setting I’m missing?

If I could solve this I would be the happiest man in town!

This site seems to have updated settings.

Kind regards

Mark.

Hi there,

Do you think this would work in Denmark as well? Thank you.

It should since all satellite signal is either DVB-S or S2.

You can also try DVB-T with Terrestrial(digital ground) TV. You can pickup a USB adapter real cheap
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Foxnovo®-RTL-SDR-Receiver-Realtek-RTL2832U/dp/B00FF32B5E

Then later you can also use it in SDR, more on that here:

Regards

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