Eumetcast supporting software for Linux: ecast_cfg

ecast_cfg is a gui managing Eumetcast reception for Linux kernel 2.6. Especially handy if you want to have start/stop and channel choice under manual control.

Each Eumetcast channel transmitted is tagged with a certain PID, and IP destination address. ecast_cfg uses the IP address to decide if the channel has to be routed to Tellicast or not, depending on the selection made in the gui.

The tool can be used for both USB and ethernet receivers.

Tested with USB device: Opera DVB-S

Tested with ethernet device: Ayecka

Related tool for selection by altering recv-channels.ini:

tqchansel: channel selection for Windows

Features

for USB devices:

Receiver:

Tune and start receiver
Show signal strength, SNR, Bit Error Rate

PID settings:

read PID's from config file and set-up PID routing
Show traffic on each PID

for USB and ethernet devices:

Selection of channels:

Dividing channels in "important" and rest
Add user-friendly channel names to 'important' channels
Select channels to receive

Tellicast:

Start/stop pcscd, etoken, Tellicast
Show last part of log-file

A screenshot: (mode "USB device")

Channels selected; Tellicast is running.

In ethernet mode the 'Tuner' and 'DVB Traffic' part are missing.

Description

ecast_cfg uses the commands and methodology described here.
The dvb related tools (dvbnet, dvbtraffic) and femon are integrated (no system calls); other tools (szap, ifconfig, smcroute) are activated by system calls.

A difference compared to the other mentioned tools (tqchansel, msgreceive) is that channel selection is not done by changing the recv-channels.ini file. Instead actual routing is adapted, using smcroute. The recv-channels.ini needs therefore to enable all channels.

Start of tool

ecast_cfg can run in 2 modes:

USB mode; traffic from USB receiver to Tellicast is managed. (virtual ethernet)
Ethernet mode; traffic from a physical ethernet port to Tellicast is managed.

The mode is defined using commandline option:

default (no option): USB mode
option -eth <portname>: ethernet mode. E.g. option -eth eth1 will use port eth1 as source.

At start ecast_cfg first reads the config-files dvb-eumetcast.cfg(USB mode) and eumetcast-channels.cfg; the last one is used to set-up the gui. Because some channel names are not very clear (e.g. "EUMETSAT Data Channel 2" for the channel carrying HRIT MSG2) a more convenient name mapping can be defined by the user, in file eumetcast_buttonnames.cfg. Each line in this file should define the original name and the desired button name, between quotes, e.g.:
"EUMETSAT Data Channel 2" "HRIT"
ecast_cfg will use this file for 3 purposes:

Show the user-defined name near the selection button instead of an (abbreviation) of the original name
Make a separate list of these selection bottons. All remaining channels are available in a second (scrollable) list.
Sort buttons using eumetcast_buttonnames.cfg instead of the order in the eumetcast-channels.cfg file

A list of actions done by ecast_cfg:

When	Mode	Action	Using
program start	USB	PID filtering	dvbnet-like function
	USB	connect PID to IP	ifconfig
	USB	set-up multicast routing	ifconfig
	USB,ETH	start smcroute daemon	smcroute -d
by user	USB	start receiver	button receive
	USB	show traffic	button Mon Traffic
	USB,ETH	select channels	buttons under Select
	USB,ETH	activate selection	button Activate selection
	USB,ETH	start/stop Tellicast	button Start under Tellicast
program stop	USB,ETH	stop Tellicast	button Quit removing config
	USB,ETH	remove all routing, filtering etc.
	USB,ETH	stop receiving
	USB,ETH	keep all settings, continue receiving	button Quit keep config

At restart ecast_cfg will examine which channel selection was kept at stop (using ip mroute) and the state of all selection buttons will be restored.

Download

Version	Type	Download	Size	Comment
v2_0	Eumetcast config channel select start/stop	ecast_cfg	304k	Linux only
v1_0	Eumetcast config channel select start/stop	ecast_cfg_v1.tgz	320k	Linux only

Installation

In short:

Download ecast_cfg.tgz
tar -zxf ecast_cfg.tgz, this will give:
- ecast_cfg: the executable
- libdvbapi.so: extra lib needed for dvb-related commands
- eumetcast_buttonnames.cfg: example file to map user names to channels; change to your wishes
- eumetcast-receiver.cfg: contains receiver info
Put libdvbapi.so into /usr/lib Put the 3 remaining files into one directory, e.g. $HOME/bin.
Install the tools from the eumetsat CD.

Remaining needed tools are usually already present (part of normal Linux distro)

In more detail:

ecast_cfg uses the gtk toolkit (gtk2.0), which is present at about each Linux installation.

The following tools are used:

toolname Mode description source
szap USB Tuner config Linux-distro
pkill, pgrep USB others Linux-distro
ifconfig USB configure network Linux-distro
smcroute USB,ETH Static Multicast Router Linux-distro
pcscd USB,ETH pcsc server Linux/Eumetsat script
etokend USB,ETH Aladdin eToken Linux/Eumetsat script
tellicast-client USB,ETH Tellicast Eumetsat

toolname	Mode	description	source
szap	USB	Tuner config	Linux-distro
pkill, pgrep	USB	others	Linux-distro
ifconfig	USB	configure network	Linux-distro
smcroute	USB,ETH	Static Multicast Router	Linux-distro
pcscd	USB,ETH	pcsc server	Linux/Eumetsat script
etokend	USB,ETH	Aladdin eToken	Linux/Eumetsat script
tellicast-client	USB,ETH	Tellicast	Eumetsat

The following files are used:

filename Mode description source
eumetcast-receiver.cfg USB Tuner config. (frequency etc.) attached to tarbal
dvb-eumetcast.cfg USB IP mc-addresses etc. Eumetsat
eumetcast-channels.cfg USB,ETH eumetcast channels Eumetsat
eumetcast_buttonnames.cfg USB,ETH User channel names example attached to tarbal

All files are searched first in the start-dir., if not present then in /etc.

filename	Mode	description	source
eumetcast-receiver.cfg	USB	Tuner config. (frequency etc.)	attached to tarbal
dvb-eumetcast.cfg	USB	IP mc-addresses etc.	Eumetsat
eumetcast-channels.cfg	USB,ETH	eumetcast channels	Eumetsat
eumetcast_buttonnames.cfg	USB,ETH	User channel names	example attached to tarbal

Usage

Note: Tools like smcroute, used by ecast_cfg, probably need root privileges. In that case ecast_cfg needs to be started as root.

Start ecast_cfg
Click on 'receive'. Note signal strenhth etc; BER should be 0 or close to 0.
Click on 'Mon Traffic'. Each PID should show changing numbers. They show received data in kb/sec.
Note that this is for information only; you don't need to keep this info running.
Select desired channels and then click on 'Activate selection'. The selected buttons should change colour to red.

NOTE: up to now nothing is saved to harddisk!

under 'Tellicast': Click on 'Start'. Now data of selected channels will be stored onto disk.
Check the log section at the bottom; these are the last few lines in recv.log.
If you see that Tellicast stops, with message:
Cannot resolve own ip address then start a new command shell and give following command:
hostname localhost.localdomain

Note: The tree in the most right part is for information only. See screenshot below:

Eumetcast network between receiver and Tellicast

(Click on image to enlarge.)