{"id":34,"date":"2011-01-05T01:54:29","date_gmt":"2011-01-05T00:54:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paguilar.org\/?p=34"},"modified":"2011-01-05T01:54:29","modified_gmt":"2011-01-05T00:54:29","slug":"qboxhd-and-qboxhd-mini-sources-released-with-sdk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paguilar.org\/?p=34","title":{"rendered":"QBoxHD and QBoxHD-mini sources released with &#8216;SDK&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last year was a very busy year and I didn&#8217;t have much time for posting, but this year seems to be much better.<br \/>\nIn fact, the first good news is that the QBoxHD Team released the source code of almost all the software that runs in these boxes.<br \/>\nIf you want to see the sources right away, you can go the <a href=\"http:\/\/sourceforge.net\/projects\/qboxhd\/\">project&#8217;s homepage<\/a> at SourceForge.<br \/>\nYou can get the sources from the <a href=\"http:\/\/qboxhd.svn.sourceforge.net\/viewvc\/qboxhd\/\">SVN repository<\/a>:<\/p>\n<pre lang=\"bash\">\nsvn co https:\/\/qboxhd.svn.sourceforge.net\/svnroot\/qboxhd\/trunk  qboxhd\n<\/pre>\n<p>Some of the most important components were already OSS such as the kernel and the application software Enigma2, so they had to be released anyway. As a matter of fact, they were released several months ago, but they were never updated, although they were in an SVN repository. This was due to the team that worked in a private repository and never sync&#8217;ed to the public one.<\/p>\n<p>Although Duolabs is doing a great effort for opening their development process (you can see that the SourceForge&#8217;s SVN repository is actively used), not all the software is being released. Some critical parts such as everything related to the FPGA remains proprietary.<\/p>\n<p>However, most of the sources that before were proprietary, now are OSS released under the GPLv2. And this, along with a simple mechanism for compiling these sources, are the relevant part that could mean an advantage for these decoders.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s start with the development environment.<br \/>\nIt is a simple, yet useful system targeted for compiling the kernel, drivers and the middleware and application software. This environment is just a set of scripts that only allows to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Compile the boot loader<\/li>\n<li>Compile the kernel<\/li>\n<li>Compile the drivers (only the OSS)<\/li>\n<li>Compile enigma2 (middleware and application software)<\/li>\n<li>Work with an NFS filesystem and an TFTP server<\/li>\n<li>Create releases using the official procedure<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>These tools consist of a <em>Makefile<\/em>, a configuration file <em>config.in<\/em> and some other Shell and Perl scripts inside the <em>\/sdk<\/em> directory. If you want to check the details you can have a look at the <a href=\"http:\/\/sourceforge.net\/apps\/mediawiki\/qboxhd\/index.php?title=Main_Page\">project&#8217;s wiki<\/a> that is far from being complete, but at least it describes the basic procedure for compiling the mentioned sources.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a quite simple set of tools. Thus, do not expect any development environment such as the ones used in projects like MeeGo or Android. Properly speaking, this is not an SDK, only a set of scripts that allows to build the sources and create a release almost identical to the official one.<\/p>\n<p>These QboxHD tools were developed one bit at a time as requirements were added to the system and to fit the needs of a small team, taking into account that the development was done in a closed fashion, different from an open development that everybody can follow. I think that&#8217;s the reason why, in one hand, they have a specific and practical purpose, and in the other hand, are quite limited if compared to full-blown development environments.<\/p>\n<p>It would be quite nice if this system was migrated to a real full-platform build tool such as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.yoctoproject.org\/docs\/poky-ref-manual\/poky-ref-manual.html\">Poky<\/a>. Unfortunately, the SH4-based processors don&#8217;t have any support of this kind. <\/p>\n<p>Now let&#8217;s move to the source code that was released.<br \/>\nBesides the already known OSS (U-Boot, Linux kernel and Enigma2), the relevant part is in the <em>\/src\/drivers<\/em> directory in which some of the drivers that previously were proprietary were now released under the GPLv2.<br \/>\nInside this directory we get the following drivers:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>avs<\/li>\n<li>e2_proc<\/li>\n<li>fpanel<\/li>\n<li>frontends<\/li>\n<li>includes<\/li>\n<li>lcd<\/li>\n<li>lpc<\/li>\n<li>multicom<\/li>\n<li>player2<\/li>\n<li>qboxhd_generic<\/li>\n<li>scart<\/li>\n<li>stmfb<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The drivers avs, e2_proc, includes, multicom, player2 and stmfb were basically taken from the <a href=\"http:\/\/gitorious.org\/open-duckbox-project-sh4\">sh4 duckbox project<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/stlinux.com\/drupal\/\">STLinux<\/a> and modified accordingly, so these are not really new.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of the drivers are the ones used for controlling most of the decoder&#8217;s hardware. The hardware between both boards is quite different, so you&#8217;ll see specific drivers and\/or macros that differentiate them.<br \/>\nNotice that all the drivers and applications regarding the FPGA inside these boxes remains strictly proprietary&#8230; <\/p>\n<p>The fpanel is used for controlling the colours and behaviour of the sense-wheel and front-button of the QBoxHD and QBoxHD-mini, respectively. You can regulate the colours leds&#8230; nothing useful, but at least fun.<\/p>\n<p>The lcd controls the front panel LCDs. Since they support at least 64k colours, you can display nice images although the data-transfer speed is not high.<\/p>\n<p>The lpc is only present in the QBoxHD-mini and controls the Stand-By functionality.<\/p>\n<p>The qboxhd_generic resets the tuners at boot time, boring&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>The scart drivers controls the analog A\/V outputs (SCART, components, composite and audio stereo). The digital video output (HDMI) is controlled by the stmfb driver that is part of the STLinux2.3 distribution.<\/p>\n<p>The frontends directory contains the drivers for the DVB-S2\/T\/C tuners and pll&#8217;s. All of them are based on drivers taken from the mainline Linux kernel, except the DVB-S2 AVL2108 demod (with stv6306 pll) that was developed specifically for these decoders. I don&#8217;t know of any DVB-S2 PCI card or USB adapter that mounts this demod, because this driver could be re-used and maybe included in the mainline kernel.<\/p>\n<p>Another interesting directory, specially for the people that wants to start playing around in userland, is the <em>\/src\/apps<\/em> directory in which several relatively simple applications such as <em>display_image<\/em> can be used as example for gaining confidence with the development for these decoders and, in general, with the embedded devices development.<\/p>\n<p>In this directory you can find too the modified sources of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.busybox.net\/\">Busybox<\/a> and libdvbsi++ that are Open Source Projects.<\/p>\n<p>As you can see, with all these sources licensed under the GPL, these decoders can be a good platform for people that want to start developing in user or kernel space with Embedded Linux and with a special focus in High Definition DVB devices.<br \/>\nAnother benefit is that these boxes could become a reference point regarding openness in the High Definition DVB decoders market since these are basically the only decoders with almost all their sources available.<\/p>\n<p>Openness is a factor that cannot be under estimated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last year was a very busy year and I didn&#8217;t have much time for posting, but this year seems to be much better. In fact, the first good news is that the QBoxHD Team released the source code of almost all the software that runs in these boxes. If you want to see the sources\u2026 <span class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/paguilar.org\/?p=34\">Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8,9,13,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-compiling","category-driver","category-enigma2","category-kernel","category-stlinux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paguilar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paguilar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paguilar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paguilar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paguilar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/paguilar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paguilar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paguilar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paguilar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}