Afatech 9015 in Linux | Michael Svanström

I recently got a noname USB DVB-T receiver which I’ve been trying to get to work on my Debian GNU/Linux laptop.

While inserting the device, here’s syslog output:

Jun 8 20:11:28 utskottet kernel: [ 5540.744100] usb 1-4: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 5
Jun 8 20:11:28 utskottet kernel: [ 5540.881274] usb 1-4: New USB device found, idVendor=15a4, idProduct=9016
Jun 8 20:11:28 utskottet kernel: [ 5540.881307] usb 1-4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Jun 8 20:11:28 utskottet kernel: [ 5540.881316] usb 1-4: Product: DVB-T 2
Jun 8 20:11:28 utskottet kernel: [ 5540.881322] usb 1-4: Manufacturer: Afatech
Jun 8 20:11:28 utskottet kernel: [ 5540.881327] usb 1-4: SerialNumber: 010101010600001
Jun 8 20:11:28 utskottet kernel: [ 5540.881557] usb 1-4: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
Jun 8 20:11:28 utskottet kernel: [ 5540.895370] af9015: tuner id:179 not supported, please report!
Jun 8 20:11:38 utskottet kernel: [ 5551.519942] usb 1-4: USB disconnect, address 5

I followed these instructions and now I at least have channel lock. Still struggling to get picture in mplayer..

hg clone -r 0f41fd7df85d http://linuxtv.org/hg/~anttip/af9015/

Patch with this patch, make, copy the firmware, reboot and voilá.

Julian Hughes June 27, 2010

I seem to have the same device, 15a4:9016 Afatech Technologies, Inc. AF9015 DVB-T USB2.0 stick. It’s unbranded and I bought it a couple of years ago and tried it in Windows and then didn’t use it. I hadn’t used any v4l or dvb devices in Debian before and had been running a small custom kernel without support for anything unnecessary. Today I retrieved the TV adapter from the bottom of the box it’s been in for a year or two and decided to try to get it working (mid-life crisis or world cup fever, maybe both), so this was a challenge…plenty to read. I’m running Squeeze. I compiled kernel 2.6.34 (kernel.org source). The driver is available in recent kernels, no need to go elsewhere. Selected module for dvb usb AF9015. Built and installed new kernel. Installed dvb-apps and w-scan. Obtained firmware for device by reading v4l wiki and following link from http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB-T_USB_Devices. Copied firmware to /lib/firmware. Rebooted with USB TV device attached, device recognised and all seems good…..read wiki pages again! Successfully used the scan tools which found 60 channels and wrote them to channels.conf. Copied the channels.conf to ~/.mplayer/ and ~/.xine. Now `mplayer dvb://` works and I’ve spent a lot of hours today staring like a hypnotised fool at all kinds of crap that doesn’t interest me. Success! Anyway, assuming you get the hardware running OK the big issues are signal strength and interference. It’s worth the tedium of trying different locations and directions for the antenna. I’m on a busy road 4 km from an old low power transmitter and it took some time to place the tiny antenna so that I can receive plenty of channels and also minimise interference from vehicles. Now I find it works well using mplayer or xine or vlc. The v4l wiki is invaluable. btw here is an image of the USB TV stick I have http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/5370/uxa07051800ux0016uxc.jpg I bought it from uxcell.com. It seems unavailable now but probably all these devices with the same chipset are much the same.

2 Responses to “Afatech 9015 in Linux”

Julian Hughes June 27, 2010

I seem to have the same device, 15a4:9016 Afatech Technologies, Inc. AF9015 DVB-T USB2.0 stick. It’s unbranded and I bought it a couple of years ago and tried it in Windows and then didn’t use it. I hadn’t used any v4l or dvb devices in Debian before and had been running a small custom kernel without support for anything unnecessary. Today I retrieved the TV adapter from the bottom of the box it’s been in for a year or two and decided to try to get it working (mid-life crisis or world cup fever, maybe both), so this was a challenge…plenty to read. I’m running Squeeze. I compiled kernel 2.6.34 (kernel.org source). The driver is available in recent kernels, no need to go elsewhere. Selected module for dvb usb AF9015. Built and installed new kernel. Installed dvb-apps and w-scan. Obtained firmware for device by reading v4l wiki and following link from http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/DVB-T_USB_Devices. Copied firmware to /lib/firmware. Rebooted with USB TV device attached, device recognised and all seems good…..read wiki pages again! Successfully used the scan tools which found 60 channels and wrote them to channels.conf. Copied the channels.conf to ~/.mplayer/ and ~/.xine. Now `mplayer dvb://` works and I’ve spent a lot of hours today staring like a hypnotised fool at all kinds of crap that doesn’t interest me. Success! Anyway, assuming you get the hardware running OK the big issues are signal strength and interference. It’s worth the tedium of trying different locations and directions for the antenna. I’m on a busy road 4 km from an old low power transmitter and it took some time to place the tiny antenna so that I can receive plenty of channels and also minimise interference from vehicles. Now I find it works well using mplayer or xine or vlc. The v4l wiki is invaluable. btw here is an image of the USB TV stick I have http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/5370/uxa07051800ux0016uxc.jpg I bought it from uxcell.com. It seems unavailable now but probably all these devices with the same chipset are much the same.
micke July 1, 2010

Thanks for commenting! I’m glad it works for you. I struggled and got it working using this method. Turns out I should’ve used w_scan with the proper options mplayer dvb:// works just fine!

2 Responses to “Afatech 9015 in Linux”

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