The V3 was only released in August, just recently hit Amazon.. No reviews yet. WayPonDev just resells the device made by a company called YouYeeToo. I have one of the YouYeeToo devices and it works well enough. The inventory for WayPonDev was depleted when they went on sale this morning for $103.99.
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The stutter is on the URay 4K. The LinkPi has been great. Tonight I tried the Chromecast into the LinkPi again, and it's been solid. Not sure what was going on previously, when it would not see a signal?
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Been reading about the LinkPi. Found it supports UVC for Webcam connection. Made me wonder, what if I was to plug in a cheap $20 USB to HDMI capture device? Would I get a second stream on the same box?
Yup.
Very early in tests. Limit of USB 2.0 and whatever form of drivers LinkPi added for UVC. Would be happy with 720@60 as YUV instead of MJPEG. But my test worked, and I had two streams, without a major impact to encoder performance (RAM/CPU about 35%).
I will have more time to test this weekend.
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Excellent find!!!
Mind posting the USB-HDMI example, for those searching for rigs?
I'm loving my choice of the LinkPi so far.
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Here is the device I'm testing with:
https://www.amazon.com/Newhope-Capture-Streaming-Teaching-Conference/dp/B0C2CJPV8D/
I'm so early in testing, I'm not recommending the above device other than to say it does work. The primary reason for selecting the device above was "okay, I'll try that one" as I wanted to prove concept. If you pay attention, there are many clones to the one linked above. They all look the same and are priced as low as $16.
I plan to order and test a few more USB capture devices. My goals are:
- Device that is under $40. Any more and I would save for another LinkPi.
- Device is compatible with UVC driver in LinkPi, trial and error.
- Best quality around limit of the USB 2.0 ports: Can output YUYV/YUY2 instead of MJPEG, if possible, on res of 720@60.
- Is reliable for 24/7 operation.
- Is not impacted by HDCP challenges.
I will let you all know what I find.
After watching this thread for a while now, I finally decided to jump in on the fun with the LinkPi V3. I am going way off the beaten path though as I have a box full of old ATV4Ks and subscribe to Spectrum. CC4C is working great for me, but the file format is kind of goofy, so thought I would try this out.
I have the LinkPi up and running pushing the ATV output to CDVR. Video looks very good, although I haven't done much in terms of testing to determine optimal settings. I did find that the "main" profile is superior to the default "high" profile, and increased the bitrate for both audio and video.
I am using Home Assistant to control the ATV. It supports deep links to the Spectrum app as well as the ability to emulate the remote when necessary. Tunes very fast.
Next step is to customize the androidhdmi-for-channels scripts to use the rest calls to HA for tuning. It works great from the command line, so I feel like this should go relatively quickly for the first test versus.
Nice thing is that the HA services provide feedback and status on the ATV, so I think I should be able to add some additional control and error handling. Although go makes my head hurt. In the long run, the underlying ATV control is in Python so I might be able to take HA out of the loop.
Any inputs on best settings for the LinkPi?
Really wish it could just pass through the audio!
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This is sick! What is the deep link for the Spectrum app? I have HA and working just was curious about this setup never thought of this.
Here is the link for USA: spectrumTV://watch.spectrum.net/livetv/58452?linkorigin=sirilivetunein&idtype=tms
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Wow. Too bad i cant get homekit to control a spare iphone i have lying around. May have to pick up a used apple tv now. This looks very iteresting for my use case.
@turtletank do you think this is in scope for ADBTuner or do we need to fork off an ATVTuner
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/apple_tv/#media-player
Quick update on LinkPi. Blacks are a little gray compared to JTech. However the JTech will only reach 1080 at 50FPS. At 720 60FPS is perfect. LinkPi drops a frame every few minutes but is nearly perfect. JTech never drops frames. Running GOP at 2 seconds on LinkPi. Will send an email to LinkPi support today.
Woohoo, I am up and running. Works great. My modified version of HDMI-for-channels running on my M1 Mac mini that hosts CDVR. ~2-3 second tune time right now, I think I can do better but that is more than acceptable. Now just need to go map all of the other channels.
The picture I am getting is very good. It is far better than the CC4C method. Tested on sports, shows, and movies. I did not have issues with blacks, but the deep ones do get crushed a bit. Probably not a great way to watch the Dark Night. But they are certainly at least on par with anything I have seen through TVE. I have not experienced any dropped frames, but then again not really detailed testing yet.
My current settings on the LinkPi below for reference. Note the GOP dropped to 1 from the default of 2. doing A/B testing is hard, but I think it did help with sports. No issue on CPU load.
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Awesome! If you are on local LAN, I would try upping the bit rate on your encode. I started at 20mbit for testing and it worked great. I then dropped down to 8mbit, and where the picture was fine, but I liked the look of higher rate.
EDIT: The original inventory of LinkPi ENC1-V3 went quick for $103.99. They have been out of stock since Monday, but are now showing (for me) ability to back order at Black Friday sale price.
https://www.amazon.com/WayPonDEV-ENC1-V3-NDI-HDMI-Encoder/dp/B0CDLHX36Z
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LinkPi ENC1-V3 update. Turning on NTSC compatible seems to have resolved the muddy blacks. Running 1080P 60FPS 12000KBPS (12M) GOP 1 Sec-- CBR. Got a note back from their support advising this. One of my encoders was failing at about 3 or minutes into a stream. Bad box. Have a new one coming next week. FYI, 720P 60FPS looks as good as TVE. With the exception of the failing box, all is good. Running ADBTuner.
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Im curious about your config. I just purchased the Link Pi.
I dont have a silicon mac mini, but have considered taking the plunge.
Im curious if you have tried running any of the “walled garden” cable provider apps for ios or ipados on the m1 mac mini , and then piping the hdmi output from the mac mini into the link Pi, and then of course piping the network stream back into channels - as opposed to using a web browser on the mini to tune the individual channels.
Or are you using ADBtuner with a separate android device and tuning that way
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Would it be theoretically possible to run one of the cable providers native ios or IPADSOS app on a silicon based mac mini, then pipe the hdmi output of the mac mini into an encoder?
Then if we could figure out a way to come up with a clever way of having tuning profiles for the stations that run on the mini, but control the ios app running on the mini, it could be another way to deal with some of the cable providers that are more locked down behind the walled garden.
For instance keyboard meastro or some other keyboard “macro” program could possible run button or mouse gestures to tune the ios app on the mini.
I dont have a silicon mac to try this out with my cable providers app. . My provider notoriously has to re-authenticate when using a browser, and if there was a way of controlling their native app it could be very slick.
My provider doesnt have an android app that supports hdmi or id go in that direction using adbtuner.
Alternatively, some kind of ATVtuner via home assistant could work, but that would require a second apple tv (which of course is a lot cheaper than a silicon mac mini).
Just throwing ideas against the wall to see if anything sticks.
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I just set up the Link Pi. Got it yesterday. This is a very cool device!
Im watching NFL football on channels through the device, with a spare iphone as the source feeding hdmi through a lightining to hdmi adapter.
Video quality is very very good in my opinion. I did use the “main” profile, and used the rate settings @chasut shared
Thanks everyone for sharing. This is cool..
But for now i can play pause record manually.
Gonnal play around with adding tuning control next. But for now its working with channels very smoothly.
Love it. Thanks for recommending this, and i got the black friday price
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That's super exciting! I'm glad people are enjoying the LinkPi as much as I am.
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If anyone is interested below is what I came up with for my bmitune.sh. The M3U passes in the tmsid, so nothing else is needed. Once I figure out how to parse the response, I intend to add some additional error handling. Below the script is a sample of my M3U text.
#!/bin/bash
curl \
-H "Authorization: Bearer [Insert long-lived token here]" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"entity_id": "media_player.tuner0", "media_content_type": "url", "media_content_id": "'"spectrumTV://watch.spectrum.net/livetv/${1}?linkorigin=sirilivetunein&idtype=tms"'"}' \
http://xx.xx.xx.xx:8123/api/services/media_player/play_media
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="SN1AUSH",Spectrum News Austin HD
http://xx.xx.xx.xx:7654/play/tuner/70612
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="KTBCDT",FOX (KTBC) HD
http://xx.xx.xx.xx:7654/play/tuner/31222
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="KVUEDT",ABC (KVUE) HD
http://xx.xx.xx.xx:7654/play/tuner/33585
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="KXANDT",NBC (KXAN) HD
http://xx.xx.xx.xx:7654/play/tuner/25147
#EXTINF:-1 channel-id="KEYEDT",CBS (KEYE) HD
http://xx.xx.xx.xx:7654/play/tuner/33424
...
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Pulled the trigger on this one. Black Friday $10…
I’ll report back if it’s compatible with the link pi firmware
edit: It’s MONO audio only. Yuck!