This is hardware playground. Its worth a quick experiment before shelling out for a 5 port device, or another single uray encoder.
so plugging a 2nd usb encoder into the linkpi hijacks the usb cam input to the new one.
had to reboot pi to get 1st one back
also I'm using my linkpi's to decode security camera's so http://10.0.0.121/live/stream2, 3, and 4 were those and I tried 5 and 6 to be sure.
I have a feeling from the research I did I is that it's a shared bus. Hence why I moved to two ENC5v2 units and now have 3 spare ENC1-V3 units hanging around.
Good timing. My 2nd USB HDMI dongle came in yesterday.
I was playing around today, and I got root ssh access to the linkpi.
I poked around for about an hour and did find the second USB port definitions in the LinkPi firmware after plugging the 2nd dongle into another port, but I couldnt find anywhere a hook to safely restart the actual encoder running process that attaches to the USB port without risking bricking my unit.
I didnt want to take that risk. In hindsight, I would have purchased the ENC5v2 2+ years ago.
Wanna sell me one of your spares?
I was planning on keeping them. You know, just in case another project comes around; I want to keep them just for tinkering. It's good to have a couple of spare units
Hey has anyone had any weird HDMI issues with their encoders. I've been still tracing teardown issues with my Ospreys seemingly related to Widevine but I traced it possibly back to a bad HDMI handshake. I did a hard reset on both of my ENC5-V2 units (USB flash not a soft reset) and so far so good. It was a solid A/B also. It went from the stream tearing down and restarting to stable after the hard reset. Just curious if this has been seen before since it seems like the Channels forums are the authority on Osprey's and LinkPi's and Claude keeps citing my own comments in my research!!! 
I haven't had any HDMI or encoder issues happened to me. Most of my issues is usually with the onn puck or firetv device which I why I keep them awake since they can't seem to wake up at times
You know, this has been specifically happening after wake. If I were to never let them sleep, I wouldn't have a problem. The problem is these Ospreys get really warm.
Get a laptop cooler and some zip ties around them and they'll be fine
Alternatively, if you like to get down and dirty you can try install some heatsinks on each of them but laptop cooler and zip ties are more easier
Already cooled! I think it was possibly something to do with the flash from 0331 to 0531. I did a full flash so so far thing seem better. I don't want to speak too soon though.
I had one box get stuck on 720 a while back, you could change the setting, but did not survive reboots, and only sometimes survived sleep. I had to factory reset that box. wonder if yours got stuck trying to serve a hdr feed.
It started tearing down again. I'm starting to think it's a networking issue or bug with my UniFi UDR7. I'm testing nf_conntrack_tcp_be_liberal 1 and since I flipped that it's stopped. But it's so intermittent I won't know for sure. I think this started after a router update that had some CVE fixes.
@maddox
In an earlier post, you were joining us using the Link Pi Enc8 encoder. How’s it working for you? I have the 5 port version but am considering upgrading to the 8 port instead of running two 5 port encoders.
8 source inputs for $450, that's impressive if this is the device you are referring to:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DRP4F3ZB
Yep. I was looking to get another 5 port and the 8 port pop’d up. If I get the 8 port, I'd only have to run 1 encoder and have a backup. For a little over $100 more, it's enticing.
if you don't need a box, bare board is only 399! that's only $50 per tuner 
This is a bit cheaper. Sometimes they also have coupons if you sign up for an account.
FWIW, ENC5 HDMI inputs are 4k30, ENC8 HDMI inputs are 1080P60.
That's a good point but I don’t see much 4K in my viewing habits.
Me neither. Actually, I never use 4k at all. It's just something I happened to notice when I was shopping for an encoder. 