Page: Main.DVB-USB-af9015 - Last Modified : Sun, 28 Dec 08

Making an Afatech 9015 DVB-T USB Receiver work in Ubuntu 8.04

2008-10-05

I bought a nameless DVB-T USB Receiver (Kjell o Co pn 98-082 in August 2008).

It was listed in lsusb as

 Bus 004 Device 005: ID 15a4:9016

This turned out to be an Afatech 9015 device. It didn't work out of the box, but fortunately there is a driver that makes it work.

This is what I did to install it:

 sudo apt-get install mercurial linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential gcc make
 hg clone http://linuxtv.org/hg/~anttip/af9015/archive/tip.tar.gz
 cd tip.tar.gz
 make && sudo make install

I then did

 sudo gedit /etc/modules 

and appended the line

 dvb-usb-af9015

I downloaded the latest firmware from the site:

 http://www.otit.fi/~crope/v4l-dvb/af9015/af9015_firmware_cutter/firmware_files/

and downloaded the latest one

 http://www.otit.fi/~crope/v4l-dvb/af9015/af9015_firmware_cutter/firmware_files/4.95.0/dvb-usb-af9015.fw

and copied to the right place with

 sudo cp dvb-usb-af9015.fw /lib/firmware

I then rebooted and inserted the device. I got the following in my /var/log/messages file:

 Oct  5 14:35:13 dell kernel: [ 3323.269140] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 6
 Oct  5 14:35:14 dell kernel: [ 3323.405346] usb 4-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
 Oct  5 14:35:14 dell kernel: [  996.254086] dvb-usb: found a 'Afatech AF9015 DVB-T USB2.0 stick' in cold state, will try to load a firmware
 Oct  5 14:35:14 dell kernel: [  996.269578] dvb-usb: downloading firmware from file 'dvb-usb-af9015.fw'
 Oct  5 14:35:14 dell kernel: [  996.353667] usb 4-3: USB disconnect, address 6
 Oct  5 14:35:14 dell kernel: [  996.360576] dvb-usb: generic DVB-USB module successfully deinitialized and disconnected.
 Oct  5 14:35:14 dell kernel: [  996.360624] dvb-usb: generic DVB-USB module successfully deinitialized and disconnected.
 Oct  5 14:35:14 dell kernel: [ 3324.596129] usb 4-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 7
 Oct  5 14:35:14 dell kernel: [  996.700287] usb 4-3: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
 Oct  5 14:35:14 dell kernel: [  996.721737] dvb-usb: found a 'Afatech AF9015 DVB-T USB2.0 stick' in warm state.
 Oct  5 14:35:14 dell kernel: [  996.721784] dvb-usb: will pass the complete MPEG2 transport stream to the software demuxer.
 Oct  5 14:35:14 dell kernel: [  996.722156] DVB: registering new adapter (Afatech AF9015 DVB-T USB2.0 stick)
 Oct  5 14:35:15 dell kernel: [ 3326.162551] af9013: firmware version:4.95.0
 Oct  5 14:35:15 dell kernel: [ 3326.168804] DVB: registering frontend 0 (Afatech AF9013 DVB-T)...
 Oct  5 14:35:15 dell kernel: [ 3326.174043] MT2060: successfully identified (IF1 = 1220)
 Oct  5 14:35:15 dell kernel: [ 3327.002126] dvb-usb: Afatech AF9015 DVB-T USB2.0 stick successfully initialized and connected.
 Oct  5 14:35:15 dell kernel: [ 3327.019356] input: Afatech DVB-T as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.7/usb4/4-3/4-3:1.1/input/input14
 Oct  5 14:35:15 dell kernel: [  997.349589] input,hidraw1: USB HID v1.01 Keyboard [Afatech DVB-T] on usb-0000:00:1d.7-3

To test it I installed kaffeine with synaptic, started it and clicked Digital TV. I then used menu DVB/Channels... and clicked the Start Scan button. After a while all channels should appear in the right table. I Selected the channels I wanted and clicked Add Selected and Done. Now I double clicked a channel and could watch the program on screen.

If you change kernel version (happens regularily when you run the Update manager), you have to rebuild the driver module:

make distclean make sudo make install