How to build Digital TV with Seeed Studio reTerminal

In this short tutorial, we will build a digital and offline TV using Seeed Studio reTerminal and E10-1 Expansion Board or reTerminal Bridge. At the end we will have a portable TV. stay with me.

What is reTerminal?

The reTerminal is a Raspberry Pi all-in-one board, powered by Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 (CM4) module, integrated with one IPS panel type multi-touch screen, carried with dual-band 2.4GHz/5GHz Wi-Fi & Bluetooth 5.0, pre-installed Raspberry Pi-based Linux system, provided storage 4 GB RAM and 32 GB eMMC. By designing in modularization, the board is equipped with multiple accessible components and high-speed connectors. It can be neatly inputted home assistance and individual AI development applications, also performing industrial-level functions suitable for being an industrial facility.

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What is reTerminal E10-1 Expansion Board?

The reTerminal E10-1 is an expansion board and fully compatible with the reTerminal where they can be simply connected through the industrial high-speed signal connector right in the middle of the board. It applies the charge-discharge function for the reTerminal by equipping the UPS-18650 dual chargeable battery and connecting the DC jack power interface. Furthermore, there has been equipped with a Power over Ethernet (POE) module on the board, thereby the reTerminal E10-1 can be also charged through the Gigabit Ethernet RJ45 connector.

The board supports the reTerminal transmitting the data through the industrial interface like DP9 Connector for RS-232 and integrated 6 Pin Terminal Connector for RS485 and CAN. Meanwhile, there are high-function mini-PCIe and M.2 B Key connectors on the board, which helps the reTerminal to apply LoRaWAN and LTE wireless function and SSD storage ability. Additionally, with an onboard card slot, it can also contribute to the reTerminal to transfer data through 4G/5G communication.

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How it works?

A USB Digital TV Tuner is connected by Mini PCI-E to USB Adapter to reTerminal E10-1 Expansion Board Mini PCI-E socket. Just connect the antenna connector to the corresponding part. Install the required application. Now enjoy watching TV.

The reason for using Mini PCI-E to USB Adapter is that DVB-T USB Dongle hides inside the compartment and protected from breakage and damage.

⚠️ Most of the USB Digital TV Tuner available in the market are supported on Linux and no driver installation is required.

I used an Female SMA connector with RF wire to install the antenna on USB Digital TV Tuner and E10-1 case.

Next, we install the antenna connector in the desired location.

Install TVHedend

TVHeadend is a popular open-source TV streaming and recording server that can run on a Raspberry Pi. The TVHeadend software has a wide range of support for various input sources allowing it to function with most TV tuners. Using this software, you can use your Raspberry Pi to record and stream live tv to various sources.

You can even watch the TV streams provided by the TVHeadend software using the Kodi media center or the VLC media player.

⚠️ Before starting the steps, make sure that the TV antenna is connected to the socket.

Before we get started with installing the TVHeadend software on our Raspberry Pi, we must first ensure all packages are up to date. To do this, you will need to run the following two commands within the terminal.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

With the package list up to date, we can go ahead and install the TVHeadend software. Luckily for us, this process is relatively simple as we can install Tvheadend directly from the Raspbian repository. Run the command below on your Raspberry Pi to install TVHeadend.

sudo apt-get install tvheadend

During the installation process of TVHeadend, you will be asked to enter some additional details. The first screen will ask you to enter a username for the TVHeadend web interface. For our tutorial, we will be using the username “idreams“.

Once you have entered a username, press ENTER to continue. In the next step, you will need to specify a password for your new user.

Once you have entered a password, press ENTER to save it. At this point, TVHeadend has now finished installing to your Raspberry Pi.

This final message will let you know that TVHeadend is now installed and notify that to access its web interface, you need to go to the port 9881 in a web browser.

With your Pi’s IP Address, go to the following web address in your favorite web browser. Make sure that you replace [IPADDRESS] with the IP you retrieved in the previous step.

https://[IPADDRESS]:9981

Upon loading the web interface, you will need to enter the username and password that you set in the initial installation process.

The first time you load up your Raspberry Pi’s TVHeadend web interface, you will need to complete some initial setup steps. Continue the steps according to the pictures.

Next you should see a list of TV channels you can watch, along with the programmes they’re currently showing.

To watch a TV channel in the browser, click the little TV icon to the left of the channel listing, just to the right of the I icon. This brings up an in-browser media player. To watch a TV channel in a local media player, e.g. VLC, you’ll need to download it: click the I icon to the left of a channel listing to bring up the information panel for that channel. Here you can see a stream file that you can download.

TVHeadend is supported by numerous apps, such as TvhClient for iOS, which will play TV from the Pi. Kodi and OMXPlayer are also supported for viewing TV streams.

Special thanks to Seeed Studio and Alison Yang.