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My solo2 setting up with VIX
How to set up your new Vu+Duo/Solo2 I will not go into setting up a motorised system like other tutorials as I have not set mine up yet, more fun to come yet?
I have had my sat box for around 3 months so no expert, like some on here, who I might add thanks too for their invaluable help and input, which they give to all us learner sat drivers.
Ok, you got your new shiny Vu+Solo2 and you want to watch some TV but you don’t know where to start !. I had my image pre-installed but soon had it broken due to me messing with it, that’s what you got it for right?
This information is what I found to be the most helpful as I started out, it aims to show you what you need to do, to setup your new receiver from scratch to the point where you can at least watch FTA/FTV ( Free to Air and Free to View ) channels via Sly UK otherwise known as 28.2 East. And although I now have BH image on my box. I did start learning, using the VIX image if you use the other tutorials and read the information given in the forums you should not be in a position “of not having something to watch” unless you break it and that is hard unless you start trying to flash the firmware of the box itself (DON’T GO THERE)
Areas covered will be as follows.
Flashing the Image
Using the setup wizard to setup network etc.
Loading a Bouquet or Channel list.
Setting up a EPG or Electronic Programme Guide
Setting up a Softcam to use with a SLY UK FTV or Free To View card.
Before we go any further I am going to assume you have a HDD you wish to use it with the receiver if not you can skip this step and return to it later.
If your using a new freshly unboxed HDD you can go ahead and install that into the receiver now, However if you are using a used HDD make sure it is formatted to FAT32 and all previous partitions removed. OK so now the HDD is installed and the receiver has been closed back up we can start connecting the various leads and cables. (The HDD sits on top of the cradle and the cradle then attaches to the body of the receiver internally.)
Flashing the Image.
The receiver will come with a standard factory produced image (The firmware or operating system for the receiver ) unless you have asked the retailer you purchased it from to load a specific image first, like I did, For our purposes I will assume this is the case and will be flashing the latest Backup copy ViX image you have downloaded .
Before we get that far however you will need a few things.
A. A USB stick formatted FAT32
B. The ViX image ( Current public version is ViX-xxxxx solo2_usb.zip )
1. Power the receiver down by the power switch at the rear on the rear of the receiver.
2. unpack the image file and place the folder which will be ( vuplus and it's contents (Solo2)..) onto the root of the USB stick. ( for this I use winrar . )
3. place the USB stick into front USB port on the receiver then power the receiver on by the power switch at the rear of the receiver.
IMPORTANT WARNING Never remove the USB stick from the box while flashing without first seeing the VFD prompt to do so and only then after powering the receiver down first. Failure to do so could lead to a very expensive hardware failure, more commonly known as a "Door Stop".
You should now see a message, it will ask to read image, press white power button on front of your set and it will read USB, On the VFD display of your Vu+ solo2 it will show the progress of the USB stick being read, Ubiffs ect, once this part is complete you will see a message telling you to remove the stick and it will automatically reboot take out the USB stick, although if you forget don't panic, if you leave it in, as it will just continue to load the image if you have not touched power button.
Setup Wizard.
The First setup screen you see should be the Video input selection screen. Here you are asked to select the input port for your Tv as below.
HDMI, Scart, YPbPr, along with the ability to select your language via the red button, the default language loaded being English.
For example I select the HDMI PORT, I am then asked to select the video mode from several choices.
720p, 1080i, 1080p, 576p, 480p, 576i, 480i.
I am selecting 1080p but this can be changed later if needed. Once selected you are then greeted with a language selection screen.
You will now be presented with the restore wizard. This can be used to restore settings backups made from a previous installation using the ViX backup manager, as this is a new setup I am selecting the Exit restore wizard option.
Again you will now be presented with another wizard that will allow you to set up some more of the basic features of your receiver.
You can exit from this or follow the wizard if you wish. I am following the wizard.
The next screen asks me to setup tuner A , by pressing left or right on the remote.
As I am using a fixed Sly UK dish for this setup, I will choose as follows.
Configuration mode (tuner A). Simple Mode Single Satellite 28.2E Eurobird 1..Astra 1N/2A/2B/2D Send DiSEqC No.
As I am using both feeds from the same source (a quad LNB I will set both tuners up with the exact same settings so tuner B will be equal to tuner A).
Now we are asked if we want to perform a automatic or manual scan, for this part I will select no as I will be loading a bouquet pack later. You will grow old waiting for it to scan. And I also select no to parental controls.
Setting the internet connection.
The next part of the wizard asks me if I want to set up the internet connection I select yes ( my Solo2 is connected to my broadband router via an AP router using WiFi and cat 5 cable from it to my Box )
Use interface Yes USE DHCP if yes! the box will scan your router and assign a ip address automatically, or if you select NO (I suggest no) you can set up a fixed ip address manually, if no select a number for your ip of say 192.168.0.20 or something higher (you can go up to 255)
That's, that the box is almost setup.
Now to setup a few things before we go any further. The first screen you will see once out of the setup wizard is the channel list, however as it has no channel list or bouquet loaded yet this will be blank, but we can come to that later. You may notice that the menu or OSD ( On Screen Display ) on your TV screen does not quite fit, it may be stretched or off to one side, don't worry this is easy to correct as so.
First exit out of the channel list screen by pressing exit on the remote. You should see the Vu loading screen.
To set the OSD go to> menu > setup > OSD > OSD SETUP
Here you can use the up / down buttons to select each option and the left / right buttons to adjust the setting themselves. Once you are happy that your OSD picture is setup press green to save these settings.
Loading a Bouquet or channel List.
To load a bouquet or channel list to your receiver you need a few things.
1. The IP address of the receiver menu > setup > system > network > Device setup > Adapter settings (write down the ip address in this case I have 192.168.0.20 with my box)
2. A bouquet pack or channel list, I am using the latest Rat's ( enigma 2 )pack.
Download a pre-configured channel list example Rat's enigma2 from here in Enigma 2 settings.
3. A bouquet editor. I am using DreamboxEdit 5.0.0.3 download from Dreambox tools section on here.
4. a copy of winrar (or use 7zip and it's free ) before we go any further install DreamboxEdit ( DBE ) to your computer.
As I said I am using the Rats bouquet, to set this up correctly you need to make some changes to DBE before you download the bouquet pack to the programme.
Launch DBE press tools > options > advanced. make sure the heading allow duplicate entries in
(user ) bouquets is selected then restart the program.
Now we need to setup a profile for your receiver in DBE tools > options > profiles.
First press the new profile button and you will see a new profile appear in the left hand column. Click on this to open it out.
Enter the ip address you noted down earlier keeping the default ports for HTTP and FTP as they already are ( 80 and 21 )
Under the heading username on dreambox enter the name root and for the password type password or leave blank.
You can also enter a name for this profile I just use solo2, then press the save button. Make sure you have it set as enigma 2 under the filepaths heading by pressing the enigma2 settings button.
Take the bouquet file you downloaded and uncompressing it using winrar to some place where you can easily remember, I create a folder on my desktop for this purpose called CH List’s, and if I try any other channel list’s I create another folder within it.
Press file folder in toolbar of DB edit open and navigate to the location you decompressed the bouquet to. Then press OK to load the files.
Now in the bottom left hand corner select the profile you just created then press file > fast FTP upload. You may need to reboot the box after this step so the settings take hold. You can alter the channel lists to suit your preference at a later date, I suggest you look at some tutorials for DB edit.
In the new version of VIX you can use ABM (autobouqetmaker) that will create the bouquet automatically for you, you can do this buy going to Menu>setup>service searching > autobouqetmaker, you set this up in much the same way as EPG choose your download time and how often you want it set. Make sure you choose your region and make sure it is freeview and sly is selected (you can also choose slyire)
Setting up an EPG or electronic program guide.
First of all I would recommend you use a dedicated USB stick for this process, I use a Kingston 4GB stick for this purpose as it is very small and easily hidden away behind the receiver. Format your USB stick to FAT32 from your computer. Place the USB stick in to any of the USB ports on the receiver. Then reboot the receiver.
When the receiver has booted up, navigate to the mount manager. Blue button> ViX> mount manager. Your USB stick should be shown as Mount: /media/usb if it is not press the green button then highlight the stick, and change the mount via the left and right buttons. Then press the green to save.
Exit from this screen using the back button and navigate to menu> setup> system> EPG.
You now have several options to setup your EPG using either CrossEPG or Rytek or both depending on your setup.
To setup CrossEPG as your EPG press settings.
Change the EPG location to /media/usb using the left and right buttons, then press green to save.
Scroll down to CrossEPG then press ok, now scroll down to scheduled download and change this option to once a day then select your preferred scheduled download time, best pick a time when you won’t be using the box. (I use 04:15)
You can leave the other options at their default values, press red to go back.
Now scroll to OpenTV providers and press ok. Highlight and select The Sly UK options, so you see a green tick next to them, then press the yellow button to download the epg. You will be taken to a radio page where the epg will download. This step will take a few minutes to complete.
You can select to use both 28.2 and 28.4 east in the settings but this consumes a lot of memory and is not needed, I only select the one that corresponds with my Bouquet pack. so for example if your bouquet points to 28.2 east select this option, The same goes for a bouquet that references 28.4 east.
To setup Rytek as your EPG
Select XMLTV-importer (Rytek) then as above set your preferred download time and set the daily automatic import option to enable. you can keep all other options at their defaults.
Now press blue and tick all the Sly UK options once done press green to save. You can now press manual to download this EPG again as with CrossEPG. This will take a few minutes, but once done you should have a fully working EPG setup.
Also note that if you use Rytek as your EPG provider you must have an active internet connection to the receiver as it needs to connect to the internet to download the EPG data. If however you use CrossEPG you do not need an active internet connection, as it uses the same source as Sly UK for its EPG.
Setting up a Softcam.
In this part I am going to show you how to setup CCcam to work with a Sly UK FTV or Free To View card. I cannot however show you how to setup a softcam for anything to do with Card Sharing, as not allowed in this forum, If this is what you are looking for have a good read on here as it’s there in one form or an another or search on other forums.
Before we go any further you will need a few things.
( you can place the card in the receiver now using any of the card reader slots but making sure the chip is face down )
1. The softcam you intend to use I use CCcam (downloaded).
2. Your FTP program, For the purpose of this tutorial I am using FileZilla as it is a free program. (VuCC it is built in)
3. A Sly UK FTV card, a deactivated White sky card will work here.
4. A copy of Notepad++ (I now use this for better results )
First you will need to download the Softcam a copy’s of which can be found on forum.
I myself used enigma2-plugin-cams-cccam.2.2.1_1.0-r0_mipsel.ipk but any version will work.
I use VuCC to access my setup which can be found here in tools section,
Open Vucc add your ip address and click connect, then click on FTP, once connected to your receiver. The boxes on the left of the program are your PC files those on the right are the internal file structure of your Receiver. Navigate to the /TMP/ folder on your receiver which is in root directory, and drag the softcam file (must be in .ipk format, just use winrar to unpack it to folder on desktop) to this location. Just left click hold and drag to the right hand sidein TMP folder window, once done you can exit from Filezilla. ( Although you will need to use it once more before you are done ).
(or alternatively if its an ipk file just place it/them, on a formatted pen drive and plug it into the USB port of VU+ box later images of VIX will detect it and ask if you would like to install it, if you use this method just press OK on remote.)
On your receiver navigate to the ipk installer. This can be found like so. Blue button> ViX> install local extension. If your file transfer via filezilla went correctly you will see the file listed here. Highlight this file and press the green button to install the file, you should see a confirmation box just follow the directions selecting yes to reboot once complete.
While the receiver is rebooting, launch notepad++ or just notepad up to you, make a new file by clicking on File> New. You do not need to enter any thing into this file for use with a FTV card but the file is needed by the cam. If for anything else again use Google it’s your fiend in need.
With this new file open again click on file, but this time select the save as option and you will see another box popup.
In this new box select the location you wish to save this file too, using the icons on the left hand side of notepad++ then under the File name heading enter the file name as CCcam.cfg Making sure it is this exact spelling as it is case sensitive then under the heading Save as type select the following All types (*.*) and press the save button. Once again open your FTP program and login as above but this time navigate to /ETC in root directory of the receiver files and copy the file you just created there, again just drag it across, exiting the program once done.
Now we can activate the Cam via the blue button. Blue button> softcam manager. press green to start the cam and blue to enable auto start.
That's pretty much it. You should now be setup to use your Sly UK FTV card Via CCcam.
Alternatively, you can just download a UK back up Image from the forum, there are a few on this forum and other forums (Ten Below is a great one) everything is already set up for you, for alternate use, and using the same methods as above navigate to /ECT in root directory highlight CCcam.cfg file right click and open as read/edit, in notepad, paste your information into it and then select save, close notepad, hit yes when pop up appears, and leave FTP programme clicking yes on exit, Reboot your box. This was the route I went down at first, make sure you perform a complete back up once set up how you like you system. You can mess with the box once you're confident you won’t be left without any TV and your full backup is on USB stick or saved to a file on your PC for later use. There are no pitfalls to it, just a learning process above all don’t “PANIC” if everything has gone pear-shaped and beyond recovery, or understanding, Just re-flash your box with backed up image chill out and start over when you think you understand the bit that failed. I hope the above is helpful? Even though I have limited knowledge myself and am still learning all the time.
