Naked hardware #7: TerraTec Cinergy T Stick Black

TerraTec Cinergy T Stick Black teardown

That stick is Realtek RTL2832U reference design. Used RF tuner is Fitipower FC0012. TerraTec has assigned USB ID 0ccd:00a9 for that device.

Device is supported under Linux starting from the Kernel 3.6.

TerraTec Cinergy T Stick Black

TerraTec Cinergy T Stick Black

Key components:

Realtek RTL2832U
Fitipower FC0012

PCB top side

Top side of PCB

Both main chips are that side of the PCB. Upper one is FC0012 RF-tuner and lower one is RTL2832U demodulator & USB-interface. Naturally, RF-tuner is near antenna connector and USB-interface chip is near USB connector. There is 28.800MHz crystal quite between the chips. It is that clearly visible metal box. It offers clock source for both RTL2832U and FC0012 - saving one crystal.

Black box, right side of PCB and near antenna connector and FC0012, is IR-receiver for remote controller.

FC0012 is direct-conversion (aka Zero-IF) architecture RF-tuner. It is very typical DVB-T RF-tuner what we could expect to see nowadays. There is four clearly visible parallel wires between FC0012 and RTL2832U, which are going through SMD resistors, that are located very near FC0012. It is baseband interface, I+, I-, Q+, Q-. That bus feeds baseband "antenna" signal from tuner to demodulator.

I am not going to explain RTL2832U features that time as I have explained those earlier. Please see older blog posts.

PCB bottom side

Bottom side of PCB

That side of PCB is quite empty and booring. The only and the one IC, marked as FM24C02A, is 2k serial eeprom. As usually it contains configuration information for RTL2832U, most notably TerraTec own USB ID.

USB interface

IDLE current drain without a driver: 18mA

lsusb -vvd 0ccd:00a9 Bus 002 Device 013: ID 0ccd:00a9 TerraTec Electronic GmbH RTL2838 DVB-T COFDM Demodulator [TerraTec Cinergy T Stick Black] Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 2.00 bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x0ccd TerraTec Electronic GmbH idProduct 0x00a9 RTL2838 DVB-T COFDM Demodulator [TerraTec Cinergy T Stick Black] bcdDevice 1.00 iManufacturer 1 Realtek iProduct 2 RTL2838UHIDIR iSerial 3 00000041 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 34 bNumInterfaces 2 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 4 USB2.0-Bulk&Iso bmAttributes 0x80 (Bus Powered) MaxPower 500mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 255 Vendor Specific Class bInterfaceSubClass 255 Vendor Specific Subclass bInterfaceProtocol 255 Vendor Specific Protocol iInterface 5 Bulk-In, Interface Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0200 1x 512 bytes bInterval 0 Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 1 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 0 bInterfaceClass 255 Vendor Specific Class bInterfaceSubClass 255 Vendor Specific Subclass bInterfaceProtocol 255 Vendor Specific Protocol iInterface 5 Bulk-In, Interface Device Qualifier (for other device speed): bLength 10 bDescriptorType 6 bcdUSB 2.00 bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 64 bNumConfigurations 2 Device Status: 0x0000 (Bus Powered)

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