Difference between revisions of "User:Jamo"

Latest revision as of 06:54, 30 April 2014

Hey-ho, here I am at last. Have had LinuxMCE on my to-do list for a long time and I'm finally getting it off the ground.

Hope to use this page to show my setup with plenty of detail and comments in case anyone would want to duplicate/ learn from it.

Current Setup

Core

• Chassis: FOXCONN TSAA-426 300WATT ATX
• PSU: incl in Chassis: 300w
• Mobo: FOXCONN H61MX-V DDR3 LGA1155
• CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3240 CPU @ 3.40GHz
• GPU: onboard Intel Sandy Bridge chipset
• RAM: 8Gb (2x KINGSTON DDR3 4GB 1333)
• Cooling: CPU cooler, PSU cooler, Case fan
• HDD: SEAGATE 320Gb SATA
• HDD2: SEAGATE 500Gb SATA
• DVD: SONY +/- DVD WRITER 24+R,SATA

LMCE:

• 12.04

Cost:

Issues:

• None

Media Director 1: TV Room

Zotac_Zbox_AD04

Cost: ~ ZAR 2,700 Remotes:

• AD04 MCE Remote
• Rii Mini i8 WiFi keyboard/touchpad

IR Control: USBUIRT

AV Equipment

TV - Hisense 40" LCD TV

• MD video Connection: HDMI @ 1080p
• MD audio Connection: HDMI to TV; TV 3.5mm stereo jack out to DiVoom 2.1 Sound.
• Satellite Set-top box input: Composite video (PAL-I) and stereo audio - 3-way RCA input to AV1 RCA jacks
• Remote: Manufacturer IR remote

Satellite TV - settop Box: DSTV PVR I (SD) with dual-view

• Dual LNB input (coax) from satellite dish
• Single RF output (coax) going to TV2 of tenant
• TV1 composite video/stereo RCA out.
• Remote: Manufacturer IR remote

Audio Receiver - Divoom 2.1 Stereo computer sound

• Connection: 3.5mm stereo jack in from TV headphone jack
• Remote: None.

Media Director 2: Kitchen (Audio station)

• MD: HP6510b Compaq Laptop
• RAM: 2Gb
• Graphics Card: Intel GM965/GL960 integrated (1280x1024 max)
• Sound: Onboard stereo audio jack connected to 5.1 Sound system with speakers mounted in kitchen and adjacent outdoor entertainment area
• Screen: Laptop screen but hidden in cupboard

Cost: ?

UI: 2 (1024x768) Issues: None

Media Director 3: Lounge

• MD: HP6510b Compaq Laptop
• RAM: 2Gb
• Graphics Card: Intel GM965/GL960 integrated (1280x1024 max)
• Sound: Onboard stereo audio jack
• Screen: Acer 17" LCD 1280x1024

Remote: Nintendo Wiimote cheap knockoff using IR pointing

Issues:

• USB gamepad auto-install - on firstboot of MD the script got into an install loop adding lots and lots of these devices and I

don't even have one. Fixed that by hacking the gamepad_detect script. Now it only installs one but it keeps adding this device which interferes with the wiimote. Have deleted the devices from the web admin device tree but they keep being reinstalled unless I comment out relevant sections in at least 3 /usr/pluto/bin scripts. Working on fixing these scripts and figuring out why it is detecting this device on my system when I don't have it. Further info- see forum thread but essentially it is the xconfig setup that picks up an accelerometer in the notebook and creates device /dev/input/js0. That is then picked up by the gamepad detect scripts. Fix will have to be to either find a diff way of detecting gamepads or put in a check for the accelerometer false positive.

• WOL not working

Specifically - it works if you remove the power cable completely, but not if you just shutdown without removing the power cable. Links: http://confoundedtech.blogspot.com/2011/06/enable-wol-on-ubuntu-hp-microserver.html https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/714417

Cost: ?

Issues: Volume control on sound card did not work until I applied the Volume_Control_Doesn't_Work fix of adding options snd-intel8x0 ac97_quirk=hp_only to the bottom of the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base file.

AV Receiver - Onkyo TX-7440

• Connection: 3.5mm stereo jack from MD to L/R RCA on CD input of receiver
• Remote: None
• Controlled by LinuxMCE: No

A/V equipment

• TV: Hisense LCD V86PE Full-HD 40"
• Amplifier: Onkyo TX-7440

ADSL router / modem

SiteCOM 300Mbs Wireless N ADSL 2/2+ Modem router with 4 10/100 LAN PORTS

Network Switches

D-Link 8-Port Gigabit Desktop Switch - DGS-1008D <- internal LMCE network

EZ Switch™ 10/100/1000 <- external network driving POE Security cameras Cameras

Security Cameras

• El-cheapo IR camera: RMI-550WF / EasyN FS-603

Dyndns for security camera:

Gnudip. run from startup scripts:

/etc/init.d/gnudip [code]

1. !/bin/bash
2. James's script to setup dynamic dns

usr/local/gdipc/bin/gdipc.pl -g 8001:8002 [/code]

Run at startup [code] update-rc.d gnudip defaults 99 [/code]

Next step(s)

• Clean up corrupted audio database (after documenting schema)
• Try to get javaMO running on HTC one V and /or blackberry 9900 to see if it's any good and how it compares with weborbiter
• Try to get Qorbiter running on HTC on V for the same purpose
• document wiimote installation and usage
• Put a wifi repeater in the roof near the kitchen to cover that side of the house
• Try to get T30 outputting stereo sound on the line-in or mic-in jack as well - then can use rear speakers of surround sound setup as another sound zone
• Add 4 more security cameras with POE splitters for power and a POE switch to drive them
• Get IR remote working with Serial Homebrew IR sensor for lounge MD
• Get IR blaster from Serial Homebrew IR sender on lounge MD working
• Fix multi-zone audio in sync!!!
• Edit web-orbiter to give more feedback - eg. actual vol %, possibly "push" the current song, feedback when a powered-up MD actually is ready (for those MDs you can't see)

Proposed Setup

still under construction....

Tips

• Nvidia card needs to be 6200 or better
• Sound on media directors: Look for cards/chips that deliver:
  • 16-bit 96KHz sample rates. This is the level of audio used for the 5.1 surround sound channels on DVD movies (or better).
• If you rip media to Private it won't show up in default Movies/Audio etc list - default options are to filter on Public. Find what you ripped by hitting "Options" on the file list when looking for the media and then include your username. You'll have to hit a pin to play the media, though. If you want to move it from private to public, physically move the file(s) to the public folder.
• To rip commercial dvds you may need to install libdvdcss2. Ensure this complies legally and with your conscience. It complies with my conscience because while I don't believe in copy protection, I will not rip a DVD that I do not own. As follows:
  • On the MD (or better still the core prior to diskless creation step): sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 w32codecs
• To access your media via SAMBA shares (on your Core or MDs) from the external network, you need to open the following ports in the firewall:
  • UDP/137 - used by nmbd
  • UDP/138 - used by nmbd
  • TCP/139 - used by smbd
  • TCP/445 - used by smbd

Troubleshooting

Media doesn't show

First sign of this is usually in UI2 where your pictures are supposed to show as the background but don't. The next sign is when you open audio or video and don't get a list of music/ videos.

In my case my media is on a separate hard drive (/dev/sda1) on my core/hybrid.

1. First step is to determine if the drive is mounted. ssh into the core/hybrid, become root and issue the "mount" command to see all mounted drives. You should see your drive mounted at /mnt/device/xx where xx is a device number. eg:

   /dev/sda1 on /mnt/device/29 type ext4 (rw,relatime,user_xattr,acl,barrier=1,data=ordered)

   If you don't, presumably there is a problem with the automounter so you need to check that out. If you do see it mounted, try the following. I did these steps and the problem resolved itself but I'm not sure which resolved it.
2. ls or cat one of the files from the symlink. LMCE mounts the drive in /mnt/devices/xx" as we saw above but creates symlinks in /home/public/data/yyyyy" to each of your media sources by name (where yyyy is a LMCE name for your source). I think this is where LMCE accesses media so by trying to access from here you force LMCE to do whatever mounting is necessary. Eg:

    cat /home/public/data/pictures/0\,00\ GB\ \(sda1\)\ ST500DM002-1BD1\ \[29\]/2014/100_9139.JPG.tnj 

   That causes the file to be "used" and potentially forces LMCE to mount it. After doing this, I could see my media in the orbiter datagrids but it still wasn't showing on the UI backdrop. However, after a quick reload router it showed. I'm guessing the issue was that something is supposed to trigger the automounter to mount this stuff on startup but it didn't. Either quick reload router or the cat command forced this to happen.

Database SQL scripts

Use at own risk!! Suggest changing any of the delete or update commands to a select * command first in order to understand what you're about to do.

• Delete all Attributes that are not linked to any File

delete from Attribute where FK_AttributeType=2 and PK_Attribute not in (select FK_Attribute from File_Attribute);

Stuff to solve

• Get wake-on-lan working on Lounge, Kitchen MDs
• Figure out how to start-up a playlist (or play-all from audio selector) with a random song and then continue random play (rather than having to push random each time)
• Figure out how to add songs to a playlist/manage a playlist from UI2
• Integrate with ZoneMinder
  • Ability to view streams from any / all monitors in ZM from a scenario button
  • Ability to trigger events from ZM in LMCE
  • Motion events from ZM to pop up Security Camera streaming view and/or notifications on Orbiters depending on state/scenario/security status

last edit: 2014/04/02