User:Gtsupport

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Introduction Hello, I'm Matt, I've been following the LinuxMCE development for a couple of years, and late 2010 I decided to go for it. Here you will find my experiences, good and bad. As I have no experience with any of the deveopment side of things I have relied heavily on support from other users, and I have to say that the response has been brilliant. There is a very real community spirit alive within the LinuxMCE user group, and I hope to be able to add to that as my experience grows. I'm from England, but currently working and living in northern Poland. I've just moved into a new apartment, and was able to wire the whole place to work with LinuxMCE, i.e CAT6 cable to every room & Z-wave switches for all lights and blinds.

Software My current installation is based on the 8.10 beta 23388 snapshot.

Network As per the recommended settings I have two NICs in my core, eth0 is the link to the world, and eth1 is the internal network, which runs the DHCP for everything on this network. It wasn't all plain sailing getting the onboard NIC to work, I had to follow the instructions here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1091989 to get both NICs working, and it was a real headache until that point because it really doesn't work with only 1 NIC.

My external network looks a little bit like this...

Local ISP -> NIC 1 (eth0) on Core

And my internal network...

NIC 2 (eth1) on Core -> Netgear GS116 16-port Gigabit switch

I used the "VISION Techconnect" series of wall plates and inserts to build an 8 port switch panel to connect each room in the apartment. Then used short patch cables to the Netgear switch.

I also have my old D-Link wireless router connected to the switch, the DHCP is switched off, so its just used as a wireless access point for my wireless devices. I use access control (i.e. MAC address filtering) to only let my devices connect.

So far the internal network consists of:-

1 MD in the kitchen.

Playstation 3.

3 x Windows laptops. The main family computer is running the orbiter software.

1 Siemens gigaset 580 IP phone. Not fully setup yet.

Wireless network:- 1 Y-CAM wireless IP camera. - Didn't work ootb, but managed to get it working using 'Motion' Added this device as a child device of motion with the generic IP camera template. Had to set the path to /stream.jpg:account:password in the template and after a core reset it worked. Didn't work after just a router reload, had to reset the core.

1 IPAD with orbiter application.

1 Iphone 4 with orbiter application.

1 Nintendo Wii

1 Kodak wifi picture frame


Core/Hybrid Main hardware includes...

Case ThermalTake DH202 Black VJ80051N2Z with 7" Touch Screen Case This is a real nifty case with a build-in 7" touch screen, IR receiver, plus jog dial, and media buttons. Haven't been able to get any of it working yet, as LinuxMCE won't do dual screen! Haven't given up though.

Motherboard Asus M4A87TD Evo AMD 870 (Socket AM3) DDR3Processor

Processor AMD Phenom II X2 Dual Core 555 3.20GHz Black Edition (Socket AM3) with all 4 cores unlocked via bios!

Memory G.Skill RipJaw 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-10666C8 1333MHz Dual Channel Kit

Power Supply Akasa PaxPower 500W Ultra Quiet Power Supply

Graphics card Asus GeForce GT 430 1024MB GDDR3 Low Profile PCI-Express Graphics Card

Hard disk Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB SATA-II 32MB Cache - OEM (ST31500341AS)

NIC Edimax EN-9260TX-E 10/100/1000 Gigabit PCI Express Network Card (EN-9260TX-E) Onboard gigabit NIC. See above for solution to startup problems.

TV cards Hauppauge WinTV 2200 Hauppauge HD PVR

DVD Drive Samsung SH-B123L/BSBP 12x BluRay ROM DVDRW DL & RAM Lightscribe SATAII Optical Drive - OEM Black


Additional hardware includes...

Aeon Labs Z-Stick. - Worked fine ootb, but I did have problems to add extra devices, basically every time I removed it from the core to add another device, the lighting wizard would start when it was plugged back in, this was fine for extra lights, but for the security sensors the security wizard is broken, and to exit the wizard you have to reload the router. This made the security devices dissapear again! The best solution I found was to reset the stick from webadmin by sending the reset command to device. Then exclude all devices from the network to basically start from scratch. I first added the Duwi 064459 remote control to the stick, then plugged the stick back in. No lights were detected which is fine as only the controller was present in the network so far. At this point in the webadmin I renamed each controller, the USB stick was channel 1, and the Duwi remote was channel 11. By renaming them it made them obvious afterwards. Finally I then went round the home with the Duwi remote and added each switch and device again. Each time a new device was added there was a message on the orbiter to confirm this. I renamed each switch and device in webadmin for clarity, then reloaded the router. After this I didn't bother with the lighting wizard, I just manually set the room for each device, and then used the floorplan wizard to place them. All working nicely.


USBUIRT. Ordered this after failing to get my Iguana works stick to work.

Dusky Sky box controller. Haven't been able to get MythTV setup yet, so this isn't working at present.

Z-Wave inclusion remote Duwi DUW_064459

Gyration GYR4101US - This is a bit like the fiire chief remote, but without full functionality. The screen for playlists etc doesn't work with LinuxMCE but did work when tried briefly with my windows box.

Display

Panasonic 50" Plasma. Wall mounted


MD Kitchen Zotac MAG - Worked OOTB with 1 quick setup step. In the bios enable PXE ROM from BIOS > Chipset > Southbridge configuration > PXE rom boot support. After that it booted from the lan. Voila!

Mobile Orbiters

IPAD Iphone 4 Web-orbiter on windows PC

Home Automation Lights

3 Duwi Z-wave dimmer switches

4 Duwi on/off Z-wave switches

4 ACT Homepro plug-in appliance modules. Used for table lamps.

2 Duwi wall mounted switches, battery operated can be stuck or screwed on the wall anywhere.

Security

ACT Homepro ZIR010 PIR sensor. Quite hard to get setup, will put more info about it here later when I'm sure its working fully.

Everspring smoke alarm. Again not as simple to setup as I'd hoped, but seems to be working ok. Will update after more tests.

Telephone

Siemens Gigaset A580 and sipgate provider. Now working independantly of LinuxMCE, but I did have to poke holes in the firewall to let it connect with the Sipgate server.