User:Vblok

Here i will document my journey as i start to use LinuxMCE to automate my new house. I hope this will help other users to build their system.

060309 (d-m-y)

Made my first purchase at zwave4u.com:

- 1x tricklestar usb adapter for my core (a test pc atm)

- 1x tricklestar remote control to use as SIS for adding devices to the z-wave network

and at lichtchef.de: (good experience so far)

- 1x Merten 508519

- 1x Merten 508619

I am going to test these devices when they arrive, this will enable me to learn more about z-wave and mce.

110309

Purchased an Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-4000 at www.informatique.nl. I will use this to test analog cable, analog A/V and possibly sattelite reception. This will also allow me to check out MythTV and/or VDR. I will also try to make the EPG work for the Netherlands.

I am also looking to purchase an USB-UIRT to control my equipment, but these are hard to come by in the Netherlands.

By the way: the lichtchef.de Merten stuff is on it's way from Germany!

When all devices above are in my posession i think i will have enough to make a realistic test setup with LinxMCE.

280309

Purchased a USB-UIRT at usbuirt.com for $55,- I also received my order from zwave4u.com and the Hauppauge card. I made a test setup with the new zwave driver in a 0710 setup and it detected the tricklestar usb adapter! I used the tricklestar RC to add the two Merten devices into my zwave network and they also appeared in the lmce admin interface! I can control these devices perfectly and i'm very happy with the result so far. Next i will make a test setup with a satellite dish and connect it to my Hauppauge card to see if i can make it work in combination with VDR. I will also try to get a test MD to connect to my TV so i can make use of the USBUIRT to control my TV and receiver.

100409

Received the UIRT and it worked as advertised: plug and play! Only thing was that i had to make a template for the remote control of my HVR-4000 remote, but this is documented in this wiki very nicely. Most buttons seem to work now, but i am still trying to understand how buttons are translated to VDR usage for example (not everything works).

I also finally managed to get my satellite setup running. For about a week i was thinking that the hauppauge card wasn't detected because i got no channels when scanning with "scan" and kaffeine. After a brainwave i realised that maybe the dish receiver was pointed to the wrong sattelite - and it was! All this time it was pointed to Astra 2 in stead of Astra 1 and this caused tuning to fail... After a quick re-alignment everything just worked and i had my own "wow" moment when kaffeine and VDR showed all those FTA channels!

I am however still unsure about the stability of the setup because VDR had quite a few lockups, but i will investigate further. I also would like to add plugins to VDR, but this seems to be unpossible by means of apt, so i will have to compile as documented in the forum.

I will also start a search for a compatible cardreader for a CAM/CI interface so i can watch and record encrypted channels in VDR.