How did you end up here, using LinuxMCE?

[Seer]

Hey there everybody! 

I was wondering what brought everybody here to use LinuxMCE.  Do you have a friend that is using it?  Someone mention it on some other forum?  Did you buy something from one of the companies selling Pluto/LinuxMCE products?  What's your story?

Here's mine:  A few years ago I got a HDTV, which kicked my old TV to the bedroom.  I've been using my PS3's DLNA receiver to stream media from my computer, which works well, but not perfectly.  It also leaves that bedroom TV to the old semi-broken DVD player and the PS2.

Then, the wife got into searching for fansubbed anime, which often are encoded in MKV dual audio, which the PS3 doesn't like.  Then the Bluray player on the PS3 died, and I was  hurting for something I could control from my couch, maybe something I could also port over to my bedroom TV, and also take care of some other small tasks I've been wanting (like a mediawiki site for the house, a replacement for my consumer grade router, and a better Linux based DLNA server, and an easy way to jump into home automation)

I've seen the word "LinuxMCE" a few times on other forums, as I've set up asterisk phone system at an old job and on the FUPPES site.  I've always been a GNOME man, so at first I looked around for other solutions.  Finally, I also wanted to get back into programming, as my new job doesn't have any (!) and I don't want to skills to wither. 

The YouTube video pulled me in.  25 minutes of everything I can do, using all the components together, and on my favorite OS to boot!

So, what about you?!

[Marie.O]

I looked at PlutoHome back in 2005-06 iirc but could not get it to work.

But remembered the cool flash presentation.

ffwd to Oct-Nov 2007 - A friend of mine wanted a small distributed media system. Since then, I have spend nearly 70% of my waking hours, working, fixing, playing with lmce

[b4rney]

Nice thread idea!

I remember seeing the video on youtube and thinking it was a scam. It was just too good!

I now have a cat6 wired home with various orbiters and a large NAS with my ripped DVDs and two DVB-S cards. I still can't believe how good this system is. So glad I got here and thanks to the developers. Not to mention the support available in this forum.

[tschak909]

I came to LinuxMCE in March of 2007, but didn't become a developer until September 2007, after the 0704 release.

Since then, I have spent almost all of my waking time, alongside posde, working on, and improving LinuxMCE.

My interests in this system arise from my private research in ubiquitous computing, particularly the aspects of human to computer interaction, and distributed networking. LinuxMCE is proving to be an excellent test-bed for a lot of things to work on in this area, as a home is a perfect place to implement massive sensor networks, far reaching distributed UI, and cross pollination of data between tasks.

-Thom

[totallymaxed]

Well we saw Pluto at the CEBIT show in March 2005. At the time we were looking for a Open HA system that we could invest effort in and build an installation business around. We signed a commercial agreement with Pluto in the summer of 2005. We spent the next 3 years testing hardware/software and supporting Pluto's software development and contributing many improvements/changes. During 2006/7 we installed 12 systems in our own homes and those of our friends/family to test our ability to install/support the system 'in real the real world' and did literally 1000's of installs in our lab to test all aspects of the system. Fast forward to May 2008 and we took an order for our first HA system based on LinuxMCE.

Andrew

[Ray_N]

We (wife and I) had an old CRT TV in the basement (entertainment room, if you can call it that), but the basement is way too cold during the winter months to go down there. Out of our home based business, we bought a nicer large flat screen for the living room to make presentations since we didn't want clients to be in the cold of the basement.

We really cant say that we watch TV... but on very small occasions, there were some shows we would have preferred to watch in the larger screen (Lost for me, Desperate Housewives for her).  But there is no cableTV connection in the living room. So we needed a way to stream the cable signal upstairs. So I started looking...should I go with a Slingbox? Well that needed a PC to be connected to the LCD. Well, if we're going to have a PC up there, might as well have a DVD and whole media center solution also, no? So, is there something else besides Slingbox and the like out there? A friend of mine very casually, very nonchalant mentioned he had heard of MythTV and LinuxMCE.

I love Linux and missed it a lot since I hadn't worked with it much lately. (I used to work with Linux, during my undergrad in Computer Engineering, 11 years ago). So I started my research, reading through the forums, and here we are today...just today I finished building the system, and just closed the box. (pictures attached  ) Am very exited about this and looking forward to contributing to the community. I was surprised to know that LinuxMCE as itself is not even three years old, so if its this "old" (new really) and it functions so nicely, I thought, just imagine what it will be 10 years from now...

[phenigma]

Hi all!  I've been running MythTV for about 3 years running multiple frontends on Xebian and have been looking for a way to incorporate home automation and voip. I first saw LMCE about a year ago in some MythTV forums and I played with it for a bit but didn't really have the hardware to implement media directors properly.  I had forgotten completely about lmce until I recently saw some of tschak's lmce videos.  The DT366 touchscreen padorbiter video hooked me and I decided to jump in.

I just finished building a core/hybrid system out of a P4 using with my file server as a NAS and a couple old (but apparently capable) pcs for mds.  I'm also using my Windows Tablet PC and a Nokia N800 as orbiters.  I hope to add a DT366, voip, irrigation control and eventually lighting, thermostats and maybe even a serial interface to my solar hot water system controller.

J.

[tkmedia]

Late 05 while trying to find an option to play my flac files on my Turtle beach Audiotron  I found plutohome... I managed to get it installed on the one Tyan board compatible at the time. Even managed to get a diskless  MD going.  Got follow me working with my Nokia 3650. Unfortunately that is far as I took it for a long time. Anxiously awaited and tried most pluto-home version since 2.036 iirc . March 07 with lmce 1.0 saw progress. With the 0704 release saw more, still did not try most of the HA features. I got involved with testing in for 0710 release. Now I am using most of lmce features and working with the 0810 testing.  Some day soon hope to add some of my own code to the mix. Recently got licensed by Pluto-Home to sell pre-installed systems. Looking forward to see what 2009 and 0810 Linuxmce will bring.




Tim

[Afkpuz]

My story is long and gradual, but is interesting to me when I look back on it.  It involves me moving completely from a passive windows (only used for games) to the media powerhouse of linux.  I first discovered linux in 2006.  A computer science class which everyone has to take at my school (gen ed class) involved giving presentations on windows vs. Macs.  After every point, like "windows is more vulnerable to viruses", the prof would also make a little linux jab, like "but linux doesn't get viruses at all".  So, he introduced me to ubuntu dapper drake.  I think it was 6.04.  Well, my particular lappy had some video card trouble and I gave up on linux.  I had never needed to put this much effort into getting my computers to work.  But eventually, a computer science major on my wing heard about my troubles and found a fix for me.  I finally had a working linux box.  I quickly learned to love linux, especially ubuntu. 

Then, later that year, the tech help area of my school was selling a used 32" crt monitor.  It was massive, cheap, and weighed 150+ pounds (I checked the tech specs on it), so naturally, I bought it.  I started by just playing movies and music on that monitor.  Since I was in a small dorm room, I could sit back on the couch and use this monitor hooked to my lappy.  Well, pretty soon, I wanted a dedicated computer for that monitor.  We watch alot of movies in college now-a-days, plus everyone was impressed by such a big monitor.  So, I ended up building a desktop computer to drive the monitor.  This was very nice and good, so I soon upgraded to surround sound speakers and began looking for the best linux movie player.  In that search, I discovered mythtv.  It worked pretty nice and could do music and movies, which is all I wanted.  So, then I bought a cheap IR remote and got that going.  Pretty soon, I thought I'd give TV tuners a try.  So, I began to dabble with that.  Soon, I signed up for schedules direct and ditched the 150 pound monitor for a sleek, off brand lcd tv. 

So at this point, I was just enamored with linux in general and would browse around youtube watching linux videos.  And low and behold, I came across the LMCE demo video.  I was blown away and immediately knew I wanted to chase that rabbit.  Several upgrades and a whole lot of tinkering later, I have a sweet, working system that will definitely keep expanding as I graduate college (may of 2009!) and get a house.  I can't imagine still using boring old windows.   

[Techstyle]

In 2006 my DVD player died and I had an excuse to build a machine to go in my Living room connected to a LG LCD Screen and my Pioneer Reciever.  I wanted to be able to watch/listen to media I had, until that point, dotted around the various machines on the Network.  I installed Windows MCE 2005 but it didn't really live upto my expectations - Problems with codecs and multiroom ability.  First I learned to live with it and then I wanted to expand to Automation to run some X10 stuff.  I installed a trial of MControl for Win MCE which worked well but I continued to research alternatives and then I stumbled upon LMCE in middle of 2008.

I downloaded the latest Beta of 7.10 and installed on my living room PC, I had some old hardware around me so built a MD for the bedroom and a PDA as a roaming orbiter.  I added the X-10 stuff, more HDD for media (my DVD collection), about 200ft of CAT5E cable, I have ordered 2 gigabit switches ($25.99 on amazon at the mo).  

[hari]

Stumbled over the webpage in 2005, signed up at the old plutohome page in Aug 2005. My "homeserver" was a Transmeta based HP Thin client with a usb disk attached, running debian. I really disliked the fact that it was "a own distro", looked at the 100s of packages, decided to better use a vm on my notebook for testing. I was appealed by UI1 in the vmware screen, _NOT_. Of course I did not have any functionality (no media in the vm, no tuners, no lighting, no nothing). So I decided this is crap and left :-)
I think it was Sep 2007 when I found out that my latest gadget (n800) runs "the orbiter" on a blog. Found out that the name had changed (LinuxMCE) and started reading the forums and the wiki. As I already had a squeezebox and a cisco 7970, too, this was a perfect fit. At first I was annoyed by requirements like dual nic and dhcp. I tried to fight it (see arpwatch patch *ggg*). Then I started to enjoy that it does everything what I did with my old homeserver (slimserver, samba, nfs, boot infrastructure, asterisk, ...). But nearly out of the box. My goal was to have all my devices at home plug and play.. that got me addicted.

br, Hari

[sambuca]

I had been using Freevo for a number of years, as a pure audio/video media centre. Then I started to set up TV recording, but was not quite happy with the fact that I needed the computer in the living room to stay on to record a show. I was also in the process of building a new house, so I envisioned a system with a central storage and recording capability. I also liked the idea of using cat5/6 to transfer tv signals to every room.

Crawling the web for such systems I stumbled upon Plutohome. It seemed to do everything I wanted, and even had possibilities in HA, which I wanted to experiment with. After looking for a while I did a test install on a old (too old) PC, but it was to slow and restricted in its setup (not having MDs) to be of any use. And I was not thrilled with the locked-down approach to the setup of the system. So I kept looking for alternatives, not having completely given up on pluto either. Then I found LMCE. It was based on Pluto, was less locked-down, and its intention was to be a add-on/package to standard Ubuntu. After some thinking I decided to try it out. So, in the autumn of 2007, I ordered a server to install as a LMCE core. If I didn't use it for LMCE, I could always find other uses for it. But its still running LMCE 

I could have written dozens of reasons why I chose lmce, but I guess you all know 

[bulek]

Hi,

I've used first Misterhouse and then combination with Freevo, that gave me quite working system. At that time I read about Pluto V1 and admired those that can afford such system... Then noticed announcement for V2 to be in "open source spirit" and I joined the project - basically from the ground up...

Now I'm using it in our new family house with full blown automation system (over 300 variables-objects are exchanged between automation level and LMCE)... Pretty complex system...
 

Regards,

Bulek.

[seth]

 
I was a knoppmyth user/release tester for about 6 years. I had a Master backend running gentoo, and 4 Knoppmyth frontends. I also had an old 486PC running IBM's Home Director software, and had several X10 lighting and appliance adapters working with plug in keypads in various locations throughout the house. One day a friend of mine in my local LUG, mentioned Pluto home to me. I attempted to use their software on existing hardware, and was met with much dismay, and vexing, and a lot of beer drinking. While looking through the posts in the Pluto forums, there was mention of another platform, an open platform, and that is when I discovered LinuxMCE.

While I have not been an active user of LinuxMCE as long as some, I had the pleasure of throwing it into my production environment at home. I started with a single core/hybrid installed from the kubuntu 704 cd and the 2 disc LinuxMCE 704 cd installation method. This was a huge step forward, but as an avid mythtv user, and the bits of mythtv that were broken in version 704, led me to try the beta for 710. I have been using 710 ever since. I shut down my old 486 with its IBM home director software, and incorporated my X10 into LinuxMCE. Now I have a core/hybrid, and 4 MD's, as well as a host of lighting and home control devices both X10 and Insteon.

I can see no use for any other platform. This does everything I will ever need, and more that I haven't even sat down with yet. I can not wait for the beta of 810. I wish sometimes I can do more than answer forum questions and the occasional wiki contributions, but I am not a developer, although I aspire to be. Maybe with the next version I will cross that bridge, but until then, I am completely satisfied with my current deployment, and with the hard work of all the developers making this "free as in beer" product, better than the systems that could break your bank, the next release will be even more Satisfying.

Regards,

Seth

[Anthony_Molg]

Stumbleupon Video http://www.stumbleupon.com/

The Windows MCE Vs Linux MCE video. The videos are great, they got me here keep them coming.