Totallymaxed: can't comment on whether the display drivers were working correctly (no way to tell really!), all I can say is that the exact same laptop, with the exact same PXE configuration stuck in a reboot loop before I tried to add the MD to the Admin console - (1audio: I note that it was well into Linux boot, having already done several pages of logging on the screen, including changing the font, so there is no indication of a PXE issue, it gets well past the PXE part).

As soon as I created the MD manually (as a device, directly, not using the specific Add MD function, as that didn't work as already described) and rebooted the laptop again, it worked perfectly.

Nothing to fix here for me, I was only testing using it, I am not attempting to get it working permanently, and have now moved on to testing other stuff - just thought it might be of use to someone else.

ok just a footnote to this then - adding the device manually in our experience can often leave you with an MD that looks like its been created fully and is working ok but in fact often is not. It seems like some of the scripts that get run during and after auto-detection do not complete properly if a manual add device is carried out. I can't say what exactly fails in this situation but it is our experience that using auto-detection is the most reliable way to add MD's in particular.

However your mileage may vary ;-)

    I just purchased the Gyration MCE remote and although it controlls the menus nicely, it does not function like the Fiire Chief when media is playing. I have seen similiar post regarding this and am wondering if anyone has found a solution for this remote or if I am better off purchasing the Fiire Chief. They are both the same price. I only purchased the Gyration remote because I could get it locally. Did Fiire incorporate specific changes to the remote that allow it to work with LMCE?

Thanks
Echo5

Yes they did. The Fiirechief and its dongle have special firmware to support the 'follow me' functionality in particular.

pixelator, I would switch that around so you have the 24 port switch as close as possible to the core, unless the 24 port switch is only 100Mb and the router is 1Gb. What's the speeds of the switches? I know most routers are only 100Mb.

RGoolsby, If you use option 1 you will need to enable DHCP on the wireless router. However, this will cause the wireless connections to be on a different sub-net and inaccessible to the rest of the network. Option 2 is your best bet. You will always loose internet connectivity during a core reboot (it's serving the net to the rest of the network), but as soon as the core is back up so will the internet connectivity. One thin you need to do is make sure you do NOT use the External (WAN) port on the router. Connect the Core and the diskless MD's to the Internal (LAN) ports. That turns the router into a cheap switch. There should be other setting on the router you can set to actually disable the WAN port and operate in switch mode completely, depending on what router you have.

I can't see that turning DHCP on the Wireless router makes any sense at all? In any lmce system you ideally want the Core to be the DHCP server for all devices, including those accessing the LAN via the Wireless router. Just lock down the wireless router properly and your set.

I was looking at the fiire.com page today and noticed that they are selling the Intermatic HA22 Z-wave adapter.  I didn't think this was compatible with LMCE.  Is that now the case?  I didn't see any recent changes to the Zwave source, so I don't think so, but maybe they know something I don't

The HA-22 is supported as far as I know... we don't use them though so I do not have any direct experience of this SUC.

Thanks guys.  I will try the advice tonight when i get home from work.

When I go to the Wizard, Devices, Media Directors it shows a MD as Core/Hybrid.  Is this what I should delete? I am trying to that that this might be the only one listed.

I did get it to recognize the diskless MD one time and it hung as part of the setup and I I thought it froze. I will stick it out now and wait.  About how long should it take for the first time?  I have seen all different ranges of times on the boards.

DO NOT DELETE THE CORE/HyBRID

The Core Hybrid is the Core's integrated MD/Orbiter deleting that will totally wreck your system.

If there is not other MD listed under the Core/Hybrid then your previous efforts to 'manually' add an MD did not actually add anything and you should just set the BIOS in your new MD to PXE boot and connect it and it should auto add as described in my earlier post. The reason I wanted you to delete it if it had been added by your manual add attempts is that the Core identifies all your devices by Mac Address and if your new MD's mac address was already in the DB then it would not get added automatically again until it was removed - deleting the MD from Wizard -> Devices ->Media Directors does this.

I also had a problem with just booting to PXE - (I don't have a dual NIC environment as I am still just playing, gonna build up a dedicated system from components in due course). The Dell laptop boots and goes through the initial part of Linux startup, changing the font, doing the announcement, then the last message I can actually see is running a .sh script that says something about diskless... it disappears too quickly as at that point it reboots again and goes into an endless loop and never gets any further!

I then read the bit RGoolsby refers to about adding the MD in the admin console. I don't know if this is a new bug for 0704, but the Add button does nothing. It just refreshes the screen - if you are not careful you could accidentally misinterpret the OnScreen orbiter config section for the core/hybrid as the new device and reconfigure that one - thankfully I carefully checked before I did this. No matter what I tried I couldn't Add a new MD (unlike in the Add new Device section which works just fine), so I couldn't type in the MAC as the instructions indicate.

In the end, I added a new Device from that dialogue (instead of new MD), struggled a little picking the right Template and other details. But finally got the device in with the MAC, now as soon as I boot the laptop it went all the way through just fine, and in the Admin console it correctly identifies it as an MD...

If you get into an endless loop in the console on boot up that almost olways means that your display drivers are not setup correctly and X can't start as at this point on the first real boot the AVwizard needs to run and it can't if X is not running.

You know, it just hit me. What I really want to know is what brand and model case they are using. We can use our own motherboards in these cases, and the cost could be a lot less prohibitive. Why do we need to use the same exact components that Fiire has chosen? Can't we find a motherboard that would fit the bill?

The Fiirestation is based on a product from Via designed for the industrial & public signage markets (ie big plasma screen hanging on wall in your local Mall). The case is not available separately it is custom to Via and the whole unit is only available direct from Via. It uses the NX-15000 motherboard;

http://www.icp-epia.co.uk/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=252

We have one of these units on test direct from Via and it performs beautifully in every respect... under UI1.

So you could find an enclosure you like and add any one of several Via C7/CX700M motherboards and build your own unit... go get the Unichrome Pro dirvers from the Via-arena site and compile them. Then set the PXE boot option in bios and connect it to your LMCE core's LAN and your in business. But the gotcha is that with the standard Unichrome Pro drivers you only get UI1

Ok, thats what I wanted to hear.  I want to stream video to all over the house and I would have at least upgraded to the 512 ram for video...  I am still waiting about the cost to upgrade the units.

What do the units with the C7 processor run?

Well the only C7 units they have are actually laptops as far as I can see... which is interesting in its own right! If you want to play/stream video or TV I would strongly suggest that you look for a unit that has a C7 processor at 1.2 Ghz or above and that uses the CN700 or CX700M graphics chip. These will give excellent video performance for sure. But you will need to build your own Unichrome Pro drivers from the sources on the Viaarena site.

I am trying to use a laptop with network boot to act as a diskless MD.

I have followed the steps on
http://wiki.linuxmce.com/index.php/Automatic_diskless_boot_of_media_directors

"In LinuxMCE Admin go to Wizard, Devices, Media Directors. Add the media director if this is a new one, and set the mac address. The mac address should be a series of six 2 character sequences separated by colons, like this: 1A:00:F2:21:23:9F"

However I go there and I see my core as a device then I go to add new at the bottom, I update the information (no where for a MAC address) then the only button I see is a close button and the information that I have just created is no where to be found.

I clicked setup diskless media directors and reloaded the router and the MD will not boot.

I can update with screenshots if needed because i am sure my descriptions are not the best.

Any suggestions or advice would be appreciated.

The best and most reliable way to add an MD is to let the system add it automatically for you. I would suggest that you go into Web Admin and delete the MD you added manually. Then reload the router from Wizard -> Restart then click 'Reload Router'. When the Hybrids Orbiter reappears then just plug the Laptop into the LAN side of your Hybrid core (make sure you have set the bios of your laptop to PXE boot) and boot it. The lmce core should autodetect it and start to boot... you will see a message on your laptops screen saying that it "has been announced..." and then you will need to wait while the core stes the new machine up... this will take some while and for a long time nothing will appear to be happening. Be patient! Your Machine will then reboot and will start to PXE boot from the network... and will then run the AVwizard to configure the basic AV settings of your laptop... then it will run the 'Setup Wizard' to complete the setup.... then you are in business!

Hope the above helps

Andrew

Folks:

I had looked into a company in the UK called Trident Microsystems (similar name to the old graphics chipset and graphics card manufacturer) regarding their computer, the VESA PC, which is strikingly similar in features and appearance to the Fiire Station VESA option (1" fanless wall mount version). They are willing to ship their computers stateside, however, they charge 563 GBP, which when converted to US Dollars, results in the following charges, not including shipping:

Thursday, August 30, 2007

563 British Pound(s) = 1128.71 US Dollar(s)

1 USD =to 0.4988 GBP
1 GBP = 2.00481 USD

So, it would cost $1,128.71, plus S&H, not to mention that they might even charge VAT.

The Fiire Station on the other hand, is distributed by a San Francisco based operation and they charge $899.00 plus S&H.

So, if you are interested in the wall mount option (or back of the TV attached version of a MD), then it appears that you should consider the Fiire Station. Thought I had something when I had come across that UK VESA PC, but, it clearly will cost too much.

This unit does look to be either the same or similar to the Fiirestation... except that they claim C7 @ 1Ghz & Eden @ 1.5Ghz where the Fiirestation uses a C7 clocked at 1.5Ghz so I am not 100% sure.

But A bigger gotcha is that with the VESA PC you will not get the Unichrome Pro II driver software that you need to make UI2 work... UI1 would work fine if you built the freely available Unichrome Pro drivers though.

Zaerc, you make a very valid point. I have no issues dealing directly with VIA as long as they are punctual with new releases. ATI and Nvidia do seem to have this down, but I haven't had to deal with VIA closed drivers before, so I wouldn't know. However, if we have to go through Fiire, which has to go through VIA, in order to get a new release then you can pretty much not do anything non-standard with X or the Kernel... like you would do as a developer... the same developers they claim to support.

We would at the very least need to have the ability to rebuild the driver against various versions of the kernel and X. Yes, both ATI and Nvidia closed drivers can do that (for those who didn't know).

Having said that, the hardware HD playback is a huge plus for this purpose and from what I understand you can not do that on either ATI or Nvidia cards without closed drivers. With this board, you can and do it with open drivers and even better then with an ATI or Nvidia card with the closed drivers. If you choose to use the closed drivers then you will also get the 3d acceleration, but with the added headache of trying to actually get the driver for the kernel/X version you are running.

So as ever you are free to not buy the Fiire hardware... its your choice.

Anyone still know about if the Via Motherboard with the S3 Unichrome Graphics card can do UI2? I've seen a couple of people on the forums  who have said that they have the GFX card.. anyone?

Any of the Via motherboards based on the C7/CX700M chipset (like Fiire's Fiirestation) can potentially run UI2 excellently... problem is you need Unichrome Pro II drivers and currently they have to be licensed from Via. The Fiirestation has these drivers bundled with it.

any updates?

I contacted the company a week or two ago and they suggested that I try the 6030P

"is our fanless unit with PXe software.  This unit costs $199 for 128 RAM.  I can see what the cost would be for 256, 512 or 1 gig RAM.  Let me know if you would like these quotes.  If you looks at he specs for the 6030 series in the attachment I sent you in the previous email, it will have the same specs as these, only differences being the software and flash/RAM."

I haven't inquired further.. but if you got one for 139$ that works I would love to hear about it.

We have a lot of experience with Via based machines with Pluto and now with lmce. The 6030 range is based on a C3 processor which we have used successfully in the past so it should be ok. You'd want at least a 1Ghz processor and if you want to us the machine to act as a full MD with video playback etc then you'd need have enough RAM to allocate at least 64mb to video memory... so realistically that means 512mb in our experience. Remember PXE boot means that all the processing/video handling etc is happening locally in the MD's processor and the Core is just acting like a big remote hard drive essentially. A C3 at 1Ghz would be about the minimum for SD video playback under UI1.

Currently we are focussed on motherboards using the Via C7 processor clocked at between 1.2 & 2.0 Ghz combined with either the CN700 or CX700M graphics chip.

Well if you want to use UI2 then the Fiirestation works great... the drivers are far less closed than nVidia's are in fact. We are'nt using UI2 so we use the Unichrome Pro on a number of different Via based motherboards.

I'm sory but that does not make sense to me.  As far as I understand the Unichrome Pro II drivers needed for the alpha-blended UI2 are not even available for binary download.  So how can they be less closed then nVidia's?   

Without the alpha-blended UI2 properly supported, I see little reason to buy a VIA board at all, and I'm having some very mixed feelings about what Fiire is (or rather appears to be) doing.

Sorry... I meant the Unichrome Pro drivers that we are using (which *currently* do not support UI2) are less closed. Show me an nVidia driver you can build yourself?

Fiire are selling a combined solution of Via based hardware and a binary driver, I can't see any problem with that... if you can't stand the thought of running a binary driver that you can only get if you buy their hardware then don't buy it.

I agree its a pity though that Via do not make their drivers open or at least provide fully functional binaries available... after all it would just make their hardware more compelling.

I have a wireless router and a wireless extender ... brick walls are a bitch.  Signal to my lounge, etc are poor.  I have a single story house, im keen to try and put the wireless extender in the ceiling ... signal should travel better through the soft thin ceilings ...

Lan over power is interesting, here in south africa we have 240v ... so will have to find devices that support this.

How much bandwidth does high def video streaming use ?  ie. how many bits per second ?  I can play with my network and test data transfer rates through the house before investing any real time or money in one solution ?

1080p takes about 13mbit's a second at 30fps... roughly