Messages

31

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: 2 orbiters on one machine??

« on: August 03, 2008, 04:53:16 pm »

That's an interesting idea. I desire for a two TV system, lounge and bedroom are directly over the top of eachother... I want to control the systems with Gyration a remote, P1i Phone and Netpad (N800i).

I have an SP13000 board and was going to use that as the bedroom system, but a single server running two screens is much more appealing.

I have seen and used these devices for extending Video over Cat5e (I have used it to move video from the 2nd floor of a building to the 9th floor and distribution over the entire floor. A run of 200 metres) CatX Video TX 8 and CatXQ Video RX, does sound too and low cost.

so, please let me know how you get on... I have just bought parts to build a quad core hybrid which, if you can get it to work, I may by a different graphics card to also give it a try...

How about VirtualBox (i have no experience of XEN) on one of the screens of a dial head system in full screen, with sound routed to a seperate sound card...? Virtual box doesn't support USB yet so we'd be limited to orbiter control rather than usb mouse control.

Thanks

Richard

32

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: Speech Recognition

« on: August 03, 2008, 04:41:11 pm »

Hi There,

I have previously designed and developed Voice User Interfaces for callcentre applications with Speech Recognition, with technologies such as Nuance 7, 8 and 8.5, Speechworks OSR1 and 2, Philips Speechpearl... and a few others, all of these were eventually bought by Scansoft which renamed themselves Nuance.

So if there is a project in this area I am certainly able to lend a hand with the VUI, it is a specialist area and although not experiences with home automation interfaces I am sure some principles and experience will be relevant.

What we'd really be looking at is multimodal interfaces... speech input and visual feedback either through an orbiter or OSD, MM work is something I have used previously in research work.

Anyway, if this goes anywhere, please feel free to drop me a line and I'll lend a hand...


R

33

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: UIQ3 Mobile phone support

« on: August 03, 2008, 04:34:21 pm »

Hi,

I would love to see this.
I am starting to build a new server for LinuxMCE. I have a  P1i, M600i and P910 lying around for use as orbiters so if we could get UIQ preferably UIQ 3 working that would be fantastic. I would certainly be able to help withbug testing and the like.

The M600i and P910 have bluetooth but no wifi, the P1i has 802.11b and bluetooth

The Symbian Foundation is in the process of being formed with a stated objective of unifying the Symbian UIs under a single platform based on S60v3 although with touchscreen support based on UIQ... so that could be interesting but is also at least 2 years away. In the meantime all Symbian software will become opensource and royalty free even for commercial use. Hopefully this will increase the number of phones using UIQ, as it is a good interface and is the basis for a lot of phones.. from Samsung, SonyEricsson (P series and many walkman series phones), Motorola, LG, Benq, and Siemens among others.

Rich

34

Users / Re: Brand New System ... can it do this

« on: July 12, 2008, 05:07:13 pm »

For information to other readers...

tschak909 got back to me off list and stated that I should use 2 NICs.

Rich

35

Users / Re: Brand New System ... can it do this

« on: July 07, 2008, 08:51:07 pm »

Hi All,

Thanks for the replies; I do really appreciate it. No, really I do!

I have stated my nirvana, and in the absence of information to the contrary it is what I would like to achieve, I am not saying that I unwilling to change my final solution based on what LinuxMCE can provide... As you say I am willing to give it a try and test, but I am no Linux whizkid... I have Kubuntu on my laptop, but that is a fairly new step for me - but it seems good and I have totally replaced Windows - except for one application which I have to use for work and that is in a VirtualBox VM.

anyway, we're getting off topic, I have stated what I would like to achieve and that has been moulded based on what I think I know that LinuxMCE can provide, with a few embellishments where I don't know cause I can't find the information.

It has been stated that LinuxMCE is an automation system and it is this area that I have the most questions... Using a Wiimote how do I press the power-on button for the TV, ok so the TV is controlled via RS232 or USBUIRT but I guess there needs to be a dedicated button on the wiimote that activates the TV and the AMP. Has anyone done this?

Assuming I can get SAMBA running on the system as well, then it should be fine as my housewide fileserver as well...

now to the networking issues that this thread has seemed to resolve around... I do understand a bit about networks... so I have no problem with linuxMCE being DHCP and DNS, in fact I think this makes a lot of sense, it's preconfigured with the options for netbooting and it knows what devices exist. I am a little concerned about having LinuxMCE - such a feature rich system - exposed directly to the net, so I was planning on putting a SPI NAT router between the LINUXMCE and Internet.

In the situation I just described surely just telling LinuxMCE what the default gateway with a single NIC would work flawlessly, but if the experts say otherwise I can chuck 2 NICs in there... I'm just running out of slots by the time I plug in a NIC (+one onboard), 2 twin tuners (Freeview and FreeSat dual tuners), SATA Raid Card, reasonable spec Graphics card... that's 5 slots (and the graphics card may take two!)

So, tschak909 in the above situation (one NIC) would that not work - if you say it wont work perfectly as intended I will use two NICs!???!

and the question about wiimotes and powering on the system from it (well powering on the tv / amp)?

Thanks for your patience

Rich

36

Users / Re: Brand New System ... can it do this

« on: July 04, 2008, 02:48:12 pm »

Hi THere,

thanks for the reply.

I have read parts of the wiki and the demo setup video, I did that a while back but I have not seend answers to my questions. I have even looked for a list of supported "events" that can be used as triggers to no avail.

I suggested using a single hybrid with secondary rooms running as pure MDs but your reply says use a core and a second system, all very well and good, but why? You know having two pc's on is a little overkill when one should be sufficient. so can you explain why one is not sufficient as a hybrid?

You mention using LinuxMCE as a firewall, surely you don't right, you mean use it as a DHCP/DNS server... exposing LinuxMCE to the outside world is something I am not prepared to do... dedicated router/firewalls should be used for such tasks.

Why are we looking at two networks, internal and external? I want to use my laptops as orbiters and my phone, but these devices need access to files and media as well, so why can't I use my very lightly loaded network for both (I could implement QoS, does LinuxMCE support QoS?)

I will install LinuxMCE on a dedicated partition, but the media is going to end up on a bunch of drives mirrored or Raid5'd, surely linucmce can cope with multiple partitions as media stores?

Sambe server, is it built in as standard, can I just setup my shares in KDE and off we go?

I'm not too worried about Asterisk or Freeebx, I work in telecoms and know about these products and they are far beyond what I need in a two person household!

So, I guess my original questions stand as I can't find answers for them on google or on the wiki!

Thanks

Richard

37

Compatible Products & Services / Re: USB UIRT's in the EU

« on: July 02, 2008, 11:45:35 pm »

yes please.

38

Users / Re: Brand New System ... can it do this

« on: July 02, 2008, 11:37:06 pm »

Oh, I am not new to home automation after setting up a friends place with custom media centre based picture frame based on jrmediacenter.com, girder, netremote on a PDA

I did consider jrmc for this project but it is not lightweight enough, requires hard discs and although quite nice, doesn't have the comprehensive tv gui I hope to see in linuxmce.

Thanks again
R

39

Users / Brand New System ... can it do this

« on: July 02, 2008, 11:33:48 pm »

Ok, before I start I have been intrigued by LinuxMCE for sometime and the community seems very helpful...

This is what I want to do; In a cupboard behind the lounge fit out the cupboard with all the AV equipment with AMP, LinuxMCE Hybrid / network fileserver and a few other bits of kit (PS3/WII?)

In the living room have a minimalist installation with just speakers and panel (and maybe an attached to the hybrid a DVD/Blue ray computer drive).

The hybrid will use lots of hdd I have lying around, sata and pata linked as RAID  -  I would love to use ZFS and ZFS but damn Sun releasing it under an incompatible license).

In other rooms I would like more media directors but it is likely that only a max of 2 playbacks would happen at once. Would Wifi be enough? for SD into a remote room, HD locally of course on the hybrid). Each MD would be controlled just via a wiimote.

So each room should be able to watch tv from FreeSat (with HD) or Freeview, play picture show, movies or music. playback via directory structure, playlist, search, filter etc.

So I'm in the lounge and I want to watch a movie, The TV needs to be turned on - via IR or RS232 as I'm not sure what TV I'll buy yet, and select the movie, Linux MCE also needs to turn on the amp of course and be able to control the amp volume (by USBUIRT from the hybrid) all by controlling the system easily  with just a wiimote.

The other rooms are simpler as I expect to use the inbuilt speakers on the tv.

I am watching tv and I wanna setup an alarm, it would be cool if I could set up an alarm on LinuxMCE media director and tell it to turn off. A few minutes before the appropriate time, the Core wakes up the relevant Media Dorector using Wake on Lan... and it boots into LinuxMCE of course ready to wake my up with the relevant music.

Now, my mobile devices. I have a SonyEricsson P1i which I use as media player and I want to use it as an orbiter as well (it supports WLAN and bluetooth)... I also use it for portable music which I fill via USB by mass storage device... unfortunately P1i only supports mp3 m4a and most of my collection has been ripped to 320kbps ogg vorbis... can Linux MCE empty and fill my device with music (transcoded to m4a) automatically with random _albums_ from my collection?, what about 4 and 5/5 rated albums from my collection based on meta tags? If I put a rating on a track/album on my P1i will that be replicated back into LinuxMCE when I resync?

The hybrid also needs to be my fileserver as well for the house with SAMBA/NFS shares.

now I know I am asking a lot... but this is my nirvana

suggestions welcome... thanks for reading my long post... well done for getting this far!

Rich