Topics

16

Users / LMCE Photobooth

« on: March 09, 2009, 05:48:39 pm »

Alright guys I need some help.
I am trying to figure out the best way to implement an idea that I have. I am throwing a huge party a few months from now and I want to turn one of my spare rooms into a "Photo Booth". Maybe have a cool background and what not, I want this whole deal to be fully automated so I dont need to mess with anything during my party. Here is what I want it to do.

1. Some sort of High Res camera on a tripod (web cam, usb cam, firewire cam etc)
2. LCD screen either right below or above camera (LCD screen will be the "viewfinder" facing the sujects so they can preview)
3. button on the LCD screen that starts a timer for maybe a 5 sec countdown till the system captures the picture
4. save the photos that are taken into the photo slideshow folder and marked to view on the slideshow

So effectively my guests can walk into the room, click the start button, pose for the picture, picture snaps, and shows up on all my photo slideshows throughout the house.

17

Users / USB sound cards

« on: February 25, 2009, 05:00:50 pm »

Hey guys, I have been sitting on a USB port sound card (actually just a usb stick) for a while and havent been able to get it to work. However I had somewhat of a breakthrough last night while chatting with Thom. I now have it working with KDE and I feel like I am getting close to success with LMCE. Here is what I have done so far.

plug the stick in (obviously)
edit the /etc/asound.conf file. Change everything  inside the quotations to "plughw:1" save and exit
edit /etc/pluto/xine.conf   Find two lines that start with audio.alsa and change after the first : to say plughw:1

reload router and you should be at the point where I am. Amarok and mplayer and Xine all play through USB on the Desktop, but I still get no sound from it when inside LMCE.

Once I get it completely figured out I will make a wiki, please post if you have successfully set up a USB sound device in LMCE.
-Krys

18

Users / A useful purpose for Text to Speech

« on: February 24, 2009, 04:58:32 pm »

I am sure that this has been talked about, but I thought it would be neat to use the text to speech program that comes built into LMCE. Instead of just saying some predetermined script I want to throw a twist in there. I want to have some variables included to give me useful information in the morning. In my mind it goes something like this.
"Good morning Krys, it is 7:30 am Tuesday February 24th. The outside temperature is currently 34 degrees with an expected high of 54 and a 15% chance of rain. Dont forget that you have a 10AM meeting with the contractor, and your wifes birthday is tomorrow."

As you can see this feature would actually be of some significant value. I find myself jumping on my iphone in the morning to see what the weather will be like to dress properly or make plans. I also have a terrible memory and it would be nice to be reminded of calendar events.
The date/time info could be pulled from the system information. The weather info would need to be retrieved from some sort of weather site (not sure here) and the calendar reminder would need a calendar where we could put stuff into LMCE, a calendar on web admin came to mind.

Let me know what you guys think, or if you have already done something similar.
-Krys

19

Users / Incremental Lighting

« on: February 24, 2009, 04:46:41 pm »

I had another idea last night, unfortunately I have more ideas than I do time to implement them so I thought I would share to see if anyone has already put it into use.
I have a zwave controlled light switch in my bedroom that I want to use it to help me get moving in the mornings. I thought that I could slowly turn the lights up at a rate of about 10% every minute until they were fully on. (i dont like getting slammed with full lighting all at once in the morning). I mentioned the idea this morning on IRC and Thom had a few suggestions. Here is a clip

[08:33] <krysallen> has anyone devised a neat way to slowly turn the bedroom lights up in the morning, like 10% every minute?
[08:38] <TSCHAKeee> krysallen: hmmm
[08:38] <krysallen> other than 10 seperate events
[08:38] <TSCHAKeee> you'd have to create a delay plugin
[08:38] <TSCHAKeee> which.... would intercept lighting events
[08:38] <TSCHAKeee> and delay them.
[08:39] <TSCHAKeee> something like that
[08:39] <TSCHAKeee> linuxmce plugins can intercept events
[08:39] <TSCHAKeee> and pre-process them
[08:39] <TSCHAKeee> which is what you would need to do that.
[08:41] <krysallen> so I would have a lighting event that has just 10 increases of 10%, then I would need a plugin that intercepts and says to do each increase 1 at a time every minute?
[08:41] <TSCHAKeee> yeah, something like that

Anyway, if anyone likes the idea feel free to run with it, if not I will get to it when I can and try to hammer it out.

20

Users / LPT port irrigation control

« on: February 23, 2009, 08:35:30 pm »

Hey guys, I have an idea but would like some input before I really start tearing into it. As the title states I am considering controlling my 8 zone lawn irrigation system via the parallel port on my core. I know that there are some X10/insteon options out there for this same purpose, and I think there is a zwave device that is coming out soon, but I would like to save $$$ whenever possible and I also like neat projects. I know that it is possible to open and close the valves via the parallel port, what I would like is some opinions on how well this could integrate into LMCE. Here is what the system would need to do.
 1. Open each valve 1 at a time for a pre-determined amount of time at a set frequency per week. (basic necessity)
 2. option to use the dawn event so that the sprinklers would run when the sun rises (a set time in the morning would be acceptable)
 3. a floorplan layout would be nice to see what zone is currently on with the ability to manually trigger each zone either on or off
 4. An option to skip the next watering event in case there has been recent rain and there is no need to water

Maybe more options, but the main one is obviously the first, the others can come down the road if they are more complicated. So let me know if you think this is crazy or a good idea. Any tips would help because this would be at the far end of the spectrum of what I am capable of doing on my own.
Anything I can come up with I would gladly share so that others can enjoy the same feature. I figure that I should be able to implement this for the cost of a parallel port relay board ($20-30) and alot of time (I have plenty) assuming that it can be done. If it looks like there is any interest I will start a wiki page to document the different areas that need work to bring this together.
Thanks,
-Krys

21

Users / Volume down before power off on IR stereo

« on: February 20, 2009, 05:30:52 pm »

Here is what I have
My core is in a closet and its audio output goes to a IR stereo (also in the same closet controlled via usb-uirt ) the stereos output goes to a distribution block that powers ceiling speakers throughout my house. When I listen to music, I crank it up loud. Now the problem is I just use the off button on my orbiter and it just turns the stereo off at whatever the volume level is, this is fine except for the fact that I have a sleep scenario that plays a sleep sounds CD in our bedroom at night. When you use the sleep scenario it kicks the radio on and its still at Vol 52 and scares the shit out of my wife and I.
So long story short, how can I send the stereo a volume down command as part of the power off command.
Say the max vol of the stereo is 30, Can I have LMCE send

Vol down x 30 (<-- just repeating vol down command 30 times)
Power off

This would ensure that when I power on the volume is always zero, then as part of the "on" command I could have

Power on
vol up x10

and it would start out at a reasonable level,

22

Users / USB printer/ Network sharing printers

« on: February 02, 2009, 09:48:56 pm »

I just added a USB printer to my core and shared it over the network. I made a wiki to help anyone that might have problems.

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Add_a_USB_printer
-Krys

23

Installation issues / Kernel Panic, round 2

« on: January 26, 2009, 05:55:19 pm »

okay so I am back on this topic again, here is the recap.
I have a dell pc that uses this NIC : Intel(R) 82562V-2 10/100
I ran this PC as my core for a few weeks, and now I want to use it as an MD, problem is when I try to Pxe boot all i get is:
ipconfig: no devices to configure
/init: .: Can't open /tmp/net-eth0.conf
Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempting to kill init!

Now, I went back and looked at the LMCE install (its still on this pc's hard drive) and it looks like it was using the e1000 module, so I followed the wiki and added this module to the list, recreated the init ramdisk, still nothing. I googled this NIC and found some info saying that there was a new source available and that I should rebuild the module from this source and it would work. So i download the source, build the module, add to list recreated init ramdisk, reboot, SAME ERROR. I tried the e1000e module, SAME ERROR..... I want to run this thing over with my truck at this point.

Does anyone have a clue as to what I need to do to get this thing to boot? Or any suggestions as to what I could do to make sure of what my problem really is? I would think that if this NIC worked for the core that surely it is compatible and I can get it to Pxe boot. There are plenty of threads on the net about people getting this exact NIC to pxe boot (none with LMCE, but a few with other versions of Linux)

Help!
-Krys

24

Users / 10 sec pause on live TV command

« on: January 18, 2009, 08:10:32 am »

I have my LCD hooked up to my MD via RS232, when I hit the live TV button on my orbiter there is about a 10-15 second delay before it switches the tv input, any idea why the delay is there? All the other commands are instant, and if I go to the resend AV commands and hit the different inputs they are all instant, there is only a delay when using the live TV button on the orbiter.
-Krys

25

Users / Anyone having success with DVD repair kits?

« on: January 13, 2009, 06:21:15 pm »

I wanted to get some reviews before I wasted my money, I have many DVD's with light wear that wont rip smoothly with LMCE. Anyone able to fix this issue with one of those DVD repair/resurfacers?

26

Users / Why is my device disabled?

« on: January 13, 2009, 05:02:40 am »

I am trying to control an LCD via serial port, but the device will not start and is disabled. When I go to the admin site, the checkbox for disabled is checked. I uncheck the box and hit save but still nothing happens. When I restart the MD or the core, and sometimes reloading the router the checkbox will become checked again.
any ideas for me?
I can control the LCD from the command line using testserialport.sh just fine, and the LCD was recognized automatically by LMCE.

27

Users / Playing MKV files, issues after using the wiki

« on: January 08, 2009, 09:36:24 pm »

So I followed the wiki instructions on how to play MKV files in LMCE without getting the green blocks. Basically just changing the file extension, and telling the admin site that it is an LMCE BD which causes mplayer to be used instead of xine. The movie that I tried no longer has the green blocks all through out, but it is not scaled properly on my TV (it is not centered left/right or top/bottom) I can only see the bottom left corner of the movie. Also the video was choppy, but this is probably caused by my lack of video card.
Any ideas on how I can fix the scaling issue?

28

Users / Is your PVR 150, 250, 500 etc

« on: January 05, 2009, 09:59:45 pm »

Is your PVR 150, 250, 500 etc picture quality relatively the same quality as the on board tuner of your TV? Mine seems quite choppy and pixelated, and I am not sure if its just the tuner card or if it is my md/core. It would be tough for me to believe that it is my LMCE setup since I can stream multiple movies at a time with no problems. I wonder if I have a bad card or something.

my setup is a pvr 150 in the PCI slot on my core (Dell optiplex, 3ghz, 4gb ram, 100/1000 switch) (MD is 2.8ghz, 1gb ram, motherboard VGA output) tuner card is using the coax input. It really has problems on sports or any fast moving scenes where the camera is scrolling across an image.

My MD currently only has a 10/100 Nic, but I would think that a DVD quality movie would be more data than streaming SD TV. I am just using VGA output of the MD, maybe this is a problem. Although once again it plays movies without a hitch.

29

Users / 80's music video's

« on: December 30, 2008, 05:43:52 pm »

I am sure that this seems like a weird topic, but I was wondering if anyone knows of any 80's music video compilations? My wife wants to have an 80's themed birthday party and I want to stream 80's music videos to all my MD's. I would like to find a top 100 or something, but have had no luck. I have found a site that will stream the video's but you have to click on each video one at a time and it is just in a small window.
Anyways, if you have heard of a DVD of top 80's videos let me know. worst case scenario I will dvr a bunch of mtv or last resort I will just download some and smash em together into one file.

30

Users / digital picture frame

« on: December 29, 2008, 04:29:30 pm »

I took apart a laptop that I was using as an MD and reassembled it into a picture frame which is now hanging on my wall. It works and looks good. Now I would like for the core to send a command to turn this on and off at a certain time each day (say on at 7am of at 12pm) just to save some life on the lcd. Is this possible? The laptop has the wake on lan option in the bios.