Messages

796

Developers / Re: Raspberry Pi Generic Serial Device

« on: September 25, 2014, 06:15:48 pm »

Diskless Create has changed, a lot has changed.  Packages are not in the same location they used to be and most packages have been updated/upgraded.  I will test this immediately and get back to you.  It looks like your 'rebuild' did not complete properly or you would not be seeing the diskless setup aspects during boot.

J.

797

Users / Re: Raspberry Pi as a MediaDirector

« on: September 22, 2014, 09:59:30 pm »

Thanks for all the testing Raybe!

J.

798

Installation issues / Re: Installing 12.04 from USB stick

« on: September 20, 2014, 12:57:42 am »

Thanks KirkD!  We will help any way we can.

J.

799

Users / Raspberry Pi as a MediaDirector

« on: September 20, 2014, 12:56:31 am »

Hey all!

Well, it's been over 2.5 years since I started down this journey of trying to support the rpi as a media director.  There have been trials and tribulations and breaks of many weeks between development commits.  I have pulled my hair out and re-grown it twice over already.   

I can say that now I am confident in the 'alpha' status of the rpi as a Media Director.  The wiki details the methods you need to follow to implement an rpi as a standard MD right now.  I am working hard to implement qorbiter based media directors and the rpi is the test bed for that, at the moment.

If you have a raspberry pi and want to get involved in testing then I'd love to hear your feedback in irc at #linuxmce or #linuxmce-dev.  Visit the wiki at: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php?title=RaspberryPi to learn how to setup an rpi MD.

Media playback is working with an lmce OMX_Player device to control omxplayer.  The Photo Screen Saver is working.  Please realize that using the rpi as an MD is not the quickest.  Orbiter and Photo Screen Saver take all of the resources of the rpi and not much else is possible.  qOrbiter will open up many possibilities and is being worked on extensively.

Enjoy your LMCE experience and let me know what your experiences are, I'll try to help any way I can.

J.

800

Users / Audio track and Subtitle support

« on: September 20, 2014, 12:36:15 am »

Hey all!

I wanted to give a heads up about some additions I've made recently.  The existing code has long permitted the selection of audio tracks and subtitles for non-disc playback.  We have had no place in the user interface to make selections so far.  For me this has been frustrating, I really enjoy 'foreign' or 'subtitled' movies.  To that end I have added buttons to UI1 that allow the cycling of the audio tracks or subtitle tracks that exist in a playing media file.  They are hidden away on the UI1 'Zoom & Aspect' menu.

There is no feedback on the UI for the currently selected tracks, nor for any listing of available tracks.  I hope to provide this functionality at some point but there is a lot that goes into making that happen in the old Orbiter UI.  So for now, you can change audio tracks and subtitle tracks in playing media files.

I would also like to point out that this functionality works within both Xine_Player AND (on regular MDs) and in OMX_Player (on Raspberry Pi MDs).

Like I said, I hope to extend this to make it more user friendly.  For now the capability is there for those that have been requiring or missing it. 

This is available for 1204 (precise) ubuntu and on raspbian (wheezy).  apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade then reload your router to get the functionality.

J.

801

Installation issues / Re: Installing 12.04 from USB stick

« on: September 20, 2014, 12:25:56 am »

KirkD,

Hardware requirements are a very elusive thing to provide as they are changing all the time.  *Usually* if the ubuntu dvd installer of the same release we have works, then ours will work as well.  We cannot keep abreast of all the kernel updates and hardware changes that occur, there are simply too many.

If the standard Ubuntu 1204 (precise) installer works then *usually* our installer works as well.  But not necessarily from usb, we have not actively tested that recently.  We are very few people trying to make this all work and we really don't have the resources to test every combination and permutation.  To that end, we *really* appreciate feedback and testing from anyone that would like to contribute.  There are so many areas that (like documentation) that need some tlc.

Thanks for any input you can provide!

J.

802

Users / Re: Volume issue with LG TV template

« on: September 18, 2014, 06:27:51 pm »

Couple of questions: 

1) What DT exactly are we dealing with here?
2) What release are you using 1004/1204?
3) Have you recently done an sqlcvs update on your system?
4) Have you recently done an apt-get update && apt-get upgrade?

J.

803

Developers / Re: squeezelite as an alternative to squeezeslave

« on: September 18, 2014, 06:24:35 pm »

Actually it's all working quite well, I just need to deal with a postinst issue to prevent squeezelite from launching its' own daemon and it'll be a drop in replacement.

J.

804

Installation issues / Re: CuBox-i from SolidRun

« on: September 18, 2014, 06:23:17 pm »

So it appears that the dual core has video support, not sure of any acceleration yet, the quad core does not.  Video driver development appears to have been stalled for about a year now, that is not promising at all. 

With accelerated video this could be a great device.  Without, it's a paperweight for our needs.    I'm interested in what you find out with the fedora install and the current state of things though.

J.

805

Developers / Re: Raspberry Pi Generic Serial Device

« on: September 18, 2014, 06:17:52 pm »

Hey!  Yes, I tested GSD a few weeks ago and found that little issue finally.  If your installation is that old you are probably pointing to the old repository and likely will not see any updates.  I *highly* recommend that you re-visit the wiki (http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/RaspberryPi) and grab the new sd card contents, update your core, build a new diskless image for raspbian and hit the 'Rebuild' button in webadmin for that MD.  This will give you all the latest, there have been a lot of changes/improvements over the last 2 months.

J.

PS.  thanks for testing!

806

Installation issues / Re: CuBox-i from SolidRun

« on: September 15, 2014, 09:13:42 pm »

Everything arm pretty much uses u-boot and the procedure is the same for each, but each needs it own targeted build of u-boot to work.  Booting is the easy part.  Generating the diskless image should be fairly straightforward, kernel may be a bit difficult to nail down if it is not available in a repository, then it's media.  The cubox has a crapload of kernel patches that need to be applied to get the device to work.  There is no current repository that holds them all in an already buildable (ie patches applied) state, so that's a fair amount of manual work.

Each of these devices will ultimately succeed or fail on their capbilbity to deliver media and control their connected devices.  Accelerated video playback (including licensed codecs which could be iffy on a lot of arm) & HDMI-CEC are pretty much mandatory going forward.  The cubox dual seems to have ok video support, a new lmce media playing device will be required.  The banana pi seems to have some accelerated playback but I haven't really found much realiable information, regardless a new lmce media player is likely required.

With the rpi, and every other arm device at the moment, we lose the ability to play .dvd files, and real dvds, as we have nothing to deal with menu systems in the existing arm based players.  Xine handles this nicely on intel architectures.  I can sacrifice that as it is trivial to create playable versions, depending on laws in your local area. 

The rpi is maxed out running basic MD software, orbiter & photoscreensaver use ~80%cpu with the pi @ 950Mhz.  That's one whole core.  qOrbiter is much better, it consumes ~40%cpu on the pi @ 950Mhz, and leaves room to launch other applications.  Squeezelite takes 15-40% cpu on the rpi @950Mhz and cannot co-exist with a standard obiter & PSS.  RS232 is horrible on arm as it doesn't have the same hardware access that intel hardware does.  Serial control with GSD is a pig on resources and kills the rpi for nearly every other task.

Anyways, I'm not trying to discourage anyone here, completely the contrary.  I am looking for 'THE DEVICE' to support going forward.  We need something that is inexpensive and 'Just Works (tm)' when you plug it in.  Almost anything that is dual or quad core in a 1ghz (or better) arm device and *has* good media support is likely a great device to investigate.

J.

807

Installation issues / Re: Installing 12.04 from USB stick

« on: September 14, 2014, 09:30:54 pm »

I would install from a DVD, that is the intended install media.  The installer has not been tested to any extent with usb.  It is also possible that the hardware you are using is newer than the 1204 kernel can support.

J.

808

Installation issues / Re: CuBox-i from SolidRun

« on: September 14, 2014, 09:27:11 pm »

I have a bananapi on the way, although I'm not extremely hopeful about it at the moment.

PXE booting the cubox looks very straightforward, especially if they already include a working u-boot (hopefully it doesn't need patches).  So a filesystem on the core is required.  It is possible to shoehorn a test system into lmce for pxe booting, you would need to create the filesystem and create all the pxe configs, but most of the server config is already odne with lmce as that's how we boot MDs already.

J.

809

Installation issues / Re: CuBox-i from SolidRun

« on: September 13, 2014, 12:27:58 am »

Hmm.  Nice device all in all.  Certainly seems like it could be much more capable than any pi.  There's a bunch of things that are required to make it work:

• u-boot for cu-box with pxe patches
• kernel built (with appropriate patches)
• default initrd to interact the the NewMD_Interactor
• lmce MD packages built for ubuntu armhf
• changes to Diskless_CreateTBZ.sh (as required)
• other specific changes (as required) to config files
• media player created to utilize whatever accelerates video playback
• anything else that comes up along the way

Some of the above is easy, some not so easy.   As I don't have one there's not a lot I can do here with the device.  #1 requires patching and building u-boot, I can provide the pxe patch for u-boot.  #3 is easy after #2 is done, by following the raspbian example.  #4 I'm planning on doing already generally for ubuntu armhf... someday.  #5 I'm planning on doing already generally for ubuntu armhf after #4 is done.  #7 is not as hard as some might think if you have even a minor amount of programming knowledge, it just takes time.  #8 can be the kicker as obstacles are difficult to predict.

The 2 majors:
Question:  What kind of video acceleration support does it have?  What codecs can it support playing?
Question:  Does it have CEC control built in?  If so, do you know if it is libcec compatible?

There are an army of arm devices out there, and since it takes effort to support each one, choosing what to support may be difficult.  The most ideal situation is one where libxine2 works on the device for video acceleration.  I don't know of any arm devices where that is the case yet.  rpi has omxplayer, I have leveraged that to provide media on the rpi.  The Cubox certainly has the potential to live up to what is neccesary but I have no way of testing it myself.  Best thing to do is likely to install ubuntu through the netinstall method, or perhaps fedora if you have issues with ubuntu, and see what it can do on the video playback side initially.

J.

810

Developers / Re: squeezelite as an alternative to squeezeslave

« on: September 12, 2014, 11:19:55 pm »

no problem.  I need to do a little bit more testing to ensure the new boot script works properly in all cases and then the switch will happen.  I'll post here when it does with any requirements.

J.