Messages

46

Users / Re: Alarm question?

« on: August 25, 2010, 09:36:05 pm »

Heads up for those considering the Honeywell Vista 21IP panel as a substitute for the ICM:  using the ethernet port on the 21IP requires a monthly subscription to the AlarmNet monitoring service and an upgrade to the TotalConnect package.  No idea how much it is, but it's a nonstarter for me since AlarmNet doesn't cover my area.

To recap: the discontinued and unavailable ICM allowed local ethernet access.  The 21IP requires a paid subscription to access the panel through the internet.  http://www.diyalarmforum.com/board/index.php?topic=5491.0

Since none of the rest of the Vista line has been discontinued, I see this as an attempted money-grab by Honeywell, trying to force new purchasers to use their monitoring service.  Unfortunately, it also kicks the diy self-monitoring crowd right in the teeth.

I guess I'll see if there's any sort of unofficial diy support for Omni.  I'm not crazy about dropping $2k+ on a system from a company that's hostile to the diy community.

brake16

47

Users / Re: Alarm question?

« on: June 22, 2010, 10:12:19 pm »

Good Morning

Okay, from what I've seen, Vista discontinued the ICM because they've released the Vista 21IP panel.  This has the ethernet port built-in:

Internet alarm reporting and uploading/downloading capability via on-board AlarmNet Internet Communicator.

Does anybody know if this speaks the same language as the Vista ICM, would it need a separate template built, or does it only communicate with a predefined monitoring service?  Unfortunately, nobody makes things very clear.

Thanks
Bryce

48

Users / Re: Alarm question?

« on: May 11, 2010, 06:02:53 pm »

Adam

I'm not ignoring it, just trying to check it out.  I couldn't find much on the boards about the development (maybe most of your communication about it was on the chat channel?).  From what I'm reading online, there's very little DIY support for HAI (unlike the Honeywell panels), official or unofficial.  So it's taking me longer to see if I can get the setup I need. 

My needs, initially, are to add heat detectors to my house (kitchen, garage, attic).  I'd like to get the guts of an alarm system in with that, and then add capabilities as funds/time are available.  With HAI, it looks like I need the following:

Omni LT panel, $378 (http://www.smarthomeusa.com/ShopByManufacturer/HAI/Item/21A001/)
Wireless Receiver for GE Systems, $342 (http://www.smarthomeusa.com/ShopByManufacturer/HAI/Item/42A00-2/)
Wireless heat detectors, 3 ea @ $63 (https://www.smarthomeusa.com/ShopByManufacturer/gesecurity/Item/60-460-319.5/)
GC-100, $140-300
various bits (mounting bracket, back-up battery)

Things I'm not clear about:
Do I need to use the GC-100, or will HAI's serial/DB-9F cable connect the panel to the core?
How does the panel call out to the monitoring station?  And is it designed for only one provider/monitoring station or can I contract out to others?
(yes, I know lmce will call me, but if I'm going to have this much of an alarm system installed, I might as well finish off the little things that will get me an insurance discount...and make my wife happy).

I'm also sensing that I may have to get the Omni IIe instead of the LT, for an extra $600, if I want to be able to add all the door strikes and window sensors.  Overall, the Omni system is more expensive.  Although it does look like it's a higher-end product altogether.  To me, it kinda feels like it was designed by Apple:  really nice, higher priced, and maybe not as flexible.

I'm still trying to piece it all together.  Work/life/house rebuilding keep getting in the way.

Bryce

49

Users / Re: Is anybody using the GE NX-8E for their alarm panel?

« on: April 30, 2010, 03:01:54 pm »

Good Morning

My last coding days were the college semester of Turbo Pascal back in '93.  Prior to that I took QuickBasic in high school, and I had a few great self-taught years on a Commodore 64 in the mid-80's.  So for now, my lmce contributions have been wiki-related.  Once my house reconstruction activities have settled, I'll be able to contribute $.  But I don't think anyone wants me messing with code right now.

Chunky bacon!

brake16

50

Users / Is anybody using the GE NX-8E for their alarm panel?

« on: April 27, 2010, 01:56:59 am »

I'm looking for alternatives since the VistaICM is no longer available.  I was updating the wiki pages to reflect that the VistaICM is discontinued and I stumbled across the only non-Honeywell alarm panel wiki-page, the GE NX-8E.  The fact that it's in our wiki tells me somebody tried it at some point.  I'm curious if anybody has it working.  I'm a little troubled by the line: "--still trying to get the alarm panel to work so if anyone has LinuxMCE configuration help, please include it here.-- "  But from the history, it looks like it's an edit from the Pluto days.

brake16

51

Users / Re: Alarm question?

« on: April 25, 2010, 10:30:56 pm »

Well, that officially sucks.  I was going to use the Vista ICM as an integral part of my alarm system in my rebuilt house this summer (I had a fire last fall). 

Does anybody have any experience with any other methods of hooking up alarm panels to lmce?

Alternatively, I'd be willing to purchase a similar unit and ship it to someone willing to try to make it work.  I'd just need some guidance on which unit has a relatively decent shot at it.  Some guesses based on the searches I've done that past few days are:
Vista 21iP kit (http://www.securitystoreusa.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=1882913)
VM101BAT (http://www.myvirtualmonitoring.com/virtualapa.htm)

Any reason why these won't work?

B

52

Users / Son of Crunchpad

« on: January 04, 2010, 05:07:17 pm »

Something else to wish for, since the Crunchpad is such a disappointment ($500 and it's still not shipping?  what the...).

http://www.pcworld.com/article/185764/an_affordable_199_tablet_for_everyone_and_its_not_from_apple.html

Still at the concept stage, and no producer, but intriguing (BT and wifi).  And you gotta love the $200 price point.

b

53

Users / VOIP provider rec's

« on: October 09, 2009, 05:55:33 pm »

Good Morning

It looks like it's been a while since this question was asked, and I'm in the market, so I'm asking if there's any updates/experiences in the last year(ish):  Does anybody (US-based) have recomendation for/against Vonage, ITP, ViaTalk, and/or Broadvoice?  They all look pretty good to me, so I'm curious what anybody's experience is integrating any of these into lmce.

Thanks
Bryce

54

Users / Re: How many of us are interested in HDMI audio?

« on: July 21, 2009, 07:19:26 pm »

I dont think there is a wiki page on this yet...but I will make one asap ;-)

There is a wiki page for this.  It was last updated six weeks ago.  http://wiki.linuxmce.com/index.php/Audio_over_HDMI
However, there's no real instructions for how to set it up on this page.

I'm eagerly awaiting your version.
Bryce

55

Users / Re: Letter to the Community: LinuxMCE 0810 - The Cold Honest Reality

« on: July 01, 2009, 02:06:08 am »

*** hari, pass the popcorn!***

56

Users / Re: custom modeline help needed

« on: July 01, 2009, 01:16:26 am »

I cant really give any specifics here, but i just went through the same thing with my 720p set.
It all boiled down to some outright wrong information in the industry, very basic stuff too.
ALL 720p sets advertise themselves as having native res ov 1366x768. This is WRONG for as far as i can tell every set out there! Its actually 1360x768. As soon as I configured a modeline for that, all my problems went away. pixel perfect display in both lmce and kde desktop.
Even the EDID response contains the incorrect 1366x768 resolution.
I would suspect that 1080p sets have the same problem, but it may take some digging to find the exact resolution needed.

Thanks for that.  It lead me to investigating incremental modeline changes, which convinced me to try it first on my Vista setup with powerstrip.  Reading the powerstrip FAQ's (http://forums.entechtaiwan.com/index.php?topic=24.0), I found this:

• You must know the resolution your monitor wants, and you must understand that not all resolutions are possible. In particular, note that graphics cards generally do horizontal timings in character clocks of 8 pixels, not individual pixels. Unless you have a ATI X1k, NVidia digital connection, Matrox Parhelia or early Kyro, your desired horizontal resolution should be evenly divisible by 8, and your vertical resolution should be an even number.

So your 1360 will probably also work at 1368, but then you'd be overscanned by 2 pixels .

For me, it seems that I will get no resolution (haha) to my small problem, since my TV will not cooperate with the customization guide (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1003099&page=2).  For now, I used a portion of that guide and limited my screen resolution to 1845x1040.  This gives me a well-lined-up bottom & right edge.  The left and top edge are still overscanned mildly.  To compensate for this, I moved my desktop icons over, and configured the panel so that it's right-justified, and only 97% long.  This makes it look like it fits perfectly.  Of course, anytime I open a window, it is off the top & left edges of the screen, but then again, may this be the worst thing that happens to me.

After all this was done, I readjusted the Orbiter spacing and offset (Advanced, Advanced, Adjust spacing and offset) to make it fit the new screen.

For those curious, apparently the PS3 & X-Box developers took a note from the TV/film folks and made use of "title safe" and "action safe" areas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overscan) to compensate for overscan. 

Also, for those curious, it is sometimes possible to go into your HDTV's service menu and turn off overscan so that your TV acts more like a computer monitor.  This would not be advisable if you still plan to hook up other appliances to your TV.  (Of course, all the "secret" tips for getting into my TV's service menu don't work).

Lastly (this one's for your geekyhawkes), according to the MythTV modeline database (see link in first post), this is a standard EDID modeline from an HDTV:
ModeLine "1360x768" 85.50 1360 1424 1536 1792 768 771 778 795 -HSync -VSync

Hope this helps somebody
Bryce

57

Users / custom modeline help needed

« on: June 30, 2009, 05:55:25 pm »

Good Morning

I've been trying for the past couple of weeks to fix the overscan on my KDE destktop (Orbiter displays fine).  I'm out of ideas, and I could use some help.

My 1080p Samsung DLP TV is connected by HDMI to the hybrid.  Orbiter displays nicely.  KDE desktop is overscanned by a couple percent on all sides, top & bottom: on the bottom, I can't see about half of the panel.  I've customized the modeline ad nauseum to no avail.  Here are some of the websites I've looked at
http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=7732.0
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1003099&page=2
http://wiki.linuxmce.com/index.php/Display_Drivers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modeline
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Working_with_Modelines
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Modeline_Database
http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Configuring_TV_output

I've tried various EDID settings, with no effect.

I've tried countless different "customized" modeline settings using calculators, the MythTV Modeline Database, and Google + Samsung + Modeline.  When I tried making my own tweaked modeline using the instructions found here (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1003099&page=2), I was able to change the size of the screen, but not the position.  Some background numbers:

148.5 1920 2008 2052 2200 1080 1084 1089 1125 (This is my default 1080p setting, slightly overscanned on all screen edges).
148.5 1800 2008 2052 2200 980 1084 1089 1125 (This makes the display region smaller, so that I can see the right & bottom edges of the generated display...ie: the mouse pointer stops moving at the black edge on the right & bottom)
148.5 1800 1887 1931 2200 980 1084 1089 1125 (This should have moved the "screen edges" to the right, but nothing changed(?!?).  Very confusing).
148.5 1800 1886 1930 2200 980 1084 1089 1125 (This gives an unusable display)

Also, using or excluding +/-hsync or +/-vsync made no difference to the result (yes, I tried all the iterations on several of the modelines.  I even tried using HSync & VSync, since there's a disparity on some of the MythTV pages about capitalization).

My PS3 displays 1080p content on the TV without problem, so the issue should be in the hybrid somewhere.

I'm running 7.10 on the hybrid.

Any help?  My head's starting to hurt from this wall it keeps banging on.

Bryce

58

Users / Re: Tuner Card Support - Please Weigh-in

« on: June 12, 2009, 11:07:43 pm »

Hauppauge 1212  (aka Hauppauge HD-PVR)

http://www.mythtv.org/wiki/Hauppauge_HD-PVR
"The Hauppauge HD-PVR is the first consumer-level analog HD capture device available."  Translation: capture 720p & 1080i through component hook-ups.  User-selectable bit-rate.  Click the link preceding for more, including some interesting HDCP info.

Major development work is on-going at MythTV to get this fully supported.  It does onboard encoding to give MPEG-2 for LMCE.  It's a bit pricey right now (~$200+), but of course that will come down with time.

Bryce

59

Users / expanding hard drives / RAID question

« on: June 02, 2009, 08:58:33 pm »

Good Morning

I'm curious if the following would work:

I currently have an 80GB SATA hard drive in the hybrid for the LMCE system.  I'm going to add more hard drives for media.  I'd like to eventually setup a RAID 5 using multiple 1.5 TB disks.  To spread out the cost and to minimize the chance for a 2-drive RAID5 failure (due to similar aged drives), I'd like to purchase and install the drives about 4-6 months apart.  I'm aware that I'll be running "at risk" the first 4-6 months with only 1 drive, but that's also the least likely age-related-failure window.

So, I know I can put in the first drive and LMCE will use it just fine.  When I add the second drive (4-6 months later) is it possible to then setup both drives as RAID1 without data loss on the first?  Then again, when I add the third drive, is it possible to setup all 3 drives as RAID5 without data loss?

Please note, I'm aware of the risk of messing with drive structure when you want to preserve data.  Again, I am aware the I could lose my data during the upgrades.  But before I start down this road, I'd like to know if it can work.

I've found that it is possible to expand the RAID5 after it's setup (http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Grow_Raid, and http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=4377.0).  Is it possible to grown into a RAID5?

Thanks
Bryce

60

Users / Re: SSL certificate for secure Outside Access

« on: June 01, 2009, 08:32:31 pm »

Having spent some time with this this morning, I have come to the conclusion that this will never be possible since apache requires ssl sites to use static ip.
you could certainly work at it enough to do your own implementation, but it will not be possible to do an automated install that works on every setup.

Forgive the newbiness most likely apparent in this quesiton, but will DynDNS help?  I have DSL, and therefore, no static ip.

Bryce