Am having similar issue with empty video list, snapshot 20120716081426238.  But I will try the upgrade script tonight and see if it sorts it out as well as filling in the snapshot details.

Running upgrade script now...

PS, just want to say again that the latest installers are so sweet. Installing was an absolute breeze.

Not exactly sure... messing about with the scripts and SQL commands and I think the device tree is a bit poked. My Lounge MD has become a hybrid (at least in description) and a few other strange things.... it's running but I suspect on reboot things will tank so I've backed up a couple of scripts and things I was working on as well as taken some screenshots of some of the config that was a schlepp (camera and events setup) so I can get up and running again easily.

The system has had a lot of hacking as I've tried to work on various things and I'm not sure I've always cleaned up after myself ;-)

Must say, I'm not averse to re-installing, esp with 10-04 that's changing so fast and the installer getting better and better. It will be good to see if all the fixes for my hardware are in and working out of the box. I'll probably go for core-only again and it will be interesting to see if I hit the same issues with the 2nd hdd. Of course it will probably be in the machine to start with so not quite the same scenario but we shall see what happens.

Will probably leave the system running until I have the snapshot downloaded so I can still use it.

Oops. I think I broke it.
Plan at this stage is to download the latest snapshot and start with a clean install. Willl take a week or so because I have to download the snapshot at work. I'll report back when I get back to this stage.

 

Does the PnpQueue table produce anything interesting?

-Thom

Will look.

It is my understanding that he chose a core only install. He will have to clarify. If so, this is likely my fault, as I chunk out a bunch of stuff which would normally be written to the DB for the ability to be an MD... some missing parameter is probably at fault for messages stopping at a non existent hybrid field.

Correct, core-only install. First time 'round I set it up as hybrid when I was testing the sandy bridge stuff but once we got that out of the way I did core only nice and clean. Will dig more when I get home.

Thom, that info is pure gold. Sweeet. OK, look forward to digging further when I get back from silly corporate ra-ra event.

In the meantime, let me do the test.

Made the change to the script, reloaded router, plugged in portable usb drive to router. No messages on any MDs.

/etc/pluto.conf

Code:

# Pluto config file
MySqlHost = localhost
MySqlUser = root
MySqlPassword =
MySqlDBName = pluto_main
DCERouter = localhost
MySqlPort = 3306
DCERouterPort = 3450
PK_Device = 1
Activation_Code = 1111
PK_Installation = 1028691
PK_Users = 1
PK_Distro = 18
Display = 0
SharedDesktop = 1
OfflineMode = false
#<-mkr_b_videowizard_b->
UseVideoWizard = 1
#<-mkr_b_videowizard_e->
LogLevels = 1,5,7,8
#ImmediatelyFlushLog = 1
AutostartCore=1
AutostartMedia=0
FirstBoot = false
AVWizardOverride = 1
TimeZoneSet = 1
LastSearchTokenUpdate=1341890379
DVDKeysCache = /home/.dvdcss
PlutoVersion = 2.0.0.45.12070126149
Bookmark_Media = 4,5
RA_CheckRemotePort = 1

I've raised this in IRC but haven't been able to hang around long enough to troubleshoot with any of the devs. I'm keen to help with the troubleshooting here but I need a wee bit of guidance. I'll outline where I've got to so far. Let me know if it would be better to open a trac ticket for this.

I have a 10.04 system with headless-core and a few MDs.

I recently added a second SATA hdd to the system to store my media. I followed the wiki http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Add_an_additional_hard_drive entry and all went well (aside: I created an ext4 filesystem as the xfs filesystem wasn't available as an option? Perhaps this is outdated?) up to the point where I expect a message to pop up on the orbiters saying a drive had been detected, do I want to use it. No message.

I then, as per L3MCE's suggestion, manually ran /usr/pluto/bin/Storage_Devices_Radar.sh (or similar) but still no message.

I hacked the above script to figure out what was wrong and as far as I can tell, the script is doing what it's supposed to do- basically figuring out that there is a new internal hard drive on the system that is not currently used and then sending all that as a message using /usr/pluto/bin/MessageSend.sh with all the appropriate parameters (eg. device template, size, path etc etc).

L3 seems to think there is something wrong with this script but I don't think so because it is working fine on the MDs (exact same script)... I couldn't test with a HDD but I tested with a USB flashdrive and it pops up the alert perfectly. The same USB flashdrive plugged into the core does not pop up an alert.

So my thinking is there is something wrong *after* the message is sent and it is something specific to my core or to headless cores in general.

What I'd like to know is this-

What device/plugin/script/code is supposed to deal with/listen to/respond to the message that is sent? I can see the message in the dcerouter log... it gets sent every 10min... but I don't know what is supposed to happen then so I can figure out why it isn't. If someone can point me in that direction I can do a bit more digging. I can post the message that is sent when I get home as well if that will help but from what I recall the "from device" is 1 (core) and the "to device" is -1001 which apparently is used for events where it isn't really aimed at a device per se.... the device template is 1790 (int hard drive) and a few other parameters.

Any pointers welcome.

This is only a feature of the 1004 snapshot.

That's something I wanted to clarify- If I wanted to add a new MD to my system, presumably it would use the diskless image that was up-to-date as of my snapshot version, even if I'd done a few globalupgrades since then? So to get my new MD up to speed, I have two options-

1. Add it and then run globalupgrades on the whole system to upgrade it
or
2. Run Diskless_CreateTVZ.sh to create a new up-to-date diskless image and then add the MD.

I know option 1 is probably preferred, bandwidth-wise because it doesn't re-do *everything*, only updates the old stuff. But I'm thinking in a scenario where I want to test how cleanly a new MD is detected and setup from scratch, that would be the way to go?

Mike

It does help, thanks. I hope to also address (or at least understand) some of this stuff once I've had success or complete failure sorting out the gamepad stuff. Thanks for the info regarding Kmotion's feature set.

• Event-based stuff
  I have had some basic success setting up a little pop-pup of my camera whenever motion is detected. I have it on my TV room MD which is usually on playing music in the backround and displaying our photogallery. It works nicely because it grabs your attention if you're in the living area and soemone's stealing the car out the driveway etc, and immediately shows you what's happening. Quite neat. Sort of electronic curtain-twitching. I did, however, have to set the event criteria to not interrupt a movie.. that can be annoying.
  
  From this little foray into event setup I can tell you that it is fairly arcane as expected but looks pretty powerful once you get the hang of it and I'm sure with some work will be able to do most of the things you ask.
  
• motion masks
  Shucks, I thought that was standard with motion as well? Or is it just the webconfig that isn't available? I haven't tried it because I'm waiting for my next camera... the gateCAM gets too much motion with cars going past etc, I'm hoping to set up my next camera almost as an outdoor beam- looking at part of the estate that should only be accessed by authorised personnel and then masking off the dog-height parts.
  
  
• timeline view
  Nice. This is a feature I'd really like. Currently I view my motion events logs manually - just open a file browser from my desktop machine and based on date/time and file size I can see any that are interesting. But that's very manual. I had thought of trying to code some sort of timeline into a php page... something that picks up the date/times by filename and then possibly just marks the "events" on a graph or something... then click the event to view it. But there are other options too... I thought of some software that actually fakes a continuous video stream by assuming the last frame from the last motion event clip stays constant until the first frame of the next one and then allowing you to view any date/time like that.
  

The rest sounds cool too, but those are the ones that initially caught my eye.

L3: I'm going to read more about the Gstreamer thing... that also sounds very promising for this and other things too. Darn, so little time. Why didn't my dad setup that trust fund?

This is not going to be particularly helpful because I can't remember the exact circumstances (can't even remember if it was 8.10 or 10.04 although it was certainly this year, probably a few months ago) but I have had the same experience once- the room naming restarting in the middle exactly as described. The only thing that might be helpful is to say that I definitely didn't have a Danish keyboard. As suggested by l3... quite possibly some hardware quirk triggering something else.

Sorry I can't remember more details but I just wanted to mention that it has happened before to me. Again, it didn't seem to cause any trouble apart from the inconvenience.

I'll have a look at the lag thing once I have someone else back in the house who I can commission to go and perform in front of the camera. The dogs have not been trained to that degree. Will compare the direct feed to the camera web page with the LMCE camera viewer in the security scenarios.

Glad you're still fiddling with kmotion, Mike. What, apart from the RAM disk buffering, does kmotion bring to the party? I had initially assumed it was just a graphical wrapper for motion and would not add functionality beyond visualisation.

Jamo,

a couple of moons ago some Russian complained about speed of cameras, and they created an inhouse solution for them, that worked fine. Unfortunately, we never heard again from him.

sambuca is working on a new advanced camera device. This does not mean, the old interface will go away.

RE picture quality: you get what you pay for. If you pay a few bucks, you get a few pixels, if you pay mucho bucks, you get mucho pixels

Cool, that all sounds good. I'm planning on putting in a range of cameras from a few bucks to a a few more bucks so I'll report back.

I have one cheap IP Camera attached to my system and it is working really well. It is only 640x480 res so the limitation is more at the camera side. Viewing it from an MD is fine except that occasionally there is a sort of top-to-bottom screen refresh but I think that may be related to the motion detection software because it only happens when motion is detected. Still very easy to see what is going on and nothing like 5 seconds lag at all. In fact, I have an event that pops the camera up on my main MD screen whenever motion is detected (provided you're not in the middle of a movie) and you can immediately see what's going on (the camera watches the driveway, gate and parked cars).

Can't comment on what will happen if I add more (though I do plan to) and can't compare to analog but I personally like the simplicity of IP and the fact that I can access it from a browser independently of my LMCE system.

I'm sold on the motion-based recordings as well and plan to add more cameras. Very useful to be able to look back in time and see what happened around your property at a particular time.

As with all LMCE projects-> start small and get the hang of the capabilities with a couple of devices. It's very difficult to know what will work best until you've had some hands on experience.

EDIT: PS, Possy, I did do some digging but could not fiind references to the new development around IP Cameras (and speed issues) of which you speak. This is a topic of great interest to me so please point me in the right direction so I can stay in the loop. Thanks.

EDIT2: Oh, I see Sambuca jumped in there and I missed the post. For what it's worth, I for one would prefer to keep motion detection in the realm of motion wrapper or some other wrapper software in LMCE rather than relying on the Camera's built in detection because my feeling is these features will be of greatly varying functionality and we'll have to get to grips with a great number of different devices. I like the fact that at the moment any IP Camera that you can get a video stream from, you can use in LMCE. But that's just me ;-)

Thom... I need some help here, buddy. The breadcrumb trail has got me this far only.

Here's the install and detect system as I understand it:

At Boot Time:
==========
AVWizard_Run.sh (which runs every boot if I recall):
calls: AVWizard_Gamepad_Detect.sh, which, in turn:
  1. installs lmce-usb-gamepad (if it thinks it's needed)
  2. returns "/usr/pluto/bin/USB_Game_Pad -l /var/log/pluto/avremote.log -r dcerouter -d -1003 -H localhost -P " or something to that effect.
AVWizard_Run.sh then sets the returned value in 2) to the environment variable GamepadCmd.

OK, so the package is installed if required, but I can't see why the GamepadCmd variable is set because I can't figure out where/if it's ever used?

Every 5 seconds:
=============
Gamepad_Detect.sh
  1. If gamepad not already running but it is detected, send appropriate message to dcerouter.

----------------------------------
So what I'm thinking is that instead of polling every 5 seconds, we just setup a rule in the udev system that detects the gamepad either on boot or on plug in and fires off a script that does the whole shebang- installs the package (if not installed) and sends the message to the router.

The only snag is... that "GamepadCmd" bit... what is that used for and where does it come in. Is it a necessary step I'm missing out?

Thanks. I may be getting somewhere on the AVWizard_Gamepad_Detect part but now for the polling script... Gamepad_Detect....

Thom, would you mind posting the output of

Code:

udevadm info --attribute-walk --name /dev/input/js0

from your joystick machine?

Ta

Edit: Almost forgot- please also check that the following script returns what you expect from your two machines-
http://pastebin.com/r1bsRXNt