Thanks, JaseP, useful comments.

Regarding the Atoms.... presumably these will be ok for just playback and you're referring to capture machines requiring something more beefy? I had a look at the HDHomeruns... nice piece of hardware but quite pricey!

I was also looking at the Hauppage colossus PCI card for capture. Anyone have any experience with that one? Search on wiki/forums came up blank.

Go and get something from Dianemo (if you are in Europe) or from lmcecompatible.com (if you are in the North America)

South Africa 

Been trying to plan and spec the hardware for a Media Director/ Hybrid and I've been having the following thoughts and questions that I'd love to get some comment on....

Firstly, the departure point here is to USE SUPPORTED HARDWARE. Most of my setups so far have been with hardware that is, to some degree inherited or lying around or just cheap and available or whatever. Often when people use such hardware and try to get it working I've noticed they get advised on the forums etc that it would be a lot easier just to use supported hardware. Of course, that makes a lot of sense, but it is a wee bit more tricky than it seems! Unless, of course, I'm missing a bunch of obvious things that I hope you gentlemen will point out.

I'll explain my thinking here and the assumptions I'm working with and I'd be most obliged if anyone can point out where I should look/ what assumptions are wrong or questionable or how I'm overthinknig or overcomplicating things... many thanks in advance.

OK, so this is what I'm trying to do-

I want to spec a machine that can be built as a Hybrid or (with some components left out or swapped for lower spec) a Media Director. I'm thinking it will be a machine that sits in the TV Room/ Home Theatre, probably visible so it needs to be pretty slick looking and quiet.

In full configuration it needs to achieve the following goals-

1. Store media (1 or more hard drives required)
2. Playback HD content 1080p video and HD surround sound audio to satisfy a medium level audiophile
3. Read and play DVDs and audio CDs
4. Capture High Def video from a settop box for streaming to MythTV or DVR
5. Act as a hybrid (ie dual NIC)
6. Be controllable by gyro-type remote

So.... the first thing I think is I need a neat HTPC Chassis. Not cheap but I think I have one that sounds nice - Antec Fusion 430. I think it comes with a power supply but it is ATX PSU so if necessary I can swap it for a bigger one if required. OK... main thing the choice of Chassis determines is the motherboard form factor- micro ATX.

OK, so the next step, I imagine, is the motherboard. This is really tricky. There are many, many out there and all I know at this stage is that I need it to be micro ATX (or smaller?).

So Mobo choice:

• Form factor: micro-ATX/mini
• CPU socket?
  I don't really know how this affects things... I'm presuming any relatively new motherboard will support a powerful enough CPU to do the hybrid/MD job and most are going to be compatible with Kubuntu 10.04.
• Memory format/capacity/speed?
  Again, I'm not thinking I need much more than 2Gb and that is pretty much stock standard minimum these days so I don't think this will drive mobo choice.
• SATA drive support
  Needs to support DVD drive and 1 or more hard drives. Presume this is pretty standard.
• Onboard Nic (1)?
  Definitely needs to be Gigabit speed. Chipset? Something to check on... I've had some issues with an Atheros chipset on the Sony VAIo and some other one on my HP Probook... but probably not critical at this stage.... likely to be supported/supportable.
• Onboard Nic (2)
  Some mobos do come out with dual lan ports on board but they seem to be pretty pricey and overkill if this is to be used just as a Media Director. So I need to reserve a PCI port for a 2nd NIC if this is to be used as hybrid. So requirement at this point grows to at least one PCI slot.
• Graphics GPU
  This is a big one. The questions are - chipset (Nvidia, ATI, Intel?) and onboard/ card. Firstly, I know Nvidia has been traditionally strongly advised for Linux and LMCE support. Is this still the case... I know l3mce is doing great work with the other chipsets. Should I still go for Nvidia at all costs? And, if so, what version? Then, what about onboard vs card based? The reading I've done seems to indicate that a decent pcix16 card will generally outperform onboard graphics. Is that still the case? The main reasons I like the onboard option are
  
  • You know it's compatable with the mobo (not going to get any conflicts or strange issues)
  • Doesn't occupy a PCI slot that could be used elsewhere
  • Doesn't require potential additional power
  • Sound over HMDI assumed to work without having to connect S/PDIF headers or do any special config?
  Which brings me to my other point Graphics card/chipset selection- HDMI out. I'm presuming that HDMI is pretty much the standard that is emerging so I'd like to ensure whatever card / onboard GPU is used, it has HDMI out and, ideally, that the sound can be output over that as well.
  Thoughts?
  If Onboard Nvidia is the way to go then I'm now looking for a mobo with an Nvidia chipset (version?) with HDMI out. That does cut down the number of boards quite a bit.
  
• Video Capture ?
  I know you can get USB based HD capture units like that Hauppage one but I want to go for an internal one so as not to have extra clutter around the TV station. So this requires an extra PCI card and therefore slot

So... the above questions make quite a big difference to the type of board I go for... If onboard video and nic2 are out I need at least 3 additional PCI slots available and then to find appropriate cards to fit the appropriately sized slots and I can go for a motherboard with slightly lower onboard specs but still with gigabit lan, decent onboard sound with S/PDIF headers that can connect to the video card, micro-atx form factor and a few usb slots where I can plug in IR blasters/ receivers, bluetooth dongles etc. Phew....

And then, after finding that ideal motherboard (which is jolly difficult because most sites don't allow you to search on the above criteria), I then go after the component cards which must, in turn, be linux/LMCE compatible if possible.

Am I over-complicating things? Is there an easier way to approach this. Any comments/ suggestion welcome.

I have to say, using this type of thought process it is no wonder I end up with a bunch of pieces that may or may not work and then I just do my best to make them work at the risk of getting the "why not just use a compatible bit of hardware" comment ;-) In some situations it may actually be easier to get an incompatible bit to work than to upset your whole selection process because the last piece is a problem !!
 

Ok, so in between admiring my daughter's artwork an eating my lunch, I tried to sort out the PXE boot of the Sony Vaio. I'm suspecting the NIC... hardware is a Atheros AR8131 chipset which I'm lead to believe requires the atl1e kernel module similar to what's descirbed on the Unrecognized NIC wiki page.

I followed the basic download and install instructions from http://joefleming.net/2010/05/26/atheros-ar8131-and-linux/ which is a great resource containing a new link to the driver source (wiki page link appears outdated so I guess I should update it).

But.... still no dice on the boot (even after modifying the modules file and recreating the initramfs). Of course I still don't know if it is certainly the NIC causing problems but it seems likely considering others have had this problem. I'll see if there are any tftboot logs or similar that can give more info. Maybe I should try windows standard maintenance procedure (reboot) on the router...

The last couple of lines before the kernel panic would indicate what the actual problem is.

One of them could be...  http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Unrecognized_NIC

Karel

Sweeeet, thanks. Can't believe I didn't check the wiki for that. Will try to sort that out this weekend. These aren't really my primary MDs.... I just have them so I try them and maybe it'll help someone else if I get them working.

Mine was the Picture viewer, but after leaving it on overnight and a reload/reboot, it sorted itself out.

Most likely the same for me. Didn't check this morning when I started the MD if it was still reporting that. Incidentally, how did you know it was the picture viewer... because you tried it or because you know where to look to see what didn't sart?

I haven't researched this much further so I hope it hasn't been covered before but possibly not as these are pretty new spec machines. The above machine, when I try to detect and boot as MD from a 10.04 (or 8.10) core does more or less the following-

Picks up the PXE server etc, no problem, reads basic image but then goes through a whole lot of screen stuff and stops at something which usually has the word "panic" in it. I found similar behaviour with my newish HP Probook 6560b (although I haven't tried on my latest 10.04 core).

My question(s) are-

How do I troubleshoot to establish what the problem(s) are. It looks like unsupported hardware but which part.... if I can establish that we may be able to fix it or at least document which hardware is not supported to assist others.

Are there logs I can look at if it only gets this far? I can screenshot (literally) what shows up at the panic stage and attach but the original error has probably scrolled off the screen at that stage.

At one stage I thought I saw complaints about the NIC... could it be that? I could try to find the chipset or whatever of the onboard NIC.

Another thought for troubleshooting was to try to run a 10.04 live CD and see if it has any issues.... if so, it could be a basic kubuntu 10.04 issue that can be addressed, if not, I could at least report the system-specs in a linux-kind-of-way....

Any advice, pointers?

And, while I'm in a verbose mode, might be nice to have a kind of a troubleshooting flowchart on the wiki for things like this... yes, I'm volunteering ;-)


Specs:

HpProbook
NIC: Integrated Intel 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection (10/100/1000 NIC)
CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-2520M (2.50 GHz, 3 MB L3 cache)
Chipset: Mobile Intel® QM67 Express
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 6470M with 512 MB dedicated DDR3 video memory

Ta. Incidentally, ssh appears to be working fine in prev (25970) image so hopefully that carries through. So far so good on that image after I ran DisklessCreate. Still haven't tracked down or looked further as far as the "some devices not starting" on the MD.

Diskless Setup is failing for everyone. I do not know why. I will investigate.

Good to know I'm not alone there. Not sure if it helps but I then ran the old manual Diskless_CreateTBZ on the core which took the usual x+1 hours and was able to bring up a media director relatively successfully this morning. There was a message that some of the devices did not start correctly but I don't know what that refers to and if it is related.

I agree. I'm not a resolution wiz but I the little reading and planning I've done suggests to me that there's a screen size above which you will see the benefits of 1080p (not sure exactly what and it depends whether you're reading an e-book or watching a movie too). The point that JaseP makes, though, certainly aligns with my planned use case- smallish MD screens for some locations... and the smaller size really won't benefit from the large format IMHO.

I have a Paradox SP6000 panel. They have an ip module caled the IP100 or something which should allow some pretty cool integration but I haven't shelled out the cash to get one yet and have had reports from local (ie not Canadian) Paradox people that they have had very little support on that module.

At the moment, I tend to think along L3MCE's lines- I'm more likely to add a few of my own sensors and rules. It may be easier to roll my own than integrate with the existing setup.

Short answer- I doubt anyone's being proprietory about it... if they'd integrated they'd tell you. This is a very supportive community when they've had enough coffee and you appear patient enough.

Currently, I view it from another machine via the network drive ;-) Haven't had much time to fiddle but keen to look more into this. Keep at  it, Mike.

Question to anyone presently using the Cameras functionality.  How do you presently access or view the stored camera footage?  I don't see anywhere to view the stored events/alerts in the Roaming Orb Orbiter, I only see it in the LMCE Web Admin (Security -> Alerts Log).  Am I correct in assuming that this functionality is presently limited to the WebAdmin only (meaning not present in MD Orbiters)?

Thanks for your time!

/Mike

No sweat, I'll tinker as well and we can share notes but I will probably limit mine to tinkering under the motion-wrapper and lmce umbrella if possible.

Mike

Did you get anywhere with this? I've been planning to head down the same route... experimenting with using my IP camera to generate events based on motion detection. Also still struggling a bit searching the wiki and forums to see if there is a "standard" way to do it.

James

Good day folks!

Could someone familiar with the camera, motion wrapper, and e-mail (or other) notifications possibly point me in the right direction?

I have two DCS-930L IP cameras configured with motion wrapper, which are visible on RoamingOrb and the Admin site (I'm not running MD's yet other than for preliminary testing).  The cameras have on-board motion detection and e-mail alerting, which I'm presently using to e-mail me about motion events.  The onboard software is pretty limited, so I get spammed when light levels change, and when I'm home, and so on.  I'd like to move the alerting and e-mail notification to LMCE, so I can add some smarts to it using event logic, and I'm wondering if:

A) it's functionality that presently exists, or if it'll take something like kmotion,
B) if so, what kind of event is emitted by motion wrapper (tripped, motion, true/false, number of pixels...), and
C) if anyone else is doing the same thing, and how is it working out for them

I'm just hoping to avoid running down a few rabbit holes... I've tried putting together some events, but not sure if I'm on the right track.  If someone could point me in the right direction, I'll go looking for the light 

Thanks!

/Mike

Will try that (quick reload) next time and document results as well.