My afternoon with 0710 Beta 4

[freymann]

I have posted a couple items in the installation forums, but for the most part, the rest of my comments are general so I'm posting them in the User's forum.

After installing LinuxMCE for the 4th time (and somewhat successfully) I was able to copy all our photos and music to the core into the public directory, and a few divx tv shows and movies. Slowly but surely they are starting to show up. For the movies, using the web admin interface, I managed to manually add them so I could finally see some HD 720p video output (not bad either).

My MCE IRD remote and blaster arrived today and that installed easily. That's another job for me, to figure out how to make it change the dish channels and shut off the TV, but since I'm no where near that (mythtv doesn't work) that will wait.

But I continued to make notes about the system throughout the afternoon. The developers may find these observations interesting (well, that's why I'm posting all my info in the first place).

-the dhcpd.conf file seems to be messed with. I had it configured and then my notebook would no longer get an IP from the wireless NIC, so I went back to look and it was back to what I would call the "defaults" and there were lines at the bottom that recognized my HP Pavillion desktop and the Dell notebook (I had to correct the Dell IP # and the usual router and assigned IP's).

At 3:29pm I had no keyboard or mouse response. The Gyro Mouse and MCE Remote worked. I rebooted the core using the web admin panel as I was unable to do any keyboard commands on the core. It rebuilt the orbiter stuff again. I powered off the notebook and logged out of samba as I was now finished copying my media over (and the core was busy cataloging my shared folders on the dell).

I started playback of an hour long divx tv show (ok, with commercials cut out is about 43 mins). I put it on pause a couple times, and while on pause for the 2nd or 3rd time (I was able to press Pause on the MCE remote, kewl) I went upstairs to spend time with my better half before she headed out to work a few hours.

When I came back downstairs, the core is once again ignoring keyboard and mouse commands. Even the gyro and MCE remotes were unresponsive.

Before I had headed back to the basement, I fired up one of my D-Link Media Lounges to see if it would find the core, etc. Couldn't get an IP address, so I gave up, went downstairs and found the core unresponsive as noted above.

So I had no choice but to hit the RESET button on the core (ouch). At 4:46pm it reboots, wants to rebuild the orbiter stuff AGAIN.

Now all my video output is off the screen on all four sides, just like what it's like inside KDE. Nice.

I went upstairs and set my other DLink to Static IP and it found a uPNP media server (the core) but there was no media available. Went back downstairs to find lots of odd messages on the tv screen, like:

EXT3-fx error (device sda1) ext3-find-entry: reading directory # 539037 offset 0
ata2.00 - exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x2 frozen

and stuff like that. Oh boy, so I have to hit RESET again! (ouch!)

It reboots, looks fine.

However, I boot up another machine in my office (hard wired) and nothing. Go back and check the dhcpd.conf file and it's overwritten again. I make the same changes I've done before at least 3 times, restart dhcp, now my machine gets an IP address fine.

Oh boy.

And I've yet to tackle MythTV, which still doesn't work.

When playing music, is it just me or do you have to play each song individually? That's rather lame. You should be able to pick a genre, an album, or the entire collection and say Play or Random Play or something. I thought I had seen something about Random but now that my screen is cut off on the left I can't see the pop-up commands when playing music. I'm glad the MCE remote has a STOP button.

Now I have another issue with a drive which I will talk about in another post.

[gazzzman]

hi there! I am not going to offer you any solutions (I am too new to this to be able to help!)
just a little "moral support"
it seems when things go wrong.. it can be quite spectacular!
the amount of work these guys have put into this is astronomical!
I simply cannot praise the open source movement or their ideology enough!
sadly it takes only one very minor bug to make everyone miserable
(especially the poor developers)
nice to see you got the MCE remote to work!
I will be buying one of those next week!
I can't find the giromouseything at anything like a decent price here in the UK just yet... but its on "the list" lol!
anyhow just a good luck message really!
Gazzzman

[freymann]

hi there! I am not going to offer you any solutions (I am too new to this to be able to help!)
just a little "moral support"
nice to see you got the MCE remote to work!
I can't find the giromouseything at anything like a decent price here in the UK just yet... but its on "the list" lol!
anyhow just a good luck message really!

 Hi, thanks! I was glad to walk downstairs this morning, flip on the TV and see the core hadn't died overnight. It was asking about my wife's notebook, which it detected, and I just told it to ignore it and the flickr pictures are back.

 The MCE remote was plug 'n play, as far as controlling the unit. I do want to experiment with it to see if I can get it to change the channels on our satellite receiver and turn on/off the tv with the ird blaster. I don't know if it is compatible that way, but the media buttons are.

 The Gyro mouse (5 buttons) is available here in Canada for $48 Refurb'd at Tiger Direct. Tiger also carries the tall Gryo remote that looks much like the Fire Remote, but it's $120 or more.

 I like using the Gyro mouse, but my wife prefers the MCE remote.

 Today I'll be trying to figure out how to configure mythTV, install ivtv, and tweak my video display so it's not running off the edges.

 This will be day 3 of my experiment.

 Still to come is to configure two Media Directors, and I have a package of X10 Home Automation equipment arriving next week too.

 Thanks for the moral support, and good luck to you too!

[gazzzman]

well.. Sarah (as my core has become known )
has been playing quite happily for the last few days
and getting mythtv to work was not as much an ordeal as I expected lol (I can't get the xml grabber to work... thats tonights project   )
I do seem to be having the ivtv issue but apparently there is a fix for that (something else to look at later)
the 5 Button gyromouse is about gbp99 here! (about 200 usd!!)
so it is a way down the list!
but the mce remote us about 40usd so that is probably going to get bought this week!
good luck with the x10 lol!
I am yet to get a comment on the cm15 (usb version of the cm11) that lies at the heart of my X10 system
and I have to convert most of it from US to UK mains
but it is a quater of the price in the US!
I really like the look of the zwave stuff but wow tht is REALLY expensive over here!
funny.. I seem to be chatting quite a lot with Canadians lately
ever heard of a band called "mold colony"?
anyways best of luck with myth and your X10 stuff!
my 1st media director worked first go!!
it is only running the most basic variant of the gui (and it is SCREAMING for a touch screen with that interface!!)
but it works great and looks very "trek"!
well pleased!
let me know how it goes!
Gazzman
 

[freymann]

and getting mythtv to work was not as much an ordeal as I expected lol (I can't get the xml grabber to work... thats tonights project   )

 After I finished breakfast, I'm going to connect the VGA monitor back up and run the AV Wizard and use the VGA monitor so I can get into MythTV Setup and actually see the entire screen.

 I will have to go to the MythTV web site and read up on what the configure program does before I do that I guess.

-> I do seem to be having the ivtv issue but apparently there is a fix for that (something else to look at later)

 Haven't seen the fix yet..


-> the 5 Button gyromouse is about gbp99 here! (about 200 usd!!)

 Yikes!

-> but the mce remote us about 40usd so that is probably going to get bought this week!

 That sounds better.

-> I am yet to get a comment on the cm15 (usb version of the cm11) that lies at the heart of my X10 system

 I started out on the 'cheap' and have a CM11A coming (serial), a 6 lamp modules LM465, one wireless inteface (RR501) and two keychain controls (KR10A). Delivered was only $70 US. I have no idea if it will work <shrugs> but I thought for that price I'd give it a go.

-> I really like the look of the zwave stuff but wow tht is REALLY expensive over here!

 Same here. Also the insteon is pricey too.