Messages

1

Users / USB to RS485 Converter and General Purpose IO

« on: April 04, 2008, 01:00:30 pm »

Hi all,

In my spare time I have been working on a number of different hardware devices that I plan to use with with LMCE and ZM amongst other things. They are still very much in the prototype phase but if anyone is interested in trying these out with LMCE then please get in touch. Any feedback good or bad would be greatly appreciated.

USB to RS485

The first of these is a USB to RS485 converter based on FTDI 232RL chip. At present it hasn't been tested on Linux or LMCE but is working fine in Windows. Drivers are freely available for Linux so I assume it would work fine in LMCE. I am currently using these to control speed domes and it works well as an alternative to the RS232 to 485 converters. As my machine has a lack of normal serial ports I can put a few of these on a hub and have as many RS485 buses as I want.

Here is what the PCB looks like, there is a jumper to allow it to be 120R terminated and another header to tap of the logic TX, RX and R/W. There are also 4 LEDs to show Power, Sleep, TX and RX activity.



It is designed to be fitted into a DIN rail mounting which is ideal for a permanent installation. It has some mounting holes so I guess it could be used in other enclosures or inside a PC casing too. At the moment there are no holes in the case for the leds but there will be some added soon.



General Purpose IO Board

This prototype IO board can control 4 10amp 250V relays or 4 opto isolated inputs. Or any combination of the two. It is controlled by RS485 and can use a supply voltage between about 7v to 25v AC or DC. I have written some basic firmware which responds to Pelco commands so it could be used to control something like a pan/tilt head etc. With the correct firmware it could be used to do many different things such as Lighting control, Sensor monitoring, Gate control etc etc.



I have a couple of other things in the pipeline such as RFID readers, Temp monitors so if anyone has any interest in expanding LMCE to do more, than I would be interested to hear your views and opinions.

//Marv

2

Users / UI2 Font and Reolution Problems

« on: November 09, 2007, 05:11:59 pm »

I am running UI2 with alpha blending on my hybrid core and I have been wondering why I cant read the menu sometimes. Then it dawned on for some reason the font is black. From the screen shots on the wiki i see this should be a white font. See the capture below

I dont remember it ever being white but I did try and change the resolution of the monitor shortly after I installed LMCE. This didnt work very well so i set it back by re-running the av wizard. Maybe this caused the mix up?

My monitor is supposed to be 1680x1050 but I cant for the life of me get LMCE to work properly with this. If i set this resolution in the admin site the KDE desktop is unreadable after a reboot. I am currently running 1280 1024/75 resolution.

Can anyone please help or am I going to have to re-install??

3

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: Pictures

« on: November 09, 2007, 02:05:59 am »

You can already set this up to do this. Please have a look in the forums...

4

Users / Re: TV keeps crashing!

« on: November 05, 2007, 04:44:24 pm »

acematti,

This issue has been logged in Mantis and has been assigned to webpaul. I am hoping this means it is on its way to being resolved. If you have any extra input then it would be worth adding it to the mantis issue.

Code: [Select]

http://mantis.linuxmce.com/view.php?id=3568
In the meantime I am just rewinding the live tv by a couple of seconds to get round this. Not very elegent tho...

5

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: Shrink dvd-images on ripping...

« on: November 05, 2007, 12:48:34 pm »

All,

I have had a lot of trouble using the built in DVD ripper on LMCE. I get a lerrors saying either DVDCSS is not install or cannot read disk.  Im confident it is working ok but just some of the DVDs i use screw it up.

So now i use dvd::rip. Its a wrapper written in perl that takes care of everything from ripping thru to a finished avi. It uses a bunch of open souce video tools. Its at:

http://exit1.org/dvdrip/

It rips pretty quick but the transcoding can take a couple of hours depending on CPU etc. It has options for clustering but I havent tried this. Maybe the sequence dvd::rip follows could be integrated into LMCE so that when ripping you can select a couple of options and have LMCE do it in the background.

It supports all the popular compressors DIVX, XVID etc and seems to work well. It also reads many discs that LMCE wont/cant read and also  images that have been compressed with cloneDVD as LMCE doesnt like playing these either. To uses dvd::rip on your existing .dvd files you can mount them using:

Code: [Select]

martin@dcerouter:$ sudo mkdir /iso
martin@dcerouter:$ sudo mount 'Big_Daddy_WS_P&S.dvd' /iso/ -t iso9660 -o ro,loop=/dev/loop0
If anyone knows of an easier or faster solution then post away...

6

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: Integrated Recipes Module

« on: November 05, 2007, 12:35:16 pm »

I started reading this thread and I was thinking "what the hell? recipes on LMCE???" but no i am converted! i really like the idea of LMCE doing recipes and kitchen inventory!

I guess this is pushing things down the "smart home" road, ie. I can check what food i have in while at work and see what I need to buy on my way home to make a particular dish. As well as using a barcode reader if you ordered you food online then you could import your shopping list from that. maybe even LMCE could be used to order your food online??

I really hope this gains some momentum on LMCE.

7

Users / Re: Is anyone really using X10 successfully?

« on: October 24, 2007, 10:34:09 am »

IMHO its about time a truely open solution was created/adapted. One that is portable to different mediums so it will work well over twisted pair, powerline and wireless.

EIB/KNX has this potential but its all tied up so only the big boys can play and license the stuff. At the end of the day we are only talking about relatively simple messaging with 2 way features. We need something that  developers can work with with simple hardware and that can be scaled up as required.

The simplicity of X10 and its low cost is great but the limitations it has can be very frustrating.

8

Users / Re: Is anyone really using X10 successfully?

« on: October 23, 2007, 06:24:55 pm »

Hi,

I am also interesting in developing some hardware to work with LMCE. I am currently just getting started in some basic stuff to control relays and read temperatures/light levels etc. It is currently all based around RS485 wired networks an uses a simple serial interface. I dont see any reason why this simple serial approach cant be migrated to use a wireless based system.

I really think the advantage that X10 etc have is cost. The lamp/appliance modules are cheap. Any form of WIFI/ZIG or other heavy system is going to impact the cost of each module. We need to find a way to do this that wont cost 100s per unit.

9

Users / Re: DVDCSS and copy protected movies

« on: October 18, 2007, 04:56:09 pm »

I also use DVD Decrypter, http://www.dvddecrypter.org.uk/. Its fast and free but again its on windows...

10

Users / Re: TV keeps crashing!

« on: October 16, 2007, 12:59:48 pm »

I have added the report http://mantis.linuxmce.org/view.php?id=3568 in Mantis to see if this can be resolved in a future release.

11

Installation issues / Re: Linux MCE kills my adsl connection

« on: October 15, 2007, 01:50:47 pm »

Looking at your diagram it seems a few things are the wrong way around. My guess is that as you have you Wan port looped back to your Lan ports on the linksys when you plug the LinuxMCE box in you are creating some sort of loop.

I am confused why you have not got your ADSL modem ethernet port connected directly to the linksys WAN port. This should definately not be connected to the 4 port LAN side of the linksys. The only reason you would do it any other way is if you had multiple IP's from your ISP and had your own subnet. Is this the case?

I know you say you dont want to reconfigure your network but to be honest it is the only option to make it reliable and secure. I am sure you will find that if your network is connected correctly you LinuxMCE (1 nic or 2) wont cause any problems.

12

Installation issues / Re: Hauppauge Nova T500 Remote Problems

« on: October 11, 2007, 02:36:39 am »

Ok so heres what I have done:

• Under the Media Directors page of the admin I have clicked 'Add Remote Control' and chosen the lircd.conf.hauppage
• I have then modified the device template for the lircd.conf.hauppage and removed the original config and added the config shown below
• I save this and reload the router but still it just works for the arrow keys. Is there somewhere where I can look at the mapping between the button names in the config file and the actions available for LMCE? Also is there somewhere I can test that LMCE is seeing the correct hardware device?
  

My config for the lircd.conf.hauppauge is:

Code: [Select]

#
# brand:                       Hauppauge NOVA-T-500
# model no. of remote control: Hauppage Nova-T-500 Snowboard Shape Silver over Black
#

begin remote

 name  NOVA-T500
 bits           16
 eps            30
 aeps          100

 one             0     0
 zero            0     0
 pre_data_bits   16
 pre_data       0x1
 gap          199999
 toggle_bit      0


     begin codes
         Go                       0x0162
         Power                    0x0074
         TV                       0x0179
         Videos                   0x0189
         Music                    0x0188
         Pictures                 0x00E2
         Guide                    0x016D
         Radio                    0x0181
         ArrowUp                  0x0067
         ArrowLeft                0x0069
         OK                       0x0160
         ArrowRight               0x006A
         ArrowDown                0x006C
         BackExit                 0x009E
         Menu                     0x008B
         VolumeUp                 0x0073
         VolumeDown               0x0072
         PrevCh                   0x016B
         Mute                     0x0071
         ChannelUp                0x0192
         ChannelDown              0x0193
         Record                   0x00A7
         Rewind                   0x00A8
         SkipBack                 0x0195
         Play                     0x00CF
         Pause                    0x0077
         Stop                     0x0080
         Fwdwind                  0x00D0
         SkipFwd                  0x0197
         1                        0x0002
         2                        0x0003
         3                        0x0004
         4                        0x0005
         5                        0x0006
         6                        0x0007
         7                        0x0008
         8                        0x0009
         9                        0x000A
         Star                     0x0037
         0                        0x000B
         #                        0x0029
         Red                      0x018E
         Green                    0x018F
         Yellow                   0x0190
         Blue                     0x0191
     end codes

end remote

13

Users / Re: TV keeps crashing!

« on: October 10, 2007, 11:25:23 am »

Hi all,

Did anyone find what was causing this problem and is there a way to fix it apart from rewinding at the start of the program?

14

Installation issues / Re: Hauppauge Nova T500 Remote Problems

« on: October 10, 2007, 11:24:02 am »

Ok Ive just tried adding a Windows MCE remote and this makes no difference. I then tried to remove the remotes so that there is no remote listed under the Media Director page and also reverted the lirc config files back to the original ones. Rebooted the machine and the hauppage remote still works, but only for up down left right.

How is this still working after LMCE has been told there is no remote? Could another process be reading the remote somewhere and sending it as keystrokes maybe??

Cheers

15

Installation issues / Hauppauge Nova T500 Remote Problems

« on: October 10, 2007, 03:12:29 am »

Hi all,

I have installed a T500 DVB tuner and it seems to be working ok (have the same freezing issue as other people but hey..)

I am wondering has anyone managed to get the remote that comes with the T500 working fully with LMCE? I am not using a USB UIRT or anything just the standard IR receiver that plugs in the back of the tuner card.

I can get it to move up down left and right in LMCE but nothing else works. Cant select an option, exit etc. I have tried a couple of things.

• Manual setup of LIRC. - Added the T500 config and setup the hardware.conf file to point to it. When i run irw it shows all the buttons are working as expected but this doesnt seem to affect LMCE.

• Added the T500 remote as a new device template in web admin and then added a T500 remote device to the Media Directors page on the admin. Reload, restart etc.

I suspect that LMCE starts a new instance of LIRCD so the manual changes that got the buttons working are not going to have much effect. Does anyone know what i am doing wrong and has anyone else got this remote working properly??

Thanks in advance...