Topics

1

Users / Video Standards.

« on: December 21, 2014, 04:01:37 pm »

So, maybe this is a personal problem, maybe its more than just me.

Being able to play Audio/Video consistently across multiple platforms is...tricky at best. Moreso video than audio, but both can be challenging. But, its still something i would like to have. yet, one thing ive come across is something that is still present in 2014. The codec problem. Some devices support this, some support that, some like one container over others when the stream contains the same content. I could go on. What I have learned is that, MKV is king. It has such great support for many of the features we like, such as multiple video streams, wider choice of audio streams, subtitle support, etc. However, MP4 (m4v) seems to be the widely accepted standard for non htpc solutions like phones and tablets across the big players in those markets.

I have pretty much doubled down on mkv, which, to my dismay i have learned is a non starter with an ipad and a hit and miss situation on my Nexus 7. Sooooo. What to do? Well a lot of time has been spent so far, with actual practical results coming out of it. We now have an html5 capable audio/video streamer (sorry no dvd or live tv folks, though possible). But the main question is this.  Am I the only person who cares about this? If so, i should likely direct my efforts elsewhere in the qOrbiter eco-system as now, audio seems to work pretty well.

Golgoj4

2

Users / Port Forwarding

« on: July 14, 2014, 10:07:00 pm »

Is this working? I cant seem to get it going, yet I know i was using it before.

3

Users / [SOLVED] Wifi Problems

« on: June 26, 2014, 03:29:07 am »

Is anyone experiencing frequent wifi drops on phones / tablets / laptops?

Just curious as I have experienced this with two different kinds of AP's

golgoj4.

4

Developers / Need help!

« on: November 10, 2013, 04:08:41 pm »

Ok, so after QOrbiter has hit the general user populace, a huge glaring problem has shown its face. location that it actually exists in.

As it stands now
*Rooms that one not might want set to manual, are set to manual, with new ea's added for the new media targets.
This presents a problem of both clutter in the old ui (EA's are treated as rooms, thus every device shows up as an additional room) Its really bad and I dont know how to fix it.

*When I play media on an android tablet, I get lights dimming and such. This is more likely not the desired action in this _new_ context. So its something else to be considered.

I have made changes to the qorbiter DT to allow for specifying what form factor it is (workstation, tablet, phone, md, god knows what else will be invented. watches you say?)

Now, the 'solution' i have for the moment is that they should all exist in a room called 'Mobile Orbiters' or something.
This would let them operate independent of a location they may or may not be tied to re: the automation options.
Users could still choose other rooms as normal, but this one would be specific to mobile devices.

It doesn't do much for the longer list of 'Rooms' on the old orbiter. they assume a 1 to one mapping and it doesn't seem i can change that.

And finally, I need seriously help writing the mysql queries to
*Make the 'Mobile Orbiters' Room show up when people add a QOrbiter, then add the subsequent new EA in that room
*Look at how we branch to do this as well OrbiterGen. Right now its done in php, which is fine with me for prototyping, but I feel like it would be messy to leave orbitergen spread over two places.

Thanks

5

Developers / Something interesting to watch

« on: October 24, 2013, 03:50:44 pm »

http://cubox-i.com/

that is all.

6

Users / Media on mobile devices

« on: September 07, 2013, 09:21:52 pm »

So Possy and I had an interesting but brief conversation relating to, in a round about way, media on mobile devices.

The facts are this.

1) Bringing media from linuxmce to android is not a small task
 *Need to engineer a media streamer (so your device could actually watch the blu-ray rips)
 *A whole host of linuxmce plumbing to deal with the 'floating' entertain area.

2)Its still really a concept. While I have proof of concept applications, that let me do this, way to much in the way of smoke and mirrors is used to make it function

So really im asking, is it worth holding up the rest of android development for this feature, or would we rather have a fully working orbiter sans md-ish features.

7

Developers / Where is sarah hiding...

« on: September 05, 2013, 10:55:57 pm »

Anyone know where to start in deconstructing sarah / setup wizard? Im not just talking about swapping videos so much as the logic for autodetecting things (lights) and then the setup wizard itself.

thanks,
langston

8

Users / Need some dedicated testers.

« on: August 12, 2013, 05:04:10 am »

for QOrbiter.

To be a tester, i require that you
*Have linuxmce installed.
*Have the target hardware.
*are willing to spend some time giving feedback.

The software to be tested
*QOrbiter for Android x86 devices (all 2 of them?)
*QOrbiter for Android Tablets
*QOrbiter for Android Phones.
*QOrbiter for Kubuntu / ubuntu linux

There will be no standalone pi version as I plan to work on following phenigmas work on creating the MD.
All Android devices must be Android 3.0 or later. This even rules out my phone at the moment. The reason for this is that I cannot provide media playback to devices earlier than this...for now.

I will be asking you to test Qt4 and Qt5 variants for these platforms. The skins will be in various stages of complete, there will be tons of ui bugs. However I feel that it is at a point where it needs to start meeting real world people.

For linux machines, I would _prefer_ nvidia graphics cards or even intel. Not so much ATI but if you have ATI bring it. I have two ati boxes which are being a pain in the video acceleration department.

Lastly, this is NOT testing for putting QOrbiter as an MD.
Thanks for reading this and please only volunteer if you have the time. My main goal with this thrust is to get a more universal version on the Android market. People have very mixed results.

Thank you.
==========================================================================
Releases can be found here:
*Android: http://docs.langstonball.com/view/Android/
 Setup Instructions for Android.
 

Code: [Select]

 wget http://tinyurl.com/qx5bbfw -O /tmp/setupQorbiter.sh
 sudo chmod u+x /tmp/setupQorbiter.sh
 sudo /tmp/./setupQorbiter.sh
*Note- tiny url used, but you can always see the download address in the console.

*Linux-X11: http://docs.langstonball.com/view/Linux-x86/
 Setup Instructions for X11 (Very Unrefined!!)
 *untar
 *go into directory
 *./qorbiter-4.8.3-core-gl
 ** add -s for fullscreen

 A note about linux version. it will be in heavy flux over the next few weeks. I intend to add a setup.sh and some other things to make it smoother (especially on my bandwidth!) Right now all the skins and everything are all in one package.

*Now there is this for the setup scripts http://docs.langstonball.com/view/Setup/
*One is for preparing your core for android.
*One is for setting up qorbiter on an x86 based machine.

More coming soon as I bring other parts of the build factory online...
Good hunting

9

Developers / [Solved]Need Web developer

« on: July 18, 2013, 03:50:17 am »

So like, I have a hybrid sockets, http information flow going but i need some one to secure the http side. if you check out what im doing in qOrbiterGenerator.php, you will understand why. Im not sure how to proceed in this context, but the requirements are simple.
It returns either
*Xml
*JSON
*image

thats all. Nothing else in the output, and I dont support https yet. Apparently thats like a big deal or something. But anyways, I need a web developer who understands this stuff and could give me a simple more secure way of requesting this annon-ish data from the core via http. i have these services up and running, but they could use securing.

Thanks
Langston

10

Developers / Missing Manufacturer and the device templates that went with it

« on: January 11, 2013, 07:49:07 am »

http://svn.linuxmce.org/trac.cgi/ticket/1039
http://svn.linuxmce.org/trac.cgi/ticket/1030

Can anyone who has done a recent install find either device? I ask because I had 2 devices by the same manufacturer but, its gone now. Device templates with it.

There was
DirecTv

now there is only Direct Tv

Did anyone else experience this?

11

Users / Southern California Linux Expo

« on: January 06, 2013, 05:26:22 am »

The time is coming for the 11th annual Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE for the initiated). And now, you are initiated, arent you? Sorry, too much Batman.

SCALE 11X will be held Feb. 22-24, 2013, at the Hilton Los Angeles
Airport hotel. For more information, visit
http://www.socallinuxexpo.org

Anyways, as usual, I will be there representing the LinuxMCE project and I am letting whoever is interested know. Will else be attending? We need people to man the booth mainly so why not come hang out?

I have most of the hardware needed, and what I dont have will be acquired in short order. But I need people. Its a rough 2 days being there from show open to close, so the more people the better.

I will most likely be getting a room at the Hilton because I dont feel like driving back and forth, and a local chillout spot is nice. If anyone else is interested, im sure we could figure something out. If anyone cant make it but would like to donate towards covering the cost of a room, by all means please contact possy.

Thats about it.
good day.

12

Users / LinuxMCE community, lets talk.

« on: November 09, 2012, 04:59:49 am »

Hey, whats up everyone. Its your fave slightly off kilter dev langstonius. Im posting this topic not to complain or yell. Don't worry, i'm not gonna, _do_ what everyone thinks im gonna _do_ , i'm not gonna flip out...

But seriously, the point of this thread it to get some honest opinions about how you use LinuxMCE, what you wish it did, where you see it going.  Me, well, as you can see i've doubled down on LinuxMCE. As I like to say, its a star-ship os, waiting for the star-ship. But what about you? Because, in a weird way, I do work for you. No I dont want money, but as a dev, we kinda take on the responsibility of making stuff work (albeit sometimes very badly). But the reason I ask these questions is because I want to make LinuxMCE better. Period. The best it can possibly be. But we are in a unique situation. Every persons home is their castle. And LinuxMCE is the life in that castle. And we all have very different castles. So, shaky metaphor aside, I need perspective from the people I 'work' for. So lets talk. And please, if there is something you dont like, just be respectful about discussing it.

that being said,
whats the good word?

-Langston

13

Users / QOrbiter freeze / bugfixing

« on: November 08, 2012, 04:20:38 am »

Sup party people. Due to many things being in the cooker at once, I am feature freezing qorbiter for the moment. I really want to take a moment and bug fix a lot of things affecting different folks on some of the non standard android platforms, working out installation, etc.
So lets review what is (or partially working)
Scenario Control
Media Control
AV Playback x86 linux platforms
Floorplans
Alarm toggling
room / user changing
setting alarm mode

I want to get these working rock solid, so I will be mainly looking at fixing these. If you have problems on android, open a ticket so i can track and test against it.

Also, if anyone is going to be in Santa Clara in early December, there is this http://www.qtdeveloperdays.com/northamerica/replacing-sdl-qtqml

And 2 months later we are showing at SCALE in Los Angeles.

Cheers,
golgoj4

14

Users / Ill Catch yer shark...

« on: June 05, 2012, 02:25:53 am »

Hello kids, tis I Langstonius.

Nevermind the silly post topic, im here on serious business.

I am holding a contest. Thats right. I will give away an (model to be decided but it wont suck) Android Tablet to the person who designs a skin for QOrbiter. What is QOrbiter? well, we have youtube videos here if you don't know, but needless to say, its a new user interface.

Now, before you start thinking the tablet is all yours, you should read how this is gonna work.

Skin Requirements - PAY ATTENTION!!
To Qualify for entry into the contest you must provide screen mockups for Onscreen (think md), Phone, tablet and desktop orbiters. No, you don't have to program the darn thing, that's my job (even though its stupid easy). I just want a themed mockup of the screens listed below. You must list and fonts or anything else like that you used and such. I am allotting 60 days for this from today. Hopefully by then, we will have Qorbiter playing video on a raspberry pi...oh, did i say that out loud?

Screens
*Home Screen
*Floorplan screen
*Audio Playing Screen - this will cover multiple actual screens
*Video Playing Screen -this will cover multiple actual screens
*Telephone call screen. Plan to have a video box that can come and go as it pleases.
*Security Video screen
*Security screen
*photos screen
*Media Grid screen
*User Status
*generic button screen (similar to advanced)
*room selector
*user selector
*sleeping menu
*power menu

Acceptable formats for entry include
*PSD - preferred
*PNG/JPEG/GIF (why are you submitting gifs? its 2012...)
*Some other fancy format i don't know about because im not a graphic designer

Who Decides?
The rest of the community will decide on what the best entry is. Good luck

-golgoj4

15

Developers / Compiling core plugins / code

« on: April 16, 2012, 02:56:13 pm »

Sup guys,
normally i would post this in irc but im in class

Need to re-compile updatemedia, but its not working on my end. Anyone know what i could possibly be missing?
Trying to compile on my core.

-golgoj4