Messages

 

This is a great new addition to the wiki. Fantastic job.

Thank you, from a meager end user!!!

Regards,

Seth

 
Also keep in mind, that the MythTV function of LMCE is exactly like the Stand alone version. If you have multiple MD's hooked to the system, each one has a slave backend built in, so, the core will push commflag jobs to any other systems (MD's) that are inactive or using less CPU.

I have 4 MD's, and I can pull up the backend status on mythweb, and usually the job hosts are the MD's, leaving the core to have full power for everything else.

My commflag jobs run first, and are then followed by the "Save Recording to Pluto DB" job as well as my "remove-commercials" jobs. Because all 3 jobs run one after the other, the core usually offloads the processes to one of the MD's in the house not being used, or being used very little.

So the more MD's you have, the more the commflag and any other UserJob you schedule from MythTV will be pushed to MD's to save CPU power on your core, or core/hybrid.

Regards,

Seth

I look forward to your setup. This is something I have not been able to implement yet. I would like to use it. It would greatly reduce the monthly electric bill, and also possibly reduce some heat in certain cases.

Perhaps over the weekend I will give it a try.

Regards,

Seth

I think this would be a great feature. Have them power off, and then at a specific time in the morning, power back up.
How green would that be?

I am going to check into this tonight, and see if I can come up with something as well. Please post back any findings here, during you experimentation. I will as well.

Regards,

Seth

 
Firstly, Welcome Aboard.
The Insteon PLM template currently does not support X10. It tries, but I have never been successful. What I have done is this, until Insteon support gets better.

I have an Insteon PLM on a development box. I have 2 Insteon Lamp Dimmer Modules, and 1 Insteon Keypad Dimmer. Here is how I actually use them:

I have Hooked up to my core 1 cm11a X10 controller. Throughout the house I have several X10 lamp dimmers, dimmer switches, motion sensors, and XPS3 on/off switches. The insteon modules I have assigned X10 addresses for now. They are always reliable, and work much faster than traditional X10 devices. The Keypad dimmer switch I have has a local ON/OFF as well as 6 keypad buttons. These six buttons I have set to different X10 addresses, and it controls the X10 devices assigned to the buttons.

For example, The local switch controls the ceiling fan in that room, and the buttons:
1 - Kitchen sink light - A9
2 - Living room ceiling fan - A2
3 - Living room lamps - A3
4 - Foyer lamp - A4
5 - Master bedroom light (insteon lamp dimmer - linked the insteon way - also assigned X10 address B2 so the system can control it)
6 - Girls bedroom lamps (insteon lamp dimmer - linked the insteon way - also assigned address B3 so the system can control it)

SO you can use the high quality Insteon stuff for insteon devices as well as X10 devices.

This is currently the most reliable way to use Insteon and X10 with LMCE.

Hope that helps.

Regards,

Seth

It seems, at least in testing that I have resolved the issue. I changed the way mythtv recordings were captured, to try to get a more "realistic" picture from a post I read here in the forums. And the post works well, at the local TV, in this case my core/hybrid. The initial settings were to make all SD recordings 480x480 when captured.

I changed this to 720x480. Per the forum post. I am thinking because of the size of the file, or perhaps the format it was captured in was causing the issue. Here are some screen shots to show the differences in the recordings:

The first image is the recordings with the modifications, the ones that would not playback well on an MD.

The second image is after the changes were reset to default, and these play swimmingly.

So at least in my case, leaving the defaults was the solution. My picture is still outstanding, very watchable, so for now I will leave the settings as default.

Regards,

Seth

Hi, All,

Well I have decided to create a core only server, and I have been on newegg and put together a list.

I would welcome any input on my choices. I will add questions to each item.

And here we go:

Case:
NORCO RPC-430 Black 4U Rackmount Server Case
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219029
Looks as though it will not be too long like most server cases.

Motherboard:
BIOSTAR TForce TF720 A2+ AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA nForce 720a ATX AMD Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138117
This has the Realtek 8111C gigabit ethernet on board, so I will most likely need the Realtek fix from the wiki.
This will be the Internet facing NIC.

CPU:
AMD Phenom 8450 Toliman 2.1GHz 3 x 512KB L2 Cache 2MB L3 Cache Socket AM2+ 95W Triple-Core Processor
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103283
Now this is triple core, so I am hoping that LMCE will utilize all cores? Would this be correct?

CPU/Cooling:
XIGMATEK Dark Knight-S1283V 120mm Long Life Bearing CPU Cooler
This is recommended for Quad core. It looks as though it will be fine for triple core. Any thoughts?

Memory:
OCZ Fatal1ty Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227364
I know 4G is overkill, but I do plan on having 5 MD's. So I am not sure how that reflects on memory usage. Any thoughts?

Standard DVD-ROM:
LITE-ON Black 18X DVD-ROM 48X CD-ROM IDE DVD-ROM Drive Model iHDP118-08
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16827106275

That would be it. I will be using my existing Gigabit Ethernet card for the Internal network. I will be using my existing storage, and tuner cards.

Please review the hardware, and if you know anything that may arise, a problem with some random chipset let me know. If all is coll, let me know, I will add the stuff to my cart.

Thanks again,

Regards,

Seth

 
Hi all,

Last evening I was down in the Man Cave intending to watch a show I had recorded. So I go to the video menu, select the recording, and start to play back. And what do I see, slow, sluggish video performance. So I figure that the network is just moshed up from running a week w/out a reboot. So I reboot the core/hybrid, wait and then all the MD's come back up again.

So I go to watch my video again, same issue. Well as I did not want another reboot, I fired up MythTV and watchied it from the recordings menu. And it played flawlessly. So no I am curious. So I drop out of that, try again from the video menu, same slow performance.

Out of curiosity, I fire up a DVD that I had ripped and it plays flawlessly. So I grab another TV show recording, Torchwood, from the video menu, slow dragging performance. Fire up MythTV, recordings menu, same show, perfect playback.

So here is the question. Is there something about MythTV recordings that xine is not happy with?

Do I need to change the format I record in, currently I record in MythTV at 720x480, .vs the default 480x480 for SD.

But then why does MythTV work so well, but the default video player not, at least for recordings?

This was the same on all my MD's.
Hardware spec outs.

Man Cave - P4 3.GHz w/ 2G ram, ATI radeon variant running UI1 Gigabit connection
Master Bedroom - AMD64 3400+ 2G ram, Nvidia 6100 on-board card UI2-Masked 10/100 connection
Playroom - P4 1.7GHz w/512MB ram, Intel onboard UI1 10/100 connection

However, the core/hybrid plays these videos flawlessly from the video menu or MythTV.

Core/Hybrid - AMD 64 x2  2.2GHz dual core 2G ram Nvidia 7300GS Gigabit to the Gigabit house switch (irrelevant I know, but it is feeding a Gig network switch)

Any ideas. Things I should look at. Personal experiences that are similar?

Regards,

Seth

 
Yes follow my wiki page here : http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/USB-UIRT_x86_Fix

That should get you all sorted out. Click the TOC for the Instant fix.

Regards,

Seth

 
Sorry.

Here is what currently happens:

With the "Ignore On/Off" turned to "Off" , located in the advanced page inside the av device page for the TV, the TV turns itself off and all commands sent from the system to the TV work as far as power on or off.
The problem here is that when I exit Media, like turn off MythTV or a video finishes running, the TV power off immediately. Then you have to manually turn the power on the TV, to view the UI2 menu. Now this is just a bit annoying, but that is not the real problem.
After exiting media, and manually turning on the TV, if you go to watch something else, it starts and the TV powers off, because as far as the system knows, it's last state was off, so it sends the command again (my TV only has a single command for on or off) and you hear the media but now the TV is off.

So to resolve this issue, I have set "Ignore On/Off" to "On" in the advanced page inside the av device page, so now it does not turn the TV off, and by itself this isn't bad, but because it is ignoring the on/off commands now, I have other scenarios I use to power off/on the TV, and they don't work.

Now i look in the orbiter screen, and see there is a check box for "Leave Monitor On for OSD" and I have it checked. I thought this might leave the TV on for viewing the UI2 menu, but still allow for the system to turn off the TV after inacvite time has passed, and allow for my other scenarios to power cycle the TV, but it does not work this way. It still powers off the TV after media exits.

So I was hoping there was another setting somewhere that I can make it so the UI2 menu is displayed, before and after the media starts and exits, while still giving the system control over powering on and off the TV

I know this is a bit long, but it is the best way I can describe it.

Regards,.

Seth

Is it possible that her laptop is out of space. There is space necessary on a copy to a LAN drive to hold the files temporarily, until write confirmation is achieved, kind of like a cache. Perhaps her hard drive does not have enough space to hold the temporary files, until write can be confirmed across the LAN.
Just a thought. I have copied several gigabytes of mp3's from a laptop to the core, but I had at least twice as much free space on the source hard drive.

Regards,

Seth

 
The wiki is your friend!

http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Adding_new_computing_apps

That should get you going. I used it to set up gnomad2, and iriverter on my systems.

Regards,

Seth

 
Hey all,

I have an interesting query. I was wondering if there was a way to control the display/tv power off after media is done playing. Here is what I would like. It is very cool that the system powers off the Display after so many minutes of no activity. However, my problem is, that it shuts the TV off every time you exit media, be it watching TV, video, etc. Is there a way to not have it turn off after media, or immediately after media playback?

I also notice that because I have "Ignore On/Off" set to "On" that my bedtime advanced scenario will not turn the TV off. Only the lights.

Is there any way to resolve this. A setting somewhere that I missed. The "Leave display on for OSD" is enabled, but it still turns everything off after watching media.

Thanks.

Regards,

Seth

 
Glad you got it sorted. I didn't even think to ask if it was in an outlet or a strip. Well now that you have it, I can recommend an e-bay store called x10-express, where I buy all my X10 stuff. I have dimmer switches, xps3 switches for ceiling fans and flourecent bulbs, half a dozen lamp dimmer and appliance modules, and a few insteon devices, that I assigned X10 addresses to, so the cm11a controls them as well.

All this is controlled by the lmce core. Once you get your feet wet a bit, and a few more devices, you can start playing with scenarios. I have one that turns on the coffee bar light, sets the wall lamps to 30% brightness, and starts up my coffee pot every work day at 515AM. Very cool stuff, all at the click of a button, and completely self-sufficient from that point on. Well besides changing the coffee filter, adding new coffee, and water to the pot.

Welcome to the new world... 

Regards,

Seth

I just launched my webadmin here, the lights themselves do not show as registered, and this I can only assume is normal, as all my lights function.

Have you tried unplugging the cm11a from the wall outlet and waiting 30 seconds, andthen plugging it back in? After you do this, reload your router.
As it is registered, perhaps it is out of sync, or locked up. Mine does this anytime there is a power bump, and occasionally after a reboot.

Check that.

Regards,

Seth