Messages

61

Installation issues / Erratic telecom behaviour under 10.04 (only my Cisco products work)

« on: March 28, 2013, 11:12:40 am »

The complexity of the entire telecom portion of LinuxMCE has always floored me.  When over the years an issue that affected a lot of asterisk/FreePBX hit the forums I would try to follow along but quickly would become confused and lost in the menus and settings necessary to make a call.  About 2 years ago I began paying for VOIP service and continued to pay for over 12 months without ever placing or receiving a single call.  I have at best been able to make one on-screen orbiter ring another,  but the moment I try to pick it up I get a "call dropped, normal clearing".  I have tried IP phones, ATAs, softphones, hardphones, orbiter embedded, usb mics, headsets, 3.5mm desktop microphones all to no avail.

Meanwhile during this time the VOIP experience has become so commonplace and easy everywhere else that I canceled my cell service and use wifi apps to handle all of my calling/SMS needs.  Watch a 30 second ad on my iPhone and earn 2 minutes of calling.  In an hour or so at my desk reaching over and tapping 'watch videos" every few minutes when I think about it gets me 60+ minutes of calling to any number.  As I am often experimenting and looking at VMs running different OSs and packages I am amazed at how difficult it is to "not" make a call.  I obviously am making something too difficult but can not understand where.  Is the telecom plugin that configuration and user input dependent?  Below is my setup that I would guess is pretty standard fair.

One hybrid - orbiter embedded phone
Two media directors - each with orbiter embedded
3-4 different DNS services I keep giving money to even though they can not provide me DNS service.
LinuxMCE is behind a router that my ISP provides. Firewall disabled, no custom port configurations or forwardings
One Cisco 7970
One Cisco 7905
One Budgetone 100 (previous voip provider issued, Grandstream is the make)
One Sipura2000
Cisco Mobile iOS
Google Talk #
Google Voice account
Text + account (iOS app I mentioned earlier)
... 5 years worth of accounts, hardware, passwords, registrations etc...

Problems.

Web-Admin/Phone Lines/ shows my voipcheap account enabled but alternates between not-registered, request and I forget the other.  I do not have any other phone # so when I registered with VoipCheap I gave my roommate's cell.  I do not know if that is my voipcheap number now, or if its +1(area code) 9(areacode).  I have found two different guides here and on the wiki that give conflicting information about what to put in the ATA configuration fields for authorization yes/no and user id.  Am I supposed to put the extension of the softphone or the voip provider info?

7970 when calling any extension or *## gets a busy signal
7905 gets a loud ringing noise the instant I lift the receiver (device removed as I suspect it may be damaged)
cisco mobile app can call the 7970 though I can only answer by using the softbuttons (or picking it up), attempts to use the orbiter drop the call.  This app is also the only device under phones that is capable of reaching my voicemail box.
Softphones (connected through various FXO equipped modems or ATAs) all get a dial tone but go to a busy signal after attempting any call.  2-3 attempted calls results in the loud screeching noise that I have only been able to clear with a reload.
The mobile iOS device status continually enters a "RUN_CONFIG" status where it becomes unuseable.  My IP for this device is on the 192.168.80 network and was assigned by dcerouter.  It may be a coincidence but I notice more problems after I return home, almost like this device not being ping-able causes an issue?

**Admins please feel free to move this post if you feel it is better suited for help wanted**

This is not an area I am able to troubleshoot and could really use some help on this.  My roommates are growing tired of "I am working on it", or "someday you will be able to get calls right here on the tv!"  If my problems can be narrowed to 2-3 most likely causes I will jump on any suggested hardware or service providers, I will even wipe my installation and start from step one if needed.  If need be, "yes" I am willing to offer some compensation as I am not aware of any major telecom bugs for other users...

62

Developers / Re: Need a shell scripter to develop mac/ipad/iphone detection routine

« on: March 26, 2013, 02:10:56 am »

Autodetection is smart.
Having a device picked up and configured automatically is a great experience.

It seems though after having watched syslog the last few days that there are quite a few jobs/radars/polls going on all the time to stay on-top of these new additions.

Does running something like this impact total network throughput?  I am at principle level understanding of network transmission and socket communications so perhaps I am only talking about a few bits through a 1000byte capable structure but with several HD movies traveling around etc... would this not slow things down?

The media update daemon has a user defined "on/off" via web-admin and a well documented console command.  Much like bluetooth pairing or z-wave inclusions, could radars such as this be built with search modes?  To make it easily accessible I could put down a list of radars/detection scripts and build a few pk_screens with checkboxes for on/off.  Standard 3:4. ui2 in 16x9, and whatever is needed for qt screens...

Would this be worthwhile?

63

Installation issues / Re: [Solved] Cisco 7970 - missing firmware

« on: March 26, 2013, 01:38:11 am »

As some speculated my issue was with missing firmware.  It is my assumption that prior to shipment the previous owner did a wipe or hard factory reset.  Since adding the necessary files to my /tftpboot/ location I have been able to boot the phone (as far as ethernet disconnected) with it detached from my network.

For any users reading this in the future I highly recommend some time spent getting familiar with tschakmac's wiki article, cisco firmware release notes and an overview of the tftpboot process.

Phone has compatible firmware,
 Update the cisco 7970 template for pnp mac detection, phone connects, asks for dhcp and location of tftpboot location (referred to as option 66), lmce generates the needed configuration files.

Phone has incompatible or missing firmware,
Follow the above but if the phone becomes stuck in a loop of syslog entries and reboots while displaying an "upgrading" screen there is a chance you may need to help it out. 

Acquire cisco firmware, the latest is available typically with just a registration login, older releases are harder to come by and could end up costing you $.
unzip, tar, etc once you have the compressed firmware and place those files into your /tftpboot/ folder.  I used 7.0.3 as there was mention that it was used at the time of the detection/configuration script creation.  I agree that for the most part once the orbiter loads it takes over the phone with its refreshes so any added xml screens or options will be hard to access anyways if you wish to use more recent versions.

Best of luck to future users and a sincere thank you for the work developing this automagic configuration.  This will be my first time trying to use telecom with lmce and an outside VOIP service so I still have some work and study ahead of me to get this talking with the rest of the world.

64

Installation issues / Re: Cisco 7970 - upgrading chain

« on: March 25, 2013, 03:59:46 am »

I read the release notes closely on 9.3, which happens to be the only 'free' firmware available with my cisco site login.  The issue I saw with 9.3 is that if your current version is less than 8.5? you had to upgrade to that, and then upgrade again to 9.3.  Back to me not knowing what version my device is or the call manager version that lmce used I am lost a bit here still.  At this time I am still trying to find a solution that lets me see more of what is going on with the phones tftp request than syslog shows me.  What remains after that is knowing where to place this firmware once I have it in my possession. 

Could someone with an active SCCP 7970 please list their /tftpboot/ folder contents?  I just need to know roughly how many files I need and if there is any special structure to it, such as all in a mac address folder like MDs or xml docs seperate from default xml docs etc.

I also cant help be question if this is necessary and typical for all users who may connect a 7970 since 7.10?  I could start documenting my process for the wiki if so. 

65

Installation issues / Re: Cisco 7970 - upgrading chain

« on: March 24, 2013, 11:23:15 am »

Continuing to struggle with this phone as I only understand a fraction of the information I am looking for.  It seems cisco charges for firmware, however other users would have had to know their firmware, know their call manager and then pay to DL the matching fw to put in tftpboot.  Obviously I am mistaken somewhere...

SCCP firmware is available from cisco.  However you must know the current firmware (there are stepping stone versions, you can't go from 1.1 to 9.2).  You must also know the call manager version.

I know neither. 

There are no files in tftpboot other than subfolders named according to their MD' MAC and some default.xml files created since attaching my phone and having it detected.

So, phone turns on and asks for DHCP, (option 66, to please pass along the location of the tftp server where it can get its firmware).  I see dcerouter return with dhcppack which must have this information.  It seems rather like the way a MD is created and booted.

I can not find a cm running or any firmware running.  Does LMCE run something similar?  When blind guessing a download to pay for, can anyone tell me the version #?

66

Installation issues / Re: Cisco 7970 - upgrading chain

« on: March 23, 2013, 07:42:02 pm »

I watched the syslog for a few reboots and could not resolve the issue.  This is completely due to my lack of experience with tftp coding and socket communication.  I do not see a clear error, just repeated requests when the phone reboots.

dhcp request
dhcppack sent
atfptp request
70default.xml called

repeat

I am currently setting up a tftp32 machine to check the phones firmware and bring it up to date if necessary.  Does anyone know the cutoff point for 7970 firmware that no longer works with lmce's defaults?  I don't want to upgrade to a point where lmce's defaults will no longer work.

67

Installation issues / Re: Cisco 7970 - upgrading chain

« on: March 23, 2013, 12:25:08 pm »

I appreciate the reply but I am unable to get to any phone menus currently.

After a full day if reading I have learned that the phone is talking to DHCP (LMCE in this case) and asking for a specific tftpboot file to match its firmware.  Since I don't have that log or know what firmware it wants it looks like I need to stuff my /tftpboot file with every version.

Alternatively there appears to be a call manager for windows I can push the latest .cop file to the phone.  I will continue working on it until I get the orbiter.  I have no other telephones outside of orbiter embedded, the 7970 will be a desktop orbiter and eventual way to call the front door.  Web admin lists this device as sccp, in case it matters.

68

Installation issues / [Solved] Cisco 7970 - missing firmware

« on: March 23, 2013, 09:59:48 am »

I working on getting my cisco 7970G working in linuxmce as outlined in the wiki article.

I was able to follow the directions and added my phones mac range to the 7970 template which did prompt a detected device on a nearby orbiter.  I have reloaded my router several times since then but the phone repeatedly restarts itself in a pattern.

Reboot, speaker button illuminated
white Cisco boot screen with a target icon in the lower left
white screen with Upgrading, current mac #
Reboot
white Cisco boot screen with a checked square
white screen with Upgrading, current mac #
Reboot, speaker button illuminated
repeat,
repeat,
repeat...

I attempted a tcpdump command on my core to see if there were any errors detectable but after doing apt-get install tcpdump I was told that "tcpdump -i eth1 192.168.80.141 was incorrect syntax.  I am not sure where to begin looking for an error/activity log to determine any other information.  In my webadmin I see that there is a 7979 listed under asterisk and that it had a child device of Cisco 7970 Orbiter.  Port listen number is 3452 as my webpad orbiter is on 3451.  Orbiter was fully regened, still nothing.

Perhaps this is a firmware issue?  How in the world though are people getting to the settings screen with ethernet disconnected or trapped in one of these reload loops?  

69

Developers / Experienced User seeks dev assisting work

« on: March 20, 2013, 02:27:56 pm »

I doubt I require much introduction...

My first linuxmce experience was 7.04, if my math is not too far off that would be approximately 5.5 years ago.  I have taken several breaks from regular forum interaction but for the most part have maintained some form of working system all of this time.  Due primarily to my financial limitations I have dug probably quite a bit deeper into the inner workings of the project in attempts to do the unsupported or use ancient hardware.  I have donated on occasion, gone through periods of heavy testing and reporting, skinned, wiki updating, etc, but I do not feel I have contributed at all compared to the massive effort this project requires.

Parcel delivery depending, this week will mark an important milestorm for me.  With the delivery of my z-wave thermostat I will have finally populated all of the major orbiter rows, and with a little more time to troubleshoot my VOIP account should be able to place my first call using my recently delivered cisco 7970.  Future expansion of my system at this point is limited by my available gig ports and the lack of any true need to expand beyond 4 AV rooms, 3 audio areas, and a scattering of other lights, security, climate, automation devices.

I am ready to contribute. 

I have coding skills...   My experience with linuxmce as I said has been a lot of figuring things out that others (without backgrounds in programing) might not have bothered with.  I have put together very rudimentary scripts and made them exicutible using googled bash commands,  I now own several books on programing that I am very clear on the systematic result orientated mindset of C++.  In other words I know what I want a program to do, I know the input and the output, I understand how to define the necessary formulas (and possibly databases to store and recall portions).  Regretably though I can not make the progression into programing.  Possibly beyond the unfamiliar commands, I become stuck in command thinking when I am faced with addressing hardware via hardware.  Yes, a keyboard is input & a monitor is output, depending on the keypress a circuit is closed on specific pins of a chip that understand NO becoming NC means the user pressed "a".  To then imagine that input as a value which can be added to the screen, combined to string an instruction or anything else just makes my head spin.

I would require so much assistance in completing basic development that my participation could actually decrease productivity on the project.  This is my limitiation and my honest approach to offering my assistance, if through continued breakthroughs that changes I will happily mention so and take on a few time-consuming tasks to free you gentlemen up.  In the meantime though I am able to assist in any way possible and request that to come to me for anything you feel I am capable of assisting with.  Even to use me as a whiteboard or to get my opinion on appearance or possible avenues for improvements.

Thank you all once again for the years of hard work that has given me such enjoyment.  I look forward to becoming more of an asset to the project were able.

jeremy mcdiarmid 

70

Users / Respond to event that acts as a custom scenario

« on: March 20, 2013, 01:40:56 pm »

I have read quite a few topics here regarding advanced scenario creation and some information on event criteria however, the challenge I currently face seems to require the control parameters of both.

My D-Link 930L is night-blind.  As a otherwise very reliable wireless camera (from sunset to sunrise) it lacks the ability to see little more than headlights in the evenings.  Instead of replacing it or pulling a piece of AV equipment off of a capture card I decided a good solution would be to install a generic floodlight in that area.  -Interesting how uncommon a 'plain' fixture is, I actually saved money by buying a dusk/dawn sensitive unit and rewiring it to bypass that circuit and connect with a grounded plug to a standard Z-Wave recepticle.
This direct wiring gives me more control over the light setting as I also have a motion detector in the area.  Once configured I can hopefully link the motion detector, light and camera, but still be able to create individual Lighting and Security Scenes. 

Interfaces = Aeon Labs Z-Stick, X10 Technologies CM15A
Lights = Z-Wave Recepticle (named Flood Lights)
Security = M16 X10 Motion Detector
Room = Driveway

Working Events and Scenes:
event: sensor is tripped/security mode check/turn on light
scene: flood light on, flood light off (available on all orbiters)
auto generated: security scene Driveway (camera view)

Desired Event Details:  Regardless of current light status, I would like "begin viewing camera" to fire the light on command to this device.  Likewise an event of "stop viewing camera" should send the off command.  - for simplicity of this event I didnt want to add check for current light status although it would be easy with z-wave.  I also didn't want commands taking too long to poll, compare, respond when I just want the area illuminated when the camera view screen comes up.    

I have not been able to associate viewing the camera with the state if this light.  Regardless of sunset/sunrise and adding devices using the advanced or lighting wizard the single_cam_view pk_screen as specific media does not allow me to send a command to device.

How is viewing of a security camera acknowledged by dcerouter if it is not media?  Because it gets the video through a browser interface I considered tying this event to firefox but could not define a specific site as criteria.  Has anyone successfully handled such an event outside of GSD? 

Note about the motion detector:  Though it may seem odd at first, the motion detector in this area does not actually point in the direction of the driveway and does not detect persons approaching the door.  The front door to my home is a patio door on a breezeway.  Guests are welcome to enter through this door where a more secure door await out of the weather.  When designing our system it was decided that a "security event" should be (of course based on house status) held back until a person actually begins to enter the home and passes the first door.

71

Installation issues / manual MD manipulation

« on: March 17, 2013, 01:26:19 am »

I have a troublesome Media Director I am trying to get working.  I realize that my problems are caused by attempting to use my existing hardware in that room and its limited connectivity.  If I spent a couple hundred on a decent TV I know this card/hardware will output audio via DVI to HDMI cable easily.

Environment:  
Dell Inspiron 531S (onboard video via VGA bios disabled), XFX HD 4350 PCIe (DVI, VGA, S-Video), RCA P52955 (ancient rear projection TV limited to S-video input), Denon AVR-1082 (S-Video capable of overlaying vol, etc on its monitor out S-Video), USB-UIRT 0038

Desired Setup:  Typical newboot environment and ACPI functions, output from MD being S-Video and 5.1 audio via multiple 3.5mm jacks to RCA multichannel inputs of the Denon, USB-UIRT sending IR commands "on/off" to RCA TV since it is only a monitor, IR commands to Denon which will announce changes with its' own on-screen overlays.  

Future Plans:  
I would like to be able to add additional AV pieces to this location and use the Denon's inputs and multiple output options, ie - lmce ir controlled VCR connects to AV1 on denon which outputs rca AV to a capture card.  I have a fairly small house and few users so the chances that more than one piece of AV gear is needed from this location are slight.  If that changes I would move the AV gear to the server rack and add a capture device for each to the core or MD.



"Shoot Me in the Face" Issues:    
AV Wizard crashes and does not produce a xorg.conf.
I likely have problems due to aticonfig/flgrx problems, multiple graphics cards being present, S-Video passing bad EDID information during setup, etc.
Rebuilting/reconfiguring this MD via web-admin or ssh has resulted in several broken installs that I have had to delete.  These additions although gone from web-admin and orbiters are still present in tftboot type locations and pluto-main under the MAC address.  
I would say that I am very familiar with the lmce environment, vague on basic linux environments and admittedly clueless on coding/programming.

Current Configuration:
To get media to that location I am booting the Dell via GeexBox on USB.  This loads a setting saveable XMBC interface which accesses media on the lmce network via SMB shares.  I have not been able to get IR commands working but I am not investing time and research into other software when I could be working on/learning lmce better.


/breath


What I would like to setup and and am hoping for help on:

Copy init, xorg, boot, etc configuration from the working USB and implant it into lmce under /usr/pluto/diskless/, tftboot and related locations.
Again, if I could code I would figure out what is breaking and fix it to make this a supported setup.  What I have though is a working configuration and a desire to patch it into a semi-supported server/client core/md setup.

After backing up lmce and then cloning my core just to be complete, I plan to boot this dell as an MD which will then generate all the needed folders and devices.  After it fails I then want to open /usr/pluto/diskless/ and begin replacing items and overwriting configurations to match what works under GeexBox.  With what hopefully are non-system breaking changes I hope to boot this equipment under lmce and get full MD capabilities.  More than likely I will need to set up this moon### with unique and unsupported boot scripts to avoid having these bandaids detected and overwritten.

I am currently looking for guidance in getting started on this, specifically if you were attempting the same what settings would you move over and how would you go about it?  Once I have a start I will be on my own to google, wiki, study, etc until I am capable to ./make and compile the necessary changes myself.
Following my success and psuedo-coding I will share the what-works with the devs for their consideration and review.  Perhaps something I discover may be helpful in making troublesome hardware work more smoothly ootb in future releases...  

72

Users / Re: switched from computer screen to my plasma & no video

« on: March 15, 2013, 12:01:52 am »

Sure.

I am needing to rearrange some cables on my core first though.  To have easy access to pastebin I need to be at my core, which is currently set up in a closet with a racked monitor.

Something that would really help in the interim though would be a location where I can find a temporary xorg.conf?  I have through web-admin up sized my orbiter to fill a screen and got sound working via asound.conf but I with no /etc/X11/xorg.conf I can't move the output to S-video.  With it functioning as it is it is obviously writing setting data somewhere outside of /etc/X11.

73

Users / Re: switched from computer screen to my plasma & no video

« on: March 14, 2013, 06:25:20 am »

Following both this thread and the wiki instructions on the AV Wizard.

I am having a hard time with a MD that uses an add on graphics card but has onboard graphics.  Onboard is VGA only.  Add on card is DVI and S-video, the S-video is what I need and why I am in this situation with two cards.

On first boot the MD skipped AV Wizard, xorg.conf has never existed so I can not follow the wiki guide to change the pci-id I want to use.  I am now at the delete and reconnect MD stage because I am lost on how to create a xorg.conf when nothing exists.

If the motherboard does not allow me to jumper out onboard graphics, how should I have my cables configured on first boot? 

74

Users / Re: switched from computer screen to my plasma & no video

« on: March 09, 2013, 03:07:29 am »

/usr/pluto/bin/RebootWithAVWizard.sh

Orbiter/Advanced/AV Setup Wizard

hold shift after the machine beeps during boot,  this is a touch tricky as you need to press it before the second set of beeps.

In web-admin, enter RECONFIGURE_DEVICE "**RUN_CONFIG**" under status.  I believe this will force a redetect at start up and notice the display change.



Alternatively I have been able with Nvidia cards to set up twinview displays and set up an LCD as a second (mirrored) display on DVI-2.  With this setting the MD was outputing video to two locations constantly and I just switched inputs to bring up the image.  Once configured I could unplug either display and continue to view it on the other.  

*Edited by ArmorGnome to change the reconfig status

75

Installation issues / Re: AV Receiver repeatedly detected (Yamaha RX-V1700)

« on: March 06, 2013, 12:42:54 am »

There is one additional script I found but can not recall its name at the moment, perhaps you have some time to hunt for it or another user knows about it:

/usr/Pluto/bin/ xxSerialxx

SetSerialports, detectserial, plutoserialupdate,  something like that ...