SmartQ V7 as a media playing MID in LinuxMCE.

[tschak909]

I've cooked up something of a surprise...

Over the last couple of in been researching an idea, which ultimately turns out to work just fine...

LinuxMCE can support Mobile Internet Devices, with some work on our part. I did the first test using a SmartQ V7 MID. This will also work on the SmartQ V5 MID.

Here is a video showing the SmartQ V7, selecting a video to play from its own orbiter, and even being controlled via one of my WebDT 366 orbiters, _AND_ showing that Follow Me even works correctly!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VZ7AjIyt0

The Architecture has proven itself robust enough, for me to create a whole new class of portable media device, and the media plugin happily sends streams to it. This was possible because the VLC that ships with the SmartQ not only can play High Definition streams, but it can be remotely controlled, and they provided a module to access filesystems exposed over NFS (and guess what we use to link our media directors to the core's filesystem? )

I have checked in the first pass of a DCE plugin and player pair, that can send media streams via the media plugin, and I have verified this works by triggering video from the same orbiter, but there is still TONS of usability work to be done...

namely:

* figuring out how to sanely expose it to the UI to send media to the devices that are already playing in house (Follow Me will work for this.)
* creating the glue so that screen touches while video is playing will e it wbring up a simple transport and ability to see the orbiter display
* sending back time code to the core, so that it can be shown, and used for bookmarking and follow me and media transfer.
* volume actuation on the device
* creating an agent package that bundles up all the plumbing and sends the appropriate PnP messages to add the necessary devices to the core when first installed.
* getting and testing libdvdcss2 on the smartQ so i can test DVD playback properly.
* overall polishing and refinement...

there is ONE flaw with this particular MID that can not be fixed by me, the wifi drivers. They suck. Performance on them is absolutely terrible. I hope that SmartDevices will release better firmware soon to fix it, so that we can actually FEED high def video to the system and have it work.

Should you all wish me to continue this work, donations would be most welcome, as I am between contracts, and would like to be able to pay my bills and be able to work on these cool projects.

Hope you all enjoyed this, until next time...
-Thom

[Techstyle]

As usual, we are not worthy

great work TSCHAK!

[totallymaxed]

I've cooked up something of a surprise...

Over the last couple of in been researching an idea, which ultimately turns out to work just fine...

LinuxMCE can support Mobile Internet Devices, with some work on our part. I did the first test using a SmartQ V7 MID. This will also work on the SmartQ V5 MID.

Here is a video showing the SmartQ V7, selecting a video to play from its own orbiter, and even being controlled via one of my WebDT 366 orbiters, _AND_ showing that Follow Me even works correctly!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VZ7AjIyt0

The Architecture has proven itself robust enough, for me to create a whole new class of portable media device, and the media plugin happily sends streams to it. This was possible because the VLC that ships with the SmartQ not only can play High Definition streams, but it can be remotely controlled, and they provided a module to access filesystems exposed over NFS (and guess what we use to link our media directors to the core's filesystem? )

I have checked in the first pass of a DCE plugin and player pair, that can send media streams via the media plugin, and I have verified this works by triggering video from the same orbiter, but there is still TONS of usability work to be done...

namely:

* figuring out how to sanely expose it to the UI to send media to the devices that are already playing in house (Follow Me will work for this.)
* creating the glue so that screen touches while video is playing will e it wbring up a simple transport and ability to see the orbiter display
* sending back time code to the core, so that it can be shown, and used for bookmarking and follow me and media transfer.
* volume actuation on the device
* creating an agent package that bundles up all the plumbing and sends the appropriate PnP messages to add the necessary devices to the core when first installed.
* getting and testing libdvdcss2 on the smartQ so i can test DVD playback properly.
* overall polishing and refinement...

there is ONE flaw with this particular MID that can not be fixed by me, the wifi drivers. They suck. Performance on them is absolutely terrible. I hope that SmartDevices will release better firmware soon to fix it, so that we can actually FEED high def video to the system and have it work.

Should you all wish me to continue this work, donations would be most welcome, as I am between contracts, and would like to be able to pay my bills and be able to work on these cool projects.

Hope you all enjoyed this, until next time...
-Thom

Great piece of work Thom!

Andrew

[totallymaxed]

Hi Thom,

Some feedback from the people here that have looked at the V7 Video, which they have universally thought was great, is that at various moments in your demo the V7 Orbiter looks sluggish and slow to respond. I tend to agree too now that I have looked again. Any idea why that would be? Slowish processor I guess... as the video you demo with plays fine as far as i can see.

All the best


Andrew

[tschak909]

Basically?

sucky ass wifi chip. the one thing I can not fix. The processor is more than capable of running orbiter fine.... In fact, network performance is THE bottleneck factor in Orbiter...

-Thom

[Kezza]

Hi Thom

Awesome work!

Tried doing some searching on the wifi but could only find your post on the SmartQ forum. Was this video taken with the wifi power saving disabled?

Cheers

[tschak909]

yes.

The issue is that both the driver and the chip are somewhat substandard. The driver works better under WinCE 6.0 (more efficient driver)...

-Thom

[l3mce]

I found a handful of reviews which support his assessment. Suspend also has some sort of problem which tends to lock in linux too.

[dlw]

Thom,
Have you done any additional work on the SmartQ V7 orbiter?   How much additional memory does it require?    Thanks.

[hacked2123]

I an absolute newb right now to the LinuxMCE project, and I have yet to receive my SmartQ V7 BUT I am very familiar with the Telechip-tcc89xx series.

Was wondering:

• Is the Telechips Linux SDK necessary to compile the SmartQ V7 orbiter software? If not how do I go about setting it up LinuxMCE on the SmartQ?
• Is Mali now supported in the lastest SmartQ Linux build?
• Have you tried using a natively supported usb wifi dongle to attempt to increase performance?
• Does LinuxMCE automatically create a database file on the "server" computer? Does it pull that the movie/tv show information automatically from the internet just once?
• Can directories be manually removed from the auto databasing feature of the LinuxMCE? Will it allow "strictly these directories/subdirectories" versus auto-add?
• Is there an upper-limit to how many files can be parsed in? Would 1000 be manageable from the SmartQ?
• Does the SmartQ switch to HDMI automatically?

I would love to help in any way possible. And thanks for your time in advance.
(Sorry for the long list, its months worth of catch up)

[tschak909]

Hi. Welcome, you may want to study our codebase before asking questions, as you are making a lot of incorrect assumptions.

1. I did my prototyping work on the unit itself, basing off of an nfs root that I created from the running image.
2. re: Mali, please do some digging, you'll find out that Mali200 is not supported unless you actually have the DDK, good luck getting that.
3. I do not want a wifi dongle hanging off my unit. I hate duct tape.
4. We store everything in a central media database. You need to study it, as it is extremely scalable.
5. If you want to control which media shows up, use the LinuxMCE file structure on your disks. Otherwise, anything LinuxMCE finds, it will appropriate. You can also use blank Foldername.folderlock files to prevent UpdateMedia from going into folders.
6. Again, you're making incorrect assumptions, go study the code.
7. No, it does not.

-Thom

[hacked2123]

Hi. Welcome, you may want to study our codebase before asking questions, as you are making a lot of incorrect assumptions.
-Thom

Yeah, sorry, wanted a quick fix.

4. We store everything in a central media database. You need to study it, as it is extremely scalable.

• I'll definitely do that before I ask anything else.
• About the DDK, if it was on the "https://www.telechips.com/kor/inc/pop_con.asp?table_name=tech_board&u_id=XYZ", there is a good chance I have it archived, I'll have to double check.
  (Just checked, I have "LinuxBSP1.6_3DMali_FB0_R2P0DEV.zip", "TCC89_92xx_ALL_3D_0.50E - Linux.pdf", "LINUX_BSP_100205-R0170B2750.tar.bz"...)
• In response to the dongle, if it did improve functionality significantly, there is a lot of room behind the right speaker I believe (maybe left), on the inside of the case, where you could solder and fasten it to.

I have a collection of 10TB+ and I bought the SmartQ V7 to replace my WD HD Media Player, which was getting unmanageable via remote control.  Was going to code it myself, but this is looking like a much more viable solution.
Thanks again, you've been extremely helpful, I'll be sure to return my gratitude in some way.


EDIT: Though that link above is dead, the downloads themselves are not. I had an old text document with a link to an actual download that is still alive.

[Marie.O]

Just as a note: I've used LinuxMCE on a 25k song lib without a problem. Clicking Audio to get the initial performer list, does take a couple of seconds, but from than on, it is fine.