Cubic Reality » Hardware

Notes (weeks 49-4) – Open source CE

admin — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 12:10:42 +0000

Well, not yet at work. It seems that the recovery is taking longer than I thought. I’ve been updating my working environment and introduced some new things like the project server which is pretty much hosting my entire life thanks to eGroupWare. These changes hopefully will balance the work load and prevent meltdowns in the future. The server is up and running. Reusing materials and parts resulted total cost to be 0€ .

Initially I was planning to host CE’s code in my own server, but after thinking it some more, there’s not really any reason to do so. There are many free hosting options out there so why not let professionals handle those servers. After reviewing different hosts, I ended up choosing Google Code Hosting. They have fast servers/connections and proper backups in many geolocations.

I have uploaded all code to the server and it’s now available. There’s still a lot’s of cleaning to do in the code and folder structures. Also building instructions should be added. I chose Mozilla Public License (MPL) as the license. Anyway, from now on CE’s code will live here:

CubicExplorer on Google Code
http://code.google.com/p/cubicexplorer/

Switching to Linux based HTPC

admin — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 15:47:00 +0000

What would I do without my HTPC. I have had a computer hooked to my TV for the past 10 years. At first, I mainly used it as a DVD player. Now it’s the only source of video. Last year the analog TV signal stopped here in Finland. Ever since then, the HTPC has been the only way I can watch TV since I don’t have a set-top box nor a TV that can receive digital signal. Because I’m really addicted to TV, starting a project like this wasn’t something I was looking forward as it meant I couldn’t get my daily dosage.

Anyway, last weekend I made the decision to try Linux as a base for HTPC. I’m not that experienced with Linux so there was lot to learn. At the moment I’m using Ubuntu but might switch to Debian later. First thing I did was to install SSH server and Synergy. That way I could use my work system to work with Linux.

I have Hauppauge HRV-1100 DVB-T card and it worked right out of the box in Ubuntu (7.10). My motherboard has Nvidia’s SoundStorm in it which I got to work by following these instructions. I tried MythTV at first but quickly moved to VDR. I think it’s really the only choice if you are looking for a serious DVR solution. It handles transponders properly which means one can watch and record many channels (from a transponder) at the same time with one card. Setting VDR up can be little tricky but once you get to know with it, it’s pretty simple. At first I was using packages from e-tobi by following these directions. But since I had some troubles with few plugins, I now compile everything myself.

All was looking good and things were moving along nicely… until!

After days of tweaking I was getting nice and solid picture. However, there was some still unknown issue that made VDR (vdr-sxfe to be precise) respond slowly when used in TV. In monitor it worked fine. I tried pretty much all different combination of settings to make it work. No luck. I also tried different graphics cards which ended in disaster. Being stupid and careless I didn’t shutdown the power supply when I removed one card. I’ve never had any problems when doing so but this time I had to turn the card in an angle which short circuited few pins and that fried the motherboard.

So, now I’m waiting for a replacement motherboard. In the meanwhile I’m using an old board with Duron 800MHz processor. On a brighter note, this gave me the opportunity to clean the case. It was filled with dust and cat hair.

Notes (week 14) – HTPC madness

admin — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 03:53:23 +0000

No progress on CE this week. Last weekend I started to rebuild my HTPC. I figured since I’ve been using Windows to handle that task for many years, it’s time to see what Linux has to offer. The plan was to get everything up and running over the weekend. Obviously it was way too optimistic timeframe since I’ve been working with it whole week. Finally yesterday I finished the job… kinda. Due to my own stupidity, I managed to blow up the motherboard! So no HTPC for a while . I’ll write more about the HTPC endeavor in my blog.

Anyway, next week I’ll go back to the regular schedule and do more work with CE. I’m hoping to release 0.90 final next Friday. After it’s released I’ll write a proper roadmap for CE and also open help wiki. If anyone knows a good, easy to use (wysiwyg) wiki or help system, let me know. This server can only support PHP and MySQL.

Have a nice weekend everyone

No more Vista!

admin — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 23:51:00 +0000

About month ago I bought a new laptop, Acer 5520. It came with Vista Home Premium and I’ve been using it until last weekend I finally had enough. All and all the Vista experience was negative. I had lot’s of issues with the wireless connection and usually after resuming from hibernation, Vista was not able to find web site addresses anymore (tweaked a lot with DNS settings but there was no fix). The most serious issues had to do with power management. Sometimes the laptop wouldn’t shutdown when powering off or hibernating, only choice was to cut the power by force. Putting the laptop to sleep ended in blue screen of death.

There really wasn’t any reason I could think of why I should use Vista instead of XP. Only difference (in my needs) is that Vista looks “better”. Other than that there isn’t anything new, just more heavier OS. So now I’m using XP and everything works like a charm. I am however tempted to try Linux and after I read an interesting article from lifehacker, I might just do that.

Windows XP drivers for Acer 5520
http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/forms/AcerDrivers/Aspire%205520.pdf

Run Windows apps seamlessly inside linux
http://lifehacker.com/367714/run-windows-apps-seamlessly-inside-linux

Notes (week 6) – New wind is blowing

admin — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 15:28:43 +0000

It’s been an interesting week. On Tuesday I got a pleasant delivery in form of a new laptop. It’s an Acer Aspire 5520. This model has AMD TL-58 processor, 2GB of RAM, 250GB hard drive and Nvidia 8400G GPU. It was 699€ which might be a bit expensive because the store I had to use (due to payment issues) is not the cheapest one. Anyway, it seems decent machine for the money so who cares. It came with Windows Vista Home Premium which I decided to keep using, at least for now. I might switch to Linux later but that’s not any time soon.

The work computer is now completely dedicated for work, which is good for productivity. Another good thing for productivity is my new eyeglasses. These are my first glasses so there is quite a learning ahead to get used to them. When using computer, the poor sight was making my eyes tired fast, which was affecting my concentration. My loss of far sight is due to long hours in from of a monitor. So if you use computer a lot and have good vision, try to keep it that way. It’s a good practice to focus your eyes to some distant spot every 30-45 minutes.

Anyway, there was some good progress with CE this week. The settings engine and options dialog are both up and running. Next week I’ll start adding more settings into the options dialog. Also I’ll do some cleaning of the code as it’s quite a mess right now. Here’s a SVN snapshot of the current progress:

CubicExplorer 0.90.0.982 (SVN Snapshot)
Installer (1.6MB)
Zip (1.5MB)

Notes (week 3) – The new hard drive

admin — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 00:49:58 +0000

So, I finally got new hard drive (sweet!). It’s a 320GB Seagate (7200.10 – ST3320620AS). I chose this drive because I’ve heard good things about Seagate’s reliability. The manufacturer seems confident also since it came with 5 years warranty. It’s pretty quite, much quieter than my old Maxtor, also it’s faster. My motherboard (NF7-S) only supports SATA/150 so I’m not getting it’s full speed though.

Because of the new extra space, I installed Linux also. I’m using Ubuntu for now but will probably switch to Debian at some point. My goal is to eventually move completely to Linux and run Windows virtually. But that won’t happen until I get a new PC. This old Athlon 2600 is just too slow. Here’s the drive and image of the partition scheme I’m using:

On other news, I registered new address for CE (www.cubicexplorer.com). At the moment it just redirects to this site but that will change at some point. There has been no progress on the development of CE. The whole week has gone in reinstalling Windows and all the software. I had forgot how much work it actually is to reinstall everything. It took almost a day just to set up the environment where I’m building CE. Anyway, everything is now in place and the work can continue.

Progress notes and NAS

admin — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 18:02:14 +0000

Well, I’m feeling better and ready to start work tomorrow. I’m still not sure how effective I can be but the new work schedule is helping a lot. Once I’ll get used to it, I’m sure these type of blocks can be avoided. Last week I was working with CubicViewer but didn’t get much done. Although, I was able to design the base structure of it’s plug-in engine, so it wasn’t complete waste of time. There’s still a lot to do and because CV is not on top of the priority list, it’s going to be some time before there’s anything to show.

Buffalo LinkStation Live (HS-DH500GL v2)

I bought Buffalo’s NAS device last week. I’ve been meaning to build a file server from my old 800Mhz machine but never got around on building the case for it. Also regular computer use quite a lot of power, so running it 24/7 shows on the electric bill. This NAS device is like a mini computer. It has 400Mhz Arm processor and 128Mb of RAM. The operating system is Linux. It’s power consumption is about 21 watts so it’s not going to be as big of an issue.

By default it only supports the basic NAS functionality of being a simple file storage. However I have some more advanced features in mind like SVN server and BitTorrent client. To make those features available you have to do a bit of hacking. I installed FreeLink which is a custom firmware containing the latest stable Debian build. After that you can install pretty much anything on the box.

SSH connection to the box after FreeLink upgrade:

Here’s a very good site that is dedicated on hacking Buffalo’s NAS devices. You can find FreeLink and many step by step instructions there.

NAS-Central
http://nas-central.org/