Tinker Talk

Raspberry PI as Media streamer (Xbmc) and Printer Server (Cups)

2014-10-12T18:09:00.001-07:00

I started out my Rasberry PI adventure by installing OpenElect to use the Rasberry Pi Model B to be used only as a streamer. OpenElect is a strip down single purpose linux distribution which sole purpose is to run XBMC to be used as a entertainment media center. This setup was perfect, OpenElect is very smooth and very stable entertainment media center. At the time i bought the raspberry pi, I also experimented with the Raspbmc. Raspbmc video streaming was equally impressive, but the menu navigation was very annoying. My guess is that Model B could not cope with the performance requirements for the menu display and navigation for raspbmc. OpenElect in the other hand was very good, menu transitions, and display was very smooth.

Recently i purchased a Model B+ to be used as a printer server for iOS devices. my current networked printer does not support the AirPrint format. So, i embarked on another quest. Installing rasbian on the new raspberry pi was a simple matter, i simply copied, the raspbian wheeze image and used the dd command to copy to the sdcard. once the raspberry pi booted up, i followed the instructions to install cups printer server. I read many blogs on how to do it. so, i'm not going to detail the process here. to my surprise just by installing the cups printer server was enough for my iOS devices to see the printer and be able to print to it. So, i guess that many people had been doing this for a while now, since some of those blogs include instructions on setting up avahi and other scripts to add the bounjour protocol to the printer server. But in my case, it was not needed.

So, i was pretty happy with this setup. however, since i now had two raspberry pi it seems such a waste to leave it at that. so i decided to re-do the new raspberry pi to be both the XBMC streamer and the printer server. An advantage of this setup is that my raspberry pi is always on when something needs to be printed and i would need one less plug. So i started, by installing xbmc on the raspbian. However, i had some problems trying to get the xbmc to start on its own. so then i quickly went to use raspbmc. raspbmc like i mentioned before had some problems when i first tryed it on the original Model B, however, i runs way smoother on the Model B+. so again the process, was very straight forward, copy the raspbmc image, and use the python script to do the installation onto the sdcard.

once that was completed, i went ahead and booted up the raspberry pi, and installation was quick, but require some attention, since there are questions that need to be answered. then i used apt-get to install cups printer server, made the necessary changes to the cups configuration and then went ahead and installed my printer, i must make a note here, since it took me several tries to get it correctly, since there were two printer drivers, i had to select the hpipc vs hpcups.

so, now that everything is working as expected, i'm left with one extra raspberry pi to play around with.

Rasberry PI Media Player/Streamer

2013-02-23T22:12:00.000-08:00

This has been by far the best easies experience making a media streamer.

I purchased the Raspberry PI form Element 14 website which was $35 dollars for the Version B model. I purchased a clear case, usb cable as well as the power adapter just for the sake of completeness. I ended up paying like around $60 for the all of that plus shipping. still was $40 cheaper than buying an apple tv (2nd gen) and far easier to get XBMC installed on it.

The unit itself took very long to arrive, however when it arrived i had it running by the end of the same day. The major problem that i faced with it was to connect a wifi adapter since the usb does not provide sufficient power for it.

I ended up not using a wifi adapter, and instead i used the ethernet cable connected to a bridge, but he nice thing about my set up is that the power comes from the tv. so the Rasberry PI get power when the TV turns on.

the unit itself boots up pretty fast and its seems very reliable, the menu interface is nothing but great, no choppiness, it is very smooth. sound from HDMI is great. The only problem that i saw (or better heard) is that the analog sound was not clear, but i'm not sure if that is because of my TV.

Maxell SSB-1 Maxsound Soundbar Tabletop Speaker w/ Built-in Subwoofer (High Gloss Finish)

2012-08-13T09:52:00.001-07:00

Recently i bought the Maxell SSB-1 in an effort to augment the sound form my pitiful westinghouse TV, only to find that the sound bar's sound is even more pitiful. i do not recommend this sound bar except if you are going to use it with something that has even smaller speakers like a ipad or phone.

this sound bar only has two analog lines in, no hdmi, digital or optical inputs. The looks are really great and stylish however, I'm very disappointed with the performance.

Apple TV Jailbreak iOS5.1 untethered (5.1.1 update)

2012-05-25T14:17:00.001-07:00

This is what we have been waiting for... and untethered jailbreak for iOS5.1

Firecore just released the untethered version of their jailbreak. so far i've been using the tethered jailbreak provided by firecore. i'm a little concerned that the new jailbreak will break my setup again since many people have complained that they can not install xbmc on it.

-- Update --
now that there is another untethered update i ventured and tried to update my atv2 to untethered jailbreak. since because of blackouts and stuff, i need to keep booting it up with my laptop.

i updated to the new season pass tool for my mac and then run it to generete the ipsw file. it did with no problem. but the season pass tool script to upload via itunes failed to execute properly. i read that the script does not work well with Mountain Lion. Since i know that season pass created the ipsw file in the same location as before. i just opened itunes and put the atv in dfu mode. next itunes recognized the "device in dfu mode" and presents the restore screen for the apple tv. so i just pressed the option key and clicked on the restore button. this opens finder so you can browse for the ipsw file. once you select the ipsw file you want to update then it just went on and try to restore the firmware.

some problems that i run into while doing the firmware update were the infamous errors 1602,1604 for 1602 i remembered that it had something to do with the apple server for firmware validation... so to solve that problem you have to check that the /etc/hosts file does not have the cidia ip address for the gs.apple.com dns. In my case it was put there by tiny umbrella application that i used to update the firmware earlier. once i removed the entry on the hosts file. the firmware update seemed to proceed, except that i got the 1604 error which seemed a little more odd since according to apple website means that there is a timing issue with the usb cable, so they just tell you to try a different port or a different cable. since i know that my cable is ok since i used it to flash the firmware before, then i was a little frustrated. but once method you can use to test your cable is to just let itunes restore the official firmware to the atv. that way if its successful, it means that your cable is good.

another reason to let it update the official firmware is to let the atv be in a 'good' state so when you go to flash it with the hacked firmware you just created with season pass then it should work correctly.

and i think that is what happened in my case, after like 10 different times trying to flash the season pass image, i flashed the official ipsw, then the next time i flashed the season pass ipsw it passes the point of failure.

after all this pain and suffering, you should back up your ipsw, your apple tv shsh file (tiny umbrella) and the xbmc catalog.

so until next time, its all couch surfing ....

setting up a bridge for your network

2012-05-11T22:01:00.000-07:00

to bridge the gap between network devices that are not wireless n or to extend your network to other rooms or around the house without running ethernet cables around the house.... you can create a wireless bridge with a spare wireless n router and dd-wrt firmware. in my case I've accumulated some routers that i can use as wireless bridge. the first thing to do is to check if your wireless router is supported by looking it up in the dd-wrt database. Then follow the instructions to flash your routers and set them as wireless bridges. it is easy to do, but it requires to follow some technical instructions and sometimes patience since the instructions may be confusing.

this is my setup:

The main router is a Cisco-Linksys E3000 Wireless-N Router. since i flashed most of my routers to dd-wrt i decided to stick with it for the main router aswell, for consistency. It is capable of wireless n at 5 ghz and n,g at 2.4 ghz plus gigabit ethernet. Connected to it are a D-Link DNS-321 2-Bay Network Attached Storage at gigabit ethernet, Apple TV MC572LL/A (2010) [OLD VERSION] at wireless n 5ghz, a PC at wireless g 2.4 ghz, another PC at wireless n 5 ghz, a tablet wireless n 5 ghz and finally two wireless bridges. Bridge one is a Cisco-Linksys E2000 Advanced Wireless-N Router with dd-wrt (capable of wireless n at 5 ghz or 2.4 ghz) currently using 5 ghz. Connected to the bridge via ethernet are an Xbox 360 4GB Console and a playstation 2. The second bridge is a Cisco-Linksys WRT54G2 Wireless-G Broadband Router with dd-wrt (capable of wireless g at 2.4 ghz). Connected to this bridge via ethernet is a network printer.

Bridge three is currently in the works. Its an ASUS WL-520GU Wireless Router (capable of wireless g at 2.4 ghz) and i'm planning to connect a USB Camera to it. this router i've flashed with Open-wrt firmware and is currently a wifi radio.

Apple tv jailbreak IOS 5.1

2012-05-10T21:32:00.001-07:00

It happened again, Apple TV crashed and in a desperate move to restore it, the newest iOS got installed. I was dreading my rush actions, so for a couple of weeks i kept postponing fixing the ATV... Lazyness, and also due to incompatibilities with the new iOS.
I really missed my awesome setup. So I decided to give it another shot and jailbreak the now Apple TV with iOS 5.1.

I started with searching on firecore.com website for the new season pass jailbreak tool, since I read the new iOS jailbreak had been released. After I searched for instructions on the procedure, I realized the new jailbreak is a tethered boot, which means that every time the ATV is cold boot started, it needs a computer to be attached by USB cable to boot up. The firecore.com website offers all the instructions necessary and the tool also can be used for the tethered boot after the jailbreak.

So the process went something like this...
I started the season pass jailbreak tool and clicked on create ispw button.
I waited for the tool to finish creating the jailbreaked image.
Then the tool asked to attach the ATV via micro USB cable.
After that the tool waits for the ATV to be in DFU mode, which you can accomplish by pointing the remote to the Apple TV and pressing the MENU and PLAY keys and holding them for 7 seconds. When the tool detects the ATV it loads a special boot loader.
Then the tool launches iTunes to load the image.
iTunes goes ahead and uncompressed the image and verifies the image with the Apple website.
Once the image is verified iTunes loads the image into the ATV.
After the load is complete the ATV is restarted.

Note: I did have problems and was getting 1600, 1604, etc error in iTunes, when loading the image, but it was because, i forgot that i have used tiny umbrella before and the hosts file of my machine was changed to point the gs.apple.com to the cydia website. and i was getting the error because of that. The solution was to comment out the entries tiny umbrella had made. and re download the ipsw image.

Now is time for the tethered boot.
I Pressed the tethered boot button on the tool and attach the power cable.
In order for the tool to detect the ATV, the MENU and PLAY buttons must be pressed again for 7 seconds.
This time the tool boots up the Apple TV with the new image.
You can double check the jailbreak by inspecting the settings button, which shape the firecore logo.
And that's it, the ATV is jail broken.

Next to install xbmc i checked the xbmc forum for the instructions.
I opened a secure shell to the apple tv and issued some command to install the xbmc app. These are the commands i used on the terminal.
ssh root@{apple tv address} <enter>
password <enter>

then entered each of these lines.

apt-get update

mkdir -p /Applications/AppleTV.app/Appliances

apt-get install org.xbmc.xbmc-atv2

mkdir -p /Applications/XBMC.frappliance

wget http://dl.dropbox.com/u/14341410/org.xbmc.xbmc-atv2_11.0-3_iphoneos-arm.deb

dpkg -i org.xbmc.xbmc-atv2_11.0-3_iphoneos-arm.deb

rm org.xbmc.xbmc-atv2_11.0-3_iphoneos-arm.deb

Slow Context Menu on windows XP

2012-01-04T10:13:00.000-08:00

I've been living in a world of pain, ever since my computer at work started to freeze or pause for a long time whenever i right clicked on the desktop or any folder for that matter. My workaround for the time being had been to open a command prompt and do what ever i needed Unix style.

Just today, i finally had some free time to look at this issue (myself) since IT disavowed me ;( last year around November...

The solution i found worked for my case. It consists of removing entries from the context menu via registry edits. the problem was that i had used some tools that resided on the network and somehow were added to the context menu with the network path. I discovered later that some of the network paths were no longer valid since some network folders were retired or moved from our network.

Google turned out some free tools available to scan my registry that allowed me to fix the problem.
i found these tools called Registry Scanner and Shell Menu New from NirSoft that worked very well.

I used the Registry Scanner to look for the Universal Naming Convention UNC symbol '\\' and this turned out all of the entries on my registry that had network paths on it. I noticed that it also picked up other entries, so i had to manually remove each invalid network path entry.

The Shell Menu New tool allowed me to clean up my new context menu to only show the items i most frequently use.

that is all... easy peace!!!

Install Rosewill-RNX-MiniN1-RWLD-110001 usb network adapter in Ubuntu

2011-12-13T21:21:00.000-08:00

Today, I received the usb Rosewill wireless adapter that i ordered, and plugged into my Ubuntu laptop, only to find that it did not work.

After finding out on blogs and the rosewill website, it seems that you have to compile the driver for your distro. However Rosewill makes it really easy, and provides a script that does all the work for you. All you have to do is download the driver zip file, unzip it and run the install script.

here is the link to the Rosewill 8192cu driver version 3.3.0_2971

1) download the driver
2) unzip
3) on the command line make the install.sh executable (chmod +x install.sh)
4) run the executable. (./install.sh)

Black and Decker Toaster cable is overheating

2011-12-09T09:10:00.001-08:00

This is an easy one. (yes i know its kind of disgustingly dirty...)

Our faithful Black n Decker (TRO570) easy clean toaster's power cord got burned. It turned out to be a very good toaster oven, since we've had it for over lets say ten years....
But, recently, the toaster's cord got really hot every time after we used it and over time, the cord burned and the cable was exposed. I think its just the heavy use that has made the cord fragile, and pulling the cord when is hot is not a good idea...
so we started looking for the replacement, only to find out that today, they are even more cheaply made than lets say ten years ago and they are far more expensive for a decent toaster broiler.

So, i decided to replace the cord instead and save some bucks at the same time. For the cord replacement i used a generic computer power cord, since i have tons of them lying around. (not literal)

I began by cleaning the toaster, which is no longer easy to do ;). Then i opened it up, and looked at the cables and mechanism, since i don't want to mess anything up.

It turned out to be super easy, the power cord is attached to the toaster with sliding connectors. The brass one corresponds to the hot wire and the other one is the neutral wire.

So i cut up the computer cable, and found a black, white and green cables. then I did a quick lookup of the color coding. black is the hot wire, white is the neutral and green is ground. (standard US color coding)

so i cut up the original sliding connectors from the original cable and soldered then to the corresponding cables.

then connected them to the toaster and tested it out, before putting everything together and voila, everything works as expected.

wifi radio

2011-11-15T20:52:00.001-08:00

TTL header to adapter to serial com port

A while back, i found this project on line, where this guy (MightyOhm), teaches you how to make a wifi radio, out of a wireless router. It is a very interesting project, me and my son thought that we could do it just as a summer project. so we went and got this cheap ASUS router, open it up and solder the serial headers on the board. We didn't realise that the computer can not directly communicate with the router since the voltage levels are different, but as expected the mightyohm site tells you all about it and even which cable adapter to get. After connecting the router to the pc we could see the router's output on a computer terminal.

The hardest part was to compile the image and flash it after we got he OpenWrt Source.( basically over writing the custom firmware OpenWRT to a ASUS WL-520GU Wireless Router ) Which in Leiman's terms becomes a Linux box.

After the OpenWRT is installed, we can add programs to the router like a music player client and server; to play music via a usb sound card connected to some cheap pc speakers that i had laying around. The sound card is listed in the website as well. It is a pretty awesome project, like i said.

The last part of the project which is not required since you can use your computer terminal to view the song information. For this we used an Arduino UNO board with a lcd screen. there are plenty of sample sketches to run on the Arduino uno with lcd, but you have to take in account that some are for 4 line lcd and there are some fancy sketches out there that can scroll the text if it is bigger than the screen size. we didn't connect any potentiometers (knobs) to the arduino to control volume or change stations, since we got a little lazy at the end.

These are pictures and video of our attempt to make this project. It was an amazing experience, one always wonder what can be done with this little router, and usb port... and my son and i had fun making it and this it is a cool project.

30 inch Cooktop replacement

2011-11-15T20:20:00.001-08:00

The close to 10 years that we have been in our house, we have used the existing kenmore cooktop, which seemed ok when we moved in... over the years, a knob broke, and the grease, and dirt became very difficult to clean. we just couldn't wait to get rid of it and buy a new one.

This is the disgusting view of our Kenmore cooktop, missing knob, and the dirt of 10 years or cooking.... plus what ever time the previous owner had it for....

Last weekend, we went to Sears, to check out the prices and the models they had available, so that we can buy during black friday. However, we found this cooktop, which was an open item. So we decide to take it, and give it a shot. The new cooktop is Whirlpool G7CE3034XB , its a radian heat type, so the heating elements are under the glass, and they do get pretty hot i must say. it does have a temperature warning light that tells you when its "save" to handle. The knobs are dishwasher save, and the glass is easy to clean.

You may have noticed that even though the cooktop is supposedly the same size as the old one (30"). the new cooktop is about 3/4 of a inch bigger than the old one. So we had to cut the counter about that much to fit it in and because of the tile, i used one of those expensive diamond blades on the skill saw.

Kindle fire tablet

2011-11-15T19:38:00.001-08:00

Today we received the Kindle Fire, Full Color 7" Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi , and we had a chance to look at it. its fast, pretty responsive and light, at only 7 inch. There are two speakers in the side. The tablet runs android operating system, but has a custom skin from amazon.

Speakers

Back logo

The amazon premier movies comes with the kindle fire, so you are able to watch movies free. For this test i selected Ip man, the loading took a long while (longer than netflix) and then the movie started, it looked grainy, and somewhat pixelated, but that may be due to our limited speed.

can not browse windows network after Ubuntu 11.10 upgrade

2011-11-12T16:47:00.001-08:00

I recently upgraded one of my computers at home with Ubuntu 11.10 (the latest and greatest), just to find that i was not able to browse my NAS from my home network. It seems that in Ubuntu 11.10 the samba network rules/properties do not work the same as in previous versions of Ubuntu.

the fix consists of editing the /etc/hosts file and appending the address and machine name to the file.
in this format:
<IP ADDRESS> <Machine Name>
example:
192.168.0.100 Ubuntu-desktop

this seemed to fix the problem for me where, I was not able to browse my home network.
luckily, I have my router setup with reserved IP addresses for my devices, for example. the Apple TV, NAS, printer, etc.

but if you have dynamically assigned addresses then this fix might not work.

Kenmore Elite Dishwasher

2011-10-23T13:13:00.000-07:00

My Kenmore dishwasher has worked diligently for the last 8-9 years without complain. However, in the last month or so, my little helper has not been washing the dishes well. The dishes on the top rack never get washed, and the ones on the bottom sometimes are dirty as well.
After a little 'research', it has come to my attention that it may be a simple part to be replaced. The symptoms are very consisten on all other websites and forums where people talk about the dishwasher problems....the top rack of dishes is not washed and food is allover the place.

I disassembled the interior of the dishwasher to see if some parts are broken or missing, and i found two things wrong, that seem simple enough to fix.

The first one is a part called "the chopper", which was broken. The Chopper consists a metal grill and blade with a plastic shaft. The clip that retains the metal part to the shaft can no longer hold the parts on the shaft since the plastic on the shaft was eroded probably due to heavy use. Because of this part not doing its job, some food was stuck to the chopper grill, clogging the supply of water to the upper part of the dishwasher.

The other problem was that the spinner at the top of the dishwasher was missing completely. (but somewhat not significant)

I went online to this place were they have lots of appliance parts and i check out the parts that i want to replace, then total comes out to a fraction this with shipping and tax included. Now what remains is to replace the parts and test. not bad considering that i thought about replacing the damn thing all together for about $300+.

Replacing the parts was a snap but it took me an additional 30 mins because i decided to replace the door gasket as well.

The door gasket had been showing signs of wear and tear. One problem that i found was that once replaced the door would not close, it kept opening by itself. i read some more about this problem on the forums and solved it by soaking the gasket in hot water for about an hour, and putting it in place and i also replace the strike just in case.

In the end, with all the parts replaced, and the door not opening by itself... everything seems back to normal. All that for about $43 total, some patience and spare time.

GoodNAS for movie streaming

2011-10-06T13:25:00.000-07:00

I purchased an inexpensive D-Link DNS-321 2-Bay Network Attached Storage in 2008 and installed a couple of 7200 RPM 500 GB Seagate hard drives that i had lying around. I know for a fact that Seagate drives are loud, so at first, I didn't mind the noise of either the Drives and the fan the NAS had. I thought that it was normal for the NAS to try to keep itself cool. But even with ffp installed my NAS would not keep the temperature down and the fan would be running at a high rate with a high pitch noise. I went as far a drilling holes on the NAS to help the very pittifun D-link air intake pull more air into the unit...
Ever since , I've used it to stream movies to a D-Link media player (which was awful), XBOX 360(ok, but many movies did not work, a Western Digital TV(probably the best movie streaming experience except for the interface which sucks), and most recently an Apple TV2 (good interface, and with some hacks ,plays all movies now even with iOS5.1).
Just recently, I was running out of storage space and I jumped on a sale for a 2 TB drive. I decided to buy the Western Digital 2 TB Green Drive to replace the 500 GB drives on it. Boy, was it a great surprise! The green drive has made with my little NAS smooth and quiet. First of all, the drive is very quiet (5900 RPM) and keeps itself cool better due to the lower RPM, so the NAS fan is not constantly spinning at a high RPM.
The noise level, overall has dropped significantly. Now, I am very happy with the drive so far; speed is good enough for movie streaming, even in HD. in the future when i again run out of space, i will purchase the same drive to fill the other empty spot.

Apple TV goodness

2011-10-01T10:37:00.000-07:00

Just when you think that all is gone, then we get pleasantly surprised... ;)

After feeling disappointed with vanilla Apple TV. I installed a custom version of the atv firmware and XBMC a few months back and had a pretty good setup to watch movies streamed wirelessly from my DNS-321 Network Attached Storage.

Recently, I was tinkering with my Apple TV; I just wanted to install a particular plug-in to listen to music. That is when everything started to go to hell. One thing after another, started to fail, until I decided to reset the atv to factory default.

Right after the reset, I realized itunes had upgraded the firmware along to the latest and greatest release. And when i went to re-flash my custom firmware version, which i had built using the pwnage tool, itunes complained that atv was not eligible for the custom firmware version.

After some preliminary research,I discovered that one tool by firecore.com was able to make a custom image for the current version on my atv. so i went ahead and got the tool, built the image with the latest firmware and tried to flash the atv. Same result. I was starting to get pissed and frustrated. why did i even try to do anything in the first place? of course i tried several times with the same result.

A week went by, and i had not found any solution to my problem.

so, on my day off, i researched some more (and by research i mean googled), and found a solution to the not eligible for requested build error of flashing with my custom image. Apparently, I'm not the only one who tries to do this sort of thing. The solution, involved commenting out the apple server on the host file of the os. "It can not be that simple", I thought. but it turns out, it is that simple.

so after the successfull flash, i went on and ssh to the atv and got greeted with a prompt. So, all that i needed now was to get nitoTV and reinstall all the plugins that i had previously installed.

and, that goes to show me, that patience and knowledge payoff, so for me life is good again....

Child Safe Internet Browsing

2011-09-27T19:41:00.000-07:00

As any concerned parent would know there comes the time when we must childproof our computer from explicit content. Children are more and more technology aware. Recently I've been researching what is the easiest way and the most effective way to make the internet safer for my family.

Take advantage of openDNS content filtering.

Go to http://www.opendns.com/ and register a free account.
Go to manage the account for your ip address.
Choose the filtering level you are most confortable with or customize your own level.
If you have a router then configure the open DNS ip addresses as your DNS addresses. This configuration will be effective when the computer gets the assigned DNS from the router's DHCP.
To connect other computer without the filtering you only need to manually assign a different DNS ip address such as google DNS or your ISPs.

To minimize configurations on several browsers, only use one web browser and install web filtering content add-ons. For example Firefox has some nice add-ons to filter web content. be aware that the add ons sometimes take a few seconds to kick in on the first request.

Use safe searching on your search engine and lock it: many of the popular search engines already provide the save search mode, to protect wondering eyes from explicit search results.

Google SafeSearch - go to your google preferences page then select the filtering level you want. The google content filtering is pretty effective, it filters images, websites, and text.

Bing Safe Search - Bing and Yahoo also provide safe search feature, and in a similar manner go to the bing preferences screen and select the appropriate filtering level.

block explicit content from other sources: sites like YouTube offer a content filtering feature that can be turned on.

YouTube - search for the "Safety Mode: Off" link at the bottom of the page. and turn it ON. furthermore if you login you can lock this mode.