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The snag list

October 14th, 2008

Ok, it is time to admit it. All is not well in the geeky home. There are little niggles, everythings working but it’s not slick and it’s not well integrated enough. It’s time to start finding some solutions. Here are the snags, if you know a way I can overcome any of them, then let me know in a comment on this post, email me, or twitter me.

There’s an annoying .net framework error popping up on the Media Center every so often.
My Harmony remote isn’t quite set up well enough. It doesn’t work well when the Media Center is already on. The problem is that I’ve installed a standby saving power bar, which I want to keep, but it doesn’t play nice with the remote.
I need to find a way to ARM the Y-CAM when we leave the house and disarm it when we return. Or I need to move it to an area with slightly less traffic, i.e. where we don’t walk all the time so that my mailbox doesn’t fillup!
I need to be able to view the Y-CAM stream on my Windows Mobile device, or at least be able to see the latest image. That might mean configuring FTP, which means finding a secure FTP server on the net.
I want to workout the overall power consumption of the kit in the house. I might be scared.
The TV Arial just doesn’t seem to be quite right, it’s a few degrees off! Time for cable?
My Windows Home Server is using a bit too much power, 40kwh in standby – that needs to come down.

Technorati Tags: y-cam,media center

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Posted in Cool geek stuff, Home Server, Home automation, Media Center, Windows Mobile

Y-CAM

October 13th, 2008

For a while now I’ve been looking at some home monitoring systems and how I can best integrate them into my digital experience. Previously I’ve used Yawcam with some pretty great results but currently I’m trying to reduce my carbon foot print and I want to make everything that has to run as low power consumption a possible. For that reason I really wanted an IP Webcam that didn’t need a PC powered on all the time.

Having done loads of looking about the only really good thing I could find was from Y-CAM. It’s now been delivered and it’s installed. I picked the Y-CAM Black and bought from ebuyer, since it was about £30 cheaper than everywhere else.

Having installed it, at first it really wasn’t a great experience, it didn’t like my router and it brought down the whole network…I’ve done a firmware update now and all seems to work well. Very well.

This camera sees really well in the dark with its knight vision, and the management software is pretty good. Actually it’s a breeze to setup. It can do motion alerts to email, which again was simple to setup and allows me to select 4 regions of the picture to watch for motion.

Two I need to work through at the moment:

I need to setup FTP publishing to somewhere so that I can view the camera at work since I can’t see the active X control
I need to get an app for my WinMo phone that allows me to view mp4 encoded RTSP…unfortunately HTC Streaming media won’t cut it.

Finally I’ve also emailed the manufacturer to find out if they have an API, so that I can develop something to easily arm the motion detection.

Technorati Tags: Y-cam,ip webcam,camera

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Posted in Cool geek stuff, Home automation, Media Center, Mobile, Windows Mobile

Long term test – the new Jawbone

June 30th, 2008

When I was in the states a few weeks ago I picked up the new Jawbone from an At&T store. A small sleek black unit, with hidden buttons, leather bound ear loop and the killer feature “Noise Assassin” technology. Well I’ve been using this device for lots of phone calls, from both my BlackBerry pearl and my T-Mobile Touch Plus (HTC Touch Dual) and I’m now ready to talk about using the device on a day to day basis.

You can read the full review at Mobile Tech Addicts…

Technorati Tags: jawbone,review,2,new,bluetooth headset

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Posted in Cool geek stuff, Mobile, Technology, Windows Mobile, iPhone

Tags: jawbone review

Squezebox part 1: Squeezebox Duet Installation Experience

June 10th, 2008

Technorati Tags: squeezebox,squeezecenter,mcesoftsqueeze,softsqueeze,fry’s

So time for my long awaited Squeezebox Duet review, actually make that series of posts. I first read about the Squeezebox when it was announced, and Automatedhome.co.uk also has great review.

Whilst I was in the states I picked up a Squeezebox Duet from Fry’s in Seattle, it was actually on sale on Memorial Day weekend, so it cost $349 + TAX. This thing is brilliant!

When I got it home it was a doddle setup. First off, I bought this in the US, so power needed to be sorted out. The power supplies are international and can take anything from 100 to 240v input, just a case of changing to the UK adapter.

The next thing to do was to install the SqueezeCenter 7 software on the Media Center. Again a simple process, no install glitches – but I did have to manually start the scan of my music library. About 20 minutes later it finished and had catalogued all the albums.

Next I installed softsqueeze3 on the Media Center. This is a cool bit of software that emulates a squeeze box. After configuring it with a name and pointing it at the SqueezeCenter installation, a web address on port 9000, it was able to access the media fine. So I turned on the Duet controller.

The controller picked up my Wifi network and asked me for the security setup. Then it found my SqueezeCenter server automatically, and, I was a bit surprised about this, it let me select my SoftSqueeze installation on the controller. All of a sudden my Media Center was pumping out tunes controlled by my Squeezebox Controller!!

Very cool. This thing can control any squeezebox!

So I went into the kitchen and setup a micro hifi and plugged in all the stuff for the Squeezebox Reciever. I pressed the button on the front and… the controller sprang into life and picked up the receiver, automatically configuring it! Next thing I know I’ve got some Fun Lovin Criminals bouncing out of the stereo in the Kitchen…and it sounds, GREAT!

Wondering what else this thing can do I found the ability to sync the output from the Kitchen Squeezebox Reciever with the Softsqueeze installation in the lounge! This is going to be great when we have a party.

Next I went into SqueezeCenter, which is really the heart of everything and found that I can control all the squeezeboxes through the web interface. Including being able to make changes to them. So I did, I changed the names, the Softsqueeze to “Lounge” and the Duet Reciever to “Kitchen”.

This is becoming one cool whole house audio system. Need to sort out Media Center integration though, enter MCE Softaqueeze.

How would I rate ease of installation 5 stars, Ease of use 5 stars. I love this thing.

Comming soon:

Part 2 – Overview of the Squeezbox controller

Part 3 – Looking around SqueezeCenter

Part 4 – Extensions

Part 5 – The wish list

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Posted in Cool geek stuff, How I Use..., Media Center, Technology, squeezebox

iPlayer on MCE – very promising indeed

May 16th, 2008

I picked up on this from Ian’s blog but this has got to be one of the best Media Center plug-ins in development at the moment. If you’re in the uk you’ll have heard of the BBC iPlayer, basically we have a “uniquely” funded broadcaster and they are making much of their content available for free in the UK.

Martin Millmore has created this great plug-in as the beeb have been a bit slow to react to making a Media Center interface for iPlayer, although they have made one available for wii, I must sort that out (not to self). What I love about this is that its nice and clean and installed really easily. Lots of the other hacks out there to get this working require the local iPlayer client, this plug-in doesn’t require that as it will display the stream’s that iPlayer offers.

The streams are by the way, watchable, not amazing but not bad either, I was able to watch the Madonna performance at The Big Weekend last week absolutely fine.

There is a minor niggle with the plug-in in that it needs the mouse to start the stream, not a big problem as there is software to make the Media Center remote work as a mouse.

Martin, if you read this post, then there is one improvement I’d like to see…a blue background.

Technorati Tags: media center,iplayer,streaming

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Posted in Cool geek stuff, Media Center, Technology

Freesat is comming…finally, oh and a recommendation for a FreeView aerial

May 6th, 2008

Stuff-em-up-the-hill-backwards has an interesting piece with links etc, on Freesat’s launch today in the UK.

From my point of view I can’t wait to see support for this in Media Center, there are some codec changes that need to occur for MC to be able to view the Sat channels, which I think are MPEG-4. Hopefully this will come from the Direct-TV changes being made for the US. This will give us HD TV in Media Center in the UK quite nicely.

Also over the weekend I upgraded my parents Digital Terrestrial aerial with one with a really great, and now VERY highly recommended bit of kit from Maplin. I bought this unit, Gigaboost, it gives a 16dB boost to the signal and is simply the best Freeview reception I’ve ever seen!! Installation was fairly simple, following electrocuting myself on a mains cable loose and un-terminated in the loft! It’s powered mast head amplified unit.

Technorati Tags: aeriel,freeview,maplin,satalite,freesat,mediacenter

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Posted in Cool geek stuff, Media Center, Technology

PointUI gets an update to make it look WM7 ish

May 6th, 2008

Over the weekend I had some time to catch up and found that PointUI has been updated to version 2.5 and with that it’s seen quite a major overhaul of the UI. It now looks kinda WinMo 7 ish in a way. They’ve split the Applications button and built in a really pretty contacts manager. This has always been one of my favourites since it came out but I’d recommend this to anyone looking to make their WinMo device more friendly.

In other news HTC are due to announce their “Manilla” or “Touchflo 2″ interface today, so we’ll see how that pans out.

Technorati Tags: touchflo,pointui,manilla,winmo,windows mobile

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Posted in Cool geek stuff, Mobile, Windows Mobile

Wii-Fi Woes

April 29th, 2008

We just got a Wii. It’s so cool! What wasn’t so cool was the wifi situation.

As you’ll know I’m using DDWRT on my Buffalo router, I’m gonna change to Tomato soon as something keeps dropping out, apparently Wii has a problem with this out of the box! I’m just trying a little fix, that’s posted just here. I’m writing this as I do run through it….

I’ve disabled my encryption, yikes! And I’ve now got the Wii connecting and updating firmware.

Cool, that’s done, now to turn the encryption back on (WPA2-PSK TKIP). Back into … oh need to set my laptop to no encryption…back into DDWRT control panel and encryption back on!

Now to change the settings on the laptop to encrypted, then on the Wii … umm that’s a no go. Wha! the routers vanished! Must have restated itself.

Lets try changing it to WPA2-AES+TKIP.

Wii = YES!

Laptop = YES!

Right, now to see what this Wii can do…expect updates

Technorati Tags: wii,ddwrt,dd-wrt,wifi

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Posted in Cool geek stuff, How I Use..., Technology, wii