So last night I set up MythTV. If you have never heard of it, it is basically a premade package for linux based computers so you can use them as a DVR. There is a lot of really good documentation out for it, so any problems you have can usually be solved pretty quick. I bought an Pinnacle 150e video capture card that I used with my XP box for a while. Once I got to college, I took it with me. It turns out that Ubuntu recognizes it right out of the box, which is awesome. And, to simplify things even further, you can download a version of Ubuntu that has everything preconfigured with simple wizards to change settings and stuff called MythBuntu. In a matter of a couple of hours, I burned the ISO, installed it to my closet server, and plugged in my tuner. After choosing some basic settings, I did a channel scan and was watching TV on my new 22" monitor. Now, there are still some things I need to tweak. For instance, there is no audio right now and some of the upper channels are not coming in very clear. Both of these problems should be pretty easy to fix.
As for things to add, I have some ideas. First, I need to be able to connect to it remotely. I have been using a free online service called LogMeIn for my laptop, but it only works for Windows and Mac. So I installed VNC and SSH, and I plan to just tunnel VNC securely through SSH. I may need to install DynDNS because the network is DHCP of course. I only have one wired connection that I can use, so I have to use a switch. However, the wired network requires that when you plug in, you have to sign on, do a security scan, and then restart the network. But, the only way it can tell if a new computer has been plugged in is a new MAC address. So any other computer I plug in, I just spoof the MAC address to match my laptop. That way, I can hot swap which computer the LAN is on and not have to sign in and wait and then wait some more and then restart the NIC.
The other thing I need to add is more space. Right now, it has a whopping 28 gigs free, which is not a lot to record on. I have another drive, but I'm not sure that it works. I also have my external 500 gig drive. I plan on plugging in that drive to the MythTV box and setting it up as a NAS. Then I can record to it and read and write to it from anywhere. The only down side is that it is not nearly as fast to add movies and stuff to it from over a network rather than USB. What I may end up doing is buying a smaller 500 gig drive, the ones that don't need external power and can fit in your pocket. I would use that to take with me for movies and stuff, and then leave the big one plugged in to a NAS.
The last thing that would be cool is another tuner card. If I can get another one like the one I have for cheap on Amazon, then I can actually record 2 things at once, or record and watch at the same time. If I can get a video out on one of the cards, then we can use the TV. Of course with all of that, I will need several coaxial y splitters.
And this is all just for the MythTV box. If I had another couple boxes, I could have a separate frontend and backend, a smoothwall box to use as a router with a bunch of NICs, and a box with Server 2008 running several virtual servers like a Samba and Web server. At this point, I would have a giant network closet. And if I had room, I would also add the cluster as part of the subnet. Then I would really be cooking. Connect remotely to the MythTV box, watch a little TV, start recording a show or 2, then administrate my website, and check the status of the Folding@Home session running on the cluster (or if I need something cracked, send the hash to the cluster). But, unfortunately, none of this will happen until I either get a house, apartment, or random free space with air conditioning, free power, and a free really fast connection. Oh well, its still fun to plan.
Hopefully I will be improving the MythTV box though, because I can actually do that.
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Battlebots FTW
Wow, its been a while since I posted last. I attribute that to the 3 tests I had this week. But, as for projects and the like, here you go:
Last week at BattleBots, we decided to to change the weight from 120 lbs to 220 lbs. The motor we are using is 30 lb and gets to 2600 rpm. It will be, in a word, ridiculous. It will be a full body spinner. We are working on getting a final design in CAD and I will post the CAD files when it is complete. We should start building around February 17 (thats when the tools will start to be free, another robotics team is using them now). We also plan to enter a medium weight bot and maybe a couple of ant weights. I've been thinking about designs for an ant weight. I actually like the idea of making a miniature version of our heavyweight. The team entered one last year that worked pretty well, basically a square with a saw blade set at a 45 degree angle. I was also thinking about using the gas engine from a small r/c car. I'm not sure how much they weight, but I know they can get an r/c car up to 50-60 mph. I figure if we hook that guy up to a blade of some kind, or use it to spin the bot, we could have a nice edge over everyone else using electric. One of the guys on our group is a grease monkey, so we could definitely get it working.
I'm tired now, so I'll do another brain dump soon.
Last week at BattleBots, we decided to to change the weight from 120 lbs to 220 lbs. The motor we are using is 30 lb and gets to 2600 rpm. It will be, in a word, ridiculous. It will be a full body spinner. We are working on getting a final design in CAD and I will post the CAD files when it is complete. We should start building around February 17 (thats when the tools will start to be free, another robotics team is using them now). We also plan to enter a medium weight bot and maybe a couple of ant weights. I've been thinking about designs for an ant weight. I actually like the idea of making a miniature version of our heavyweight. The team entered one last year that worked pretty well, basically a square with a saw blade set at a 45 degree angle. I was also thinking about using the gas engine from a small r/c car. I'm not sure how much they weight, but I know they can get an r/c car up to 50-60 mph. I figure if we hook that guy up to a blade of some kind, or use it to spin the bot, we could have a nice edge over everyone else using electric. One of the guys on our group is a grease monkey, so we could definitely get it working.
I'm tired now, so I'll do another brain dump soon.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Futuristic
I know CES is over, but it got me thinking. And in honor of it, I present these concepts that we will hopefully see at a CES soon.
1. and eInk book: why just have a kindle when you can have a 500 page book that has double sided eInk displays. The back cover could be a battery. That way, you could keep an entire library in a single book. I like the idea of flipping physical pages in a book. Solid state memory could hold it all, and you could stick in a wifi card so you could download books on the fly like the kindle.
2. a better netbook: CES this year was full of tiny projectors. That coupled with the new nVidia Ion made me think. What if you made something with the form factor of the nVidia Ion with an embedded micro projector. The keyboard could be projected, like the ones that are available for PDAs. It could be powered with a laptop battery. Unfortunately, the micro projectors that are currently out are only able to project a 20" display and probably aren't really bright. Once the second or third generation of these get out, then we can expect a much higher quality display. The Ion can now support 1080p resolution. Once the projectors catch up to this, you could implement a multitouch display. A series of infrared LEDs and receivers on the same side as the projector could allow someone wearing something reflective on the tips of their fingers to interact with the computer. If Synergy is installed on several of these, then you could fling files with your finger to the others. An alternative to the multitouch could be a modification of the laser projected keyboard. I need to do more research on how they work, but if it can detect where your finger is at that resolution, then I think you could make a mouse that worked on similar principals. Perhaps a projected circle that worked like a trackpad.
1. and eInk book: why just have a kindle when you can have a 500 page book that has double sided eInk displays. The back cover could be a battery. That way, you could keep an entire library in a single book. I like the idea of flipping physical pages in a book. Solid state memory could hold it all, and you could stick in a wifi card so you could download books on the fly like the kindle.
2. a better netbook: CES this year was full of tiny projectors. That coupled with the new nVidia Ion made me think. What if you made something with the form factor of the nVidia Ion with an embedded micro projector. The keyboard could be projected, like the ones that are available for PDAs. It could be powered with a laptop battery. Unfortunately, the micro projectors that are currently out are only able to project a 20" display and probably aren't really bright. Once the second or third generation of these get out, then we can expect a much higher quality display. The Ion can now support 1080p resolution. Once the projectors catch up to this, you could implement a multitouch display. A series of infrared LEDs and receivers on the same side as the projector could allow someone wearing something reflective on the tips of their fingers to interact with the computer. If Synergy is installed on several of these, then you could fling files with your finger to the others. An alternative to the multitouch could be a modification of the laser projected keyboard. I need to do more research on how they work, but if it can detect where your finger is at that resolution, then I think you could make a mouse that worked on similar principals. Perhaps a projected circle that worked like a trackpad.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Back
Break is over, so here are the projects that I either made progress on or finished:
-Tiny Mammoth: My friends and I ordered the mammoths (see earlier post) and put them together at my house, and then used my dad’s acrylic from work to encase them. The first attempt did not go well at all. After assembly, he mixed the powder and liquid in a rubber mortar and poured it over the models. He then stuck them in a double boiler so it would react faster. The end result was a block so full of bubbles that it looked exactly like a crouton. So, we ordered more and tried it again, this time at his office. We used scalpels and surgical tweezers to pop the pieces out and then carefully assemble them. I even used a microscope which helped a lot. To encase them, we first laid down a base of powder, then set the mammoth on it, then covered him up in powder. We then squirted the liquid on top and let is seep down by gently squeezing the sides of the mortar. Last time we accidentally used yellow colored liquid, so this time we used clear. After the liquid seeped down, we put them in a pressure pot which applied heat and about 20 psi. Then we popped them out of the mortar and ground them to a square and polished them with pumice. The result was much much better than before. They all turned out really good. The only problem was that they all had a small amount of powder in the very middle of the acrylic that did not get any liquid. Luckily, it wasn’t much and we passed it off as a snow bank that the mammoth was walking through. If we try it again, or with another model, we plan on using an anesthetic needle filled with the liquid to inject to the middle of the powder. Hopefully that will eliminate all dry powder.
-Email alert owl: After much help and time spent on the Hak5 forums, I was unable to get this working 100%. When I tested the circuit I built, I could only get the owl’s eyes to blink and I couldn’t get the head to move. Since it was to be a gift, I didn’t want to give something that didn’t work 100% the way I wanted it to, so the person never saw it. The guy on the forums who was helping me said his worked no problem, but still seemed a little starved for power. I plan on tackling this again when I have taken more classes at Tech to understand how to design circuits to do that kind of thing. But the good news is that I learned a lot about how transistors work and how they can be used, and my friend liked the owl even without my mod.
-Rocket Launcher: I was able to draw up some schematics for my rocket launcher control box. I will be using a kitchen timer to count down and trip a relay that will fire the rocket. If you go to my projects link (in last post) you can look at the schematics. I didn’t have time to fabricate this, but I did get most of the parts. I still need to order the relay and another switch or two.
-Tiny laptop (Acer Aspire One): I did get this for Christmas, but unfortunately, it did not work. So I am now talking with the company I bought it from to try to sort stuff out and get a new one. My friend got his and it worked, so I helped him install Ubuntu 8.10 and install Wine and Skype and update everything. He has now been introduced to the wonderful world of Linux. On a side note, our Xbox 360 broke (error E74) so I also have to be looking for either a cheap new one or decide to pay $94 to get it fixed, or try to fix it myself)
-GBA emulated in a PSP emulated on VirtualBox: Turns out you can’t hack a PSP emulator. Doh!
Everything else didn’t happen either because I didn’t have enough time or money or both.
-Tiny Mammoth: My friends and I ordered the mammoths (see earlier post) and put them together at my house, and then used my dad’s acrylic from work to encase them. The first attempt did not go well at all. After assembly, he mixed the powder and liquid in a rubber mortar and poured it over the models. He then stuck them in a double boiler so it would react faster. The end result was a block so full of bubbles that it looked exactly like a crouton. So, we ordered more and tried it again, this time at his office. We used scalpels and surgical tweezers to pop the pieces out and then carefully assemble them. I even used a microscope which helped a lot. To encase them, we first laid down a base of powder, then set the mammoth on it, then covered him up in powder. We then squirted the liquid on top and let is seep down by gently squeezing the sides of the mortar. Last time we accidentally used yellow colored liquid, so this time we used clear. After the liquid seeped down, we put them in a pressure pot which applied heat and about 20 psi. Then we popped them out of the mortar and ground them to a square and polished them with pumice. The result was much much better than before. They all turned out really good. The only problem was that they all had a small amount of powder in the very middle of the acrylic that did not get any liquid. Luckily, it wasn’t much and we passed it off as a snow bank that the mammoth was walking through. If we try it again, or with another model, we plan on using an anesthetic needle filled with the liquid to inject to the middle of the powder. Hopefully that will eliminate all dry powder.
-Email alert owl: After much help and time spent on the Hak5 forums, I was unable to get this working 100%. When I tested the circuit I built, I could only get the owl’s eyes to blink and I couldn’t get the head to move. Since it was to be a gift, I didn’t want to give something that didn’t work 100% the way I wanted it to, so the person never saw it. The guy on the forums who was helping me said his worked no problem, but still seemed a little starved for power. I plan on tackling this again when I have taken more classes at Tech to understand how to design circuits to do that kind of thing. But the good news is that I learned a lot about how transistors work and how they can be used, and my friend liked the owl even without my mod.
-Rocket Launcher: I was able to draw up some schematics for my rocket launcher control box. I will be using a kitchen timer to count down and trip a relay that will fire the rocket. If you go to my projects link (in last post) you can look at the schematics. I didn’t have time to fabricate this, but I did get most of the parts. I still need to order the relay and another switch or two.
-Tiny laptop (Acer Aspire One): I did get this for Christmas, but unfortunately, it did not work. So I am now talking with the company I bought it from to try to sort stuff out and get a new one. My friend got his and it worked, so I helped him install Ubuntu 8.10 and install Wine and Skype and update everything. He has now been introduced to the wonderful world of Linux. On a side note, our Xbox 360 broke (error E74) so I also have to be looking for either a cheap new one or decide to pay $94 to get it fixed, or try to fix it myself)
-GBA emulated in a PSP emulated on VirtualBox: Turns out you can’t hack a PSP emulator. Doh!
Everything else didn’t happen either because I didn’t have enough time or money or both.
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