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

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

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)

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)

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

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

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

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!!!