Author: Peter Skarpetis

Recycling to the max

Buying new gadgets always leaves me with the chore of cutting up the packaging and placing it in the recycling bin. Recently I bought a Sony Bravia X-series LCD display and found myself with the task of recycling a rather large cardboard box.

Buying new gadgets always leaves me with the chore of cutting up the packaging and placing it in the recycling bin. Recently I bought a Sony Bravia X-series LCD display and ended up with a rather large cardboard box.

I’ve had this cabinet without a back in my garage for a while and have been contemplating blocking the back so that it becomes a fully enclosed cabinet. A few days ago I was having a BBQ and mentioned it to my uncle who is a carpenter. His immediate response was “why don’t you just cut up that big box over there and use it instead of buying some wood”. Well that’s exactly what I did and here are some pictures showing the process.

1. Half covered back of cabinet. Nails were used to attach cardboard to the back of cabinet.

half way there
2. View from the inside of the cabinet. Looks just like the inside of a box.

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3. Rear view of finished product with me standing behind it. Lots of gaffer tape used to seal gaps.

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Well now I just need to paint it!

Cabinet after painting
And here is the finished product. It won’t win any beauty contents however it will keeps it contents dust free.

Cabinet in its final resting place

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My new bitching mythtv box

The old Pentium was getting a bit noisy and had trouble playing high definition video at 1080p.While I was in replacement mode I went ahead and purchased a new case…. It has a built in VFD 2 line display as well as an infra red receiver and it is all supported by Linux.

I finally got around to replacing my old Pentium 4 mythtv box with a Intel Core 2 Duo based one. The old Pentium was getting a bit noisy and had trouble playing high definition video at 1080p.

While I was in replacement mode I went ahead and purchased a new case. After a lot of research I settled on the Zalman HD160. It has a built in VFD 2 line display as well as an infra red receiver and it is all supported by Linux. Other parts used were an ASUS P5W DH Deluxe motherboard, a Gigabyte GeForce 7600GT, Silent-Pipe II video card, a Seagate Barracuda 320GB hard disk, a Zalman CNSPS9500 CPU fan, and a Intel Core 2 DUO E6400 CPU.

Here is a picture of the final product (click on it for a full resolution version). This box it just amazingly fast and quiet as a mouse.

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Here are some of the things required to make the remote and VFD display work on linux.

First you will need to download both the iIRTrans Server and the IRTrans lcdproc driver and install them as per the instructions. I installed mine in /usr/local/share

You will need to create a remote control definition for the one shipped with the HD160. You can either use the “IRTrans ASCII Client” to create your own or just download the one I created from the link below and copy it into /usr/local/share/irtrans/remotes

Zalman.rem

If you want the power button on the remote to turn the Zalman on/off you will need a switches.cfg. Here is mine for the Zalman remote

switches.cfg

This will also need to be copied into /usr/loca/share/irtrans/remotes

And here are some line I added to my rc.local to activate the 2 servers:


/usr/local/sbin/irserver -start_clock -daemon -logfile /var/log/irserver.log -pidfile /var/run/irserver.pid /dev/ttyUSB0
/usr/local/sbin/LCDd

Finally you will need to create an lircrc file for mythtv and copy it into ~mythtv/.mythtv. Click below to download mine.

lircrc

Enjoy.

UPDATE: 29 June 2007

A lot of people have asked how I got the power button on the remote to turn on the Zalman. Here are some quick instructions / screenshots.

I downloaded and installed the IRTrans windows software and then ran the IRTrans GUI client. You can probably run it under Wine if you do not have access to a windows computer. I ran mine under Parallels on my Apple MacBook Pro.

Picture 1-1
When the TCP/IP address box popped up, I put in the TCP/IP address of my mythtv box.
I then selected the device status menu.

Picture 3
Picture 2
In the device status windows under the Power ON section I entered the name of my remote as trained on my mythtv box ( in my case Zalman) and in the next text box I entered the name of the button that should power on the Zalman (in my case Power),

If you cannot remember the name of your remote or the name of the button, check /usr/local/share/irtrans/remotes on your mythtv box. You may also wish to add an entry to the PowerOFF section but I have left it blank.

If you are familiar with the command line, you can use the linux client. Here are some steps to follow:
Download and compile the IRTrans ascii client from //www.irtrans.de/download/Client/client-src.zip

To compile, just unzip the source code into a directory, cd into that folder and then type in the following command:

gcc -o irclient *.c

To launch the ascii client:

./irclient localhost
1 - Send
2 - Learn
3 - Status

99 - Exit

go into the status menu by selecting 3

Select command 3
Getting Device Status ...SEND RES: 0 - 14

1 Device(s) Found:

0: - D5.03.08

99 - Exit

Select device 0
The device status should now be visible on screen

Select command 0
Device [0]: D5.03.08

Repeat Mask: x  o  o  o  o  o  o  x  x  x  o  o  o  o  o  o
0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10 11 12 13 14 15

Device Mode Send [20]: x
IR               [21]: x
SBUS             [22]: x
SBUS RemoteCtrl  [24]: x
RAW              [25]: o
SBUS send Repeat [27]: x

Self Repeat [36]: o

Learn Timeout   5ms [37]: o
Learn Timeout  15ms [38]: x
Learn Timeout  30ms [39]: o
Learn Timeout  60ms [40]: o
Learn Timeout  90ms [41]: o
Learn Timeout 120ms [42]: o
Learn Timeout 150ms [43]: o
Learn Timeout 250ms [44]: o

Repeat Timeout 5ms  [45]: x
Repeat Timeout 25ms [46]: o

PowerOn Remote               [52]: Zalman
PowerOn Command              [53]: Power

PowerOff Remote              [54]:
PowerOff Command             [55]:

Cancel                     [88]
Save & Exit                [99
]

Use option 52 and 53 to set the name of the remote for Power on as well as the name of the button for poweron.
Select Option 99 to save and exit.

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Froogle australian style

While doing my usual price check on the internet I came across a site called stat[i]c ICE It is just like Froogle except that is is for Australian shopping sites…. I only wish it showed you the approximate shipping cost, credit card surcharge and accepted credit cards for each site found since the cheapest sell price does not necessarily translate to the cheapest total price.

While doing my usual price check on the internet I came across a site called stat[i]c ICE It’s just like a Froogle for Australian sites. Now with a couple of clicks I can find the best place to purchase my gadgets. I only wish it showed you the approximate shipping cost, credit card surcharge and accepted credit cards for each site found since the cheapest item price does not necessarily translate to the cheapest total price. Nevertheless it still takes the pain out price comparison for internet shopping.

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