My Raspberry Pi media centre project - Part II

23/07/2013 - ordering

Ordered everything:

• Raspberry Pi + power supply from RS Components. This takes a whopping 28 business days to arrive, but I'm busy enough ripping everything
• HDD + DVD Drive from megabuy.com.au, my favorite reseller with PCCasegear.

29/07 - installation of the ripping station
Received the stuff from Megabuy.

Installed the DVD Drive (too easy). I need a region-free drive since half my DVDs are Region 2. It appears this drive (LG GH24NS90) uses a MediaTek chipset for which no RPC1 firmware exists. In short for those who don't patch their DVD firmware, a RPC1 firmware is an unofficial/hacked firmware upgrade that makes your DVD drive region-free. More information on RPC1.org, it's worth browsing.

I thought I might have to buy a second drive, to keep one Region 4 and one Region 2, but this wasn't needed, you'll see why.

I rip DVDs in 2 stages (on Windows):

1. DVD Decrypter does a full rip and removes the DVD protection (hey, I bought those movies, I do what I want with them, no?). It creates an .ISO file.
2. Handbrake reads the ISO, locates where the main movie is, extracts it and creates a video file, either mp4 or h264. I prefer h264 since the Pi can decode this format in hardware.

The accidental beauty of this is (in full humility) that it takes about as much time to rip with DVD Decrypter than to encode with Handbrake (on a quad core Sandy Bridge i5), so I can encode a DVD while ripping the next at the same time

DVD Decrypter is a fairly low-level program, which completely bypasses the DVD Drive region limitation. I'm not sure how it does, it just says it does a brute force attack on the key, which is supposed to take longer but I couldn't see any difference.

07/08  ripping
OK, to this day I've now ripped more than 100 DVDs. I don't dare counting how many are remaining.

Doing about 6-7 per night, the routine is:

1. stack DVDs next to the PC
2. feed them to DVD Decrypter once in a while
3. if I'm not in front of the PC, just enqueue all ISOs in Handbrake before going to bed, and let the PC churn data at night.

The Pi will not arrive before a couple of weeks, so I must rip as much as possible. DVD Decrypter is so easy to use that the whole family helps. Isn't that beautiful?

Stay tuned for Part III, when the Raspberry arrives. I hope it arrives...

My Raspberry Pi media centre project - Part I

So, after years of having my collection of movies & music split across CDs, DVDs, a few hard drives (a lot of duplicates-but-not-quite, so go figure where you put stuff), I decided to rationalise things, by setting up a media centre.

The main advantages will be:

• free up the cupboards of the 400+ DVDs, CDs, etc
• have everything available from a central location
• make backups easier
• no better opportunity to tinker with a Raspberry Pi!

For those who lived in a cave, the Raspberry Pi is a $35 credit-card sized computer that consumes almost nothing, got plenty of connectivity and runs Linux.

I'll try here to document the whole process, from day 1 to a glorious go-live (hopefully...), so this will probably span over several posts.

Our current setup

Our current video setup is a recent (2012) wifi-enabled Samsung Smart TV, and a desktop PC with all movies stored over several internal or external HDD, loosely backed up.

Since the TV is DLNA compliant, we can stream movies to it from the PC, either directly (with Windows Media Player), or with the TV remote with Samsung dismal interface, or from any Android DLNA app, like the excellent BubbleUpnP.

The drawback is that it requires to power on the desktop, and to use a phone as the remote. Also, Window Media Player library management is .... well, unpredictable at times, and won't play all formats natively (mkv for example).

We also have a hacked Wii, with WiiMC, that accesses video as a SMB share from the PC. Neat solution, unfortunately the Wii is severely underpowered and the image quality quite bad.

The plan

Our geeky solution for media domination is:

• a big external HDD (2TB, WD Elements)
• a Raspberry Pi running RaspBMC, which is the Raspberry version of the well known XBMC media player
• the TV. La television in French.

What makes the Pi ideally suited for the task?

1. hardware video decoding, so even if its CPU it not powerful, it should play Full HD without any problem
2. HDMI output, perfect.
3. Supports TV remotes via the HDMI backchannel thanks to the CEC standard. Great.
4. Free Software!

Oh, also the HDD will be plugged directly to the Pi, where it can probably (didn't dig that yet) be shared so we can add movies to it from the PC. 

Now, the stuff

Here's the stuff I had to order and the associated cost, including the Australian rip-off tax (tm).

• Raspberry Pi w/ power supply : USD54.00 from RS Components
• External WD Element 2TB HDD : AUD89.00 from MegaBuy
• HDMI cable : haven't bought one, will scavenge it
• SD Card : not bought yet

You can use a mobile phone charger as a Pi power supply, but it's a bit hit-and-miss apparently, since the Pi needs a stable voltage/amp, and phone chargers are just made to, well, charge a phone, not power a device 24/7. So I opted for the more expensive but official power supply. YMMV.

I also had to order an internal DVD drive to rip my DVD collection. I had only an external, USB one, which would take ages to rip anything. At $18 the drive, there's no hesitation.

And music?

Yes, I mentioned music before. I've got a good Yamaha audio amp but it's just audio, and pretty old, so no digital/HDMI input.

On the other hand the Pi has an analog output but it's supposedly low quality (11 bit sampling, etc). A solution could be to use a HDMI splitter (like this), to extract audio from the HDMI output and redirect it to the amp, but I'll probably rather shell out a few bucks for a decent USB DAC, which should have a better quality.

RaspBMC's latest version (Frodo) supposedly now supports USB sound output, so the USB DAC option seems safe.

Anyway, I'll deal with video first, then Music at a later stage of the project.

Now we know what we want to do, stay tuned for Part II, where the actually work begins

La Rogaine: un sport d'orientation pour tous

Le 16 juin 2013 nous avons eu la joie de participer a la 50eme Paddy Pallin Rogaine a Glenbrook, dans les Blue Moutains.

La rogaine, qu'est-ce que c'est?

Il s'agit d'un sport d'orientation en equipes de 2 a 5 personnes aux règles très simples.

La rogaine est une course d'orientation avec un temps limité (3, 6, 12 ou 24 heures) ou les équipes essaient de récolter un maximum de points sur un itinéraire libre.


Une carte topographique est remise a chaque équipe environ 2h avant le départ (le départ est simultané pour toutes les équipes); celle-ci contient un certain nombre de points de contrôle qui rapportent de 10 a 100 points:

Chaque équipe prépare ensuite son itinéraire, prenant en compte les distances, type de terrain, dénivelé, etc. 

Une fois le départ donne, les équipes effectuent leur itinéraire et récoltent des points au passage. Rendez-vous pour tous a la fin du temps réglementaire  soit 6 heures plus tard pour nous ce jour-la.


Le parcours est totalement libre; chaque équipe décide de la longueur de son parcours et de son itinéraire. Cette activité est donc ouverte a tous: les familles avec enfants peuvent faire un parcours court, s’arrêter pique-niquer au milieu, les sportifs tenter d'amasser un maximum de points.

Enregistrement du passage a un point de contrôle

Chaque participant est équipé d'un bracelet électronique, et chaque point de contrôle  (indiqué par un drapeau), a un marqueur électronique qui enregistre sur le bracelet que le candidat est bien passé par la. 

Pour qu'un point de contrôle soit validé, il faut bien sur que tous les équipiers s'y enregistrent.

 

Les points de contrôle sont parfois au milieu du bush

La difficulté du parcours dépend de donc chacun; les points de contrôle peuvent être en bordure de chemin, ou au milieu du bush et nécessitent parfois de naviguer a la boussole. Voire de naviguer de nuit a la boussole pour les rogaines de 24h!

En général, plus un point de contrôle est difficile a atteindre, plus il rapporte de points au classement final.

La vallée de la Nepean River

Pour notre dernière rogaine, près de 600 personnes ont participé. Nous avons marché/couru environ 18km, et avons récolté 950 points. Les meilleurs en ont eu 1320! 

Comme il s'agissait de notre première rogaine dans le bush (la précédente était en ville) et sans coéquipier expérimenté, nous étions quand même assez fiers du score, et surtout d'avoir pu boucler notre itinéraire en temps et en heure.

Indispensable: la carte
toujours a portée de main

et parfois utile, la boussole
pour les points hors du chemin

Coté matériel  il s'agit avant tout d'une randonnée sportive, donc outre de bonnes chaussures, prévoir de l'eau, une boussole, un crayon, trousse de secours et voila, rien d'extraordinaire.

La rogaine est avant tout une excellente raison de passer une journée dehors dans le paysage magnifique des Blue Mountains; même si être a Glenbrook a 7h30 un dimanche matin demande une volonté de fer... et un bon pull, il faisait 7 degrés au départ.

Voila, nous espérons que ce petit compte rendu vous donnera envie de participer a une rogaine près de chez vous. Pour les habitants du New South Wales, consulter www.nswrogaining.org

Decorate your walls with wallpaper made of old book pages

When we saw the ceiling of the amazing Pocket Bar in Sydney all decorated with old book pages, we knew we had to try this at home.


We chose to do this in our computer corner, which is small (less than 10m2 - 100 sq ft of wall area), and for the obvious connection : book/computer/knowledge. Also because it's a non-strategic part of the house, so in case something goes wrong, it doesn't matter (but hey, everything went fine!)

Here's our feedback, to help you do the same and amaze your friends!

Preparing the book

First thing, you need to find the good book. Check in your basement, second-hand bookstores, opp shops, etc, take your time. 

Ideally find a large enough book, to minimize the number of pages to glue, with pages sewn in the middle, to make it easier to dismantle. The paper weight doesn't matter too much. Absolutely avoid glazed paper, it probably won't stick to the wall.

As for us, we chose a 1982 Encyclopedia Britannica, since it had a good mix of all-text pages and schema, and a nice tint. Also many topics to choose from, from locomotives to puritanism :-)

Dismantle the pages, and cut the center part with a paper cutter, to have nice and clean pages.

You can also mix different books, of different age and size, up to you.

How to build a spiny leaf insect enclosure

Kids love pets. So we had to have a pet... After ruling out high maintenance ones like cats & dogs, we settled for a turtle. To quickly realize a turtle requires a licence here, and a ton of gear. Fallback plan: the spiny leaf insect. OK, you can't teach him tricks, but it's cheap, low maintenance, and just scary enough.

Next step was to find a cage. Believe me or not, it's like AUD120 for a basic plastic reptile cage. Mmm, I smell the opportunity of a good little project here. So let's go and build it ourselves. We'll do a small wooden cage (25x30x40cm) enclosed with fly net. Like that:

I'm really not a woodwork expert, this cage is extremely basic & rough, so constructive comments are welcome.

Material

You need simple stuff:

• pine or timber wood for the edges. I used 20mm square section wood. 

• plywood for the top & floor, and for the bottom walls

• bits and pieces for the door, like hinges, a lot of small nails
• a strong stapler
• some flynet

Let's go!

1. First, saw all the pieces.

2. Build the floor, by nailing 2x21 and 2x26 pieces to the plywood bottom. I show on the diagram where you should put nails.

3. Build the main frame: nail plywood bottom walls to a 40cm edge, like this:

4. Repeat for the other edges till you've got something like that:

Attach it to the floor we did on step 1. Now the tricky steps: let's make a door and attach it.

5. Nail two 26 cm pieces horizontally to the front side, 10 cm from the bottom. That's gives a kind of frame where the door will fit.

6. Make the door: nail 2x20 and 2x26 pieces

7. Attach the door to the main frame with the hinges.

8. Screw in the rings so that the door can be kept closed.

9. Nail the top

10. Staple fly net all along the sides and the door (and obviously not on the frame behind the door...)

Et voila! OK it's very rough, it's not meant to be aesthetically pleasing, but more a simple project you can do with a 10yo kid.

Total budget: around 50 AUD, mostly for the wood, flynet, hinges & nails.

I wish I had taken pics of the ongoing construction, but I thought about explaining everything afterwards. Some improvements could be :

• paint it (although the paint might contain chemicals that might harm the insect? I don't know, frankly)
• nail the "bottom walls" and the top over the fly net  to make it look nicer.

Good luck, don't hesitate to post improvements. Maybe for a version 2.0?