Using MythTV with FIOS TV

For many years now, I've been enjoying the benefits of running MythTV on a cheap, bare bones tower. With two capture cards, I've been able to record just about everything my family and I want to watch. It's ability to autoskip commercials and export all of the content I record to any format and device I choose (iPhone, laptop, etc) puts it well above commercial DVRs out on the market.

The price for this, however, is that setting up MythTV requires bit of knowledge and effort.

Recently, we got FIOS and dropped our Comcast Internet and TV. When using Comcast, the tuner cards installed in the server set the channels internally. Of course, because FIOS TV requires set-top boxes, some changes were needed so that MythTV could control the channel changes on the external devices.

First, a bit about my setup:

OS: Mythbuntu 10.04.1 (updated)
LIRC version: 0.8.6
Capture Cards: Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150, Hauppauge HVR-1600
Set-top boxes: Motorola DCT-700

The DCT-700 can be rented from Verizon for $3.99/mo, or can be purchased online from anywhere as cheap as $10. The only means to control the channel on this box is via Infrared.

Although the Hauppauge cards both have IR receive and transmit capability built into them, I wasn't easily able to get the transmitter working (the receiver works out-of-the box with Mythbuntu). Although it's fairly easy to make a serial IR transmitter, I decided to buy the additional hardware.

After shopping around, I chose the USB-based transmitter by Iguanaworks. There were two things I liked about their product. For one, they provide their own drivers and give support to getting their product working with LIRC. For the other reason, I only have one serial port on my current MythTV backend server. I didn't feel like cracking open the case to install an expansion card, and even if I did, doing so would have limited my ability to add another capture card later, if I wanted to.

For some reason, the LIRC included in Mythbuntu didnt have IguanaIR drivers installed from the start. However, the IguanaIR software installation was fairly easy, though I did require a little help from the guys who run Iguanaworks. It should be noted, they helped me get their software installed before I even bought their product - BIG props to them for such excellent customer service.

Here was the jist of the steps they had me do to install their drivers:

If you haven't, add our repository to apt-get (see downloads page for instructions).

Run
sudo apt-get install iguanair

to install our software. Now to install LIRC, you need to add Mythbuntu's 'source repository' to apt. This may already be done, or you may need to add it via synaptic (settings, repositories).

Once that is added, run
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get build-dep lirc
apt-get -b source lirc
sudo dpkg -i lirc_*.deb

and that will install the new LIRC that you just compiled. Now run lircd -H ? and you should see iguanair listed.

Following their directions, their drivers loaded perfectly into the kernel. I then bought from them a USB IR transceiver with 2 plugs and two 5ft wired IR emitters. When I inserted the USB plug & the two adapters, and was greeted with the following output from lsusb:
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 1781:0938 Multiple Vendors Iguanaworks USB IR Transceiver

To configure LIRC to use the hardware, I made the following changes to /etc/lirc/hardware.conf:

TRANSMITTER_DRIVER="iguanaIR"
TRANSMITTER_DEVICE="/dev/iguanaIR/0"

To configure LIRC to be able to speak to the Motorola DCT700's, I used the posted config file for the DCT2000 from the LIRC Sourceforge Product Page. This is included in Mythbuntu by default, and should be referenced as follows in /etc/lirc/lircd.conf:
include "/usr/share/lirc/extras/transmitters/motorola/dctxxxx.conf"

That line is the only one that's needed in lircd.conf.

Two changes are needed in /etc/lirc/hardware.conf to specify the DCT700:

TRANSMITTER="USB-UIRT2 : Motorola Cable box"
TRANSMITTER_LIRCD_CONF="motorola/dctxxxx.conf"

Of course, its necessary to recycle lirc after making all these config changes (/etc/init.d/lirc restart)

To verify that the transmitters worked, I used the irsend command from the LIRC package. It should be noted, a multi step command is needed to change to a specific channel:

irsend set_transmitters 1
irsend send_once DCT2000 1
irsend send_once DCT2000 2
irsend send_once DCT2000 OK

The first line specifies which transmitter on the USB to use. Right now, I'm only using two, which I specify with either "1" (as above) or "3". Stereo 3.5 to Mono 3.5 adapters can also be purchased to add an additional 2 transmitters to the USB stick.

For MythTV to change the STB via irsend, wrapper scripts are needed. If there were any that came with in MythTV, I didn't bother to find them, but wrote my own:

root@mythtv:~# cat /usr/local/bin/ch0.bash
#!/bin/bash
/usr/local/bin/sendir.pl 1 $1
root@mythtv:~# cat /usr/local/bin/ch1.bash
#!/bin/bash
/usr/local/bin/sendir.pl 3 $1

More on the "sendir.pl" script in a few.

To configure Myth to use these scripts, it was necessary to load up the GUI configuration program on the backend server where all of this was going on. The magic config screens are found at "Input Connections", one for each capture card:


Two fields needed to be changed. The one was "External channel change command", which set to the respective script shown above (0 or 1). The second was "Preset Tuner to Channel", set to "3", which is the analog channel that the DCT700 transmits on.

As it turned out, there's a strange bug in LIRC that prevents transmission of the number "0" to the DCT 700. I found some commentary about it, but since any fix seems to require code changes to the compiled LIRC binaries, I got really lazy and just expanded my Perl wrapper script sendir.pl to handle the odd requirement to never try to send "0" to the DCT700's:

root@mythtv:~# cat /usr/local/bin/sendir.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
my $transmitter=$ARGV[0];
my $channel = int($ARGV[1]);

print "irsend set_transmitters $transmitter\n";
system "irsend set_transmitters $transmitter";

if ($channel =~ /.0./)
{
my $diff = $channel - 99;
&setch(99);
while ($diff)
{
&chup;
$diff--;
}
} elsif ($channel =~ /0/) {
$channel += 1;
&setch($channel);
&chdown;
} else {
&setch($channel);
}

sub chdown
{
print "irsend send_once DCT2000 CH-\n";
system "irsend send_once DCT2000 CH-";
}

sub chup
{
print "irsend send_once DCT2000 CH+\n";
system "irsend send_once DCT2000 CH+";
}

sub setch
{
my $channel = shift;
my @channel_bits = split("", $channel);
foreach my $ch (@channel_bits)
{
print "irsend send_once DCT2000 $ch\n";
system "irsend send_once DCT2000 $ch";
sleep 0.1;
}
print "irsend send_once DCT2000 OK\n";
system "irsend send_once DCT2000 OK";
sleep 0.4;
}

It should be noted that the above script will workaround the "0" issue when handling channel sets [1-9]0 and 10[1-9], but it will not handle the [2-9]0[1-9] channels. I didn't bother to write the code to do that, as we currently don't have those higher channels in our subscription. :-P

Naturally, it's necessary to physically isolate the two DCTs, otherwise any command sent to one transmitter would likely affect both. A cardboard box was a handy solution. ;)



















In all, it was a pretty painless process, and so far everything seems to be working as needed.

Cell Phone Evolution - Nesting Doll Style

My wife linked me to this clever creation, thought it was quite cool.



More details at curbly.com.

The Story of Stuff

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

From the website:

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

The 2008 Election from Delaware

The line I faced this morning when I arrived at about 7:15am. I've voted in De in every election since 94, and can't recall such a crowd. I stood in line for about an hour. Granted, not as long as bigger states, but hey, this is Delaware ;-)

Uploaded by www.cellspin.net

We are going to do what we do every night, Pinky...

i luvz my lolz...

Man decorates basement with $10 worth of Sharpie

The Lexington Herald-Leader published an article about a man who knows how to wield a permanent marker.

When Charlie Kratzer started on the basement art project in his south Lexington home, he was surrounded by walls painted a classic cream. Ten dollars of Magic Marker and Sharpie later, the place was black and cream and drawn all over.

There are fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Sherlock Holmes, Winston Churchill lounging with George Bernard Shaw — and the TV squirrel Rocky and his less adroit moose pal Bullwinkle.

Click on the link, there's an amazing animation showing the whole basement. It's quite cool.

2008 - a new depression?

In reading news articles about Congress' rejection of the $700 billion bailout, I stumbled across disturbing testimony to the US House of Representatives' Committee of Financial Services regarding the parallels between the stock market crash of 1929 and the present economic situation.

The reader, if bold enough to undertake such a deep reading, should be quite disturbed by the fact that the testimony was given almost a year ago...before the subprime meltdown really got into swing and we reached the current state of crisis.

Some interesting quotes,

"Your predecessors on the Senate Banking Committee, in the celebrated Pecora Hearings of 1933 and 1934, laid the groundwork for the modern edifice of financial regulation. I suspect that they would be appalled at the parallels between the systemic risks of the 1920s and many of the modern practices that have been permitted to seep back in to our financial markets."

"Since repeal of Glass Steagall in 1999, after more than a decade of de facto inroads, super-banks have been able to re-enact the same kinds of structural conflicts of interest that were endemic in the 1920s -- lending to speculators, packaging and securitizing credits and then selling them off, wholesale or retail, and extracting fees at every step along the way. And, much of this paper is even more opaque to bank examiners than its counterparts were in the 1920s."

"A last parallel is ideological -- the nearly universal conviction, 80 years ago and today, that markets are so perfectly self-regulating that government's main job is to protect property rights, and otherwise just get out of the way.

We all know the history. The regulatory reforms of the New Deal saved capitalism from its own self-cannibalizing instincts, and a reliable, transparent and regulated financial economy went on to anchor an unprecedented boom in the real economy."

"Mr. Chairman, we are living on borrowed time. And the vulnerability goes far beyond the spillover effects of the sub-prime debacle.

We need to step back and consider the purpose of regulation. Financial regulation is too often understood as merely protecting consumers and investors. The New Deal model is actually a relatively indirect one, since it relies more on mandated disclosures, and less on prohibited practices."

And one last bit...

"One last parallel: I am chilled, as I'm sure you are, every time I hear a high public official or a Wall Street eminence utter the reassuring words, "The economic fundamentals are sound." Those same words were used by President Hoover and the captains of finance, in the deepening chill of the winter of 1929-1930. They didn't restore confidence, or revive the asset bubbles.

The fact is that the economic fundamentals are sound -- if you look at the real economy of factories and farms, and internet entrepreneurs, and retailing innovation and scientific research laboratories. It is the financial economy that is dangerously unsound. And as every student of economic history knows, depressions, ever since the South Sea bubble, originate in excesses in the financial economy, and go on to ruin the real economy."

Truly, those who do not study history are doomed to repeat it.

The original article is very long, and very heavy in its economic details. I don't pretend to understand all of it, though I do get the jist of most of it.

In the end, it's very frightening, as are the times we live in.

Here's hoping we're not on the cusp of the next Great Depression...