I checked that there are quite a few threads on building HTPC's, but what prompted me to write a new one is because there are quite a few changes from a few months ago in the HTPC world, specifically with XBMC. So what has changed now ?
Hardware acceleration has been added in Windows 7 via DXVA2 in XBMC 10.0 which released in Dec 2010. What this effectively means is that if you use a supported graphics card, XBMC will offload all the video rendering to the card (Remember that this option is available only in Windows Vista and Windows 7, not in Windows XP). You will see the effect this small change has on the choice of hardware in your HTPC.
First things first, the hardware list. I will categorize a few items with a *Splurge*, which means you can blow up the money on them if you are really interested in reducing the noise to a minimum or looks to the maximum in the machine :
1. CPU : When I used to build HTPC's a few months ago, I used to go with a decent CPU and motherboard, specifically a Intel Pentium Dual core E5300 to E5700 and a good mini-itx motherboard with inbuilt graphics support. This used to result in a system that is capable of handling almost every movie I threw at it, save for movies encoded with extravagantly high bitrates.
As of today, the CPU has lesser role in the HTPC. so you can reuse any old cpu that you have and it will work great. Im currently reusing a old Athlon X2 3600+ and it works just fantastic.
In short, if you are setting up a new system, get a Pentium Dual core E5700 for Rs 3000. Else reuse any decent CPU from the last 5 years.
2. Motherboard : Trust me, just go and get the most basic and cheapest micro-atx motherboard that you can lay your hands on. Just make sure it matches the socket for the CPU that you purchased. The ASUS M2N68-AM is a simple choice for about Rs 2000 if you are going the AMD way and the Intel G31/41 motherboards are similarly priced.
The choice of the board will also depend of whether you have any old DDR2 memory sticks lying around. If you have even a single 1gb DDR2 stick with you, go for a DDR2 board. Else stick your neck out and go for DDR3. Im reusing a old Asus AM2 motherboard that was lying around as I had a extra stick of 2gb DDR2 with me.
*Splurge* : If you have the moolah to blow up, you can get a mini-itx motherboard from the US, or if you are plain lucky, you might get it in India. Mini-itx boards are definitely better looking when assembled in a small case, but the boards cost upwards of 5k.
Cabinet : The big question with very few answers in India. The cabinet is what brings in the eye candy from your friends when you showoff, it does not matter how much you blew up on the components inside the box, the cabinet needs to look good. Unless you want to buy a cheapo cabinet from iball, I would recommend three choices:
Choice 1 : Cooler Master Elite 360
A beautiful cabinet that has all the quality you need and has a horizontal layout so that you can keep it near your receiver. One of the best things about this cabinet is that the PSU sits in the front and blows air out from the front. So if you have woodwork done and the cabinet sits in a closed enclosure, this will allow the air to come out from the front. Priced between 2k-3k on ebay.
Choice 2 : Silverstone SG02B (My personal preference)
PrimeABGB is currently running a great offer till new year where you get a Silverstone 500w PSU free with the Silverstone SG02B cabinet. The cabinet itself costs 4.5k otherwise and is a compact one that can take Mini/Micro motherboards. Looks good and is a Silverstone, what more do I say.
Choice 3 : CFI Cube
If you have already blown money in getting a Mini-itx case, this cabinet will work well for you as it only takes mini-itx boards. Comes with a inbuilt 150w PS.
PSU : Any Basic PSU of 250w will do as the machine is not a power guzzler. On the other hand, as most experienced folks in TE will tell you, this is one component where you should gladly put in a little more money and get peace of mind.
*Splurge* : Get a good PSU with a 120mm fan. This will reduce the PSU noise to a bare minimum. I personally got a Corsair CX400 for 3k.
But you will do equally well with either of FSP Saga II 350W or Gigabyte 400w.
CPU cooler : Since the CPU will not be stressed much, you can tweak the bios to run the fan at the lowest necessary speed and save on money.
*Splurge* : Get the Cooler Master Vortex Plus CPU cooler. It is a low height CPU cooler for Intel and AMD and works cool and quiet with a 92mm fan, meant specifically for building HTPC. You cannot just hear anything when the machine is idling. Available locally for Rs 1700.
Video Card : I definitely do not want to get into a ATI versus NVidia war here, but we cannot go much wrong with either here. The Linux support is better for NVidia, but for the DXVA2 support that we need, Radeon works equally well.
My personal preference is the Radeon HD5450 passive cooled card. Passive cooler, great technology and good support in XBMC. Most importantly, it has support for 7.1 Bitrate Audio. Effectively means that you can pass pristine Audio via the HDMI to your receiver and the video to the TV from the receiver. So Dolby TrueHD and DTS MasterHD over HDMI: a necessary addition for serious Home Theatre enthusiasts.
I picked up the HIS HD5450 Silence for 2.9k shipped. Comes with extra brackets for small cases.
Audio :If you do not want to use the HDMI out for audio, or if you have a older receiver that can only take optical output, you can add a Turtle beach Micro II USB adaptor for unprocessed sound via optical output. Costs about Rs 1500 in India via Global ebay. The reason Im suggesting the USB adaptor rather than a full fledged PCI card is because the PCI card will use up a slot in the machine, leading to less airflow.
If you want pristine 7.1 bitstream via optical output, I would also suggest the Turtle Beach Montego 7.1 Channels 24-bit 96KHz PCI Interface Sound Card. It is a awesome sound card. Available for Rs 3500 via global ebay. This card is supported out of the box in XBMC.
Hard drive : You want a cool and fast hard drive. Two choices based on how your media is available for viewing. If you already have a NAS server hosting your movies, get a cheap and small hard drive, preferably WD green or Blue. If your HTPC will also host your movies, get a WD Greeen 2tb drive and use the first 20gb for XBMC and the rest to store your movies.
*Splurge* : Get a Super talent 16gb SSD card from Global ebay for 3k. Or if you want to splurge more, get a OCZ 40gb Vertex 2 SSD for 5.5k with local warranty. And the XBMC box will boot up crazy fast, will run cool and zero noise !
DVD drive : Just pick any of the LG or Samsung DVD writers for 1k. This will become your default DVD player. Liteon drives are great, but they make a little more noise than I would like on a media center.
*Splurge* : I have personally not used a Blu-ray drive, but I do not see why they will not work. If you have the moolah, get a Blu-ray reader for 6k !!! It will work full fledged as a blu-ray player as XBMC gets better.
Media Remote : You need a simple remote control to sit on the couch and control the movie. I would recommend the USB IR Media Remote Controller for PC. It works very well on XBMC without any configuration and is cheap.
DealExtreme: Universal USB IR Media Remote Controller
Also, I personally wanted to use my existing Logitech Harmony remote with this setup. The code to use the Logitech Harmony with the above USB IR adaptor is Chinavasion CVSB-983 ! Works flawlessly without any changes.
*Splurge* : If you want some geek factor, get the Lenovo Multimedia Remote with Keyboard for $35
Its a unique combination and works great with XBMC. Only downside, no backlight when you are sitting in pitch darkness and want to press a key.
And that is all you need !!!
Assemble the stuff, install Windows 7, video drivers and download and install XBMC 10.0. Once XBMC is installed, the key is to make sure that you enable DXVA2 in XBMC.
If you need more info on this, go to the official link.
How To: Enable Hardware Accelerated Decoding via DXVA2 in XBMC for Windows - XBMC
And that is it, connect the Video card via HDMI to your HD capable TV and enjoy the movies via XBMC. If all goes well, the cool and quiet machine you just assembled should be purring along showing a CPU usage of less then 5% to render the most complicated of movies and pass pristine audio to your receiver.
Some of you might have already seen the famous "killa sampla" scene which wrecks havox when rendered by any CPU without hardware rendering support (Including my AMD X6). Well, XBMC used to suffer and shudder when it would try to render this video, but with DVXA support, it plays flawlessly on my old Athlon X2.
Download the full video, but check it out in 1080p in Youtube !
YouTube - Bird 42 MBit ABR + 1 5 MBit
I personally built my new HTPC using a old AMD X2, a older AM2 motherboard and DDR2 memory. You can also put your old machine to good use and spend a little to assemble a great HTPC.
Dec 15, 2010
Choosing a good Internal Hard Drive...
When was the last time you bought a new internal hard drive ? It used to be a simple decision three years back, pick the cheapest Seagate or Western digital based on the drive capacity that you need and you are all set to use and enjoy it for many years.
Not so anymore, especially if you need a high capacity internal drive. There are so many newer models and sub versions that it becomes a major pain if you buy the wrong drive. Here is a quick write up on the various options based on my own experience:
Internal Drive: There are a few factors to consider if you need a new internal drive.
1. Usage : Is this a drive that is going to go into your computer and be used once in a while for data access ? Or is this going to go into a enclosure that will be on many hours in a day (say for media player, FTP server or a backup server). Or do you need it as a primary boot drive in your primary computer ?
2. Heat : How much heat will the enclosure create ? Is it a nice computer cabinet with plenty of fans to circulate air or is it a small NAS/USB enclosure with hardly any fan movement ?
3. OS : What operating system (Windows 7, Windows XP and Linux) will be used to access the drive ? And will you have some form of Raid ? Yes, it seems like a idiotic question, but trust me, this has a bearing on the choice of drive.
Once you have answers to the three questions above, you can pick the right drive from below:
Seagate 7200rpm 1tb (Barracuda 7200.12) : (Fast, Hot, All OS) These are fast and really hot drives. They are ideally suited for boot drives which are quick, but need a lot of air circulation to keep them cool. They work well on any operating system. I have seen one such drive being used in a enclosed media player that failed because the temperature reached over 80degrees. When we took it out, it was so hot that we could not even hold it. So DO NOT use them in tight enclosures.
One point to note. When it comes to Seagate drives, avoid the older Barracuda 7200.11 drives at any cost. There are some good drives in that series, but the amount of issues and heat in the series is not worth taking a risk especially when the 7200.12 series is easily available.
Seagate LP 5900rpm 1tb and 2tb (Barracuda 7200.12) : (Medium fast, medium hot, All OS) These drives are the Seagate answer to the slower competition drives that generate less heat. They are a good compromise drive if you have a enclosure with less air circulation and are still looking at reasonably good performance. My second choice for NAS and USB enclosures as they still run hotter than the Western Digital.
There is one note of caution that I read with these drives. The Seagate LP has a much lower load/unload rating of 50,000 cycles, . Reason being, the Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB uses the older Contact Start-Stop (CSS) technology to park its heads, while the other drives use the more updated and more reliable Ramp Loading technology. Not sure if we will ever hit the 50k number, but you never know !
Western Digital WD20EARS : (Fast, Cool, Windows 7, no Raid)
These are excellent drives in general and come with 64mb cache. Run fast and run cool and are a great value for money. But with all good choices, there is a major caveat. The WD20EARS, along with the companion 1TB WD10EARS, are the first 3.5" drives to hit the market with Western Digital's new formatting structure, which divides the drive into 4k byte sectors instead of the smaller 512-byte sectors used in current drive technology.
What this means is that if you want to use a old OS like Windows XP or a NAS box or a USB enclosure with its own adapter, the incorrect partitioning and formatting can make the drives three times slower and the data very unreliable. If you need a fantastic drive on a new OS like Windows 7 or a new Linux variant, go for this drive with your eves closed. But if you are not a geek who can find their way around with manual partitions and sector alignments, stay away from this drive for all other operating systems and enclosures.
Western Digital WD20EVDS : (Fast, Cool, All OS, no Raid) :
The latest entrant in the crowd, WD calls these as media capable drives that will fit in any existing enclosures. In layman's terms, it means that WD realized the the WD20EARS drives would have been winners without the advanced format crap that they added. So they took out the advanced format and made normal drives that go anywhere, run cool and are reasonably fast). Alas, only 32mb cache !
Western Digital WD20EADS : (Medium fast, Cool, All OS, no Raid) Four platter 2tb drives that are not available easily anymore. They are drives that run cool, work across all OS and are generally average performance. Old drives, so stay away if possible.
WD2002FYPS : (Fast, cool, RAID) WD's way to make money if you need raid support. If you need to use the drives in a raid enclosure, make sure you get these drives, otherwise the normal drives do not respond fast enough for the raid commands, thus rendering the raid unusable. There are plenty of tips in the net about using a WD internal tool to make all drives RAID compatible, but the tip is not a gurantee.
Samsung F4 2tb : (Blazing Fast, Cucumber COOL, All OS) One of the best drives available in the market for all and any purpose. The only black spot is that the Samsung warranty is not the best of class and there are plenty of horror stories. The bad news is that it is just not available in countries like India (I would be willing to pay a 10% premium if these were sold in India !).
Not so anymore, especially if you need a high capacity internal drive. There are so many newer models and sub versions that it becomes a major pain if you buy the wrong drive. Here is a quick write up on the various options based on my own experience:
Internal Drive: There are a few factors to consider if you need a new internal drive.
1. Usage : Is this a drive that is going to go into your computer and be used once in a while for data access ? Or is this going to go into a enclosure that will be on many hours in a day (say for media player, FTP server or a backup server). Or do you need it as a primary boot drive in your primary computer ?
2. Heat : How much heat will the enclosure create ? Is it a nice computer cabinet with plenty of fans to circulate air or is it a small NAS/USB enclosure with hardly any fan movement ?
3. OS : What operating system (Windows 7, Windows XP and Linux) will be used to access the drive ? And will you have some form of Raid ? Yes, it seems like a idiotic question, but trust me, this has a bearing on the choice of drive.
Once you have answers to the three questions above, you can pick the right drive from below:
Seagate 7200rpm 1tb (Barracuda 7200.12) : (Fast, Hot, All OS) These are fast and really hot drives. They are ideally suited for boot drives which are quick, but need a lot of air circulation to keep them cool. They work well on any operating system. I have seen one such drive being used in a enclosed media player that failed because the temperature reached over 80degrees. When we took it out, it was so hot that we could not even hold it. So DO NOT use them in tight enclosures.
One point to note. When it comes to Seagate drives, avoid the older Barracuda 7200.11 drives at any cost. There are some good drives in that series, but the amount of issues and heat in the series is not worth taking a risk especially when the 7200.12 series is easily available.
Seagate LP 5900rpm 1tb and 2tb (Barracuda 7200.12) : (Medium fast, medium hot, All OS) These drives are the Seagate answer to the slower competition drives that generate less heat. They are a good compromise drive if you have a enclosure with less air circulation and are still looking at reasonably good performance. My second choice for NAS and USB enclosures as they still run hotter than the Western Digital.
There is one note of caution that I read with these drives. The Seagate LP has a much lower load/unload rating of 50,000 cycles, . Reason being, the Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB uses the older Contact Start-Stop (CSS) technology to park its heads, while the other drives use the more updated and more reliable Ramp Loading technology. Not sure if we will ever hit the 50k number, but you never know !
Western Digital WD20EARS : (Fast, Cool, Windows 7, no Raid)
These are excellent drives in general and come with 64mb cache. Run fast and run cool and are a great value for money. But with all good choices, there is a major caveat. The WD20EARS, along with the companion 1TB WD10EARS, are the first 3.5" drives to hit the market with Western Digital's new formatting structure, which divides the drive into 4k byte sectors instead of the smaller 512-byte sectors used in current drive technology.
What this means is that if you want to use a old OS like Windows XP or a NAS box or a USB enclosure with its own adapter, the incorrect partitioning and formatting can make the drives three times slower and the data very unreliable. If you need a fantastic drive on a new OS like Windows 7 or a new Linux variant, go for this drive with your eves closed. But if you are not a geek who can find their way around with manual partitions and sector alignments, stay away from this drive for all other operating systems and enclosures.
Western Digital WD20EVDS : (Fast, Cool, All OS, no Raid) :
The latest entrant in the crowd, WD calls these as media capable drives that will fit in any existing enclosures. In layman's terms, it means that WD realized the the WD20EARS drives would have been winners without the advanced format crap that they added. So they took out the advanced format and made normal drives that go anywhere, run cool and are reasonably fast). Alas, only 32mb cache !
Western Digital WD20EADS : (Medium fast, Cool, All OS, no Raid) Four platter 2tb drives that are not available easily anymore. They are drives that run cool, work across all OS and are generally average performance. Old drives, so stay away if possible.
WD2002FYPS : (Fast, cool, RAID) WD's way to make money if you need raid support. If you need to use the drives in a raid enclosure, make sure you get these drives, otherwise the normal drives do not respond fast enough for the raid commands, thus rendering the raid unusable. There are plenty of tips in the net about using a WD internal tool to make all drives RAID compatible, but the tip is not a gurantee.
Samsung F4 2tb : (Blazing Fast, Cucumber COOL, All OS) One of the best drives available in the market for all and any purpose. The only black spot is that the Samsung warranty is not the best of class and there are plenty of horror stories. The bad news is that it is just not available in countries like India (I would be willing to pay a 10% premium if these were sold in India !).
Oct 25, 2009
Build your own expandable NAS box !
One more step towards a networked home, I needed a NAS server where I could keep adding disks as necessary with no restrictions ! Every ready made NAS server in the merket has its own restrictions like huge cost, missing RAID capabilities, not expandable to more than four disks, missing NAS/Samba mixed usage and so on.
So build my own NAS box was the mantra. What I needed:
1. Cheap processor with low power consumption
I already had a dual core 330 Atom board at home, just had not found a use for it. This CPU would be perfect for the NAS.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121359
Cost Rs 3500.
2. Small cabinet that does not take up space or power and makes no noise.
This was the tough one, especially in India. After a lot of research, I zeroed in on the Panache T3300 as the cabinet. It is small, in fact really compact and runs off a DC power board. This means that there is no PSU in the case (hence no fan/noise) and it runs off a DC adapter like a laptop. Disadvantage is the lack of a DVD drive.
Note the Panache box kept next to a WD external hard disk and a encyclopedia to get a idea of its size ! :bleh:
http://panache.co.in/store/product_info.php?products_id=111
Cost Rs 3200.
3. Operating system for the NAS box
Lot of options here. Windows embedded, standard linux distros and more. But what caught my eye is the FreeNAS distribution. It is a embedded OS that runs off a 200mb image, configured completely from the web and works like a charm on the Atom. More importantly, very configurable and very expandable. Just perfect for my needs ! :hap2:
http://www.freenas.org/
Cost Rs 0 !
4. Install disk for the OS on the NAS box
An 3.5" disk is out of question on the small panache box. A 2.5" disk is acceptable, but still draws 4-8 watts of power for no reason. And the minimum size is 40gb when I just need one GB of space.
A little more research got me onto a fantastic solution. I found out that there are IDE adaptors for compact flash cards for about Rs 100. The bad news is that a compact flash card is expensive. But here also, I stumbled across a great solution. A CF adaptor that used cheap SD cards internally !!!
A 2GB disk for a grand total of Rs 1000 and uses 0.2 watts of power!!!
http://dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.711
Cost Rs 100
http://dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.22338
Cost Rs 700 + Rs 200 for a SD card (Be a little carefull when you buy a SD card. It has to support DMA access, otherwise the OS will not install on the disk)
5. Memory. Less is more in this case !!!
A 512 DDR2 stick would have been plenty, but I had a spare 1GB stick with me and used it. Can hardly see any difference in performance between this and a 2gb stick.
All set, I assembled the Atom box and made sure everything is working.
Now is the time to download the FreeNAS OS and boot off the OS with a external DVD drive. There is a nice option to install the embedded system to the disk. Choose this and install the embedded FreeNAS OS to the attached compact flash drive.
Attach the external USB drives that you want to share, assign a IP address and reboot the machine. When the machine is up, you can connect to the headless machine from a browser at http://myfreeNASipAddress and configure the machine, the attached drives, the network shares, the services and everything else from the web !!!
You are all set. The network access is extremely fast and you can add as many USB drives as you want and share them on the network either cvia NFS or Samba. You can even setup software raid for the drives that need protection.
The NAS box up and running, attached to a monitor. See the power being drawn on the side. Just 0.11 Amps, which translates to a grand total of 25watts for a fully running NAS box. :hap2:
Total cost of the setup was Rs 9k without the external hard disks. For a NAS server that is expandable to as many USB disks as you want with RAID and multiple share options, this is worth it !
So build my own NAS box was the mantra. What I needed:
1. Cheap processor with low power consumption
I already had a dual core 330 Atom board at home, just had not found a use for it. This CPU would be perfect for the NAS.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121359
Cost Rs 3500.
2. Small cabinet that does not take up space or power and makes no noise.
This was the tough one, especially in India. After a lot of research, I zeroed in on the Panache T3300 as the cabinet. It is small, in fact really compact and runs off a DC power board. This means that there is no PSU in the case (hence no fan/noise) and it runs off a DC adapter like a laptop. Disadvantage is the lack of a DVD drive.
Note the Panache box kept next to a WD external hard disk and a encyclopedia to get a idea of its size ! :bleh:
http://panache.co.in/store/product_info.php?products_id=111
Cost Rs 3200.
3. Operating system for the NAS box
Lot of options here. Windows embedded, standard linux distros and more. But what caught my eye is the FreeNAS distribution. It is a embedded OS that runs off a 200mb image, configured completely from the web and works like a charm on the Atom. More importantly, very configurable and very expandable. Just perfect for my needs ! :hap2:
http://www.freenas.org/
Cost Rs 0 !
4. Install disk for the OS on the NAS box
An 3.5" disk is out of question on the small panache box. A 2.5" disk is acceptable, but still draws 4-8 watts of power for no reason. And the minimum size is 40gb when I just need one GB of space.
A little more research got me onto a fantastic solution. I found out that there are IDE adaptors for compact flash cards for about Rs 100. The bad news is that a compact flash card is expensive. But here also, I stumbled across a great solution. A CF adaptor that used cheap SD cards internally !!!
A 2GB disk for a grand total of Rs 1000 and uses 0.2 watts of power!!!
http://dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.711
Cost Rs 100
http://dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.22338
Cost Rs 700 + Rs 200 for a SD card (Be a little carefull when you buy a SD card. It has to support DMA access, otherwise the OS will not install on the disk)
5. Memory. Less is more in this case !!!
A 512 DDR2 stick would have been plenty, but I had a spare 1GB stick with me and used it. Can hardly see any difference in performance between this and a 2gb stick.
All set, I assembled the Atom box and made sure everything is working.
Now is the time to download the FreeNAS OS and boot off the OS with a external DVD drive. There is a nice option to install the embedded system to the disk. Choose this and install the embedded FreeNAS OS to the attached compact flash drive.
Attach the external USB drives that you want to share, assign a IP address and reboot the machine. When the machine is up, you can connect to the headless machine from a browser at http://myfreeNASipAddress and configure the machine, the attached drives, the network shares, the services and everything else from the web !!!
You are all set. The network access is extremely fast and you can add as many USB drives as you want and share them on the network either cvia NFS or Samba. You can even setup software raid for the drives that need protection.
The NAS box up and running, attached to a monitor. See the power being drawn on the side. Just 0.11 Amps, which translates to a grand total of 25watts for a fully running NAS box. :hap2:
Total cost of the setup was Rs 9k without the external hard disks. For a NAS server that is expandable to as many USB disks as you want with RAID and multiple share options, this is worth it !
Oct 23, 2009
Hack the WDTV into a networked snazzy media player and Linux box !
I had a lot of spare time yesterday and thought, what the heck, it is time to hack the one device that I have not yet touched in the house
The WDTV has been a great media player for me over the last year, plays every damn file I throw at it, but I do not quite like the UI and more importantly, it is a pain to keep shuttling the attached hard disk to the computer to update the movies. So here is how I hacked my WDTV into a networked snazzy little linux box !!!
Step 1: The simplest and best hack for the WDTV :
http://b-rad.cc/wdlxtv
Just download the binary firmware file and place it in the root of a USB stick and reboot the WDTV. It should pick up the new firmware and update it. Step one done with the full fledged linux running on the WDTV !
By the way, there are quite a few options for hacking the WDTV. Two of the options I have listed below are for the advanced users who love to fiddle around in linux.
http://b-rad.cc/wdtv-firmware-dvd-enabled
http://wiki.wdtv.org/doku.php?id=ext3-boot-releases
Blow away the firmware files from the USB stick, from here on you will need the USB stick for your hacks.
Step 2: You need logs from here on to see what is happening on the WDTV.
Download : http://b-rad.cc/log-saver.app.bin
Place it on the root of the USB stick, boot the WDTV and when you shutdown, you should be able to see the boot log files on your USB stick.
Step 3: You need to buy a USB wireless network adaptor for the WDTV to go wireless !
There are a limited set of options here for what adpator you can use. See:
USB Wireless adaptor support
It seems like any adaptor that uses the rt2870 chipset is your best bet. The rt73 seems to be the easiest to get in India. The Dlink DWA-110 (1.4k) and the Dlink DWA-140 (2k+) adaptors are both available in ebay India for your reference and both use chipsets that work well on the WDTV.
I personally have the BELKIN Wireless G Plus MIMO Network Adapter which uses the rt2870 chipset :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833314026
Step 4: You need the driver pack for the network adaptor.
See this thread:
http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php?topic=1029.0
Follow the thread properly, get the dat file and the bin file for the adaptor drivers and drop them into the root of the usb key. Now reboot and if you have done the steps properly, you should see the adaptor lighting up and connecting to your router. I personally use WPA-AES encryption on my router and it works perfectly.
Step 5 : Install Samba server and NFS client on the WDTV
This is the part where I screwed up a lot as I had a lot of trouble trying to get the Samba server to export the USB devices. Anyways, it was just a matter of editing the smb.conf file to export your USB devices and bingo, the USB device attched to the WDTV is now visible on the network from any Windows box. Now I copy new movies sitting on my computer to the hard drive attached to the WDTV. It takes time as the processor is slow, but what the heck is 10 minutes extra when it saves me from moving the hard disk all over the place every second day.
Follow this post and you should be able to setup Samba pretty easily:
http://b-rad.cc/609/wdlxtv-app-pack-samba
Note that it is possible to mount NFS drives to the WDTV so that you can view media remotely, I have not yet attempted that. That is a experiment for another day, another time !
Step 6: Making the WDTV interface look better !!!
This was the fun part. Use custom packs to snazzy up the UI.
http://wdtv.free.fr/osdmod/
This changes the icons and makes the WDTV menus look snazzy. Like this:
Step 7: Show movie information for every movie.
This is something that I always wanted, go to a movie folder and get all information about the movie before I play it !!! There is a program called tvixie that does this. Download the point it to the movies folder in your hard disk and it downloads all the information in JPG form for all the movie to the same movie folder. And this is how it looks:
Here is the link : http://www.tvixie.com/
Step 8: Use the TVIXIE information on your WDTV.
See this thread below and use the plugin. As simple as that !!!
http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php?PHPSESSID=d914fdbda1cd13578366c3a7941c1262&topic=1039.0
When you do this, this is how you browse your movies :
And clicking on any movie gives this screen full of info :
This was the way the WDTV was meant to be used !!!
P.S : I have provided links to the original author's webpage wherever there was a need to refer to someone else's work. This means that they have the full credit for their work and I do not mean to infringe on anyone's copyright.
The WDTV has been a great media player for me over the last year, plays every damn file I throw at it, but I do not quite like the UI and more importantly, it is a pain to keep shuttling the attached hard disk to the computer to update the movies. So here is how I hacked my WDTV into a networked snazzy little linux box !!!
Step 1: The simplest and best hack for the WDTV :
http://b-rad.cc/wdlxtv
Just download the binary firmware file and place it in the root of a USB stick and reboot the WDTV. It should pick up the new firmware and update it. Step one done with the full fledged linux running on the WDTV !
By the way, there are quite a few options for hacking the WDTV. Two of the options I have listed below are for the advanced users who love to fiddle around in linux.
http://b-rad.cc/wdtv-firmware-dvd-enabled
http://wiki.wdtv.org/doku.php?id=ext3-boot-releases
Blow away the firmware files from the USB stick, from here on you will need the USB stick for your hacks.
Step 2: You need logs from here on to see what is happening on the WDTV.
Download : http://b-rad.cc/log-saver.app.bin
Place it on the root of the USB stick, boot the WDTV and when you shutdown, you should be able to see the boot log files on your USB stick.
Step 3: You need to buy a USB wireless network adaptor for the WDTV to go wireless !
There are a limited set of options here for what adpator you can use. See:
USB Wireless adaptor support
It seems like any adaptor that uses the rt2870 chipset is your best bet. The rt73 seems to be the easiest to get in India. The Dlink DWA-110 (1.4k) and the Dlink DWA-140 (2k+) adaptors are both available in ebay India for your reference and both use chipsets that work well on the WDTV.
I personally have the BELKIN Wireless G Plus MIMO Network Adapter which uses the rt2870 chipset :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833314026
Step 4: You need the driver pack for the network adaptor.
See this thread:
http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php?topic=1029.0
Follow the thread properly, get the dat file and the bin file for the adaptor drivers and drop them into the root of the usb key. Now reboot and if you have done the steps properly, you should see the adaptor lighting up and connecting to your router. I personally use WPA-AES encryption on my router and it works perfectly.
Step 5 : Install Samba server and NFS client on the WDTV
This is the part where I screwed up a lot as I had a lot of trouble trying to get the Samba server to export the USB devices. Anyways, it was just a matter of editing the smb.conf file to export your USB devices and bingo, the USB device attched to the WDTV is now visible on the network from any Windows box. Now I copy new movies sitting on my computer to the hard drive attached to the WDTV. It takes time as the processor is slow, but what the heck is 10 minutes extra when it saves me from moving the hard disk all over the place every second day.
Follow this post and you should be able to setup Samba pretty easily:
http://b-rad.cc/609/wdlxtv-app-pack-samba
Note that it is possible to mount NFS drives to the WDTV so that you can view media remotely, I have not yet attempted that. That is a experiment for another day, another time !
Step 6: Making the WDTV interface look better !!!
This was the fun part. Use custom packs to snazzy up the UI.
http://wdtv.free.fr/osdmod/
This changes the icons and makes the WDTV menus look snazzy. Like this:
Step 7: Show movie information for every movie.
This is something that I always wanted, go to a movie folder and get all information about the movie before I play it !!! There is a program called tvixie that does this. Download the point it to the movies folder in your hard disk and it downloads all the information in JPG form for all the movie to the same movie folder. And this is how it looks:
Here is the link : http://www.tvixie.com/
Step 8: Use the TVIXIE information on your WDTV.
See this thread below and use the plugin. As simple as that !!!
http://wdtvforum.com/main/index.php?PHPSESSID=d914fdbda1cd13578366c3a7941c1262&topic=1039.0
When you do this, this is how you browse your movies :
And clicking on any movie gives this screen full of info :
This was the way the WDTV was meant to be used !!!
P.S : I have provided links to the original author's webpage wherever there was a need to refer to someone else's work. This means that they have the full credit for their work and I do not mean to infringe on anyone's copyright.
Aug 22, 2009
The 24 hour torrent downloader plus file server !
I have been obsessed with power consumption for a little while and have been considering ways to bring down the same in my home. One of the big power drainers was the downloading of movies via torrents. The PC used to be up all night downloading movies using up a full 140 watts with a super fast quad core processor and a graphics card drawing good amount of power while just idling. So I was looking for ways to prevent this.
The second issue I had was with the sharing of data between the multiple devices at home and having too much redundant data across drives for various purposes. The ideal solution was to have a network drive which allows all the devices to talk to the drive over the network. But NFS drives are prohibitively expensive and come with too many caveats. So I wanted something simple and cheap.
So here is one great solution. I purchased the ASUS WL-500g Premium V2 wireless router for Rs 5.5k and this one device does all that I want and consumes less than 8 of power for all the wonderful work it does. Here is the router :
The hardware chip on this router is a broadcom, which means that you can flash plenty of opensource firmwares onto this and make it into a full fledged linux machine. DD-WRT, Oleg and Tomato were the options for firmware and I choose the Oleg's firmware since it closely resembles the Asus factory firmware and is well extensible. Here is the link for the firmware: http://oleg.wl500g.info/
Next step, install "transmission", a torrent client to this linux box. Install the windows agent onto your PC and bingo, you have a torrent downloader running on the router, controllable from the PC. Here is how the PC applicaiton looks like when it connects to "transmission" running on the Asus router.
Im sure you are wondering where the downloaded file is saved ? Now the beauty is that the Asus router has two USB ports. Connect a USB drive to it and the linux OS on the router shares the whole drive on the network as it was a network file system. Works like a charm !
Part two of the project was to make sure that I get a USB device that itself that does not draw too much power. So I opted for a 1.8" hard disk with a external enclosure that consumes 1 watt of power. Gives me space for 60 gigs of download space and also serves as a swap disk for the linux box.
Just for the sake of curiosity, above is a picture that shows four external USB drives, a Verbatim 3.5" disk, a Transcend 2.5" disk, a Diva 1.8" disk and a regular USB flash disk. The 1.8" disk seems to be the best compromise between pocket size, speed and price.
So folks, project succeeded ! I connect to transmission on the router from my PC, start off a any download (FTP, torrent and HTTP) and switch off the PC. Download happens all night and the electricity meter is hardly running. And I can monitor it using the transmission internal webpage from my mobile phone !!!
Do remember that all this does not change the main job of the router and it still functions as a fantastic wireless router.
And to top it all up, I have connected a 1 terabyte external hard disk to the Asus box. I switch it on when I need to and it gives me a 1TB network disk !
Aah the sweet satisfaction of a job well done...
The second issue I had was with the sharing of data between the multiple devices at home and having too much redundant data across drives for various purposes. The ideal solution was to have a network drive which allows all the devices to talk to the drive over the network. But NFS drives are prohibitively expensive and come with too many caveats. So I wanted something simple and cheap.
So here is one great solution. I purchased the ASUS WL-500g Premium V2 wireless router for Rs 5.5k and this one device does all that I want and consumes less than 8 of power for all the wonderful work it does. Here is the router :
The hardware chip on this router is a broadcom, which means that you can flash plenty of opensource firmwares onto this and make it into a full fledged linux machine. DD-WRT, Oleg and Tomato were the options for firmware and I choose the Oleg's firmware since it closely resembles the Asus factory firmware and is well extensible. Here is the link for the firmware: http://oleg.wl500g.info/
Next step, install "transmission", a torrent client to this linux box. Install the windows agent onto your PC and bingo, you have a torrent downloader running on the router, controllable from the PC. Here is how the PC applicaiton looks like when it connects to "transmission" running on the Asus router.
Im sure you are wondering where the downloaded file is saved ? Now the beauty is that the Asus router has two USB ports. Connect a USB drive to it and the linux OS on the router shares the whole drive on the network as it was a network file system. Works like a charm !
Part two of the project was to make sure that I get a USB device that itself that does not draw too much power. So I opted for a 1.8" hard disk with a external enclosure that consumes 1 watt of power. Gives me space for 60 gigs of download space and also serves as a swap disk for the linux box.
Just for the sake of curiosity, above is a picture that shows four external USB drives, a Verbatim 3.5" disk, a Transcend 2.5" disk, a Diva 1.8" disk and a regular USB flash disk. The 1.8" disk seems to be the best compromise between pocket size, speed and price.
So folks, project succeeded ! I connect to transmission on the router from my PC, start off a any download (FTP, torrent and HTTP) and switch off the PC. Download happens all night and the electricity meter is hardly running. And I can monitor it using the transmission internal webpage from my mobile phone !!!
Do remember that all this does not change the main job of the router and it still functions as a fantastic wireless router.
And to top it all up, I have connected a 1 terabyte external hard disk to the Asus box. I switch it on when I need to and it gives me a 1TB network disk !
Aah the sweet satisfaction of a job well done...
Aug 8, 2009
"Kill A Watt" for 220v !
I have been recently thinking a lot about how to conserve power. Part of this is driven by the ever increasing number of gadgets in the house which are leading to larger and larger electricity bills !
I did a lot on searching on the net to figure out if a device to measure the amount of current being drawn by any device is available on the net. Sure it was, "Kill a watt" is a much used, much loved device to do this exactly. Unfortunately, like most things American, it uses 120v and there is nothing for the 220v side of the world. And one 220v option available for Europe was just ridiculously expensive.
So that set me thinking that this should not be too difficult to build. With the help of a few friends who were good at circuits, I finally built it for just Rs 750 ($15).
Here is the circuit diagram of the same. Remember that the current has to flow in series through the multimeter. The current has to pass through the multimeter and the selected component in series to measure the current flowing through the circuit.
Now for some live photos and DIY steps of how I to made it.
Disclaimer : Remember that we are talking of live current here, so the standard disclaimers apply. If you electrocute yourself or burn down your house, it is all your fault !!! Be careful with the circuits and do not connect anything till you are reasonably confident it is all going to work.
What do you need ? A digital multimeter that can measure current, these are available for Rs 600 in any good electrical shop. Remember that the multimeter's available for Rs 200 cannot measure current. They only work on DC and measure current voltages. (If there is a doubt, check if there is a "A~" option among the options).
This is the one I used:
You also need a ready made switch box, again available in any electrical shop for Rs 50. Make sure you get a 5amps model as I would not be comfortable connecting a 15amps component to the multimeter.
Now, you are ready to connect the multimeter to the switch box. Chop off one end of the multimeter cable so that you can connect it directly to the switch box. Remember to cut the cable from the side which does not connect to the mutimeter (It will be a special molex cable on one end to connect to the multimeter and a sharp pin on the other side. Cut the side with the sharp pins). Current flows from the mains to the box and the multimeter wires are connected in series.
Here is the snap of the same.
Close the box and bring the cables from one side of the box so that no live wires are hanging out. This is how the completed box looks like:
Now connect the multimeter molex cables to the multimeter and leave it there. This is because current will be flowing through the molex ends and you do not want them to touch the ground.
That is it basically. Set the multimeter to the 20amps mode to make sure the fuse does not blow, connect ANY device to the box and plug the box to the mains. Switch on the current and the device and you can start seeing live data on how many amps are being drawn by the device. If you multiply the amps reading with 235, you get the number of watts being drawn by the device. Note that even though India claims to run on 220v, we actually get anywhere between 220v and 240v in the mains. I seem to be getting 235v almost constantly, hence I multiply by 235. You can measure the voltage in your house using the same multimeter at the precise moment you are taking the reading if you want perfect figures, otherwise 235 is a close approximation.
See the picture here of my old 17" TFT monitor monitor connected to the circuit.
The 17" TFT monitor is drawing 0.21 amps, which translates to 50 watts of current being used. Note that my new 22" LCD draws a similar amount of current which shows how electronic components are getting more and more power efficient !!!
That is it folks, connect any 5amps device to the circuit and measure the current being used.
A homemade DIY Kill a watt on 220v for Rs 750 !!!
Please leave comments if you find this post usefull !
I did a lot on searching on the net to figure out if a device to measure the amount of current being drawn by any device is available on the net. Sure it was, "Kill a watt" is a much used, much loved device to do this exactly. Unfortunately, like most things American, it uses 120v and there is nothing for the 220v side of the world. And one 220v option available for Europe was just ridiculously expensive.
So that set me thinking that this should not be too difficult to build. With the help of a few friends who were good at circuits, I finally built it for just Rs 750 ($15).
Here is the circuit diagram of the same. Remember that the current has to flow in series through the multimeter. The current has to pass through the multimeter and the selected component in series to measure the current flowing through the circuit.
Now for some live photos and DIY steps of how I to made it.
Disclaimer : Remember that we are talking of live current here, so the standard disclaimers apply. If you electrocute yourself or burn down your house, it is all your fault !!! Be careful with the circuits and do not connect anything till you are reasonably confident it is all going to work.
What do you need ? A digital multimeter that can measure current, these are available for Rs 600 in any good electrical shop. Remember that the multimeter's available for Rs 200 cannot measure current. They only work on DC and measure current voltages. (If there is a doubt, check if there is a "A~" option among the options).
This is the one I used:
You also need a ready made switch box, again available in any electrical shop for Rs 50. Make sure you get a 5amps model as I would not be comfortable connecting a 15amps component to the multimeter.
Now, you are ready to connect the multimeter to the switch box. Chop off one end of the multimeter cable so that you can connect it directly to the switch box. Remember to cut the cable from the side which does not connect to the mutimeter (It will be a special molex cable on one end to connect to the multimeter and a sharp pin on the other side. Cut the side with the sharp pins). Current flows from the mains to the box and the multimeter wires are connected in series.
Here is the snap of the same.
Close the box and bring the cables from one side of the box so that no live wires are hanging out. This is how the completed box looks like:
Now connect the multimeter molex cables to the multimeter and leave it there. This is because current will be flowing through the molex ends and you do not want them to touch the ground.
That is it basically. Set the multimeter to the 20amps mode to make sure the fuse does not blow, connect ANY device to the box and plug the box to the mains. Switch on the current and the device and you can start seeing live data on how many amps are being drawn by the device. If you multiply the amps reading with 235, you get the number of watts being drawn by the device. Note that even though India claims to run on 220v, we actually get anywhere between 220v and 240v in the mains. I seem to be getting 235v almost constantly, hence I multiply by 235. You can measure the voltage in your house using the same multimeter at the precise moment you are taking the reading if you want perfect figures, otherwise 235 is a close approximation.
See the picture here of my old 17" TFT monitor monitor connected to the circuit.
The 17" TFT monitor is drawing 0.21 amps, which translates to 50 watts of current being used. Note that my new 22" LCD draws a similar amount of current which shows how electronic components are getting more and more power efficient !!!
That is it folks, connect any 5amps device to the circuit and measure the current being used.
A homemade DIY Kill a watt on 220v for Rs 750 !!!
Please leave comments if you find this post usefull !
Apr 10, 2009
Life is all in reverse !!!
The most unfair thing about life is the way we keep growing old and the way it all ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time and what do you get at the end of it?
A death. What`s that, a bonus?
I think the life cycle is all backward. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home where you are taken care of with full government benefits. You get kicked out when you`re at the retirement age, you get a gold watch and nice gifts and you start to go to work.
You work 40 years until you`re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do girls, drugs, alcohol; you party, and you get ready for high school. You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities.
And then you become a little baby. You suck around all day with no restrictions, sleep when you want and pee and shit where you want. And then you move into the best natural SPA in the world, your mother's womb; you spend your last nine months floating around, everything being taken care off and in complete control.
And then you finish off as an fantastic orgasm !!!
A death. What`s that, a bonus?
I think the life cycle is all backward. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home where you are taken care of with full government benefits. You get kicked out when you`re at the retirement age, you get a gold watch and nice gifts and you start to go to work.
You work 40 years until you`re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do girls, drugs, alcohol; you party, and you get ready for high school. You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities.
And then you become a little baby. You suck around all day with no restrictions, sleep when you want and pee and shit where you want. And then you move into the best natural SPA in the world, your mother's womb; you spend your last nine months floating around, everything being taken care off and in complete control.
And then you finish off as an fantastic orgasm !!!
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