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Showing posts from May, 2013

My New Raspberry Pi & OpenElec System

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Been meaning to post about this one for a while, but I suppose with some actual experience using the system now i'm better placed to give some real feedback. The Hardware So before getting started, the following are the various bits of hardware I had to purchase from Amazon: 1 x  Raspberry Pi Model B 512 MB RAM Latest VERSION 1 x  PCSL Brand - Cyntech BlueBerry Case for Raspberry Pi with adaptor to fit to VESA 100 Monitor 1 x  FLIRC USB Dongle for Media Centre / Raspberry Pi / XBMC 1 x  UK Micro USB Power Supply Charger For Raspberry Pi - 5V 1000mA 1 x  Edimax EW-7811UN 150Mbps Wireless Nano USB Adapter I already had a few SD cards lying around, so I just used an 8GB SD card that used to be in my SLR. It was actually one of these: 1 x  Sandisk Ultra 30MB/s SDHC Card 8GB Putting it together is not complex. The case I bought fits the RPI perfectly, just slots into one half and just attached the other. Couple of screws later and it's sealed. You shouldn&#

Asus RT-N56U Router with Stock Firmware & Sky Fibre

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Wow, what a nightmare Sky Fibre is. All I wanted to do was replace the crappy Sagem wireless router with my Asus Black Diamond router and it turned out to be a 3 week sprint of reading about Asuswrt, Tomato and udhcpc. Turns out that yes, it's a pain to setup, but it's definitely possible... and with the stock firmware! :-D So, how does it all work? Well, firstly, the Sagem router communicates the with BT OpenReach modem like any other ethernet based device, except it uses MER (MAC Encapsulated Routing) to authenticate the device so that you can't just plug in any old router. What does this actually mean? Well it means the Sagem router sends some very specific information to the OpenReach modem, the client id. This client id is naturally not found in any configuration screen, you have to sniff it out of a DHCP packet to get it. You have to connect your laptop/system via ethernet to the Sagem router and make sure nothing else is connected. Then give your laptop/sy