Daniel Maclean

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 ...

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...

So it's been some time since I last posted. Much has happened since then, some big life changing events but all good thankfully! My life has settled down a little bit now so have found myself with some free time. I thought then it would good to start posting on blogger again; about something new and not media centre related. Although, plenty of that to come as OpenElec and XBMC has been making big waves since last year. Over the Christmas period just past I was able to get myself a shiny new Macbook Pro Retina while out in the states. Amazing machine. I'll save you all the usual amount of "it just works", but really it just does. After getting back I immediately set about customising and getting it to a place I was happy with everything. However, one thing I was lacking was easy ways of getting to information on the system without having to run up several apps. If I wanted to get my IP, I could either use the terminal or the network preferences, if I wanted to c...

Normally I wouldn't write a post for something so trivial such as a memory upgrade. In a normal ATX or AT form factor Desktop PC or even a modern laptop, it normally isn't that difficult to upgrade the system memory. In fact this was one of the first things I learnt to do when playing around with my dad's old system, an Intel 486dx based system with Windows 3.11 installed. However for those who own a ER1401 they will know that it's form factor, case design, etc is compact and I had some challenges while doing the upgrade. Here are some notes for others which if I had known in the first place would have helped me: Please note that this is not a complete list of instructions and that if you attempt to do this, that you may (and probably will) cause some damage to the chassis due to the fact it was never designed to be opened!  I done the whole upgrade i.e. Opening of case, removal of old memory and installation of new and rebuild in around 30 minutes, but if you ...

In my previous post I talked over the experience I had with the initial upgrade. It wasn't the smoothest of upgrades to be sure, however it's always a good upgrade when it works without my better half knowing anything has changed :-D I also mentioned some issues I was having, specifically the following: VGA Mode error on boot Audio set to Analog but coming through HDMI anyway Thumbnails on my shared drive don't seem to work with the new database, this is either because XBMC Eden index's them differently or that during the migration from the old to the new format, there was a conversion fault in the DB. However I haven't checked this out yet in more detail, could well be something entirely different. Well the good news two out of three of these issues are solved. Details below: VGA Mode error on boot So it turns out that a fix that I had to put in place with a previous version of OpenElec caused problems for the newer version. Specifically the splash scree...

Nothing more nerve racking than preparing for a major upgrade on production hardware. Sure I could have installed the new OpenElec to a external disk then tested from there, but I prefer to jump in with both feet! So how did it go? So I downloaded the latest image from the openelec.tv site (the 1.95.1 version which to all intensive purposes is 2.0) and extracted the contents as normal. I used my Windows laptop to do the work required below as apposed to my Macbook, simply because it was closer to me... yep I'm hardcore :-p I then copied the new KERNEL and SYSTEM images (along with the MD5 files) over to the SAMBA location //openelec/updates on my running ER1401 system. So far so good, system restart is then required to have OpenElec do the upgrade based on the files that I just transferred above. Apon reboot I got the familar messages than new images had been detected and that it was upgrading. It automatically reboots then starts with the new and updated OpenElec and XBMC...

So after the release of XBMC Eden , it was only a matter of time before OpenElec was also updated to include the latest version of XBMC. The guys over at openelec.tv have now also released the 1st beta version of OpenElec (1.95.1) or 2.0. Good times! As i'm running a system which is classed as "Generic" i.e. doesn't require a custom build, time will tell how the update/installation goes. What i've read so far is that not only is there significant changes on a OS level within OpenElec, but also there have been changes to the DB that XBMC maintains, so i'm not expecting the upgrade to go smooth, but here goes nothing! The guys over at OpenElec.tv have put together a wiki on how to upgrade , so give it a go yourself if you feel up to it. Will post my results after the upgrade has been completed. Image can be downloaded here . UPDATE: To see how it went check out this  post !