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USB is certainly capable; but arguably overqualified for IR work: The classic LIRC DIY can be driven off a serial port; and I assume that a few GPIO pins that aren't too crippled would work as well. Bit-banging the ~36KHz carrier frequencies common in IR applications would probably be a pain in the ass; but the sheer ubiquity of consumer IR remotes and receivers means that handy little 'most of the low-level details and the emitter/receiver all in an IR bandpass plastic package' modules are cheap, and the actual data rates on IR remote protocols tend to be trivial.

Soft power is a bit harder to just tack on; but would be really nice, especially for embedded applications. Yes, it isn't rocket surgery to have a microcontroller set up as a watchdog and capable of switching the +5v line on the rPi; but one would think that the same feature could be integrated into the board more cheaply and elegantly than doing it after the fact.

Remember the parallel port?

It was great for learning and even intermediate robotics projects. Each pin was a bit you could simply read and write the binary, hook the wires up to a breadboard with LEDs, control circuits for stepper motors, etc.

Nowadays since everything is fucking serial, you have to have all this extra crap in the way to serialize and de-serialize the data, and modems on each board. An old Pentium III is cheaper (typically free, people throw them away), and with DR-DOS or MS-DOS installed you're ready to code up 10 lines of C and make the port work. Windows or Linux don't let you get right at the ports / memory without ridiculous kernel drivers, recompiling the kernel in most cases for Linux -- that's how I get my LIRC to control multiple devices simultaneously via parallel port. You can install those older OSs on brand new x86-64 hardware too thanks to onboard BIOS emulation, so anything with a parallel port will work.

Sure, they're not as small as Arduino or a single board computer, but for fuck's sake it's sad seeing people get all excited about the fact someone basically brought back the parallel port interface so we can tinker again like we always could before the serial scourge of USB and SATA. Hint: Now that 40 pin ribbon cables are gone from new hardware, in favour of Serial-ATA the "high performance" SSDs use parallel interfaces like PCIe... It's just fucking sad to me.

Just think of all the layers of abstraction required of the Arduino just to do simple projects that you could do on an IBM XT with no abstractions. Fuck this gay earth.

Many recent computers have a build in IR receiver. You can build an IR emitter for the old computer (the schematic here may be helpful http://www.lirc.org/parallel.h...). I guess it would be very slow :-

I would not really prefer IR.

I would prefer it be IR. I can already use my LG smartphone to control every IR capable AV device in my home, including projector screens and lighting setups. It is my one remote already. Works well with XBMC or Linux Media Center Edition.

While everyone else scrambles to figure out who will dominate this space, me and my home cloud will continue streaming all my media to all my devices and controlling it all with an array of USB, Ethernet, RS-232 serial, and IR input AND output (the latter via Linux Infrared Remote Control)

Remotes are a solved problem: My phone is the only remote I need damnit, I can even bounce the signal to the other side of the house via IR -> Ethernet -> IR with LIRC. Bonus: If I lose it, I can geolocate it then give it a ring and listen for the tone. Set top-boxes are solved too: A Linux media center PC. Why? Because a TV with built in computer is too expensive to upgrade as fast as I want for games, Steam is on Linux, all my media, Hulu, Netflix, and my cablecard is too. Why not a proprietary OS? I can't hack new things into a proprietary OS like I can with Linux or BSD, like the aforementioned Ethernet assisted whole home IR signal routing technology. See: XP EoL, that's why.

If someone comes along and packages this shit all up nice and simple like -- Oh, guess what? Someone already did. My cousin does that for a living. He puts in very expensive whole home AV outfits. They use Ethernet as a backbone, and you can control anything from your tablet, phone, or these wanna-be phone/tablet looking touch enabled devices. Look up Crestron. I can do what they do for free with Linux. This Apple/Google/Amazon crap is playing at some mickey-mouse tier featureshit comparatively.

Modern connection interfaces are complex enough that you need an IC to negotiate a connection before you can even get a LED blinking. Today's systems aren't exactly designed for hobbyists to build things.

Get an old beige box. You can solder a resistor and LED to the DTR pin of a serial port, and program it with a couple lines of assembly -- Oop, nope. The modern OSs aren't really designed for hobbyists to build things either. You'll be learning how to write a kernel driver for your OS if you use Linux. This is why I still use and make small DOS-esque OSs -- It's quite easy using BIOS interrupts. Also, you can still install DOS on nearly all x86-64 systems...

Data Terminal Ready is just one pin, but with it and the RxD / TxD pins you can build a simple lock-step electronic coms project on a serial port -- So you don't have to implement the whole RS232 chipset just to do a little manual IO. Parallel ports have many more such pins to play with, and don't require serialization either. That's why I teach kids to make robotics with DOS like OSs on my spare "junk" -- Because it's so much faster, cheaper, and easier than with USB, or even RS232 serializing and deserializing state -- Save that for when they get a bit more skilled. There's something almost magical to watching bits flip in memory by making and breaking electrical contacts; Folks immediately start thinking up ways to use such a thing. It's fun watching the scales fall from their eyes as kids realize computers aren't impenetrable black boxes full of voodoo. It's kind of funny that you have to buy a kit with ICs to make more transparent the interface provided by making and breaking pins on older hardware.

In my experience, once you get past a couple of LEDs or controlling higher voltage switches via contactors, etc. the next stop usually isn't a notification app for your system -- It's a breadboard full of gizmos, or using your PC to control your other gadgets.

Eg: Readers who liked TFA also liked LIRC.
(swap the LED with IR-LED, and control your home theater setup)

You could but then you may need a USB hub as well.
If you are going to use it as a small PC you will want wifi and a keyboard which works out to two USBs
If you want to use it with XBMC you may need a second USB to add blue tooth, or an IR receiver.
or you could always use a smartphone running this http://code.google.com/p/android-xbmcremote/ for a remote.
Of course that is for the minimal hackers out there.
Now if one wants to really get into the spirit of things you can add and SPI Wifi module like this http://www.cutedigi.com/wireless/wifi/wifi-module-with-spi-interface-to-8-bit-mcu-zg2100mc-wishield.html
And then an IR module to the UART on the GPIO http://www.lirc.org/receivers.html for a complete XBMC solution.
That would leave the USB port free for a card reader, USB memory stick, or Bluetooth adaptor.

A lot of ITX stuff is used in industry.
PS/2 KVMs are cheap and common as dirt. RS-232 can go much farther than USB and is also super common. Some machine tools still run DOS it is realtime and makes sense for some dedicated controllers and use the Centronics port to interface to hardware.

Imagine that you have a perfectly good $20,000 CNC machine that has a blown controller.... Nice to have a simple pop in replacement. It is all about the market you are in. You still see RS-232, PS/2, and VGA on server motherboards a lot for the same reason.

Actually the only thing I would rather see is the serial port be brought out to an internal header like the printer port is.
Here is a link to how to build your own IR receiver to use with LIRC http://www.lirc.org/receivers.html
And one for transmitters as well http://www.lirc.org/transmitters.html

A lot of ITX stuff is used in industry.
PS/2 KVMs are cheap and common as dirt. RS-232 can go much farther than USB and is also super common. Some machine tools still run DOS it is realtime and makes sense for some dedicated controllers and use the Centronics port to interface to hardware.

Imagine that you have a perfectly good $20,000 CNC machine that has a blown controller.... Nice to have a simple pop in replacement. It is all about the market you are in. You still see RS-232, PS/2, and VGA on server motherboards a lot for the same reason.

Actually the only thing I would rather see is the serial port be brought out to an internal header like the printer port is.
Here is a link to how to build your own IR receiver to use with LIRC http://www.lirc.org/receivers.html
And one for transmitters as well http://www.lirc.org/transmitters.html

"What the Kinect Could Be, But Probably Won't" -- Been there done that -- TFA should be called, "What Kinect & LIRC hackers have realized is really lame way to control a TV or computer."

The article says a qwerty keyboard in the living room is a bad idea, without explaining why. So, why?

Thanks.

Because Dvorak is so much nicer.

On a serious note, I don't see keyboards going away any time soon (or ever). I can type almost as fast as I think and 8 times as fast as I can get my voice recognition software to recognize.

What I am seeing more of is Computers. Everywhere. In portable phone & tablet form factors, as mp3 players, as game consoles, set-top boxes and routers... Even in the dash of some cars.

Once we realize that TVs are just big computer screens, and a general purpose "desktop" computer can perform all the tasks that we currently use the set-top boxes for, it won't seem too strange to just use your keyboard in the living room. Google TV already does this... For typing in a search or composing text/emails, nothing beats a keyboard. If I'm near my computer, I use it to send text messages.

Hell, I even have a wireless USB keyboard hooked up to my XBox360 -- It's much quicker/nicer than the overpriced controller mounted keyboard.

We'll always need a pointing device -- I prefer a Wacom pen-tablet/mouse pad, but I could see a Kinect filling this role. In fact, I've used my Kinect to control the mouse pointer, but the CPU usage is ridiculous when you consider how little my Wacom uses and how much more precise it is.

As for Kinect controlling the TV -- Well, I've done that. It wasn't that hard. I've been using LIRC to control my TV with Linux for quite some time. Linking LIRC to a gesture recognizer (libFreenect + OpenCV) was a piece of cake, but not really worth it. The Kinect is far less efficient and precise than either my truly universal remote (which I use to control both the TV & computer with via LIRC), or a simple keyboard / mouse combo. Seriously though -- WAY too much CPU consumption when you consider how little an IR remote, keyboard or mouse/pen tablet consumes...

The key is not to get tied into any particular vendor's "ecosystem" (hint on marketdroid newspeak: the consumer is never on top of these food chains, and overpricing companies do go out of business, and/or force customers into upgrade cycles every bit as much as in the unfree part of IT).

LIRC can actually drive RF transmitters as well (by simply turning off the software-generated carrier), but even for IR very few devices are more than simple receivers, though the code would allow for both recording and playback of commands for a gazillion appliances.

Factor in a few weather/proximity sensors (some can even be received by that very same hardware) and outputs such as LivingColors as an "Ambilight on steroids" (aside the usual suspects such as roller blinds, home entertainment gear and "conventional" lamps) for computer-generated scenarios based on age-old magic like the sunrise equation, and you get an idea of how much can be accomplished with minimal hardware.

Combining IR and RF puts within every hobbyist's reach the Holy Grail of integrating each and every remote-controlled device in the house, from high-end all the way down to the El-Cheapo DIY market.
The current crop of microcontrollers should provide a candidate that could do the trick sitting on an Ethernet plug - or piggybacked e.g. on the USB, "hidden" internal serial or GPIO port of some popular Wi-Fi router.

http://www.huitsing.nl/irftdi/ and http://www.mediola.com/products.htm are just a few of the places to look for inspiration.

If you can't get the receiver on the WinTV card to work, you can also build a small receiver yourself. It's easy to build, and easy to set up with lirc: http://www.lirc.org/receivers.html

Seconded! MythTV is friggin' awesome. It eats the commercials, shares the shows over the network (NFS and SMB), lets me dump my MP3s onto it for playing, supports multiple heads (and backends), and more. I don't even use half the features of the software, and it still blows me away.

I'm using KnoppMyth, and was totally amazed how easily everything installed. Yes I did have to tweak LiRC, and a few other things.

I'm getting ready do build another unit into my house, and look forward to the extra features in the new version.

Not really too "getto" here is a great solution for you
First here is a site that tells you how to add two serial ports to a WRT54G
http://www.rwhitby.net/wrt54gs/serial.html

Here is a link to lirc http://www.lirc.org/
It also includes a link to a home made ir transmitter that interfaces to a serial port.

So here you have a linux box with wifi , Ethernet ports, and an IR port. It would also make a good wifi bridge for an XBox and or a PS-2.
Put Boa on it and PHP or perl and you could make a web based interface for your hardware devices. It should even be girl friend friendly and not all that ugly.

The survey did bring up three issues which should be addressed by the embedded linux community, whether those issues are misconceptions or actual problems. 1) Incompatibility with software, applications, and drivers. 2) Performance or real time capability. And 3) support."

The points are somewhat valid. I've used a few embedded style solutions such as GeeXboX.

Firstly, they rely on being minimalistic first and foremost. This means removal of unnecessary things which could use up more space and resources such as X.org for many of them. They remove a lot of things not absolutely required for the product. To that end, the first point, incompatibility applies. A lot of other software will fail to function correctly or even perhaps to run at all. Usually the saved resources are worth it, but, it does make it a LOT harder to integrate major changes such as using a new program for some part or other. This encourages the reuse of already in place stuff. For example, for the sake of maintaining the current setup, interface, software, etc, GeeXboX is using mplayer for TV rather than some of the other more popular utilities such as MythTV and one that I thought looked pretty promising to replace a lot of GeeXboX's functionality, FreeVO.

Well, my first point kind of brushes on the second point made above on performance. In fact, #2 is way off base with a real embedded linux solution. Due to the minimalistic nature of the systems, they actually perform BETTER at what they were made to do. It's only things they were not where they will do worse. For example, GeeXboX's official requirements are listed as:
* x86 Pentium-Class CPU or above (P2-400 should be quite enough) or Macintosh G3 (G4 highly recommended)
* a VESA 2.0 compliant graphics card (for x86 PC only).
* an ALSA compatible sound card.
* at least 64 MB of RAM
* CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive
* Motherboard which supports booting on CD-ROM (should be ok for everyone ;-)
* Keyboard, Joystick or Remote Controller, using a Lirc-compatible IR (InfraRed) receiver (check http://www.lirc.org/ to build yours), e.g. Miro PcTV's one or ATI Remote Wonder.

In fact, those little $100 laptops should be able to boot GeeXboX and play current gen DVDs... And easier things like MPEG4 (DivX, XviD, etc) need less. I have played 640x480 mid to somewhat high bitrate encodes smoothly on a Pentium 2 running at 233MHz (though I did overclock to 266MHz after initial tests for better results on some slightly higher bitrate things.) No, performance is not an issue.

To address number three, support is kind of both ways. First of all, most of these projects have bustling communities where users can help each other and on a few occasions the devs themselves will actually help (GeeXboX is a good example of one like this.) On the other hand, since support is 100% unofficial, a more unusual problem can result in few to no responses forgotten in the back pages of the forums with no solutions. Simpler problems often result in a tired canned response because they are sick of having to answer the same question over and over and aren't exactly being paid to do so. Some projects lack the huge communities and dev interaction and you end up with far more unanswered questions and unsolved problems. Also, if you want a new feature or whatever, the answer sometimes painfully enough ends up being told that if you want so-and-so, you should do it yourself. Since the person asking usually lacks the technical expertise to actually do this (hence the request thread rather than a "I've started adding so-and-so to the distro and need feedback" style thread.) Then again, some requests are admitedly ridiculous or against the goals of the project such as the people requesting X in GeeXboX, or, for an example of ridiculous, one person actually asked for a Gamecube

The reason the MythTV documentation seems intermittent is that MythTV doesn't really care what kind of remote control you use. It uses LIRC for remote control. The remote controls supported by LIRC change with each release, and those releases aren't synchronized with MythTV releases. The LIRC homepage has a comprehensive list of IR and RF receivers that are known to work.

Nice ideas man, check out LIRC for Linux Infrared control - transmitting and receiving made really simple using any old remote :) - http://www.lirc.org/

I did it and it's really easy! :)

Dug

From my own experience, a remote control is probably a lot cheaper than the $30 portraied there. You can get some standard IR-decoder components out there, and hook those up to the serial port. It will take you 1 universal remote, 1 ir decoder (vishay) and a few extra components to get it to work. But that's explained pretty well on the Lirc-page.

I'm talking about the LIRC software for remote controllers, of course.

PVR150's can come either with or without remote. Typically without they run about 10 bucks cheaper. I personally went the do it yourself route with the universal remote I already use and built a little IR receiver with parts from radioshack using a design from the web.

Here's a rough overview: Lirc Homebrew page

But there are more user friendly step by step guides out there. Takes about ten minutes to do if you're a complete novice with a soldering iron and circuit boards like I am, and about 10 bucks worth of stuff from Radio Shack (I actually had to buy the soldering iron too, so it cost more than if I just bought the dang thing)

What remote control do you use to control TV tuners, or DVD players with your Linux Box?

Many TV tuner cards such as my Winfast TV 2000 come with perfectly usable IR remotes. Naturally, under Linux (with lirc) you just assign the buttons to whatever functions you want.

What's unique about this particular incarnation of the digital picture frame is that mine includes a homebrew remote control recognizer made out of a programmable IC, the Microchip PIC16F628.

I think this mag is an excellent idea. Getting more people excited about engineering is always a good thing.

From the site, it looks like they are covering pre-existing projects out there on the web. As for suggested topics, how about:

Intros to PIC programming
Interfacing a PIC with an LCD display pannel
Stuff like http://www.lirc.org/

-My $0.02

However a lot of stuff uses serial ports in non-standard ways and I doubt you can do that with a USB-to-Serial converter. LIRC and WinLIRC allow you to send and receive remote control signals but don't work with the converters. A converter also might not allow you to talk to calculators, program some microcontrollers, decode and encode radio signals and more.

Sure, you can find microcontrollers with a USB interface and use those instead but that's more expensive and more work. Many people who would feel comfortable with making a simple interface involving a few resistors and diodes wouldn't build a USB interface.

First, this same thing can be done with any device able to play .wav or .mp3 files at equal sampling rates.

Secondly, it is a coincidence the IR leds work on the audio output on this device, because it is propably designed to drive some high impedance loads such as headphones (around 600 ohms) or line level inputs in stereo systems (from 10 kohms to 100 kohms). And usually the IR leds are driven with 100 mA of current in order to have sufficient range, the iPod range will be quite limited compared to real remotes. And if the internal voltage of the iPod is 3 volts, the audio output has a theoretical maximum amplitude of 1.5 volts, and the forward voltage of IR leds is around 1.6 volts.

Another thing that would prevent this from working is that the infrared signals usually have a carrier signal of around 30 to 40 kHz (32 kHz Denon,Panasonic,Philips, 40 kHz Sony, 38 kHz some manufacturers), and with a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz, the maximum frequency that a sampled signal can have is 22.05 kHz (see google for "Nyquist theorem" if you don't believe me). Many IR receivers are sensitive to this and don't work without the correct carrier frequency, at least the range is very limited then. Though not all systems use the carrier at all, so then this would work perfectly, but these are rare (some Finlux televisions).

And the IR module you suggested is definitely a bad one, because it removes the carrier signal and only the baseband signal is on the output pin. The IR phototransistor will work fine, as long as the signal amplitude is good enough, maybe the microphone input has enough gain for this.

Yet more problems lie when the audio is recorded.. The DC offset (and very low frequencies) should be removed.

And for all you who are whining to get the prerecorded .wavs and remote specs:
Go to the Linux Infrared Remote Control site LIRC and see the link "All supported config files". Sure, you need a converter to make your button information to .wav files. I don't care how or with programming languages you implement the LIRC2WAV converter, but just do it, it is not hard. Just make a wav file with a sampling rate of 44.1 or 48 kHz, and use a carrier frequency of exactly half of the sampling rate. Make silent parts to a sample value of 0, and the carrier to go from -100% to +100% sample values (-32768 and +32767 if 16-bit samples). Then perhaps encode it through LAME with extreme settings so that the high frequency parts are preserved and not filtered away like normal MP3 encoders do.

There you have it. Sorry for being so pessimistic, but I am having a bad day, and I really am an university student majoring in electronics and my current employer wants me to research infrared data transmission and control so I think you will find these handy..

- Jeppe Jääkarhu

Just get any old IR remote control and LIRC. You should be able to configure it to output keystrokes into X that will be passed to the current application.

There is even a specific howto for setting it up on Debian on their page.

Get a VIA EPIA system

This is what I've done for my home entertainment system. The entire box (which is nice and small and pure black) is fanless, and in fact has no moving parts at all. It boots into freevix over the network, and accesses my server's music via NFS. I control it with a LIRC remote control, so it's basically just like another component in the stereo system - except with about 40 gigs of music. Very cool!

You plug in the CompactFlash reader to a USB port, and it appears on the desktop. If your system is set up for it, GNOME then asks you "Would you like to import these photographss into your photo album?"

Under Linux, you can use the kernel bttv driver, the current CVS of lirc, and MythTV to make a PVR that works better than the software bundled with the card. If all you want is simple TV playback, tvtime will do that. (tvtime's useful to keep around for TV-card debugging anyway, and it's more polished than xawtv.)

(If you buy the NTSC version of this card and want to use it under Linux, you'll need to edit drivers/media/video/bttv-cards.c so that the tuner will be set up properly. Search for "Leadtek WinFast 2000/ WinFast 2000 XP", scroll down to the .tuner_type= line, and change it from 5 to TUNER_PHILIPS_NTSC. If you don't do this, the tuner and the remote control won't work properly.)

Sure they do. I am using this functionality on my MythTV box right now.

When MythTV wants to change channel on the cable box, it calls a user-definable external script. I use LIRC to emit the IR control codes to switch channels on my General Instruments cable box.

MythTV works perfectly with a decoder box - you set the input to S-Video (or composite if you can put up with composite quality), tell it to use an external channel changer script and write a short script to send the right commands to the decoder using LIRC and a IR diode.

I use Myth with my Sky Digital box very happilly - my LIRC configuration and channel changer script is on my website. The hardware required is just an IR LED across the serial port (as described on the LIRC website). I also have an IR receiver plugged into the same serial port so I can control Myth with my original Sky remote control.

A lot of the discussion focusses on target market. With a little lateral thinking, Samsung as well as the resellers like Dynamism could widen this significantly. An example could be to use it as a home entertainment controller through LIRC combined with a funky custom interface. c.f. this expensive S.O.B., the Philips Pronto.

With this example of course the battery life is not right. I'd like to hear other people's example uses, demonstrating the value of the new Zauruses.

(btw, this is an example that I would personally implement, keeping the unit plugged into a wall socket when using it as a remote control; in fact I was gonna do this about 6 months ago but spent the money on a stupid impulse buy instead :'( )

I use NetJuke which streams all my MP3s to any PC on my local subnet. I also use a laptop with wireless LAN 802.11b outside on the patio which can play the streaming MP3 songs, plus I can dual boot the laptop from either Windows or Linux and still play my music. Works great for my purposes.

You may also checkout Linux InfraRed Controller LIRC for a remote control solution. Using LIRC may also allow you to use existing IR remote controls.

good luck!

Actually, both use Lirc to let you use a remote control to control many things. It's indirect, but effective. It's a sizeable portion of the FAQ & Documentation in MythTV at least. You'll need some kind of infrared detector on your system. You can either get an independant IR card, or many Hauppauge TV models have it included.

Ryan Fenton

Well, you should check out LIRC. There software is pretty good, but you'll have to get your hands dirty. Phil, my roommate in college used this softare and built a transmitter from some parts at Radio Shack. We hollowed out in the eye ball in a Jack in the Box and went to town. Good luck, and oh yeah.. ya gotta ditch Windows ;)

JOhn

I'm doing a Linux based Multimedia PC project in the near future, and could really use an RF remote since line-of-sight could be a problem. We'd also like to avoid requiring a keyboard in order to control most of the functions of the unit. I know X10 makes an RF remote that plugs into the serial port of the PC, but I'd like to find alternatives that are known to work with LIRC. Any one have experience in this?

Soko

How the heck do you effectively control windows/linux with a remote...

LIRC for Linux. It can control lots of software, including at least one HTPC software project.

It has a windows port too.

How the heck do you effectively control windows/linux with a remote...

LIRC for Linux. It can control lots of software, including at least one HTPC software project.

It has a windows port too.

Of course, there was no way to change stations. I considered briefly the notion of building a machine from mindstorms that would push the radio's preset buttons

The ability to record WHAT I want, WHEN I want, and use it HOW I want, even after the *AA buys themselves the entire goverment? ...Priceless.

Personally, I'm waiting for either a good deal on a decent tuner card, or general prices to come down - But I don't watch enough television to make the wait difficult. (Hell, I don't even have an antenna installed at this point.) Would be nice to watch CSI with, though

Oh, another option - Two or three sub-$100 VCRs, controlled by a cheap *IX server running for input/output/scheduling.

Of course I very quickly discovered that RealOne player's fullscreen mode messes up pretty badly when you're running Xinerama. Now if I click the fullscreen option, it tries to display the video centered across my entire Xinerama display, and for some reason the part that's supposed to show up on the right monitor doesn't show up at all. So what I get is the left half of the video displayed on the right half of my left monitor and the right monitor is effectively rendered useless.

And I guess expecting them to add LIRC support so I can control it with my remote control is *utterly* ridiculous.

The REALLY neat thing about xine is that it has extremely good support for LIRC, too. LIRC is something really really neat -- it's basically an open source piece of hardware that hooks into your serial port and can read commands from almost any ordinary IR remote control. (The parts for it are around $13-$15 at Radio Shack, takes around an hour to build if you don't know much about electronics.) Combined with xine and a DVD drive whose firmware I've patched to make it regionless, my computer is now a fully functional, multi region, multi display standard DVD player!

I think part of the whole point of releasing the source is to allow people to build their own tools, sans spyware, et al.

Who cares about spyware? What about general user experience? =)

My own experience is that RealPlayer in Linux is far from good. But with Helix DNA Player out there, why isn't anyone bolting that to Xine?

This way, I'd go on any web site that's offering Realvideo content, say open it, Xine would open it - and

1. have a real full screen mode with Xv hardware scaling (RP8 only supports maximized window, leaving stuff on the edges, and when it decides to resize the window, you're out of luck),
2. Have working playlist support - that is, one with auto-advance (so that the clueless sites like xenu.net that chop a two-hour program into 10 segments are actually viewable without getting up to start the next segment),
3. have a LIRC support (no need to get up at all), and
4. Just have a better UI, dammit!

I'd so much like to watch RealVideo with the same video player that I use for everything else...

...or someone to give a gigantic donation to xenutv.com so that they get fat net connection and ability to publish their stuff as MPEG =)

There are a few similar projects out there as well that I've been tracking.

• Myth TV has a music mode AND does live tv functionality! (I will probably migrate to this instead of continuing my project).
• Dave/Dina project may fit the bill too.
• IR File Chooser for the perl hackers. :)

Yes, it's possible. You can even control xmms with it. Or even (shameless plug) AlsaPlayer (although the AlsaPlayer control doesn't work the way it should, yet. It's just a load of hackery at this point.). One issue, though, with all these, is setting up playlists. AFAIK the xmms plugin has some playlist control, but I've never tried it. The AlsaPlayer has basically nothing.

xmms had plenty of command line control. If you configure LiRC to work with your remote, then you're all set.

If LiRC doesn't like your remote, you could do what I did: Buy a wireless keyboard. I bought a Logitech one with all the extra internet buttons and used Xikbd to remap the extra "media" keys into xmms commands.... works great.

All the hardware and software parts to do this yourself are already out there, mostly for free. Fetch an old pentium out of the trash, qet your own 20G HD. You already have a CD player and probably a sound card in the thing. You might want to hack with the power supply/cooling to reduce fan noise. Here is an example of why a slower machine would be better.

Since you probably don't want a video monitor atop your stereo, add an ehthernet card so you can remote manage it, or read the serial port console HOWTO. Install Linux, install mpg123 and cdparanoia, check out The linux remote control project to learn how to add infrared remote capabilities, and there you have it. Since it's on a LAN, you can access songs over the network, and vice-versa.

You could even build this thing diskless and access everything over the LAN, which would make it really quiet. Check out The etherboot page for booting over a LAN, or consider a flash memory drive (more money, but simpler to implement).

I'd have done it myself by now if there weren't 10^6 more important things to work on.

Try this one for $9.

It's serial (not USB) so that might be a downside, but it has linux support too !

I've been using one on my mp3 player box, and it's great!

>But NOT one project I've seen (including the Linux VCR, the Linux-Tivo thing on /. before, etc) has found a way to change the channels on the CABLE box when you want to watch something else.

They have their own domain, lirc.org. Like you're about to say, this is exactly the other half of the equation you need -- just add the glue code now and you're done.

>I'm working on coding my own using the TiVo emitters, but I really don't want to duplicate work.

Visit the site above and let us know when its complete!

HTH.

For a lot less then then $199, to be exact $35,- you can pick up an Irman remote control sensor. It will recieve any infrared code and works with LIRC, an open source linux package.

DISCLAMER: I used to be associated with Evation.com