A neat trick I found on the Ubuntu forums for dealing with dual booting and keeping a bluetooth devices paired

from http://newyork.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=224673&page=11....


Re: HOWTO: Apple Wireless Keyboard (Bluetooth)
@Webnickko: I solved the problem with dual booting with blue tooth and not having to pair the device every time i switch operating systems.

What you need to do is pair the device in windows and then look at the hex key for the pair in the windows registry and then copy that hex key to your /var/lib/bluetooth/linkkeys

this thread saved me ( http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1479056 ) but i'll walk you through exactly as i did.

First pair the device in Ubuntu and then open the following file:

Quote:
sudo gedit /var/lib/bluetooth/00:00:00:00:00:00/linkkeys
***NOTE*** 00:00:00:00:00:00 is the address of your bluetooth pc/dongle (receiver) not your keyboard. Use your file browser and look into the /var/lib/bluetooth/ directory. There is probably only one folder which is the address of your bluetooth pc/dongle

Notice that within the linkkeys file it shows something like this:

11:11:11:11:11:11 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 6 6

****NOTE**** 11:11:11:11:11:11 is the address of your bluetooth device and xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx is the 16 bit hex key that you are going to get from your windows registry and copy in its place. If you have more than one line in this file then you have more than one bluetooth device with a pairing key. You will have to figure out which is which. Blueman easily tells you which device is which.

Ok i just wanted to familiarize you with what we will be doing in ubuntu and since i'm not sure if that linkkeys file would be created without an initial pairing I had us start there.

Now for the real work!

Boot into windows and Pair the device again and make sure it is working. Now reboot windows **was an important step for me**

NOW WE NEED TO RUN REGEDIT UNDER THE SYSTEM ACCOUNT so nothing is hidden from us

to do this download this tool from here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s.../bb897553.aspx

unzip that file into a directory of your choice and run cmd.exe and change into the directory

type:

Quote:
psexec -s -i regedit.exe


You will then run regedit as SYSTEM, and be able to find the link key entry from windows.

now go to:
Quote:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet002\services\B THPORT\Parameters\Keys\
There will be one more subfolder whose name i think is system specific. In that subfolder will be the hex key for your device. The name of the hex key will be the address of your keyboard ( 11:11:11:11:11:11 ) and the value of the hex key will be 16 pairs of numbers looking like this:
xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx

This is the 16 bit Hex key. It doesn't let you copy and paste from here so export this specific registry file somewhere on your computer and then open up that exported file and copy and paste it into a text file and then remove all the the spaces so that it looks like:

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Now go into ubuntu

Quote:
sudo gedit /var/lib/bluetooth/00:00:00:00:00:00/linkkeys

and replace the old hex key with the one you copied from windows registry into a text file and leave the rest the same. REMEMBER YOU NEED TO HAVE REMOVED THOSE SPACES in the hex key

11:11:11:11:11:11 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 6 6


All i had to do after that was unplug and reinsert by bluetooth dongle

CHEERS!!! and thanks to mbehensky and harbulot for solving this in the original post located here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1479056


***on a side note my eject key on the keyboard still doesn't do anything, haven't figured that one out yet***
Last edited by HeinekenPissr; October 7th, 2010 at 07:18 PM.

XBMC and home automation

XBMC short for Xbox Media Center has been the premier open source home entertainment system for a while now. It was originally released to be run on original Microsoft Xboxes that had been soft moded. That seems like so long ago. These days the XBMC dev team are still hard at work, and while recently support for xbmc on the original xbox has stopped (the original xbox really wasn't designed for 1080p quailty video) many other platforms are now supported: 1st gen apple tv, linux, OS X, and windows are the big ones. The team even has a comercial version of their software called BOXEE. And while XBMC can play almost any media you can throw at it, AND has a host of community supported plugins available, the coolest feature is its API. With this we can remotely control a running instance of XBMC from some other device. There are remote control programs for the sony psp, iphone/ipod touch and droid platforms. But we can write our own too.

The first thing we will need to do is get a copy of xbmc up and running. There are plenty of guides for various platforms. I currently run XBMC on an acer revo hooked up to the down stairs TV, on an apple-TV in the bed room, and on the linux server in the office. for simplicities sake, to install xbmc on ubuntu its as easy as

sudo apt-get install xbmc

but for our purposes you'll also want to

sudo apt-get install xbmc-send

xbmc-send is a stand alone command line program that can send commands to a running instance of XBMC.

NOTE: before trying this you will first need to allow you XBMC to recieve remote commands.

System->Network->Services->Allow control of xbmc via HTTP and or UPNP

you also want to enable the option that says "Allow program on other systems to control XBMC"

after you get XBMC installed and configured to your liking grab a terminal and try something like

xbmc-send --host="your host by name or ip" --action="Notification(title, my message)"

and you should see a little notification box pop up in the lower right hand corner(depending on which skin you are using).

there are other ways of gettings these sorts of thing to happen. If you are using a recent version of xbmc you can check out the JSON remote control protocoll. If you are you using versions of xbmc old enough to run on the original xboc you can check out the deperciated http api, for a list of all built in functions take a look at

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=List_of_Built_In_Functions

the commands on this list are what we will use with the xbmc-send program.

so where does x10 fit in with all this? Last post I talked up one of the new features of the python driver, that it can recieve commands from other remotes AND sensors

like the one here, for example

http://www.thehomeautomationstore.com/ms14a-w.html

(they are much cheaper on ebay!!!!)

So, lets say you purchased one of these guys and programmed it to be a13

assuming you are redirecting out put from your x10 python driver like we talked about last post you might do something like this...

tail -f liveHouse.log | while read a ;

do [[ if "$a" == +a13* ]] ; then

#put anything you want to happen as a result of tripping the motion sensor, like sending an IM or email or desktop/xbmc notification

xbmc-send --host='my xbmc IP or HostName' --action="Notification(Activity, Motion detected)" ;

fi ;

done

then make some motion in front of your sensor (or you could just turn on a13 from an x10 remote, essentially thats all the sensor does)

and you should see your little message box on the XBMC screen. AWESOME!

you of course don't need XBMC to enjoy this kind of early warning. Mac users have Growl (though I've never played with the API for growl) ubuntu users have a built in notification system called notify-osd. you can access the ubuntu system directly from the command line by doing

sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin

after which you can run a command like

notify-send 'TITLE", "My message"

Home Automation Part 2 (Now With Python)

Wow. It has been a while. It can be hard to find time as a student to work on personal projects let alone share them with the world, but I'm happy to report a few improvments on the state of cheap and easy home automation for the DIY minded.

Firstly, incase you didn't know...

Kernel modules are out. User-space python scripts are in.

Mike Lemay, the gentalman who provides the linux kernel module I wrote about last time has released an upgrade as a python module. This is great news! No more recompiling evrytime Canolical releases a kernel update, and no more (ok, well less) worrying about permissions.

And one of the best parts is that we can now use our cm19a to listen for commands from other wireless compliant x10 remotes and sensors!

Things are invoked a little differently now, but with a little bash magic we can massage data flow to work with any preexisting scripts you might have in place from the kernel module version of the driver. IE we'll make our own pseudo device in dev called cm19a0

start out by grabbing the latest python driver from Lemay's site

http://m.lemays.org/projects/x10-cm19a-linux-driver

Following the linux tutorial on Lemay's site

and come back when you get to step 9

...

for step 9 we will be making some named pipes - our pseudo device, and we're going to put them in /dev

so in a terminal with root permissions type

mkfifo /dev/cm19a0

mkfifo /dev/cm19a1

cm19a0 will represent the commands going out from the transceiver

cm19a1 will represent the commands coming in from other x10 remotes and sensors

we're ready to fire up the driver.

as an aside you may have to adjust the permissions of the transceiver device on your system. step 10 on Mikes site will illustrate how to do this manually, but you will have to retype the commands he talks about every time your machine reboots. As an alternative you may want to set up a udev rule. Being able to set up udev rules is an invaluable skill for sysadmins and in general are very handy for keeping track of devices that aren't necessarily "plug n play"

There's plenty of info around the web on the particulars of writing udev rules, but for the bare minimum to get you going here's what you want to do.

gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/95-perso.rules

put this line in the file somewhere

ATTR{manufacturer}=="X10 Wireless Technology Inc", ATTR{product}=="USB Transceiver", GROUP="users", MODE="0666"

save and close

sudo service udev restart

to apply the rules.

95-perso.rules is the rules file that I use. the 95 at the beginning describes the order that udev will apple these rules. for devices like the usb transceiver I find it is best to wait until the system has sorted everything else out, so we make it the last thing the kernel deals with.

Now, in its basic syntax, we invoke the driver by running ( from the directory where the driver is located)

python pycm19a.py < /dev/cm19a0 > /dev/cm19a1

if you are having problems at this point, try going back and following steps 1-9 (or further for your satisfaction).

you should be able to enter a command in a new terminal in the usual fashion

echo +a1 > /dev/cm19a0

looks familiar, right?

now (in a different terminal) type

tail -f /dev/cm19a1

then use one of your remotes or sensors and turn off or on a device

if I turn off the lamp on a1 with mine, I see

...

+a1

...

cool?

and thats all well and good, but for those who want to take things a step farther you might try something like this...

python pycm19a.py < /dev/cm19a0 > /dev/cm19a1 2>>/dev/cm19a1 && cat /dev/cm19a1 | while read a ; do echo "$a : `date`" ; done > cm19a.log &

what does this do?

you may have noticed that commands sent via command line to the driver do not show up with commands from other remotes. so the first thing we want to do is include those commands

(thats the 2>>/dev/cm19a1) we then redirect that entire output again to a loop that appends the date and time each command was recieved or sent into a file called cm19a.log. Pretty neat huh? now you have a running log for your own edification of when any appliance has been turned off or on via any controller.

Ok. Last little tidbit for this post. once you have this command and you throw it in to a bash script to run at reboot. For me I prefer a userspace service.

this little bash script is based on a skeleton that I reuse over and over again for things I want to run as services but only under my normal user space.

copy the following code in to a file called liveHouse. chmod u+x liveHouse then you should be able to ./liveHouse start to start the service ./liveHouse stop to stop it and ./liveHouse to check to see if its running (if its running it will return its process number)

#!/bin/bash

#emulate the stop start action of /etc/init.d with out all the service overhead...

driver='/absolute/path/to/your/driver';

inFile='/dev/cm19a0';

outFile='/dev/cm19a1';

logFile='/absolute/path/to/where/you/want/to/log'

#if no argument is given, return the process number

if [[ $1 == '' ]] ; then

iam=$(ps ax | grep 'pycm19a.py' | grep -v 'grep' | awk '{print $1}');

if [[ $iam == '' ]] ; then

exit 0;

else

echo "$iam";

fi;

elif [[ $1 == 'start' ]] ; then

running=`ps aux | grep "$SHELL $0 start" | grep -v grep | wc -l `

devCheck=`ls -l $inFile $outFile | grep $USER | wc -l`;

if [[ $devCheck == 2 && $running == 2 ]] ; then

#if its not already running start it up

echo "starting liveHouse";

exec python "$driver" < "$inFile" > $outFile 2>>$outFile & cat $outFile | while read a ; do echo "$a : `date`" ; done > $logFile & echo > $inFile &

else

echo "liveHouse is already running or there was a problem with $inFile or $outFile";

exit 0;

fi

elif [[ $1 == 'stop' ]] ; then

echo "Stopping liveHouse";

killMe=$(ps ax | grep 'pycm19a.py' | grep -v 'grep' | awk '{print $1}') ;

kill -9 "$killMe";

fi;

NOTE YOU MAY WANT TO DOUBLE CHECK THE QUOTES ON THIS. THEY MAY NOT HAVE BEEN ENCODED CORRECTLY WHEN I PASTED FROM MY TERMINAL AND IT MAY CAUSE SYNTAX ERRORS IF YOU TRY TO RUN THIS

NEXT POST: throwing XBMC in to the mix!!!

Adventures in X10 Home automation with iphone and JQTouch

This year my tax return was big. It let me afford to purchase some things that I've wanted to play with for a while now, not the least of which the cm19a X10 RF controller like this one here

http://www.thehomeautomationstore.com/cm19a.html

I think this device is probably anyone's best bet for this sort of thing as it does not interface directly with any sort of power outlet so you don't have to worry about some sort of freak occurrence happening and destroying your precious, precious computer.

This means though that you will also need to purchase the transceiver module

http://www.thehomeautomationstore.com/tm751.html

then of course you will want at least one or more lamp/appliance modules

X10 is sort of the old man at the table of home automation, so there's plenty of documentation on how it does what it does, not to mention hard ware and modules are pretty reasonable compared to the newer standards like Z-wave.

the beauty of this little device is it is supported in linux with control via the command line.

to achieve this we first get the most recent driver from here

http://lemaymd.com/drupal/node/3

extract the files to your home directory
(I'm using Ubuntu 9.10)

go ahead an plug in the device to an open USB port and confirm that the computer sees it

$ lsusb

...
Bus 005 Device 002: ID 0bc7:0002 X10 Wireless Technology, Inc. Firecracker Interface (ACPI-compliant)
...


To build the modules make sure you have the build-essential package installed

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential

then

$ cd x10-cm19a-0.1.1/

$ sudo make
$ sudo make install

if everything went well, it should compile with out any major complications or errors

if it didn't, or you feel like you need to recompile the module, be sure to run sudo make clean before trying again.


but now we are faced with some kernel confusion. Stock builds of Ubuntu will more then likely think the cm19a is some sort of ir receiver device or other kind of remote control. To set it straight we add these modules to the kernel module blacklist

$ sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

add these lines

blacklist lirc_atiusb
blacklist ati_remote

save and close
then remove the modules from the current state of the kernel

$ sudo rmmod lirc_atiusb
$ sudo rmmod ati_remote

then to add the cm19a module

$ sudo modprobe x10-cm19a

There may be some plugging and unplugging but you should see your new device show up in /dev

$ ls /dev/c*

/dev/cm19a0

if you don't see it here now, a reboot may solve the issue, or you can add some rules to udev to make sure it gets inserted with the right permissions and or other custom parameters. Check this post out for more on that

http://pr0gr4mm3r.com/linux/getting-your-x10-cm19a-module-working-in-linux/

if everything worked you should now be able to write commands directly to the device in this manner to turn off the X10 module with house code A unit code 5

$ echo -A5 > /dev/cm19a0

this does not give you any direct feedback though, so for debugging dmesg and syslog are your friend

open up a new terminal of your choice and run either

$ dmesg | tail

or

$ tail -f /var/log/syslog

(passing the -f flag to tail will let tail follow the file as new lines come in)

you should see something like


Mar 8 11:02:08 ubunbox kernel: [164153.964339] x10-cm19a: devf_write called with buffer length 4
Mar 8 11:02:08 ubunbox kernel: [164153.964346] x10-cm19a: got off command
Mar 8 11:02:08 ubunbox kernel: [164153.964348] x10-cm19a: house code A
Mar 8 11:02:08 ubunbox kernel: [164153.964351] x10-cm19a: unit = 1
Mar 8 11:02:08 ubunbox kernel: [164153.964354] x10-cm19a: Created HA command: off a 1
Mar 8 11:02:08 ubunbox kernel: [164153.964357] x10-cm19a: Transmitting 5 byte command:
Mar 8 11:02:08 ubunbox kernel: [164153.964360] x10-cm19a: buf[0] = 20
Mar 8 11:02:08 ubunbox kernel: [164153.964363] x10-cm19a: buf[1] = 60
Mar 8 11:02:08 ubunbox kernel: [164153.964365] x10-cm19a: buf[2] = 9F
Mar 8 11:02:08 ubunbox kernel: [164153.964368] x10-cm19a: buf[3] = 20
Mar 8 11:02:08 ubunbox kernel: [164153.964370] x10-cm19a: buf[4] = DF
Mar 8 11:02:08 ubunbox kernel: [164153.964376] x10-cm19a: wrote command
Mar 8 11:02:08 ubunbox kernel: [164153.964379] x10-cm19a: read back interrupt data
Mar 8 11:02:08 ubunbox kernel: [164153.964382] x10-cm19a: devf_write: back from x10_transmit_cmd
Mar 8 11:02:08 ubunbox kernel: [164153.966694] x10-cm19a: freeing buffer in callback (0xf685e020/0x3685e020)


So now that you have command line access to any X10 enabled appliance in your house, the next thing you want to do is set up some server side script to make access from mobile devices possible

this is a quick and dirty PHP file that takes arguments via http GET requests
By reading further you acknowledge that I am in no way responsible for any undesired effects!!!
but feel free to use it to whatever legal ends you see fit

Put this in some protected web directory in whatever php capable server you are running.

see .htaccess for more on using basic authincation to protect files and directories under apache

Some might also notice that I am using the command line backticks here. You can read up about this on the official PHP.org site to get more info on alternative methods for running cli commands and the potential security risks

<?
####
#Scott Cheezem
#03052010
###
#h - the house code
#u - the unit code
#s - the state 1 for on 0 for off
function check($ch){
#echo "checking $ch";
if (isset($_GET[$ch]) && strlen($ch) == 1){

return true;
}
}


if (check('h') && check('u') && check('s')){
$h=$_GET['h'];
$u=$_GET['u'];
$s=$_GET['s'];
if($s=="0"){
$s="-";
}else if($s=="1"){
$s="+";
}
$ts=`date`;
$command="echo ".$s.$h.$u." > /dev/cm19a0";
#echo $command;
`$command`;
$log=`echo "$ts $command" >> x10.log`;
}

?>

after that is done check to make sure everything is working as it should up to this point...

try going to

http://ip.address.of.your.computer/path/to/file/whateverYouCalledIt.php?h=A&u=1&s=1

and it should turn on house code A, unit code 1


and now the pay off!!!!

the next layer in this delicious cake of home automation is your interface.... Your iphone interface!!!

I have a working version of a webapp I call liveHouse. feel free to check it out here on your ipod touch/iphone/Safari (even windows safari works! YAY!)

http://user.theroyalwe.net/liveHouse









if you want to download the code to use on your own server go here

http://user.theroyalwe.net/liveHouse.zip

click the plus in safari and then add to home screen to install on your device











(note: in the case of webapps like this one, all the javascript CSS images and html are cached locally to your phone. when ever you run the app, it will check automatically for any updates to the code and download them. really,who needs the app sotre!?!)

this app was developed with jquery and the jqtouch extension.

more info on jqtouch here

http://code.google.com/p/jqtouch/

NOTE: this is just the first working draft. The control script url (the php file we made earlier) and optional login credentials are stored in a cookie in plain text. For anyone planning on using this from behind their home network, this should be fine. I would not recommend using this script from outside your local area network if security is an issue!!!


Cheers and Happy home-atuomating!!!

remote Tv

So about a year ago my now-roommate bequeathed me with a PCI-WinTv decoder/PVR/tv card. Always excited to try legacy hardware in my ubuntu box I popped it in, and got MythTv up and running. But much to my dismay MythTv ran like crap on my slightly older, surplussed hardware. Audio was not decoding at the correct sample rate, the display was lagged and pixilated, and MythTv was hogging all of my precious resources (is a mysql DB really necessary for watching TV?). At the time, recording Tv shows was lower on the priority totem than having clear crisp Tv on my Desktop.

TvTime was next and did what it does very well. Clear audio, crisp full screen Tv, no lag. But how quickly our satisfaction fades. One thing about the winTv cards is that the defacto hardware install calls for a patch cable to be run from the line out on the card to a line in on the motherBord/sound card in order to get analog sound. And this is Fine untill I move my computer, or the cat walks behind it or some other such thing that causes the cable to become unplugged. Plus it just seems so...extraneous.

Of course all this begged the question, why not use my favorite open source, seemingly trans-platform, streaming media player, VLC? why not indeed. First Run didn't produce much. In Linux world we get a V4L tab ( in windows its DirectShow ). pointing it at my video device (/dev/video0), only produced a screen full of static and no sound at all. Ultimately though, spurred on with much success streaming from webcams and the like, I knew I really wouldn't be happy until I could watch and stream TV with vlc. Last weekend, however, my patience and perseverance paid off and Now I am streaming TV from home to work as I write this very satisfied with my technological prowess.

and of course here is a road map to help other perspective tv streamers and sopCasters.


1. what driver do you need? where do you get it?

This part, mythTv took care of for me, but I know there are a variety of options here in terms of open source drivers. Mine ended up being Cx88xx (or some such thing) more information check on the v4l home page (http://www.linuxtv.org/)
Chances are, if you're using something like a Debian/ubuntu these are already included in your kernel so not much to worry about.

2. what's what in /dev

after I installed the card and mythTv did it's thing I noticed some new listings under the /dev directory. radio0, video0, vbi0, audio2. The trick is figuring out what's what. This step took me a while and turned out to be a huge pain in the ass as on the surface linux isn't very forthcoming about details (at least if you don't know how to ask). On top of that I also have two webcams plugged in to the machine in question. On reboot my kernel would sometimes switch around all the asignments of the name space (IE video0, a webcam might be come video1).

I don't reboot my machine that often, but when I do, I like it when my scripts dont get confused about what piece of hardware they should be talking to. Enter the magic of UDEV rules. Only really ever having used the ubuntu distro I can't speak to weather udev is common among other *nixes or not, but I'm glad that they are in Ubuntu. for those who don't know, they allow for a rule sheet with mappings to a consistent file system name space.

For example,
from (/etc/udev/rules.d/95-perso.rules)

KERNEL=="video[0-9]", SYSFS{name}=="cx88*video*", SYMLINK+="tv"

will tell the kernel at start up, after its done its initial hardware mapping to make an additional symlink to whatever device that comes up with "cx88" and "video" to /dev/tv. Of course thats only one way in an entire search syntax to have it map your devices for you (see the ubuntu forums and http://reactivated.net/writing_udev_rules.html for more on this).
so after a quick script to run through all the items in /dev and list only the ones that had something to do with the cx88 dirver...


for i in /dev/* ; do udevinfo -q path -n $i ; done 2>&1 | grep -v node | while read a ; do udevinfo -a -p "$a" | if grep -i some part of the driver name that you are searching for (like "cx88") ; then echo $a ; fi ; done

running that from a command line or script should list all the devices that use the search term in question.

3. VLC

with the freshly created /dev/tv and /dev/tvAudio we can now move on to working with VLC. Knowing that I would want to be able to remotely stop and start the stream with vlc I whipped up this little bash script called remotetv.

#!/bin/bash

if [[ $1 == '' ]] ; then
iam=$(ps ax | grep vlc | grep '/dev/tv');
iam="${iam# }";
iam="${iam%% *}";
if [[ $iam == '' ]] ; then
exit 0;
else
echo "$iam";
fi;
elif [[ $1 == 'start' ]] ; then


vlc -vvv -I dummy --ttl 12 v4l:/dev/tv:size=320x240:samplerate=48000:adev=/dev/tvAudio --sout '#transcode{vcodec=DIV3,vb=512,scale=1,acodec=mp3,ab=64,channels=1}:duplicate{dst=std{access=http,mux=ogg,dst=0.0.0.0:1235}}' 2>/dev/null 1>/dev/null &



elif [[ $1 == 'stop' ]] ; then
killMe=$(ps ax | grep vlc | grep '/dev/tv') ;
killMe="${killMe# }";
killMe="${killMe%% *}";
# echo "$killMe";
kill -9 "$killMe";
fi


put it in /usr/local/bin, chmod ug+x, and bam! start/stop vlc with remotetv stop or remotetv start. check the process-ID by simply calling remotetv and if its running it will tell you the PID
some things to note...

v4l:/dev/tv:size=320x240:samplerate=48000:adev=/dev/tvAudio

/dev/tv & /dev/tvAudio are the two devices that we made earlier with the UDEV rules.

:samplerate=48000

this one took me a loooooong time to figure out. my card's default sample rate is 48000. VLC calls v4l with a default sample rate of 42000 but this causes the audio to sound like its being squeezed through a tin horn. setting it corectly should take care of that.

for the rest of the parameters dealing with streaming (codecs, containers, bit-rates and stream destinations) and on the fly transcoding check out the videolan wiki (http://wiki.videolan.org)


once remotetv is running, you should be able to connect to the stream from multiple machines simultaneously with

vlc http://your.ip.address:1235


4. Changing Channels?

so there may be a way to pass the frequency to VLC directly, but from what I understand it will only take the frequency not the channel, so you need to have a mapping of frequency to channel. Fortunately we don't need VLC to change channels for us we can use the tools that came with ivtv (which were probably installed when we installed and ran tvtime or mythtv, if not a simple apt-get install ivtv should do it)

from the command line something like this will change to channel XX

me@ubunbox:~$ ivtv-tune -d /dev/tv -c XX

**a quick note: it is possible to change channels with the v4lctl command, something like v4lctl -c /dev/tv setchannel XX is supposed to work, but on my box with my card, it seems to cuase a bit of unpleasant panic**

and for some, that might be everything you need to enjoy some streaming tv and remotely change channels, but for me I wanted a more friendly interface, maybe even something I could use from my phone.

so after a little more coding I wrote up a page in php with so called smart phones in mind (but also works in the usual browsers, FF IE safari. not yet tested in chrome).

I've put the script and the php page I wrote up on source forge please feel free to check it out and check out the additional documentation I included (though really there is a lot in this post that isn't covered there).

check out
https://sourceforge.net/projects/remotetv/

Pray for left handed sophie

-- Post From My iPhone