• There’s an annoying .net framework error popping up on the Media Center every so often.
• My Harmony remote isn’t quite set up well enough.  It doesn’t work well when the Media Center is already on.  The problem is that I’ve installed a standby saving power bar, which I want to keep, but it doesn’t play nice with the remote.
• I need to find a way to ARM the Y-CAM when we leave the house and disarm it when we return.  Or I need to move it to an area with slightly less traffic, i.e. where we don’t walk all the time so that my mailbox doesn’t fillup!
• I need to be able to view the Y-CAM stream on my Windows Mobile device, or at least be able to see the latest image.  That might mean configuring FTP, which means finding a secure FTP server on the net.
• I want to workout the overall power consumption of the kit in the house.  I might be scared.
• The TV Arial just doesn’t seem to be quite right, it’s a few degrees off!  Time for cable?
• My Windows Home Server is using a bit too much power, 40kwh in standby – that needs to come down.

Technorati Tags: y-cam,media center

La búsqueda fué realmente complicada, pero al final dió sus frutos y dentro de unas líneas vereis el resultado, pero antes toca comentar una cosilla. En aquella primera entrada tenía bastante claro que el hardware que iba a estar dentro de la caja elegida sería una placa Intel D945GCLF con un Intel Atom. Sin embargo, a medida que seguía buscando la caja, seguía mirando más y más la susodicha placa, y cuanto más la miraba, menos me convencía. Al pertecener a la serie Essential de Intel, es extremadamente básica a nivel de funciones integradas, en concreto los 2 puertos SATA y la falta de Gigabit Ethernet me echaban bastante para atrás, sin contar el diseño en general de la placa y el chipset Intel 945, que la mata mucho en todos los sentidos, especialmente en consumo energético, y es que en idle consume practicamente lo mismo que un AMD Sempron o un Celeron, y la diferencia en carga máxima es de tan solo 15-20W, mientras que la diferencia de rendimiento es abismal... Total, que al final decidí irme a una configuración "más clásica", aunque tratando de minimizar el ruido. El resultado es que decidí utilizar un Intel Celeron S 430 (1.8Ghz) como procesador. Tiene un consumo máximo de 35W, por lo no debería de haber muchos problemas para matenerlo refrigerado con poco ruido, y como os contaré más adelante, así es.

Bien, ahora vamos con el tema central, la caja. Pues bien, la agraciada no ha sido una caja "suelta", sino un barebone (y es que no la había suelta! :)). Se trata del barebone Asus T3-P5G31 que podeis ver en la foto de abajo (debido a un problemilla con la batería de la cámara, tuve que sacar las fotos con el Nokia N80, asique no son una maravilla):

El barebone está compuesto por la caja (lo más importante) y una placa Asus con chipset Intel G31, lo que incluye soporte para 4Gb de RAM, 1 ranura PCI-e x16, gráfica integrada Intel X3100, 3 SATA II, gigabit Ethernet y poco más. Por dentro la caja está bastante bien aprovechada, teniendo en cuenta el tamaño que tiene y que lleva una fuente de alimentacion ATX de tamao estándar, lo cual fué una característica que me ayudo a convencerme. Aquí os dejo un par de fotillos:

Entre las curiosidades del barbone está el panel frontal de conexiones USB, audio y lectores de tarjetas, el cual se conecta a la placa a tavés de una conexión que desconozo, no se si sera una ranura AMR o una ranura PCIe 1x camuflada... pero lo cierto es que este método no me gustó n, por que como en el futuro cambie de placa, adiós panel frontal... me esperaba que se conectase por USB internamente.

El barebone me ha dejado muy buen sabor de boca, el diseño me encanta, compacto y sobrio y en combinación con el Intel Celeron es un sistema muy silencioso (no es totalmente silencioso, pero si dificil de escuchar). A esto se une un buen compromiso de consumo y rendimiento. Si estais pensando en montaros un pequeño servidor casero, os lo recomiendo, es una fantástica opción.

As you can see(the little green led is flashing ;) , my little Fit-PC slim server is finally up and running. It is completely fanless and still pretty cool. The case works as a heat sink, and even directly ontop of the CPU, its only mildly warm (sorry for not having a thermometer for telling the exact temperature).

I installed Ubuntu (Hardy) using a mini-iso (net-install) on a USB stick. The installation was easier than I thought, even though I ran a command line setup.

So the (command line only) minimal installation is done and I managed to get an apache and an nfs-share to work. I can now access the documents on the server with my notebook just like any external hard drive (only faster). Neat!

Also, I must say that it is incredible how silent it runs, sitting on the shelf.

Now that all these things work, I can start thinking of all the other fun things I want to do with it.

I guess the first thing will be a personal wiki, some cron services (I want to automatically back up all the document-files on an external harddisk every day plus I want my Sony Walkman to be updated with new podcasts every night), and a ftp- and www-accessible foto-album service for my family (upload with ftp, then view by browsing automagically generated HTML-pages).

So, looking ahead, I can see a lot of work and fun coming the next weeks/months.

My plan was to buy a small, silent, power saving computer, install Ubuntu Server Edition on it and create some services for me, my parents/sister and some friends.

I want to create a private Wiki, a family Foto-Archive that can be accessed via FTP and viewed as html, my own little code snippet dump (mostly for stuff in python) and a fileserver for pdfs, lecture notes etc.

So I decided to purchase the newly released Fit-PC Slim due to its low energy consumption and the fact that it is fanless.

I bought the version without HDD, directly from overseas. And this may have caused me alot of trouble, because the HDD that I bought won't be recognized by the Slim. The problem is that I now don't know what part is broken or where the error occurs.

So I'm gonna have to test the HDD (and hope that this is the part that is broken since I bought it in germany so it's easy and cheap to return it), but I have to prepare some exams, too, which really limits my spare time for stuff like that.

Wish me luck, folks!

• First post: Hello world! on 19 September 2007, and I didn't even write it!

• Most popular post (hits): Cheap low power home server options with 1,026 hits

• Most popular post (comments): DSL, Puppy Linux, Netvoyager and CurrentCost with 12 comments

• Least popular post (not including this one!): Perranporth, Cornwall with 3 hits, which is a shame because the Ordnance Survey still do nice wallpaper pics

• Most popular search term: "low power home server" 112 times

• Busiest day: Thursday, July 31, 2008 with 306 hits

• Total views: 8,994

• Spam: 2,763 (all caught thanks to Akismet)

Luckily it's not all numbers. Here's my roundup from the past year/99 posts:

• Favourite post (other than the obvious one!): You can do anything with stop motion animation

• Favourite comment: if I'd have started this blog sooner, there would have been a lot of posts about fitting the kitchen!

• Favourite incoming link: Blogrolled

• Most useful post: Setting up an MDM Server development environment (useful but not necessarily interesting! I've pointed a lot of people at work to it and it seems to help)

• Most useless post: iPhone accessibility (nobody seems interested, which is a shame- must try and catch up with Andy about trying it out on the touch screen kiosk in the ETS lab instead)

If you got this far, well done! If all goes to plan, I'll have some cakes at my desk in Hursley to celebrate.

P.S. Aarrr!

Update: If you were working at home today/don't work in Hursley, you missed out... yum...

• PSDTUTS: 7 Steps to Developing Originality in Your Design and Illustration Work
• Debuggable: Hacking a Commercial Airport WLAN
• Smashing Magazine: Screencasting: How to Start, Tools, and Guidelines
• ReadWriteWeb: 10 Promising Web Platforms
• Lifehacker: D-Color Customizes Your [Windows] Desktop Icons
• Lifehacker: Mozilla Crowns Best Firefox 3 Extensions
• Smashing Magazine: 7 Principles of Clean Optimized CSS Code
• Lifehacker: Email Innovations You Want in Your Inbox
• Smashing Magazine: 10 Futuristic User Interfaces
• Digital Inspiration: Bulk Convert Old Documents to the New Office 2007 Format 
• Webmonkey: Set Up a Home Server
• Lifehacker: Quick Media Converter Converts Audio or Video to Any Format [Windows]

This article tells how to set up your home server.

No more excuses, now! Get that thing up and RUNNING!

I’m amazed at how simple it was to setup.  Pop the CD in, tell it to format all the drives, enter a password and wait.  When it was done I logged on and got it to do updates using Windows Update.  I also setup one user for myself and I turned UPNP on on my router.

Next I setup my laptop and media center.  All I had to do here was connect to \software">\\<server>\software and run the home server connector software setup.  Now my machines will backup to the Home Server every night.

All I need to do now is work out how best to manage the power…

For more on Windows Home Server, check out We Got Served

The nice thing about a home server is that it doesn't have to be a really fast machine. An old Celeron with 512MB of RAM will do just fine. The only two real requirements for the computer are hard drive space, and a NIC (ethernet/network) card.

If you have more than one computer that you will hook up to this computer you should use a router. Any wireless or regular router will do. If you are hooking up the computer directly to the server you will need a crossover cable.

Once you have downloaded the ISO image and burned a copy of OpenSuse you can install it. I will detail that in the next post.

Ik ga ervan uit dat er een nieuwe bibliotheek wordt aangemaakt. Het is eventueel ook mogelijk om een reeds bestaande bibliotheek onder OSX te consolideren naar een gedeelde folder op het netwerk ipv stap 1.  

Maak de nieuwe iTunes bibliotheek aan onder OSX:

1. Start iTunes via Option-click en selecteer de gedeelde iTunes folder op het netwerk om de nieuwe bibliotheek aan te maken.
2. Sluit iTunes volledig af en hernoem het zojuist aangemaakte bestand iTunes Library naar iTunes Library.itl
3. Start iTunes nogmaals op via Otption-click en browse naar de iTunes Library.itl file.

iTunes zal de bibliotheek nu opnieuw inlezen en een extra iTunes Library.itl.xml aanmaken, zodra dit is uitgevoerd start iTunes normaal op.

Om de iTunes bibliotheek vanaf een Windows machine te gebruiken:

• Start iTunes via Shift-Click en selecteer iTunes Library.itl vanaf de gedeelde netwerk folder

iTunes moet de bibliotheek weer inlezen en maakt nu een iTunes Library.xml bestand aan. Onder Windows wordt  iTunes Library.xml  gebruikt en onder OSX iTunes Library.itl.xml.

Uiteindelijk staan er dus 3 ipv 2 bestanden in de iTunes folder:

1. iTunes Library.itl
2. iTunes Library.itl.xml (gebruikt onder OSX)
3. iTunes Library.xml (gebruikt onder Windows)

Note: Helaas kunnen niet meerdere gebruikers de bibliotheek tegelijkertijd wijzigen, wijzigingen zullen in dat geval verloren gaan. Sluit daarom iTunes af alvorens deze op een andere computer weer op te starten. Ook kan er op de gedeelde folder een gebruikerslimiet worden ingesteld, door deze op 1 te zetten kunnen nooit  2 iTunes op hetzelfde moment toegang hebben tot de gedeelde folder en de data mogelijk beschadigen.

Tenslotte maak ik regelmatig met SyncToy een backup van mijn iTunes bibliotheek naar een externe harde schijf.

Bron: Share iTunes library with OS X and Windows via a server