Cutting The Cable

You may have inferred the fact that I have recently upgraded a perfectly wonderful MacBook Air to the latest model. And you may also know that I've been geeking with the Raspberry Pi. Implicit in this is my desire to create the perfect Internet/TV lash-up. If you buy an Internet-ready TV, you'll find it has some of the apps you want, but it'll have some annoying gaps that are filled by the Apple TV. And if you buy an Apple TV set top box, you'll find it has more of the apps you want, but other annoying gaps that are filled by the Raspberry Pi. (If you think this is an unreasonable line of reasoning, I agree and I blame my friend Paul.) My days of subscribing to Cable TV are numbered.

So, I've been poking around figuring things out how to plug those gaps.

Since the weather has gotten cold, I don't like to walk outside with my wife for exercise. We have a treadmill and Nordic Trak next to one another, but took out the TV in front of them when television went HD digital a while back. So, I didn't want to be cold when I exercise. and I didn't want to be bored, either. So, this morning after breakfast, I trotted off to Best Buy and bought an open-box Samsung TV. It's not particularly large, and it was reasonably priced. So reasonably priced that I was able to throw in another Apple TV into the deal.

It took a few hours and a bit of to-and-fro with the cables, but I got both the Apple TV and the Raspberry Pi XBMC application going. If you're going to do this, I recommend a TV that implements some form of HDMI/CEC so you don't have to fuss with adding a keyboard, mouse, or other interface to the Raspberry Pi.

Because I got the television dirt cheap, it did not have HDMI/CEC. But I was able to dispense with the keyboard/mouse after I told the XBMC application to let other programs control it over the net. After I turned that on, I was able to download and configure apps for my Android phone and also for my iPad so that each can serve as a remote control That's pretty cool to pick up the cell phone or the iPad when you want to pause a video.

(I got my wife a Nest thermostat for Christmas. So, this morning I turned up the temperature without getting out of bed with my iPad. I love living in the future.)

I made mention of upgrading a perfectly good MacBook Air, because it supports this feature called "AirPlay mirroring." Thus, when I'm running the MacBook Air, I can mirror its display to the television. Anything I can see on my Mac I can also see on my TV without having to schlep a bunch of cables between things. And all the wires are tucked behind the television and its stand the way God intended them to.

In these days of HDTV, I find that I can dispense with a lot of complexity I had to sort out in the 1990s, but I get a lot of new complexity. So, it's a wash. It's amazing how much awesome technology you can get for not much money these days.

With a HDTV, Apple TV, and Raspberry Pi running XBMC, I figure I can have the almost-perfect television-viewing experience...

WHEN I SHOULD BE READING A BOOK.

Please Baby, Go All The Way

The title of this post comes from this tune by The Raspberries. I've written a few blog posts about the Raspberry Pi of late and here is a summary thereof. And an observation of the entire course of experiments. You will want to read the summary statement even if you skip the rest.

Can Raspberry Pi Save Civilization?
In this post I introduced the Raspberry Pi, a single-board computer designed in the UK to provide a way for kids to learn computers without spending a lot of money. The board costs $35 and the software is free. You'll have to dig out a USB keyboard and mouse, provide a power supply from a cell phone, a 4GB memory chip, and enclosure. So, you'll feel like you are being nickle-and-dimed to death.

Will Raspberry Pi Destroy Civilization?
My experience with the Raspberry Pi wasn't all beer and skittles. It will serve a useful purpose as a media computer/television set-top-box if you can get it to run XBMC. But I failed to get it to run despite several attempts. Part of this was climbing the learning curve of XBMC. And when you compare the performance of the Apple TV that Just Works, the rationale for the Raspberry Pi as a media computer is diminished.

Thinking Inside the Box
Since the Raspberry Pi does not come with an enclosure, I figured I needed one. I did some googling and stole a design for repurposing an audio cassette tape case and make it into a Raspberry Pi enclosure. It works surprisingly well.

Raspberry Pi as Torture

My experiments with the Raspberry Pi disclosed that you need to be careful to check compatibility. Don't just assume you can plug random components into your Raspberry Pi and expect them to work. Instead, you should check whether they have been verified to work with your Raspberry Pi when you encounter difficulties.

Tasty Raspberry Pi
Happily, I bought a second Raspberry Pi that has twice the on-board memory in hopes it would work better. Then I repeated the earlier, failed experiments with much better results. I devised more powerful troubleshooting techniques and better approaches. This made my Raspberry Pi start acting as a useful media computer.

Raspberry Pi Safe
With the second Raspberry Pi working well, I sought a second enclosure. Yes, I could make another enclosure from the audio cassette case, but my wife gave me a raspberry-colored wooden box of the appropriate size to serve as an enclosure that I named a Pi Safe.

Hot Raspberry Pi
In the Raspberry Pi Safe enclosure, I worried that the Raspberry Pi might run hot. I cut slots in it to accommodate cables, and dissipate heat. And I discovered the Raspberry Pi temperatures go UP when I ask it to tell me its temperature.

The Magic Raspberry
While using the Raspberry Pi as a media computer, I discovered something magical called HDMI-CEC. And that discovery has enabled me to simplify the hardware requirements of the Raspberry Pi when it is used as a media computer.

In summary
The Raspberry Pi is a great educational tool. If you think, "Oh, I want an open source replacement for my Apple TV," stop. Repeat after me: the Raspberry Pi is a great educational tool.

When you unbox something and expect it to Just Work, there's little educational value.

There's a lot of fuss and bother putting things together just right. There's frustration when things ought to work don't work. There's annoyance when expectations are not met and behavior is a little different. BUT every time you encounter a problem, diagnose it, and tweak a fix you are Learning Something.

Learning Something is often frustrating and time consuming. I had forgotten something important when I was in the throes of making the Raspberry Pi work.

Just because I'm not a kid any more doesn't mean I'm past education.

The Magic Raspberry

I got my Raspberry Pi put into an enclosure and doing great things running XBMC with my TV. I wasn't thinking and I picked up the TV Remote Control instead of the micro wireless keyboard. Instead of pushing the arrow buttons on the keyboard, I pushed the arrow buttons on the remote control.

It did what I wanted.

Then I stopped. Oh my gosh. How did that do that? That shouldn't have worked.

I'm an engineer. I understand things. If you push a button on a remote control, infrared light waves go speeding to an eye built into the TV. The Raspberry Pi has no eyes. It is blind to infrared light and everything else. It CAN'T respond to the remote!

Your eye does not work in the infrared. So, when you push the button on the remote control, you don't see anything.  Your smartphone's camera uses a sensor that is sensitive to infrared. So, when you aim a remote at it, you can tell whether it's emitting or not.
(If you're a terrorist worried about infrared targeting lasers from the US military, you already know this. I said I understand things.)

My wife held the remote up to the camera with the button off and the button pushed on so that we could illustrate this.

How in the world did my Raspberry Pi figure out that I'd pushed the button on the TV remote?

After a bit of Googling, I found the HDMI standard and read about a CEC (Consumer Electronics Control) connection. If you have the right kind of HDTV, it can send commands back down the HDMI cable from the TV. And if the thang, Blu-Ray player, cable box, satellite box, whatever, is smart enough, it'll respond to those commands. It's like freaking magic.

This has profound ramifications for use of a Raspberry Pi as a set top computer. You don't need to hook ANY MOUSE or KEYBOARD to it: Just power, HDMI, and Ethernet. No USB hub or even those cute little wireless dongles.

So, I got to thinking, let's try this on my other TV set. I did. No joy. HDMI CEC is not on every TV set, just a select few. Since Black Friday is coming up, you might want to know what to look for if you're going to be buying a TV.

According to Wikipedia, the Trade names for CEC are

• Anynet+ (Samsung); 
• Aquos Link (Sharp); 
• BRAVIA Link and BRAVIA Sync (Sony); 
• HDMI-CEC (Hitachi); 
• E-link (AOC); 
• Kuro Link (Pioneer); 
• CE-Link and Regza Link (Toshiba); 
• RIHD (Remote Interactive over HDMI) (Onkyo); 
• RuncoLink (Runco International); 
• SimpLink (LG); 
• HDAVI Control, EZ-Sync, VIERA Link (Panasonic); 
• EasyLink (Philips); and 
• NetCommand for HDMI (Mitsubishi).

Before you buy a TV from these vendors, look in the specs for these buzz-words. If you see them on the set you want to buy, you'll know its TV remote can control your Raspberry Pi XBMC application.

Tasty Raspberry Pi

I thought I was doubling down on stupid.

I bought a 512MB model B Raspberry Pi. I couldn't get my 256MB Raspberry Pi to perform satisfactorily as a media computer. However, a mix of climbing the learning curve and adjusting my expectations has brought about a pleasing round of experiments I'd like to relate to you.

First off, less is more. If you don't have to plug in a USB hub, don't. If you don't need a wireless Internet interface, don't use it.

Second off, more is more. Dig out some extra SD chips and try out more Linux distros until you get the one that works best for you.

Here's my new model Raspberry Pi. If you see that little black nubbin on the right of the card, that's the USB dongle for the keyboard. The unplugged dongle on the left is the wireless Internet adapter that I unplugged and don't use.

I attached this teeny USB keyboard/touchpad combination. Yes, it costs more than the Raspberry Pi itself did, but it's cool.

My application is to create a media computer/set top box. When I bought my big new HDTV last winter, it came complete with Internet connectivity. Trouble is that Sharp's idea of Internet connectivity is pretty lame.

Instant Netflix works really well, but almost everything else does not. This includes YouTube or media stored on my network. So, I decided to buy or build something to make everything work with everything.

My first stop was an Apple TV. It is cheap $99 and it does a good job with stuff I didn't care about: iTunes. It falls on its face for what I really want: media stored on my network.

I am told that if I can jailbreak the AppleTV3, all my problems will be solved. Trouble is that nobody has figured out how to jailbreak the AppleTV3 yet.

Here's an amusing factoid: If you have an Apple TV2, you can sell it used for more money than an Apple TV3 sells for new.

This is why I wanted to make the Raspberry Pi into a media computer.

First thing I suggest if you buy a Raspberry Pi is to buy three SD cards that run as fast as possible. Then install onto these cards the following Linux distributions:

• Wheezy-raspbian
• Raspbmc
• OpenELEC

Each distribution has unique pros and cons. For instance, Wheezy-Raspbian is the most stable build and most things "just work." However, it is not specialized for service as a media computer. It doesn't readily run XBMC which seems to be the gold standard for Open Source media center software. That's XBMC you are seeing on the TV screen above.

Raspbmc automatically boots into XBMC as does OpenELEC. Sadly, Raspbmc does not seem as stable as OpenELEC.

Maybe I have just learned what not to try to do on a Raspberry Pi. I first installed Raspbmc and struggled with it in my first Raspberry Pi Model A 256MB card. It never really worked and I gave up.

That's why I thought I was doubling down on stupid buying a Model B 512MB card.

This was one of those rare times that worked out. I made the three SD chips with the three Linux distributions described above.

Of these I settled on OpenELEC. As you can see above, the Raspberry Pi handled media stored on my network. That's the Dude in the bathrobe above.

Then I installed the YouTube plug-in and pointed it to my favorite YouTube video. Happily, it worked and you can see it here.

If you'd like to see that video for yourself, you can find out more about it here.

Will Raspberry Pi Destroy Civilization?

My Raspberry Pi arrived in the mail today. I anxiously waited until work was done and then started hooking it up.

To make it go, you download a Linux distribution, then burn it onto a SD chip. I followed instructions, installed the Raspberry variant of Debian and it worked. I typed startx at the command line and it was just like 1989 again running X windows.

After I remembered how little I got done in 1989, I looked at installing the XBMC package on it.

Well, the way you install XBMC onto a Raspberry Pi is just download another Linux distribution, then overwrite the SD chip you just got done working on. Well, OK. Did that.

Now, please don't get the false impression that I didn't overlook something obvious and do something stupid that is at the root of the badness I'm about to recount.

You run the Rasbmc and the first thing it does is download the latest-greatest version of itself. I don't think it's completely stable. Or maybe something is flaky in the hardware. It had to restart about three times. After it got installed, the video started cutting out, then starting again, then cutting out over and over again.

Maybe it's got a thermal problem. So, I propped the thing up and set a fan blowing on it. No joy.

Maybe it's got a power problem. So, I unhooked the radio-keyboard-mouse dongle scrounged up a USB hub and plugged the dongle into it.

After another cycle of reboots and redownloads, I got XBMC running stable enough to set things up. This took a while--a long while. Most of the problem was the sluggishness of XBMC running on the Raspberry Pi. And this might be explained by the fact that a lot of network traffic was going on as it was adding my terabyte library of videos in the basement to its database.

But the result was a lot slower than anything I'd experience with any other computer.

At $35, the Raspberry Pi is a lot cheaper than the reasonably priced Apple TV $99. And the Raspberry Pi is a wide open system whereas the Apple TV 3 is locked down and there's no jailbreak available at present. It was just like 2002 configuring Red Hat.

The bottom line is that I've managed to waste the entire evening messing with a computer the size of a cassette tape. If that is not what you want to do, buy an Apple TV, but get an older version you can Jail break.