Anyone use Plutohome

I've downloaded, but not yet installed... at this point i'm willing to use anything that gives me total media control (including whole house audio and two tv locations). i'm really interested in your intended use of this (esp based on your other post on the remote).

My wife wants some progress on the media front (i know Dean's sitting back laughing and saying "you could have bought CQC months ago and had the WAF!!!) anyway, Sony appears to be no longer selling the ES777 dvd changer which would have been a nice fit with CQC for stored video. As for digital content and the fact i have brighthouse (scientific atlanta), i'm not sure what my best options are but I guess STB has to be IR (as would tv(, Only my receiver offers rs232...


i may try to install the pluto core tonight if the kids go to bed early enough

-brad
 
Didn't the Pluto software become integrated/merge with the Linux MCE, or am I way off here... http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Screenshots

I always thought the Pluto software system was really interesting, especially their bluetooth integration. I would have jumped on it already if they had ELK M1 integration, but as far as I know, it doesn't yet.

I will be interested to hear if anyone else has tried it.
 
as far as the remote is concerned i am looking at vista media center. personally i believe vista's best purpose is as a media center.

there are quite a few decent boxes with cablecard on the market. lifeware has a mean quad card box. alienware has the hanger18. on the base end we have okoro and dell even has the xps420.

anyways, through some HA software with z-wave support along with a bluetooth/wifi sideshow remote and have access/control to your audio/video/HA without having to turn the t.v. on or use a bulky UMPC. i don't know about you but i'm there... :)


i like the form factors on the extenders from FIIRE's rebranding of the linuxmce. fiire.com




another HA to check out http://www.engadget.com/2007/12/29/vidabox...rols-your-home/
 
FYI - my experience so far has been mixed:


1) i hate the fact they only allow drive level installation not partition based (maybe doing seperate installs of kubunto and the mce would allow more flexibility here, but the dvd-based quick install doesn't). I had to lose my XP install on the server just to try it

2) i'm basing everything here on the GC100 capability and so far i haven't had much luck. I got somewhere this morning in that whenthe IR lights flshed, i could see they were talking, i was prompted for a software upgrade, but i let it go for 20 min and it never moved beyond the "finding GC100" screen again). I'm going to reboot with the upgrade and hope for the best. However, skimming the forums, there were some posts that seems to imply i couldn't take advantage of plug-and-play for onkyo receievers and other rs232 based devices unless they are connected to a pc's comm port. I'm hoping mce treats the two comms on my gc100 as virtual and this still works - but can't find out until i get them talking.

3) So far i had to go with the "basic" gui which kindof is ugly. I have an nvidia nx8600GTS which supports opengl so i had hoped i could at least used the medium level overlay. Need to look into the drivers there and see if that's my only issue...

4) looks like elk is not one of the PNP security panels - that would suck as i'd be force to do the scripting

5) vonage isn't listed on the list of PNP VoIp providers - not sure if i have any options here at all

6) some of the pnp-support is iffy. For example, the panasonic model numbers aren't in sync with latest releases, but hoping the code is. And the way they list "Onkyo / Integra" i'm not sure if that means the integra had a a different protocol than the ones i have (hope not)

7) looks like lighting is pretty much proprierty zwave interface as they build it. I really want control through the elk+rxcop. I guess i could add a non-two way controller for this on the MCE side, but that's a bummer. or maybe run two RZCOPs and build the interface into it

8) oh and it doesn't seem to recognize my raid array (hardware based on the intel MB). Treats them as seperate drives (not good at all).



i keep chugging...
-brad
 
8) oh and it doesn't seem to recognize my raid array (hardware based on the intel MB). Treats them as seperate drives (not good at all).

If it's hardware-based RAID, you need to create the array in the BIOS.
 
8) oh and it doesn't seem to recognize my raid array (hardware based on the intel MB). Treats them as seperate drives (not good at all).

If it's hardware-based RAID, you need to create the array in the BIOS.


The array exists (and i was using it ok under XP before i trashed that drive) and it shows as such before t starts the boot sequence. But this version of linux doesn't seem to recognize...
sda - primary
sdb-sdd - raid array

MCE shows sdb & sdd as seperate NTFS partitions, but shows sdc as unknown
 
have you tried the software raid? i know this is not the optimal config but it may get you by for now

http://wiki.linuxmce.com/index.php/Create_RAID_in_LMCE

the drivers for your raid card may not be compatible.

also, here is a decent wiki guide on the linux mce video that was made for more specific info on hardware, etc.
http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Video#PC_Preparation


8) oh and it doesn't seem to recognize my raid array (hardware based on the intel MB). Treats them as seperate drives (not good at all).

If it's hardware-based RAID, you need to create the array in the BIOS.


The array exists (and i was using it ok under XP before i trashed that drive) and it shows as such before t starts the boot sequence. But this version of linux doesn't seem to recognize...
sda - primary
sdb-sdd - raid array

MCE shows sdb & sdd as seperate NTFS partitions, but shows sdc as unknown
 
On the software raid, I might - but not right now - i have all my mp3 and jpegs on that array and i need to get them off somehow first. I will likely order a new HD so i can dualboot to XP. And i think i want to prove this could work first...

I will read both of these and try to progress on both fronts (couple of 2AM nights this weekend though so it might be some time before i make more progress)

Oh one other thing i meant to report: my pc finds no bootable drive, but if i boot from the dvd and choose option 4 (boot from first HD), it works. Assuming that grub didn't make it onto sda or something but minor. If i can get video/raid/gc100 working, i think for $0 we might be in business!

thx
-brad
 
sda - primary
sdb-sdd - raid array

Definitely odd. A true hardware RAID should never present itself to the OS as separate drives - the OS should only think it is a single drive.
 
Actually, CentOS setup was able to see my hardware RAID configuration as well, very confusing at first.
 
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