Watching TV over network at home

Last weekend, I managed to complete a long-pending project of mine. The idea was to setup an infrastructure at home so I could watch TV from anywhere in my home (ie., network streaming via Wifi). I missed this facility particularly when we have guests at home and we couldn't watch TV at our convenience (second TV? No, there are differences and I don't need a second one right now).

Bottom line is, I now can watch TV anywhere in my house -- on my laptop, even on my mobile!! See this lenovo touch tablet showing Oreo Ad on Vijay TV:



I had always felt that I have everything I needed to do this, but it has not been that easy before I discovered all the right things. A simple way to put it would be: connect the video/audio output of the set-top-box to a TV tuner on a comp and stream it! But a number of questions need to be answered at every stage in this setup.

1. Video Output of Set-Top-Box:
I needed a video output that is in parallel to the one that connected to my TV. I don't want to plug out and plug in every time I need to stream TV content. Fortunately, I have been using the component video of the STB for my TV due to its greater clarity, so the composite video was idling anyways. Cool.

2. Audio Output of Set-Top-Box:
I had to use a splitter here, as the stereo audio output is connected to my home theatre already.

3. Connect it to the TV tuner:
It is this stage that took me a while to figure out!! I had a TV tuner that I used and hacked long back. When it looked like everything was in place, I realized that the TV tuner only has a S-Video input and a RF antenna (cable) input. I would need a composite input socket and there is no easy conversion possible from composite to S-Video (ie., pin to pin mapping) due to the difference in the signals. I opened the TV tuner box and searched for any composite video input that probably didn't get exposed outside -- hoping I could solder them if required. This is the TV tuner motherboard:





Could not find any socket/pin for composite video. I found the TV tuner chip on the motherboard ie., Trident TVMaster. On downloading the datasheet of the chip, I could confirm that the chip in deed supports Composite video as input. The pin diagram in the datasheet had clear indication of I/O pins available for composite input. When I traced those lines from the chip on the motherboard, it ended up in the existing S-Video socket. This kind of contradicts! How could S-Video port provide a composite input?! After lots of reading, the conclusion was simple : my TV tuner uses a non-standard 9 pin S-Video socket (while a standard S-Video socket is just 4 pins -- Y, C, Gnd, Gnd). The 9-pin socket is compatible with the 4-pin S-video socket, so the remaining 5 pins could be used for other inputs. Some hardware (like my TV Tuner) use this for simplicity in its form-factor. So all I needed was a conversion cable from composite video to 9-pin S-Video -- note: this is just pin mapping, no real signal conversion. Fortunately got this simple cable from ebay. I had reached this point months back and the project stalled :D

4. TV tuner works?
I had used this TV tuner against RF cable earlier, but never used/tested with composite video; and given all these conversion thingy, I wanted to first test if the TV tuner software works directly. And, yes it did!! I just had to configure the software to use the correct input signal. But TV tuner software doesn't stream, it just renders locally.

5. Stream it from VLC:
TV tuner device creates a video device on the computer and the tuner software uses the same. My tuner creates a Video device called 'Trident Analog Video'. VLC supports playing/streaming of video devices via DirectShow. I had streamed webcam's earlier, so wasn't anything new here for me. Things that required attention was how to configure via VLC, to use the correct input (Composite) -- as this device supports multiple inputs (RF antenna, S-Video, Composite etc). VLC has 'advanced options' while streaming that lets us configure the device. Input signal had to be set as '1' for composite. Used 'avi' as the container, 'divx' as video codec, 'aac' as audio codec. I have a Asus EEEBox on my setup that is already connected to the TV for other usage. Due to its proximity to the set-top-box, I used my eeebox for this purpose too. It connects to my home network via Wifi, so it could be reached from anywhere in my house.

6. Play it from VLC:
Now that the stream is on, all I need to do is connect to it via network. I used VLC again from a Lenovo touch tablet and connected to the eeebox via Wifi. Voila! I could now watch TV on my laptop. I'm yet to figure out an app for Android that could show multimedia stream over network -- given the small screen size, I am not that keen on watching TV on mobile. And as it has to go through the whole process of capture/encode/stream/network/decode/render, there is a delay of few seconds against the video on the live TV.

Some of you might have already thought about this: the only missing thing is that I can't change channels remotely. But it is just because I don't have a network remote, yet! (I have been eye-ing on Logitech Harmony Link for sometime :D).

MyApp: Calendar Widget for Android 2.2 (Froyo)

I had been looking for a decent home screen widget for the calendar(s) on my Samsung Galaxy S (currently on Froyo). Could not find one that is free, so wrote one.

Features:
* Includes events from all your calendars on the phone (personal, corporate etc., etc).
* Support for recurring events.
* Separate section for today's events and later events.
* Auto refresh in every 2 minutes (No, it doesn't wake up the phone, if sleeping -- so don't worry about battery).
* Occupies 3 (rows) x4 (columns) cells in home screen.
* Shows up to 6 events at a time.

Note:
* Apparently Google has deprecated the Calendar ContentProvider post Froyo. So this widget may not work post Froyo (including 2.2.1, I suppose). I only have a 2.2 phone and the emulators don't support Calendar (deprecated) -- so no idea.
* Tested only on Samsung Galaxy S on Froyo.

When I get a firmware update to Gingerbread to my SGS next month (hopefully!), I shall try to port this to Gingerbread as well, if possible.

Download the .apk installer here or point your phone to this QR code to download directly



Developed and built using Eclipse Indigo on Ubuntu.

Debugging Android apps remotely via Wifi

Android has tonnes of cool features and this is just one of them. Now I don't need to search for my USB cable to start developing/debugging the apps. Also, poor Samsung, my WinXP BSODs whenever I plug out my phone from adb debugging. This was irritating and that's when I came across this useful tweak.

Requirements:
+ You need a root'ed Android phone. (I suppose, to start/stop services..)
+ You need a terminal emulator software on the phone (preferrably). Android market gives it free.
+ You should already have a working debugging setup from your PC to the phone via USB (I mean all those SDK's, tools, ADT plugin installed).

Connect your phone via Wifi into a n/w that provides access to, from your PC.

On the phone: (either via a 'terminal emulator' OR via 'remote ssh' OR via 'adb shell on USB')

$ su
# setprop service.adb.tcp.port 6666
# stop adbd
# start adbd

All set, now the adbd knows it is suppose to listen on TCP instead of USB.

Disconnect the USB if connected.

On the PC: (example on Windows)
C:\>adb devices

if this shows your device connected, run
c:\>adb disconnect

Then,
c:\>adb connect mobile_ip_address:6666
Connected to device mobile_ip_address:6666
[not to mention, you can use any port other than 6666, but use the same in both places.]

c:\>adb devices
[this should list your device.]

All set. Use Eclipse and debug just like you would on a USB connected device.

Note: This change goes off once you restart your phone. You can automate this in a number of ways.. left to you.

Seeing my apps getting deployed wirelessly onto my phone and debugging and watching those variables remotely is really cool!! :)

Custom device driver for Linksys USB Wifi on WDTV Live

There is lot of specifics involved, so before I go any further, let me clarify the title more. This post is about using the Cisco (Linksys) USB Wifi G Adaptor WUSB54GC on your WDTV Live for network connectivity. If you need to do this on your WDTV live, you would need to have sufficient understanding of Linux and shell scripting. Also, you need to have Wifi network and with appropriate network shares available via SMB or FTP and understand how you configure stuff.

WDTV Live has wireless network support, however it doesn't work on all USB Wifi network adaptors or chipsets. There is a defined list of USB Wifi adaptors that are compatible -- again this depends on which firmware you use. The stock firmware support (from western digital) might be different from the unofficial firmwares like wdlxtv. I use wdlxtv unofficial firmware but that doesn't support my linksys Wifi adaptor as well. I had bought this wifi dongle before WDTV live, so didn't want to buy another one. The result of trying to make this work on my WDTV is this post.

Apparently, the particular linksys adaptor that I'm talking about (take a look here if you want to know what I'm talking about) is based on Ralink Chipset 3070; in fact there are many other wifi dongles that are based on the same chipset. At least the unofficial firmware supports ralink 3070 chipset, however, it doesn't matter unless the device driver was built to support that particular device. ie., the device driver should have been compatible with the given vendor id and device id. This is where my device didn't work in spite of it being 3070 chipset.

I had to then setup a total cross-platform toolchain for WDTV Live by downloading the appropriate kernel source from Western Digital website. WD has provided beautiful support for building stuff for WDTV live. The source code of device driver for Ralink 3070 chipset is available from Ralink's website. I tampered the source a bit to accommodate this Linksys device too (Vendor Id: 1737, Device Id: 0077), cross-compiled the device driver for WDTV Live on my desktop Linux. Viola, my driver got loaded for that device.

This device driver was built for the kernel 'Linux WDTVLIVE 2.6.22.19-19-4'. Make sure this matches your kernel version too (this should be in line with the WDTV Live official firmware version 1.02.21).

Also, if you have this USB dongle, you should see an entry like this when you do 'lsusb' on your WDTV Live:

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 1737:0077 Linksys

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Download this zip file that contains (rt3070sta.ko, net.mounts, RT2870STA.dat, resolv.conf, wpa_supplicant.conf).
2. Create a folder named 'wireless' in the root of a pendrive and extract the contents to that folder.
3. Move/copy net.mounts from that folder to the root of your pendrive.
4. Edit the files net.mounts, RT2870STA.dat, resolv.conf, wpa_supplicant.conf and customize with your Wifi's SSID and WPA PSK as necessary. You can use wpa_passphrase on a desktop linux to create a encoded PSK and copy that to these files.
5. More customization is required in net.mounts script as per your network to mount the right share on startup. I use ftpfs, as that seems more robust than smbfs on WDTV live.
6. Plug-in this pen drive to your WDTV live along with your Linksys Wifi dongle and reboot, your WDTV Live should join your network and mount your network share seamlessly.

I've this setup successfully working for almost 3 months now. Every time I start my WDTV live it joins the wifi network in around 30-45 seconds and the network shares are instantly available. You also don't have to worry about network interruptions, WDTV Live takes care of remounting the shares if the ftpfs breaks for some reason (note the 'xmount' in the script).

Here is the net.mounts script that I use at home (with specifics removed):

#
# Original Author: Gerald Naveen A (http://geraldnaveen.blogspot.com)
#
# WDTV Live! net.mounts to use my custom built device driver for WUSB54GC
# on WDTV Live firmwares. This script uses the wpa_supplicant to configure
# WPA based authentication.
#
# Refer : http://geraldnaveen.blogspot.com/2010/12/custom-device-driver-for-linksys-usb.html
# for more info.
#
# COPY THIS FILE TO THE ROOT FOLDER OF YOUR USB DRIVE ON WDTV LIVE!
#
# License:
# You are free to modify/distribute/use for commercial/non-commercial/
# personal applications. Any modification to this code needn't be published.
# However, any publication of this code or the derivative of this code, should
# include the original author and this license text.
#
logger -t GERALD "$0 starting..."
if [ -f /tmp/gerald ]; then
 # make sure this script doesn't run more than once. Sometimes, net.mounts
 # gets called multiple times.
 logger -t GERALD "$0 already ran." 
else 
 touch /tmp/gerald
 config_tool -c DISABLE_ETHERNET_ON_STANDBY=NO
 config_tool -c USB_POWER_OFF=NO

 # NOTE: change below line to cp from your USB wireless device
 cp /tmp/mnt/64BA-4243/wireless/* /tmp/
 cp /tmp/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf

 WIFI_DEV=ra0
 insmod /tmp/rt3070sta.ko
 ifconfig $WIFI_DEV up
 sleep 5 ; # let the radio come up before scanning
 #discover the current channel number
 CHANNEL_NUMBER=`iwlist $WIFI_DEV scan | grep YOUR_WIFI_SSID -A 2 | grep Channel | cut -d\( -f 2 | cut -d\  -f 2 | cut -d\) -f 1`
 logger -t GERALD "Configuring $WIFI_DEV to Channel $CHANNEL_NUMBER"
 iwconfig $WIFI_DEV channel $CHANNEL_NUMBER

 wpa_supplicant -i$WIFI_DEV -c/tmp/wpa_supplicant.conf -B
 # DHCP client has some issue and is inconsistent.
 #udhcpc -i $WIFI_DEV
 logger -t GERALD "Configuring IP Address for $WIFI_DEV"
 ifconfig $WIFI_DEV STATIC_IP_ADDRESS_OF_WDTV_LIVE netmask 255.255.255.0
 route add default gw YOUR_NW_DEFAULT_GW_IP

 sleep 15 ; # let the n/w settle before mount
 logger -t GERALD "Pinging NAS via LAN..."
 ping -c 1 -W 2 NAS_IP_ADDR_HSPEED | grep -q "bytes from"
 if [ $? -eq 0 ] ; then
  logger -t GERALD "Ping successful for NAS via LAN. Now xmounting..."
  xmount "ftp://NAS_IP_ADDR_HSPEED" NAS_1Gbps ftpfs "-o user=movies:password"
  logger -t GERALD "xmount done for NAS."
 else
  # could not reach NAS via high speed n/w.
  # try to reach via Wifi.
  logger -t GERALD "Pinging NAS via Wifi..."
  ping -c 1 -W 2 NAS_IP_ADDR | grep -q "bytes from"
  if [ $? -eq 0 ] ; then
   logger -t GERALD "Ping successful for NAS via Wifi. Now xmounting..."
   xmount "ftp://NAS_IP_ADDR" NAS_Wifi ftpfs "-o user=movies:password"
   logger -t GERALD "xmount done for NAS."
  fi
 fi 
fi ; # if already ran
logger -t GERALD "$0 complete."

In case you find issues, check /tmp/messages.txt file on your WDTV Live for the relevant log messages to troubleshoot.

Video cable for Samsung Galaxy S

Disclaimer: Although this should just apply for any other SGS, this has been tested only on SGS Vibrant, India model.

If you didn't know how this cable looks, here it is. Note the 4 terminal stereo plug (stereo plug normally has only 3 terminals).

Although one can build a cable from scratch, it is usually cheaper or same to get a read-made cable like this, instead of trying to build our own cable with just the plugs. Ok, so what is there to be done if I get the ready-made cable -- the reason is that, all cables aren't compatible with SGS video output. This post anyway has all the info to build your own cable, if you are interested.

The common confusion that prevails in the forums is that some cables work and some don't; so how do we buy the right cable. The answer is that, you don't have to worry as long as the terminals are exactly these (ie., 4 pin stereo on one end, RCA on the other end). I had bought one such cable from ebay India for just Rs. 100. You can search for "Camcorder RCA cable" and you might end up on one such item.

If you get a camcorder cable, it most likely won't work. If it doesn't work in the normal configuration (ie., Yellow to Video, Red/White to Audio), try connecting the White to Video, and Yellow/Red to Audio. This should just work.

Why?


This is how a 4-terminal stereo plug looks. Lets name the terminals as T1..T4 as in figure. The camcorder cables send T4 to Video, but the SGS sends out video on T2. On Camcorder cables, T2 is the Left/Mono Audio (White) -- thus swapping that for Video works.

T1 is the Ground. As long as the ground is not changed, you should be able to convert any cable to be compatible with SGS video out. T1 usually gets in contact with the case/body of the device, so I would think it would be always ground on any such cables for consumer devices. I also don't see any reason for a cable to insert the video terminal between the two audio terminals. Going by these rules, it is most likely that, it is either T4 (T2, T3 are audio) or T2 (T3, T4 are audio) which is the video terminal.

If you have a multimeter, just connect this cable to your phone, turn on Video out on settings and measure the DC voltage (0-20V range) on each of the RCA plugs (make sure the phone isn't playing any audio). Only the video plug will sense a voltage of ~1.5V at this point. This should identify the video plug safely without having to try out various plugs on the TV directly.

To summarize, so you can build one if required. The SGS video output pin out is:

T1: Ground
T2: Video
T3: Left/Mono
T4: Right

Getting over problems

Courtesy: Pravs World

If you can't get through the mountain, Go around it. If you can't go around it, Go over it.

If you can't go over it, sit down and ask yourself, if getting to the other side is all that important? If it is, set about digging a tunnel.

For every problem, there are many solutions. Whatever the problems in life are, you have to find ways to get over it.

MyApp: Spb Wallet to KeePass convertor

Spb Wallet is one of the best wallet applications that I've used across various mobile platforms. However, it isn't available on all mobile platforms and it isn't free either. Once I moved on to Android, I hit a road-block because Spb Wallet isn't available for Android (yet). I'm sure you would understand how painful it is to not have a wallet app, once you are used to.

KeePass is the alternate. KeePass is an open-source software for password management. To be fair, KeePass isn't as great as Spb Wallet, but does its job. Being open-source, it is available on almost all platforms including desktops.

The pain here is the conversion. I have tonnes of data on Spb Wallet that manually entering them on KeePass is a no-go. Unfortunately, and mostly intentionally, Spb Wallet doesn't export to any well known format for import into KeePass. There weren't any handy tools to convert either. Thankfully Spb Wallet had a text export and KeePass had many import options. But it isn't directly compatible, because Spb Wallet doesn't have any proper structure to the exported TXT file and the grammar is quite ambiguous. KeePass has a well defined XML structure for import (found it by doing a sample XML export from KeePass). I wrote this python script to convert the Spb Wallet TXT export file into the XML format that KeePass can understand. In reality, Spb Wallet has more "specific" fields than KeePass, so there isn't always a direct mapping. Any non-mappable field (Account Number for example) will be appended in the notes section of KeePass so no information is lost.

This script is a simple parser that understands and converts the Spb Wallet TXT export file. It maintains the internal state of parsing and learns dynamically about what the current token is -- some times even looking ahead into the file to resolve ambiguities.

This script is probably not so robust on errors. But this did the job for my Wallet export which is reasonably big.

If you find any bug on this script that you want me to fix, report here. I *MAY* fix it for you.

Here is the source:

#
# Code to Convert Spb Wallet TXT export file to KeePass XML import file.
#
# Original Author: Gerald Naveen A (http://geraldnaveen.blogspot.com)
#
# License:
# You are free to modify/distribute/use for commercial/non-commercial/
# personal applications. Any modification to this code needn't be published. 
# However, any publication of this code or the derivative of this code, should 
# include the original author and this license text.
#
import sys

def mywrite(f, str):
f.write("{0}\n".format(str));
def main():
print "\nSpb Wallet to KeePass Convertor v 1.0 by Gerald Naveen\n";
print "Report bugs at http://geraldnaveen.blogspot.com/2010/11/myapp-spb-wallet-to-keepass-convertor.html\n";
if len(sys.argv) < 3:
 print "Usage: spb_wallet_to_keepass.py <spb_txt_export_file> <keepass_xml_import_file>";
 print "\nWhere,\nspb_txt_export_file: path to the TXT file exported from Spb Wallet.";
 print "keepass_txt_import_file: path to the output XML file, that shall be imported into KeePass.";
 return;
try:
 ifile = open (sys.argv[1], 'r');
except:
 print "Could not open input file", sys.argv[1];
 return;

try:
 ofile = open (sys.argv[2], 'w');
except:
 print "Could not open output file", sys.argv[2];
 return;

FOLDER_NAME_TOKEN=1;
ENTRY_NAME_TOKEN=FOLDER_NAME_TOKEN+1;
BEFORE_NOTES_TOKEN=ENTRY_NAME_TOKEN+1;
NOTES_TOKEN=BEFORE_NOTES_TOKEN+1;
INVALID_VALUE='invalid';

next_token=ENTRY_NAME_TOKEN;
folder_name = INVALID_VALUE;
entry_name = INVALID_VALUE;
user_name = INVALID_VALUE;
password = INVALID_VALUE;
url = INVALID_VALUE;
notes = INVALID_VALUE;
valid_entry = False;

mywrite(ofile, '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?>');
mywrite(ofile, '<pwlist>');
try:
 for line in ifile:
  line = line.strip('\r\n');
  if len(line) == 0:
   # empty line
   if valid_entry == False:
    # entry name found after folder name
    folder_name = entry_name;
    entry_name = INVALID_VALUE;
   else:
    # found the last line of the entry..dump
    mywrite(ofile, '<pwentry>');
    if folder_name != INVALID_VALUE:
     mywrite(ofile, '<group>{0}</group>'.format(folder_name));
    mywrite(ofile, '<title>{0}</title>'.format(entry_name));    
    if user_name != INVALID_VALUE:
     mywrite(ofile, '<username>{0}</username>'.format(user_name));
    if password != INVALID_VALUE:
     mywrite(ofile, '<password>{0}</password>'.format(password));
    if url != INVALID_VALUE:
     mywrite(ofile, '<url>{0}</url>'.format(url));
    if notes != INVALID_VALUE:
     notes=notes.replace('\n', '&#xD;&#xA;');
     mywrite(ofile, '<notes>{0}</notes>'.format(notes));
    mywrite(ofile, '</pwentry>');
    user_name = INVALID_VALUE;
    password = INVALID_VALUE;
    url = INVALID_VALUE;
    notes = INVALID_VALUE;
   valid_entry = False;
   next_token=ENTRY_NAME_TOKEN;
  else:
   if next_token == ENTRY_NAME_TOKEN:
    entry_name = line;
    next_token = BEFORE_NOTES_TOKEN;
   else:
    valid_entry = True;
    if next_token == BEFORE_NOTES_TOKEN:
     if line.startswith('User Name:'):
      user_name = line[len('User Name:'):].strip(' ');
     elif line.startswith('Password:'):
      password = line[len('Password:'):].strip(' ');
     elif line.startswith('Web Site:'):
      url = line[len('Web Site:'):].strip(' ');
     elif line.startswith('Notes:'):
      if notes == INVALID_VALUE:
       notes = line[len('Notes:'):].strip(' ');
      else:
       notes += '\n' + line[len('Notes:'):].strip(' ');
      next_token = NOTES_TOKEN;
     else:
      # any unknown params should go as notes.
      if notes == INVALID_VALUE:
       notes = line;
      else:
       notes += '\n' + line;
    elif next_token == NOTES_TOKEN:
     # any thing from the notes section.
     notes += '\n' + line;
except:
  print "Unknown error occured while processing the input file.";
mywrite(ofile, '</pwlist>');    
ifile.close();
ofile.close();
print "Success. Now import {0} in KeePass as KeePass XML".format(sys.argv[2]);
if __name__ == "__main__":
   main()

Download spb_wallet_to_keepass.py

Update [26-Nov-2010]:

If the script ran successfully, but the output XML file didn't work on import, it could most likely be a CRLF issue. Try this in such cases:

Lets assume your file is test.txt.

1. Open test.txt in Notepad
2. "Save as" another file, say test2.txt (Note: select Utf8 as Encoding).
3. Use test2.txt as input