<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
<atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
+ <item>
+ <title>Add-on to control the projector from within Kodi</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Add_on_to_control_the_projector_from_within_Kodi.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Add_on_to_control_the_projector_from_within_Kodi.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 26 Jun 2018 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>My movie playing setup involve <a href="https://kodi.tv/">Kodi</a>,
+<a href="https://openelec.tv">OpenELEC</a> (probably soon to be
+replaced with <a href="https://libreelec.tv/">LibreELEC</a>) and an
+Infocus IN76 video projector. My projector can be controlled via both
+a infrared remote controller, and a RS-232 serial line. The vendor of
+my projector, <a href="https://www.infocus.com/">InFocus</a>, had been
+sensible enough to document the serial protocol in its user manual, so
+it is easily available, and I used it some years ago to write
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/infocus-projector-control">a
+small script to control the projector</a>. For a while now, I longed
+for a setup where the projector was controlled by Kodi, for example in
+such a way that when the screen saver went on, the projector was
+turned off, and when the screen saver exited, the projector was turned
+on again.</p>
+
+<p>A few days ago, with very good help from parts of my family, I
+managed to find a Kodi Add-on for controlling a Epson projector, and
+got in touch with its author to see if we could join forces and make a
+Add-on with support for several projectors. To my pleasure, he was
+positive to the idea, and we set out to add InFocus support to his
+add-on, and make the add-on suitable for the official Kodi add-on
+repository.</p>
+
+<p>The Add-on is now working (for me, at least), with a few minor
+adjustments. The most important change I do relative to the master
+branch in the github repository is embedding the
+<a href="https://github.com/pyserial/pyserial">pyserial module</a> in
+the add-on. The long term solution is to make a "script" type
+pyserial module for Kodi, that can be pulled in as a dependency in
+Kodi. But until that in place, I embed it.</p>
+
+<p>The add-on can be configured to turn on the projector when Kodi
+starts, off when Kodi stops as well as turn the projector off when the
+screensaver start and on when the screesaver stops. It can also be
+told to set the projector source when turning on the projector.
+
+<p>If this sound interesting to you, check out
+<a href="https://github.com/fredrik-eriksson/kodi_projcontrol">the
+project github repository</a>. Perhaps you can send patches to
+support your projector too? As soon as we find time to wrap up the
+latest changes, it should be available for easy installation using any
+Kodi instance.</p>
+
+<p>For future improvements, I would like to add projector model
+detection and the ability to adjust the brightness level of the
+projector from within Kodi. We also need to figure out how to handle
+the cooling period of the projector. My projector refuses to turn on
+for 60 seconds after it was turned off. This is not handled well by
+the add-on at the moment.</p>
+
+<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
+activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
+<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
<item>
<title>youtube-dl for nedlasting fra NRK med undertekster - nice free software</title>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/youtube_dl_for_nedlasting_fra_NRK_med_undertekster___nice_free_software.html</link>
has mostly retired, but found it best to migrate the source to a good
version control system to help those willing to move it forward.</p>
-<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
-activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
-<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Using VLC to stream bittorrent sources</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_VLC_to_stream_bittorrent_sources.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_VLC_to_stream_bittorrent_sources.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 14 Feb 2018 08:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>A few days ago, a new major version of
-<a href="https://www.videolan.org/">VLC</a> was announced, and I
-decided to check out if it now supported streaming over
-<a href="http://bittorrent.org/">bittorrent</a> and
-<a href="https://webtorrent.io">webtorrent</a>. Bittorrent is one of
-the most efficient ways to distribute large files on the Internet, and
-Webtorrent is a variant of Bittorrent using
-<a href="https://webrtc.org">WebRTC</a> as its transport channel,
-allowing web pages to stream and share files using the same technique.
-The network protocols are similar but not identical, so a client
-supporting one of them can not talk to a client supporting the other.
-I was a bit surprised with what I discovered when I started to look.
-Looking at
-<a href="https://www.videolan.org/vlc/releases/3.0.0.html">the release
-notes</a> did not help answering this question, so I started searching
-the web. I found several news articles from 2013, most of them
-tracing the news from Torrentfreak
-("<a href=https://torrentfreak.com/open-source-giant-vlc-mulls-bittorrent-support-130211/">Open
-Source Giant VLC Mulls BitTorrent Streaming Support</a>"), about a
-initiative to pay someone to create a VLC patch for bittorrent
-support. To figure out what happend with this initiative, I headed
-over to the #videolan IRC channel and asked if there were some bug or
-feature request tickets tracking such feature. I got an answer from
-lead developer Jean-Babtiste Kempf, telling me that there was a patch
-but neither he nor anyone else knew where it was. So I searched a bit
-more, and came across an independent
-<a href="https://github.com/johang/vlc-bittorrent">VLC plugin to add
-bittorrent support</a>, created by Johan Gunnarsson in 2016/2017.
-Again according to Jean-Babtiste, this is not the patch he was talking
-about.</p>
-
-<p>Anyway, to test the plugin, I made a working Debian package from
-the git repository, with some modifications. After installing this
-package, I could stream videos from
-<a href="https://www.archive.org/">The Internet Archive</a> using VLC
-commands like this:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote><pre>
-vlc https://archive.org/download/LoveNest/LoveNest_archive.torrent
-</pre></blockquote></p>
-
-<p>The plugin is supposed to handle magnet links too, but since The
-Internet Archive do not have magnet links and I did not want to spend
-time tracking down another source, I have not tested it. It can take
-quite a while before the video start playing without any indication of
-what is going on from VLC. It took 10-20 seconds when I measured it.
-Some times the plugin seem unable to find the correct video file to
-play, and show the metadata XML file name in the VLC status line. I
-have no idea why.</p>
-
-<p>I have created a <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/890360">request for
-a new package in Debian (RFP)</a> and
-<a href="https://github.com/johang/vlc-bittorrent/issues/1">asked if
-the upstream author is willing to help make this happen</a>. Now we
-wait to see what come out of this. I do not want to maintain a
-package that is not maintained upstream, nor do I really have time to
-maintain more packages myself, so I might leave it at this. But I
-really hope someone step up to do the packaging, and hope upstream is
-still maintaining the source. If you want to help, please update the
-RFP request or the upstream issue.</p>
-
-<p>I have not found any traces of webtorrent support for VLC.</p>
-
<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
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