- <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>
+ <title>CasparCG Server for TV broadcast playout in Debian</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/CasparCG_Server_for_TV_broadcast_playout_in_Debian.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/CasparCG_Server_for_TV_broadcast_playout_in_Debian.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 15 Jan 2019 00:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The layered video playout server created by Sveriges Television,
+<a href="https://casparcg.com/">CasparCG Server</a>, entered Debian
+today. This completes many months of work to get the source ready to
+go into Debian. The first upload to the Debian NEW queue happened a
+month ago, but the work upstream to prepare it for Debian started more
+than two and a half month ago. So far
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/casparcg-server">the
+casparcg-server package</a> is only available for amd64, but I hope
+this can be improved. The package is in contrib because it depend on
+the <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/fdk-aac">non-free fdk-aac
+library</a>. The Debian package lack support for streaming web pages
+because Debian is missing CEF, Chromium Embedded Framework. CEF is
+wanted by several packages in Debian. But because the Chromium source
+is <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/893448">not available as a build
+dependency</a>, it is not yet possible to upload CEF to Debian. I
+hope this will change in the future.</p>
+
+<p>The reason I got involved is that
+<a href="https://frikanalen.no/">the Norwegian open channel
+Frikanalen</a> is starting to use CasparCG for our HD playout, and I
+would like to have all the free software tools we use to run the TV
+channel available as packages from the Debian project. The last
+remaining piece in the puzzle is Open Broadcast Encoder, but it depend
+on quite a lot of patched libraries which would have to be included in
+Debian first.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Learn to program with Minetest on Debian</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Learn_to_program_with_Minetest_on_Debian.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Learn_to_program_with_Minetest_on_Debian.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 15 Dec 2018 15:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>A fun way to learn how to program
+<a href="https://www.python.org/">Python</a> is to follow the
+instructions in the book
+"<a href="https://nostarch.com/programwithminecraft">Learn to program
+with Minecraft</a>", which introduces programming in Python to people
+who like to play with Minecraft. The book uses a Python library to
+talk to a TCP/IP socket with an API accepting build instructions and
+providing information about the current players in a Minecraft world.
+The TCP/IP API was first created for the Minecraft implementation for
+Raspberry Pi, and has since been ported to some server versions of
+Minecraft. The book contain recipes for those using Windows, MacOSX
+and Raspian. But a little known fact is that you can follow the same
+recipes using the free software construction game
+<a href="https://minetest.net/">Minetest</a>.</p>
+
+<p>There is <a href="https://github.com/sprintingkiwi/pycraft_mod">a
+Minetest module implementing the same API</a>, making it possible to
+use the Python programs coded to talk to Minecraft with Minetest too.
+I
+<a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org/new/minetest-mod-pycraft_0.20%2Bgit20180331.0376a0a%2Bdfsg-1.html">uploaded
+this module</a> to Debian two weeks ago, and as soon as it clears the
+FTP masters NEW queue, learning to program Python with Minetest on
+Debian will be a simple 'apt install' away. The Debian package is
+maintained as part of the Debian Games team, and
+<a href="https://salsa.debian.org/games-team/unfinished/minetest-mod-pycraft">the
+packaging rules</a> are currently located under 'unfinished' on
+Salsa.</p>
+
+<p>You will most likely need to install several of the Minetest
+modules in Debian for the examples included with the library to work
+well, as there are several blocks used by the example scripts that are
+provided via modules in Minetest. Without the required blocks, a
+simple stone block is used instead. My initial testing with a analog
+clock did not get gold arms as instructed in the python library, but
+instead used stone arms.</p>
+
+<p>I tried to find a way to add the API to the desktop version of
+Minecraft, but were unable to find any working recipes. The
+<a href="https://www.epiphanydigest.com/tag/minecraft-python-api/">recipes</a>
+I <a href="https://github.com/kbsriram/mcpiapi">found</a> are only
+working with a standalone Minecraft server setup. Are there any
+options to use with the normal desktop version?</p>