<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>Simple streaming the Linux desktop to Kodi using GStreamer and RTP</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simple_streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_GStreamer_and_RTP.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Simple_streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_GStreamer_and_RTP.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 12 Jul 2018 17:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Last night, I wrote
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html">a
+recipe to stream a Linux desktop using VLC to a instance of Kodi</a>.
+During the day I received valuable feedback, and thanks to the
+suggestions I have been able to rewrite the recipe into a much simpler
+approach requiring no setup at all. It is a single script that take
+care of it all.</p>
+
+<p>This new script uses GStreamer instead of VLC to capture the
+desktop and stream it to Kodi. This fixed the video quality issue I
+saw initially. It further removes the need to add a m3u file on the
+Kodi machine, as it instead connects to
+<a href="https://kodi.wiki/view/JSON-RPC_API/v8">the JSON-RPC API in
+Kodi</a> and simply ask Kodi to play from the stream created using
+GStreamer. Streaming the desktop to Kodi now become trivial. Copy
+the script below, run it with the DNS name or IP address of the kodi
+server to stream to as the only argument, and watch your screen show
+up on the Kodi screen. Note, it depend on multicast on the local
+network, so if you need to stream outside the local network, the
+script must be modified. Also note, I have no idea if audio work, as
+I only care about the picture part.</p>
+
+<blockquote><pre>
+#!/bin/sh
+#
+# Stream the Linux desktop view to Kodi. See
+# http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html
+# for backgorund information.
+
+# Make sure the stream is stopped in Kodi and the gstreamer process is
+# killed if something go wrong (for example if curl is unable to find the
+# kodi server). Do the same when interrupting this script.
+kodicmd() {
+ host="$1"
+ cmd="$2"
+ params="$3"
+ curl --silent --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
+ --data-binary "{ \"id\": 1, \"jsonrpc\": \"2.0\", \"method\": \"$cmd\", \"params\": $params }" \
+ "http://$host/jsonrpc"
+}
+cleanup() {
+ if [ -n "$kodihost" ] ; then
+ # Stop the playing when we end
+ playerid=$(kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.GetActivePlayers "{}" |
+ jq .result[].playerid)
+ kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.Stop "{ \"playerid\" : $playerid }" > /dev/null
+ fi
+ if [ "$gstpid" ] && kill -0 "$gstpid" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
+ kill "$gstpid"
+ fi
+}
+trap cleanup EXIT INT
+
+if [ -n "$1" ]; then
+ kodihost=$1
+ shift
+else
+ kodihost=kodi.local
+fi
+
+mcast=239.255.0.1
+mcastport=1234
+mcastttl=1
+
+pasrc=$(pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | grep 'Name: .*\.monitor$' | \
+ cut -d" " -f2|head -1)
+gst-launch-1.0 ximagesrc use-damage=0 ! video/x-raw,framerate=30/1 ! \
+ videoconvert ! queue2 ! \
+ x264enc bitrate=8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=30 \
+ key-int-max=15 bframes=2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
+ mpegtsmux alignment=7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=1316 min=1316 ! \
+ udpsink host=$mcast port=$mcastport ttl-mc=$mcastttl auto-multicast=1 sync=0 \
+ pulsesrc device=$pasrc ! audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux. \
+ > /dev/null 2>&1 &
+gstpid=$!
+
+# Give stream a second to get going
+sleep 1
+
+# Ask kodi to start streaming using its JSON-RPC API
+kodicmd "$kodihost" Player.Open \
+ "{\"item\": { \"file\": \"udp://@$mcast:$mcastport\" } }" > /dev/null
+
+# wait for gst to end
+wait "$gstpid"
+</pre></blockquote>
+
+<p>I hope you find the approach useful. I know I do.</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>Streaming the Linux desktop to Kodi using VLC and RTSP</title>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Streaming_the_Linux_desktop_to_Kodi_using_VLC_and_RTSP.html</link>
<p>Note the 192.168.11.4 IP address is my desktops IP address. As far
as I can tell the IP must be hardcoded for this to work. In other
words, if someone elses machine is going to do the steaming, you have
-to update screenstream.m4u on the Kodi machine and adjust the vlc
+to update screenstream.m3u on the Kodi machine and adjust the vlc
recipe. To get started, locate the file in Kodi and select the m3u
file while the VLC stream is running. The desktop then show up in my
big screen. :)</p>
x264enc bitrate=8000 speed-preset=superfast tune=zerolatency qp-min=30 \
key-int-max=15 bframes=2 ! video/x-h264,profile=high ! queue2 ! \
mpegtsmux alignment=7 name=mux ! rndbuffersize max=1316 min=1316 ! \
- udpsink host=239.255.0.1 port=1234 ttl-mc=0 auto-multicast=1 sync=0 \
+ udpsink host=239.255.0.1 port=1234 ttl-mc=1 auto-multicast=1 sync=0 \
pulsesrc device=$(pactl list | grep -A2 'Source #' | \
grep 'Name: .*\.monitor$' | cut -d" " -f2|head -1) ! \
audioconvert ! queue2 ! avenc_aac ! queue2 ! mux.
<p>Note the trick to pick a valid pulseaudio source. It might not
pick the one you need. This approach will of course lead to trouble
if more than one source uses the same multicast port and address.
-Note the ttl-mc=0 setting, which limit the multicast packages to the
+Note the ttl-mc=1 setting, which limit the multicast packages to the
local network. If the value is increased, your screen will be
broadcasted further, one network "hop" for each increase (read up on
multicast to learn more. :)!</p>
<p>Having cracked how to get Kodi to receive multicast streams, I
could use this VLC command to stream to the same multicast address.
-The image quality is way better than the rtsp approach.</p>
+The image quality is way better than the rtsp approach, but gstreamer
+seem to be doing a better job.</p>
<blockquote><pre>
cvlc screen:// --sout '#transcode{vcodec=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128}:rtp{mux=ts,dst=239.255.0.1,port=1234,sdp=sap}'
</description>
</item>
- <item>
- <title>Facebooks ability to sell your personal information is the real Cambridge Analytica scandal</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Facebooks_ability_to_sell_your_personal_information_is_the_real_Cambridge_Analytica_scandal.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Facebooks_ability_to_sell_your_personal_information_is_the_real_Cambridge_Analytica_scandal.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 21 Mar 2018 16:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>So, Cambridge Analytica is getting some well deserved criticism for
-(mis)using information it got from Facebook about 50 million people,
-mostly in the USA. What I find a bit surprising, is how little
-criticism Facebook is getting for handing the information over to
-Cambridge Analytica and others in the first place. And what about the
-people handing their private and personal information to Facebook?
-And last, but not least, what about the government offices who are
-handing information about the visitors of their web pages to Facebook?
-No-one who looked at the terms of use of Facebook should be surprised
-that information about peoples interests, political views, personal
-lifes and whereabouts would be sold by Facebook.</p>
-
-<p>What I find to be the real scandal is the fact that Facebook is
-selling your personal information, not that one of the buyers used it
-in a way Facebook did not approve when exposed. It is well known that
-Facebook is selling out their users privacy, but a scandal
-nevertheless. Of course the information provided to them by Facebook
-would be misused by one of the parties given access to personal
-information about the millions of Facebook users. Collected
-information will be misused sooner or later. The only way to avoid
-such misuse, is to not collect the information in the first place. If
-you do not want Facebook to hand out information about yourself for
-the use and misuse of its customers, do not give Facebook the
-information.</p>
-
-<p>Personally, I would recommend to completely remove your Facebook
-account, and take back some control of your personal information.
-<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/19/how-to-protect-your-facebook-privacy-or-delete-yourself-completely">According
-to The Guardian</a>, it is a bit hard to find out how to request
-account removal (and not just 'disabling'). You need to
-<a href="https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674?helpref=faq_content">visit
-a specific Facebook page</a> and click on 'let us know' on that page
-to get to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account">the
-real account deletion screen</a>. Perhaps something to consider? I
-would not trust the information to really be deleted (who knows,
-perhaps NSA, GCHQ and FRA already got a copy), but it might reduce the
-exposure a bit.</p>
-
-<p>If you want to learn more about the capabilities of Cambridge
-Analytica, I recommend to see the video recording of the one hour talk
-Paul-Olivier Dehaye gave to <a href="">NUUG</a> last april about
-<a href="https://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20170404-big-data-psychometric/">
-Data collection, psychometric profiling and their impact on
-politics</a>.</p>
-
-<p>And if you want to communicate with your friends and loved ones,
-use some end-to-end encrypted method like
-<a href="https://www.signal.org/">Signal</a> or
-<a href="https://ring.cx/">Ring</a>, and stop sharing your private
-messages with strangers like Facebook and Google.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
</channel>
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