Hi Guys. Followed the site for a while and been a long time WMC user, nothing else seems to do the job quite as well. I've built a number of boxes since 2005 and the next one is about to be born.
I run an electronics business, we design our own boards etc and when our Sky+ HD box brought the farm a few weeks back, being an older Samsung and big enough to take a Micro ATX board, its been earmarked for the new WMC box. The current slim PC is loud, old and struggling with some files at full HD (Its only an Ath64 X2). I want it to look as stock as possible so it matches the new boax so having gutted it, tested the hard drive and then started the research I've spotted two things with these conversions...
The board goes in with HD and PSU a treat, a few have done this and it all seems to just fit with only a little work.
All the ones I've seen have wasted months trying to make button boards, LEDS work etc.
For the latter I did some research on the front panel board. Reasoning ts going to be i2C, SPI or Serial used to talk to the LEDs, switches are wired in a simple matrix, IR RX is the same unit used in the MS box I have, so already I've used the buttons and IR without too much work being needed. An hour with a logic probe and datasheets shows that the front panel board speaks serial! Plain old, 19200,8,n,1 TTL serial that could be provided easily from a USB to Serial convertor.
I'm now trying to decide to try and play with what I have extracted (PC can turn the power light on and change color) OR put it back together enough that I can play with all the LEDs by doing a few things and leach the data off. The whole front panel board should be re-useable with a simple bit of code and then I should be able to write something to inject the keypresses into WMC.
Just waiting for the new Mainboard, graphics care, PCI-E extender and PSU to arrive then I shall have more fun.
This particular system runs pretty much over the net (My business is on site, we live next door) with all media streamed over the lan from the Business Server in the cellar which is a 1 year old Dell Poweredge. This means this box just boots and occasionally plays USB media locally so thinking of the SSD Route, Has anyone experimented with these with WMC?
New Build
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mike_ekim
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HTPC Specs:
I THINK you are asking if anyone has used SSDs with WMC. Yes, many people have used SSDs for the operating system and are give a noticeable improvement. Guide data, movie listings, and other database/menu features are much much faster with a SSD.
That being said, if you are streaming media from a local server then I'm not sure if a SSD in the client will have the same benefits; it all depends on the software i.e. if the local computer pulls media data (file names, cover art etc) from the local server ahead of time then you may see an improvement, but if you are basically file browsing and the computer gets data from the LAN on-the-fly and then streams the file as it is played, the SSD in the client won't have much of an impact but a SSD in the server might improve the experience.
That being said, if you are streaming media from a local server then I'm not sure if a SSD in the client will have the same benefits; it all depends on the software i.e. if the local computer pulls media data (file names, cover art etc) from the local server ahead of time then you may see an improvement, but if you are basically file browsing and the computer gets data from the LAN on-the-fly and then streams the file as it is played, the SSD in the client won't have much of an impact but a SSD in the server might improve the experience.
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evilgoat
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- Joined: Mon Nov 17, 2014 11:06 am
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HTPC Specs:
Its more to get the bootup times down. I've been reading through the threads so I think I'll go that route. Found a board in my stock cupboard I'd ordered by mistake that happens to be just right so some memory, SSD, Low profile cooler and PSU are on order.
I have FULL control over the old Sky+ display board bar the Play LED which is a little annoying. Even have the circular LEDs running, the dsiplay controller manages them, you just say what direction to go in and how fast. Anyone else thinking of this you need to pic up pin 1 on the MCU on the front, then supply +5v and ground pin 31 of the MCU. It'll then respond to 19200,8,n,1 ttl serial (I'm using a cheal PL2032 USB board). Then you send 4 byte commands. I'm still working these out BUT
0x255 is the start byte
0xnnn where nnn is the target LED
0x01 to enable a LED or 0x00 to turn it off. Some of these seem to have other options.
the next byte is a bit odd. It seems to be when turning on an LED it should match the target LED. When turning off it should be the target -1. Messing with this and the value above make the ring do different things
Values I have so far:
193 Ring, slow c/wise
194 Rec LED
195 Ring, slow ac/wise
208 Standby LED
209 Power LED
210 Message LED
211 Online LED
212 Flashes IR LED
213 IR LED
224 Seems to be an LED test sequence for the ring, various patterns
225 Ring, Fast ac/wise
Confirmed the IR Receiver is compatible with the one in my OVU4003 Receiver
I would imagine this board is actualy based on a spec for the system as a whole and these boards are probobly all using the same protocol no matter who they are made by.
I have FULL control over the old Sky+ display board bar the Play LED which is a little annoying. Even have the circular LEDs running, the dsiplay controller manages them, you just say what direction to go in and how fast. Anyone else thinking of this you need to pic up pin 1 on the MCU on the front, then supply +5v and ground pin 31 of the MCU. It'll then respond to 19200,8,n,1 ttl serial (I'm using a cheal PL2032 USB board). Then you send 4 byte commands. I'm still working these out BUT
0x255 is the start byte
0xnnn where nnn is the target LED
0x01 to enable a LED or 0x00 to turn it off. Some of these seem to have other options.
the next byte is a bit odd. It seems to be when turning on an LED it should match the target LED. When turning off it should be the target -1. Messing with this and the value above make the ring do different things
Values I have so far:
193 Ring, slow c/wise
194 Rec LED
195 Ring, slow ac/wise
208 Standby LED
209 Power LED
210 Message LED
211 Online LED
212 Flashes IR LED
213 IR LED
224 Seems to be an LED test sequence for the ring, various patterns
225 Ring, Fast ac/wise
Confirmed the IR Receiver is compatible with the one in my OVU4003 Receiver
I would imagine this board is actualy based on a spec for the system as a whole and these boards are probobly all using the same protocol no matter who they are made by.
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evilgoat
- Posts: 10
- Joined: Mon Nov 17, 2014 11:06 am
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HTPC Specs:
Yay
I now have an MCE box that matches the Sky+HD box its sat next to perfectly. All LEDs and now the front panel buttons all work, some buttone do other things, eg Guide launches MCE, REC is set as mute as I dont have a TV tuner. I've also now got a nice little app that can take a matrix keypad and make it work with MCE as well as drive displays from MCE. Just need to do a little firmware tweak for the power button so if there is no +5v coming from the board it sends and ATX power up to the board and if there is, it sends windows a sleep command.
Only downer is I have had to send the motherboard back this morning, hanging on reboots. With the SSD from power up to the main MCE sceen and ready in 20 seconds! That includes the BIOS boot, rather chuffed. A Real HD box takes about 2 mins.
Allthough there is a little bit of custom electronics in there this i almost totally off the shelf bits and the actual conversion took 3 hours tops. Surprisingly fast.
I now have an MCE box that matches the Sky+HD box its sat next to perfectly. All LEDs and now the front panel buttons all work, some buttone do other things, eg Guide launches MCE, REC is set as mute as I dont have a TV tuner. I've also now got a nice little app that can take a matrix keypad and make it work with MCE as well as drive displays from MCE. Just need to do a little firmware tweak for the power button so if there is no +5v coming from the board it sends and ATX power up to the board and if there is, it sends windows a sleep command.
Only downer is I have had to send the motherboard back this morning, hanging on reboots. With the SSD from power up to the main MCE sceen and ready in 20 seconds! That includes the BIOS boot, rather chuffed. A Real HD box takes about 2 mins.
Allthough there is a little bit of custom electronics in there this i almost totally off the shelf bits and the actual conversion took 3 hours tops. Surprisingly fast.
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evilgoat
- Posts: 10
- Joined: Mon Nov 17, 2014 11:06 am
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HTPC Specs:
And now the wait.
Board laid out and ordered from the fab -=> https://www.oshpark.com/profiles/Touchdown
This does the following:
Simple bits, talks to the LED controller on the panel and makes it show up as a USB device. Makes the buttons send back scancodes. Both of these have a small bit of software that sits between the board and Windows.
Not so simple:
Detects that the PSU is on and if the board doesnt start (some reason resume on AC loss doesnt always work) powers the motherboard up
Detects a 'tick' from the software above. If this tick goes missing more than 30 seconds, hard power cycles the board to get out of hard crashes
Grabs the display on power up and jams the RED standby LED on, the software then switches it to amber and then green when MCE is up and connected
Decides what the standby button should do. If the machine is off it sends the board a power button press, same with sleep. If its powered up will instead send windows a hibernate command.
In theory this would work with any 4x4 keyboard matrix and serial display. EG it would work wth a basic membrane or button pad and any serial LCD although it'd need software tweaks to know what to do with the LCD.
Board laid out and ordered from the fab -=> https://www.oshpark.com/profiles/Touchdown
This does the following:
Simple bits, talks to the LED controller on the panel and makes it show up as a USB device. Makes the buttons send back scancodes. Both of these have a small bit of software that sits between the board and Windows.
Not so simple:
Detects that the PSU is on and if the board doesnt start (some reason resume on AC loss doesnt always work) powers the motherboard up
Detects a 'tick' from the software above. If this tick goes missing more than 30 seconds, hard power cycles the board to get out of hard crashes
Grabs the display on power up and jams the RED standby LED on, the software then switches it to amber and then green when MCE is up and connected
Decides what the standby button should do. If the machine is off it sends the board a power button press, same with sleep. If its powered up will instead send windows a hibernate command.
In theory this would work with any 4x4 keyboard matrix and serial display. EG it would work wth a basic membrane or button pad and any serial LCD although it'd need software tweaks to know what to do with the LCD.