In my last posting, I turned a Raspberry Pi into a media center PC. One of the things I left undone before declaring the project a success was to set up some kind of hardware based remote control. I was only able to control the PC using the web interface or the XBMC app on Android and the iPad. I originally wanted to build some kind of remote control that didn’t require me to have my phone next to me and unlock the screen every time I wanted to pause the show. I really don’t need another remote control in the living room. I already have one for the TV, one for the Blue Ray, and one for U-Verse. Fortunately, the U-Verse remote is actually a 4-in-1 universal remote. A quick Google found the manual, so I programmed one of the slots with a Sony DVD player code. It had enough of the buttons defined to be usable. ...

For a while now, I’ve been using DLNA to push video to my TV from my computer. The biggest problem I’ve had with that is that is my Sony TV is very picky about the video format. I’ve been stuck experimenting with options to pass to ffmpeg to convert the video from whatever format the file is in and the format that the TV likes, MPEG2. Among the many problems include poor resolution, out of sync audio, and no audio at all. I had been using MiniDLNA on my Debian box as the server for the content. It’s pretty simplistic. It’s little more than a file server that implements the DLNA protocol. I found another DLNA server, Serviio, that will do some conversion on the fly. This worked better. No need to convert video formats or worry if the TV would not even see the file. The biggest problem occurs whenever I pause a video. When I resume, the TV thinks the DLNA server has gone away. So basically, no pause, fast forward, or rewind. I’d consider that a show stopper. Several times, I have resorted to connecting my laptop to the TV using HDMI and playing the videos that way. ...

Today was RACES Exercise with Simulated Traffic 13-11. In the exercise, we were supposed to call up a net, contact as many other stations as possible using both voice and digital modes (QSO party style), and send a list of all of our contacts back to net control via voice or digital. In East Contra Costa County, things didn’t exactly go as planned. The net was called up by John KN6SQ with Lou N6VV co-located on top of the hill at Willow Pass that separates Central and East county. It’s a decent location that can hear most of East county. Initially, I was the only one that checked in. It wasn’t until the county emergency notification system was activated that others got on the radio and checked into the net. I think we had a total of 6 stations. We usually have a few more than that for these exercises. ...

I finally started a blog. I’m going to chronicle my exploration of amateur (ham) radio and electronics. So, let’s get to the first post. For the first post, I decided to go after something simple. My daughter has an Elmo guitar, the volume of which is, shall we say, earsplitting. I’ve been threatening to wire a potentiometer into the thing so it isn’t so loud. (for those that don’t know, a potentiometer resists the flow of electricity and has a knob to change the amount of resistance). ...