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Set top box#

Goals#

Be able to play a number of sources on TV, from the internet or local sources. Be able to browse the web, access spacepirates.com and look at Google Earth.

Software stacks#

There are multiple solutions:

• XBMC
• Boxee
• Stock Linux. This has the advantage of being more like a desktop and reduces the risk of being blocked from services such as Hulu

Media Resources#

Personal resources#

We have multiple home resources:

• DVDs we bought
• home videos
• home pictures

Online video sources#

Multiple websites are currently available that offer video:

• Youtube
• Hulu
• Netflix (Requires M$ Silverlight for streaming. Not available for Linux.)

Hardware#

Typical solutions#

There are a lot of typical solutions on the market:

• Blu Ray player with Wifi and Youtube, Netflix access
• Roku player for Netflix
• WD TV Live Plus

The typical solutions offer HDMI output, internet access through cat5 or Wifi, a remote control, Ars Technica has a very interesting evaluation of the new Apple TV. They tackle the problem of entropy regarding set top boxes and TV.

Music in all the rooms#

Goals#

Be able to play all our music in multiple rooms, adjust volume, choose songs etc. Ideally, the same music should play in multiple rooms seamlessly.

Hardware#

Typical solutions#

Sony has the S AIR system that can stream music from a computer or from an IPOD. Speakers get the music wirelessly in the 2.4GHz band.

Moon tracking#

Goals#

Take pictures of Moon automatically so as to track its motion. Tracking it while it's in the field of vision of the equipment seems much simpler that mechanical tracking. It would be nice to combine multiple images to reduce noise, atmospheric perturbations. Then pictures combined at different times could be used to reconstruct a 3D model of the relief (Sun's light coming with a different angle which results in different shadows).

Hardware#

Typical solutions#

There are telescopes with mechanical tracking and you can buy CCD cameras that can take multiple exposures. Some people attach an DSLR camera but it causes some shaking.

Home server#

Goals#

The home server's main goals are to make information sharing easier across multiple gadgets in a house. It should offer appropriate services to reduce the need for cloud services and move the center of gravity of information back into the house. The home serve should bring the information together and make it easier to protect it from disaster or unwanted access. The home server can offer other services in addition to network access and storage:

• accept incoming data from memory cards (plug in memory card reader, automate copying them to an incoming

Typical solutions#

Home servers are a common product with solutions anywhere from 100$ to 1000$. They typically don't offer gigabit ethernet, have slow CPUs, little RAM and reduced functionality.

DIY solutions#

One may simply run Linux and configure adequate services or use dedicated solutions such as FreeNAS. The hardware can be a regular PC or wifi router with USB ports reflashed with Linux. A regular PC might be wort the trouble and the electrical power as even old PC will be 5 times faster than a typical router CPU and have 4 to 10 times more RAM. Plus, they can house hard drives, CD drives etc.