Home Media Center at Intel Atom
In a trail of an article that interested me in Habré about a compact home server based on the Mini-ITX platform from VIA, I decided to describe my experience in building a compact home multimedia center.
I decided to use the Intel Atom platform as a basis, since the performance requirements for the media center are somewhat higher than for the router - we want to see beautiful visual effects and movies in HD!
Looking ahead, I will say that the entire media center cost me a little more than $ 250, including the delivery of a motherboard from sunny California.
I have long wanted to build a computer at home that would be permanently connected to the TV - for watching movies, photos. Especially acutely arose such a need, when guests gathered in the house, and parents wanted to watch home videos and photos - I had to take a laptop, put it on the table (or connect to a TV) and thumb through these pictures ... It was then that the idea arose to assemble a medical center based on a computer, which everyone in the family could use - from the younger brother to the parents.
Requirements were such - small size, connection to TV, remote control and a simple interface.
The search for iron on which to assemble the media center took me some time. It was impossible to find a Mini-ITX motherboard with S-Video output in Ukraine, and I had a simple CRT TV at that time, on which, of course, there was no VGA input ... So I was very pleased to read the news that Intel has released a D945GCLF2 motherboard with a dual-core Atom 330 2x 1.6Ghz processor and video output! The search for this board in Ukraine was not successful, so I decided to buy it on ebay, chose the Intel D945GCLF2 kit , which includes the motherboard itself, the case, and the picoPSU-90 power supply.
The kit does not include a hard drive and a DVD drive, so I had to buy a 5GB boo hdd for $ 10 from an old laptop, and so far I decided to refuse a DVD - over time, it will be possible to buy and deliver a notebook DVD drive to the system box (always with slot loading) I like them very much!). You can also buy a CF-IDE adapter and use a CompactFlash card for a couple of gigabytes to install the OS - and get rid of unnecessary noise.
The kit included a picoPSU-90 power supply - outside the system unit - an adapter, the size of a notebook, inside - a board, the size of a matchbox. And this little one provides the system with a power of 90W. However, as it turned out later, this power supply has some problems with suspend mode, so if you plan to use it, you had better remove another power supply, or wait until the developers fix the problems.
To control the media center, I use the same remote control as the TV, and to receive its commands, a simple homemade application is connected to the RS-232 port, which with the help of the lirc daemon allows you to receive commands from almost any IR remote.
')
As an operating system, I use Ubuntu 8.10, everything works fine out of the box, no additional OS configuration was required.
To support IR, the installer installed the lirc package, using irrecord, “taught” it to the codes of the keys of my console, the setting did not cause any difficulties.
As a software for organizing a media center, I chose XBMC - I really liked the interface, there are quite a lot of skins, convenient remote control and the project is developing dynamically.
Put the version of XBMC from the repository, in principle, everything worked fine, except for a small problem with sound. I found the solution on the Ubunt forums - for XBMC to work properly, it was enough to add a line in the startup script that stops PulseAudio:
I configured the xml XBMC configuration file to work with my console, entered the appropriate names of the buttons - and it all started, support for lirc is built into XBMC.
The new gadget is already fully exploited by relatives, it became much more pleasant to watch movies, and most importantly - it is accessible to everyone in the family - and I think the cost of creating it was worth it. Future plans include upgrading the media center with a DVD drive, and replacing standard coolers with quieter ones, and installing a small USB card reader into the case.
I decided to use the Intel Atom platform as a basis, since the performance requirements for the media center are somewhat higher than for the router - we want to see beautiful visual effects and movies in HD!
Looking ahead, I will say that the entire media center cost me a little more than $ 250, including the delivery of a motherboard from sunny California.
Foreword
I have long wanted to build a computer at home that would be permanently connected to the TV - for watching movies, photos. Especially acutely arose such a need, when guests gathered in the house, and parents wanted to watch home videos and photos - I had to take a laptop, put it on the table (or connect to a TV) and thumb through these pictures ... It was then that the idea arose to assemble a medical center based on a computer, which everyone in the family could use - from the younger brother to the parents.
Requirements were such - small size, connection to TV, remote control and a simple interface.
Iron
The search for iron on which to assemble the media center took me some time. It was impossible to find a Mini-ITX motherboard with S-Video output in Ukraine, and I had a simple CRT TV at that time, on which, of course, there was no VGA input ... So I was very pleased to read the news that Intel has released a D945GCLF2 motherboard with a dual-core Atom 330 2x 1.6Ghz processor and video output! The search for this board in Ukraine was not successful, so I decided to buy it on ebay, chose the Intel D945GCLF2 kit , which includes the motherboard itself, the case, and the picoPSU-90 power supply.
The kit does not include a hard drive and a DVD drive, so I had to buy a 5GB boo hdd for $ 10 from an old laptop, and so far I decided to refuse a DVD - over time, it will be possible to buy and deliver a notebook DVD drive to the system box (always with slot loading) I like them very much!). You can also buy a CF-IDE adapter and use a CompactFlash card for a couple of gigabytes to install the OS - and get rid of unnecessary noise.
The kit included a picoPSU-90 power supply - outside the system unit - an adapter, the size of a notebook, inside - a board, the size of a matchbox. And this little one provides the system with a power of 90W. However, as it turned out later, this power supply has some problems with suspend mode, so if you plan to use it, you had better remove another power supply, or wait until the developers fix the problems.
To control the media center, I use the same remote control as the TV, and to receive its commands, a simple homemade application is connected to the RS-232 port, which with the help of the lirc daemon allows you to receive commands from almost any IR remote.
')
Soft
As an operating system, I use Ubuntu 8.10, everything works fine out of the box, no additional OS configuration was required.
To support IR, the installer installed the lirc package, using irrecord, “taught” it to the codes of the keys of my console, the setting did not cause any difficulties.
As a software for organizing a media center, I chose XBMC - I really liked the interface, there are quite a lot of skins, convenient remote control and the project is developing dynamically.
Put the version of XBMC from the repository, in principle, everything worked fine, except for a small problem with sound. I found the solution on the Ubunt forums - for XBMC to work properly, it was enough to add a line in the startup script that stops PulseAudio:
#! /bin/bash
pulseaudio -k
xbmcI configured the xml XBMC configuration file to work with my console, entered the appropriate names of the buttons - and it all started, support for lirc is built into XBMC.
Plans
The new gadget is already fully exploited by relatives, it became much more pleasant to watch movies, and most importantly - it is accessible to everyone in the family - and I think the cost of creating it was worth it. Future plans include upgrading the media center with a DVD drive, and replacing standard coolers with quieter ones, and installing a small USB card reader into the case.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/49113/
All Articles