28Sep/0980
New Video – HULU on the Zipit Z2
And not just HULU, anything that you can dynamically transcode and serve on the network, you can watch or listen to on the Z2. 30 rock on the Zipit Z2? Oh YES THANKS. Instructions after the jump.
Though this has been possible from the first image posted, I only today finally sat down and set it all up. Essentially, you are going to transcode audio or video on the fly to the Z2 using a windows or linux computer.
- First, setup your transcoder machine. For the most part this is beyond the scope of this guide, but I'll give a windows example
- For the windows users, I recommend TVersity. It's free to try for as long as you like, and they are really good to their customers
- Setup your data sources, In TVersity add your HULU/youtube username (for your online video queues) and any audio/video folders you wish
- Now setup the transcoder, for TVersity set the maximum video and image size to be 320x240. In the general settings, set your playback device to be mpeg1/2 device, and set the port for the web interface (and if you're really lazy, set your port to be 80)
- On your trancoding machine, obtain the ip address (ipconfig (windows) / ifconfig(linux)
- If you want to stream your files over the net, forward incoming connections to the ip/port combination above on your external router
- Now, on the Z2 create a script with the following contents
#/bin/sh
mplayer -vo fbdev -vf rotate=2 -bandwidth 100000 %1
- This tells mplayer to rotate the framebuffer (who wants the overhead of X11 or flux...) 90 degrees ccw (non-flipped) and limit the bandwidth to 100k
- Connect your zipit to your wireless network, and use dillo or links etc to browse to the ip address of your server
- Browse to the audio or video file you wish to watch, and copy that shortcut (or output to file). You may want to just wget/grep for the shortcut if you are comfortable on the command line
- Pass the shortcut (or paste it into a script, etc) into the script you created earlier.
- Voila! Streaming Audio/Video etc on the Z2 in great quality! Bet you didn't think it'd do that eh? If you're feeling adventurous, you can set the link handler for dillo or fennec to open the script and be fully GUI
October 1st, 2009 - 06:04
Ok anyone interested I have posted a quick and Dirty Faq over at sourceforge. hopefully people will find this useful.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openzipit/forums/forum/917462/topic/34170611
October 1st, 2009 - 07:50
I’m making more progress on learning how to use this thing.
I have it hooked up to my wireless [Yay!]
I have telnet-ed out to a server and that worked great.
I have converted a few tv episodes to play on it [works quite well though I'm working on the volume]
I’m using a program called MediaCell video converter. Its perfect for this application!
The 2 things I’m having trouble with are
1. How do you type numbers in xterminal? something funky with the keymap? they work fine before i start x after x though they don’t work.
2. How can I create my pidgien config?
October 1st, 2009 - 08:27
The following only applies to the original filesystem and kernel posted in the instructions
mcavity, run alsamixer and press “n” until you get to speaker, then use the “PREV and NEXT” buttons to change the volume…
you can also disable the speaker and change the headphones settings too… btw there are a LOT of options in alsamixer for this unit. as far as the number keys go, they don’t only not work in terminal (under x) but they don’t work under x at all… this is due to the fact the “ALT” key acts as an ALT key within X… however out of x and back to the TTY, the number keys work fine. (which is why I had to do certain things out of x to get things the way I liked)
Very quickly one bug I noticed was at a cold boot the tty after you login as root does not scroll down after a few lines and becomes rather corrupted, if you run a program (like alsamixer) and exit everything turns out fine though.
Pyr0: no where they sell them seems to force the sale of the plan I find.
(looks at comment about multiplayer games)
any way you can get nexuiz running on this thing? (j/k, lol)
Are the “Options” button and the “Play” button mapped to anything yet?
Handy Tips for those who do not know:
The bora_black style doesn’t seem to flicker as much as others do.
Right clicking a program’s taskbar and selecting “maximize” will put the application in full view.
“Stop” button is right click in X
“Volume” buttons on side act as “+” and “-” keys
Zipit button is
Happpy face is
alt+key for numbers and symbols only works out of X
“…” key acts as
Full blast the headphone jack could make you death, man this thing’s got power and the sound quality is damn nice
October 1st, 2009 - 08:31
oops.. HTML tagging got me! (I put my keys in less than and greater than signs)
Zipit button is TAB
Happpy face is ESC
alt+key for numbers and symbols only works out of X
“…” key acts as CTRL
October 1st, 2009 - 09:29
Hey Cprossu,
Great info! You should think about adding it to the sourceforge page. We’ve got some really good community knowledge happening. I am…. doubtful…. that nexiuz will work. I was thinking more of working off the wormux maemo port and getting wormux netplay working on the Z2, maybe start with something simple like chess or tron though. My absolute next task is a windows-only video/flashing tut for the windows folks, hopefully my new microSD cards will come in this evening.
October 1st, 2009 - 09:30
Cprossu :
So does that mean you can’t use numbers inside of X?
I’d love to get one of these:
http://www.comsciences.com/product.htm
October 1st, 2009 - 09:32
Hey Maxunknown, You should be able to use numbers within X yes, I believe somebody posted a keymap earlier.. That’s an interesting product, 300mhz marvell, limited ram, wireless instant messenger….. where have I seen that before
October 1st, 2009 - 09:38
Hunter If you see that keymap let me know. I will add it to my FAQ. Right Know I dont know how to do numbers in X.
So its quite hard to do “mplayer filename.mp3″
Mike
October 1st, 2009 - 09:39
Hunter If you see that keymap let me know. I will add it to my FAQ. Right Know I don’t know how to do numbers in X.
So its quite hard to do “mplayer filename.mp3″
Mike
October 1st, 2009 - 09:42
Hunter If you see that keymap let me know. I will add it to my FAQ. Right now I don’t know how to do numbers in X.
So its quite hard to do “mplayer filename.mp3″
Mike
October 1st, 2009 - 09:44
Hunter If you see that keymap let me know. I will add it to my FAQ. Right now I don’t know how to do numbers in X.
So its quite hard to do “mplayer filename.mp3″
October 1st, 2009 - 09:53
Hunter
I’ll see what I can do, and I’ll perhaps pick up another unit..and see if I can find my other micro to mini sd converter… (those things are getting hard to find o_O)
maxunknown
Yeah no number keys under X with the standard keymap… Supposedly Lokichoas’s keymap fixes this issue, and is included with the debian filesystem has this keymap. But I saw no links to d/l it by itself.
October 1st, 2009 - 10:07
Hunter If you see that keymap let me know. I will add it to my FAQ. Right now I don’t know how to do numbers in X.
So its quite hard to do “mplayer filename.mp3″
I did get pidgin working though I set up the config files on my ubuntu live cd system. Its a bit laggy but usable. I may have to look around and see if there’s a jabber client that’s lighter.
October 1st, 2009 - 10:37
The thing is, the mouse emulator takes over the entire keymapping right now, so a working keymap gets ignored once the mouse emulator is loaded. I’ve been running without the mouse emulator most of the time because I need the keyboard symbols more than mouse functionality.
October 1st, 2009 - 10:43
Karl, the mouse emulater(grab a recent one) does not take over the entire keyboard these days.
October 1st, 2009 - 11:36
Ahhh, my bad. The keymap needs to be loaded after the mouse emulator. When I was trying out the new ones, I ran them through a terminal so it was loaded in the wrong order.
For anyone who doesn’t have a proper keymap in fluxbox, download Aliosa’s keymap.map from their page, put it in /home/root/.fluxbox, and add the following to the end of your /bin/startx script:
xmodmap /home/root/.fluxbox/keymap.map
if it doesn’t work, grab one of Aliosa’s new mouse emulators and change startx to load the new one. I’m using z2mouse-option because the option key doesn’t seem to be readable under x (no event in xev)
October 1st, 2009 - 17:13
Do the readymade 2G (or 1G) images from SVN also save the existing firmware+wifi firmware to the SD card ? Or would those be lost if I were to use the readymade image?
October 1st, 2009 - 17:18
Hey ingolemo,
I believe you’ll still have to flash your z2 with the autoflasher. I got my new sd cardsin today, and just started the tut. Hopefully up by the end of the night. I believe the process will be flash the zipit, copy off the backup files, write the disk image to SD, copy the backup files onto the new fat32 partition, boot the zipit into linux, copy the files from the fat partition to /lib/firmware/libertas. Good luck, i’ll post when complete.
October 1st, 2009 - 20:56
Few more Tips to put into the faq.
Linux wireless commands .
To scan for local access points
root@zipit2:~# iwlist eth0 scanning | grep ‘ESSID’
To connect to an access point
root@zipit2:~# iwconfig eth0 essid “name” [no" "]
To run dhcp
root@zipit2:~# udhcpc
That should get you online as long as your not running wpa
- yes being able to type numbers in X would be nice =)
October 1st, 2009 - 21:04
Few more Tips to put into the faq.
Linux wireless commands .
To scan for local access points
root@zipit2:~# iwlist eth0 scanning | grep ‘ESSID’
To connect to an access point
root@zipit2:~# iwconfig eth0 essid “name” [no" "]
To run dhcp
root@zipit2:~# udhcpc
That should get you online as long as your not running wpa
- yes being able to type numbers in X would be nice =)
/I made a support thread on sourceforge/
October 1st, 2009 - 21:10
Karl
Where is the site to grab the new keymap? I cant seem to find it.
October 1st, 2009 - 21:17
I’ve got my ZipIt flashed and it will go in to X, however, when I start xterm off of the menu, it opens, but does not show any typing. I’m running the 2.6.29 kernel, and have not modified anything.
Also, is there a Wiki for keyboard mappings, and other help?
October 1st, 2009 - 21:38
Dennis
I am putting together a FAQ sourseforge.
Try pressing Alt-m to be able to see the text.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/openzipit/forums/forum/917462/topic/3417061
October 1st, 2009 - 22:39
Aliosa27’s keymap is at http://www.aliosa27.net/projects/zipit2 , it’s named keymap.map. I haven’t used it myself, but it’s very close to the keymap I’m using. I do not remember if xmodmap comes on the image Aliosa27 posted, if not you can install it from the console with apt-get install xmodmap on Debian, or ipkg install xmodmap on the OE image. Be sure to run ipkg update first if using the OE image, to update the package lists
December 1st, 2009 - 18:26
What, precisely does “pass the shortcut” mean? I’ve been trying
$ ./script “http://.mpg”
but it says
“file not found: ‘%1′
failed to open %1″
It works great if I hardcode the link into the script, so it looks like
#/bin/sh
mplayer -vo fbdev -vf rotate=2 -bandwidth 100000 %1 “http://.mpg”
but that gets old fast (especially from the command line, where I don’t have copy+paste)
Also, I don’t have nearly the performance I had hoped–to get consistent framerate I have to use 320×120 for my resolution (which works great for widescreen movies like in the preview; but it makes 3:4 resolution videos tiny)
December 1st, 2009 - 18:39
Hey poweruser,
What operating system are you running this script on? It will depend on what your sh interpreter points to.. Try $1 instead of %1, it’s the variable name for the first argument passed to the script.
As for the movie…the performance will vary depending on the movie, and what background programs are running, if any. Are you running this straight from sh or from a bash shell or from fluxbox? How much swap memory is used? Just things to check.. Good Luck!
December 1st, 2009 - 19:05
OS: Emdebian–I followed your Windows tutorial (thanks for posting that by the way–excellent work!)
I’m running straight from bash; as in I have not typed ’startx’
Checking with top (from an ssh connection, while the video is playing), if I’m reading correctly, I have used 0k swap. Oh I see I also have 0k swap free… Well there’s the problem lol. Do you have any tips on how to reactivate swap space, or should I just start it back from scratch (this time using the Linux method since Windows 7 doesn’t like physdiskwrite). I also messed up my apt sources so I’m not entirely against it.
December 1st, 2009 - 22:24
Zipit reinstalled, swap fixed. Many thanks to you and the people on #zipit
December 20th, 2009 - 15:27
Is it possible to download Hulu files with Linux? Does it violate some sort of copyright laws?
December 21st, 2009 - 10:09
Hey Matthew,
No Hulu files downloaded, just re-encoded on the fly with a re-encoder. There’s a hulu linux client now as well. Good Luck!