HTPC

I’ve recently finished work on an HTPC. The goal was to run a media center WM on a box that looked appropriate in my cabinet by my TV using a remote. That much I’ve done; all that’s left is tweaking the remote functions and adding to the collection.

Hardware

The first thing I got was the case; I wanted one with a built in remote and a low enough profile to fit in my TV cabinet and not look out of place.

Enter Lian Li’s PC-C39. Let me say, it’s a great case. It’s small, quiet, and looks great. One problem, the remote is garbage.

It doesn’t work more than 2 feet away from the sensor. The remote is RF (another flaw IMO) and the sensor is actually over-shielded by the case itself. Solution? Slide open the top of the case (even just an inch), your range will increase tenfold. I did this for a while but wanted something better – more on that later; anyone reading this should buy the PC-C37B which is the same case but sans the trash remote (and $50 bucks).

Next, I stopped in at MicroCenter to pick up the internal components. I knew I wanted to spend five to six hundred bucks and get a decently powered machine; one that could keep up with whatever HD content I wanted to run without getting too hot.

Here’s what I ended up with:

• Intel DP55WB mATX 129.99
• ASUS GF210 47.99
• Intel Core i5 650 139.99
• OCZ 4GB DDR3 1600 CL8 119.99
• OCZ 600W Stealth 69.99
• WD 1TB SATA 99.99
• LG 22x Burner 29.99
• Total 639.93

After the usual mail-in-rebates, It’ll be just over $550. You could definitely achieve a great system for less, but I wanted something more high-end (and I had just gotten my tax return), so I probably spent a little more than I had to.

So now that I’ve got a fully functioning box, it’s time to fix my remote situation.

Enter Logitech’s Harmony 300. I originally bought this thinking it was primarily a PC Media Center remote and would come with its own USB IR receiver. It did not. I was pissed.

In the end, I’m really glad I made that mistake because the remote’s awesome. You configure it by plugging it into a computer and using an in-browser control panel (luckily it’s mac+firefox compatible), just add devices by Manufacturer number, and that’s it.

To get it working with the computer was a bit more involved, but not much.

First, I had to get my own USB IR Receiver. Luckily, amazon had a Dell RC6 receiver for like $18 bucks, sold. Then it was just a matter of adding its MFR# to the harmony setup and starting lirc.

If you’re on Arch, it’s like this:

pacman -S lirc
cp /usr/share/lirc/remotes/mceusb/lircd.conf.mceusb /etc/lirc/lircd.conf
/etc/rc.d/lircd start

You can test it by typing irw and pressing some buttons.

You’ll want to add lirc_mceusb2 to MODULES and lircd to DAEMONS in /etc/rc.conf.

Now I’ve got just one remote that runs my whole living room. The girlfriend was pleased. There was much rejoicing.

Software

I went with XBMC. Once installed, I set up an autologin by editing /etc/inittab (assuming xbmc is your default username):

## Only one of the following two lines can be uncommented!
# Boot to console
#id:3:initdefault:
# Boot to X11
id:5:initdefault:

# snip...

x:5:respawn:/bin/su xbmc -l -c "/bin/bash --login -c startx >/dev/null 2>&1"

And then adding the following to that user’s ~/.xinitrc:

exec /usr/bin/ck-launch-session /usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session /usr/bin/xbmc --standalone -fs

I share my media from the main desktop PC using samba, so I just added the shares in XBMC.

Once added, XBMC scans your sources using some filename regexps that caught pretty much everything I threw at it. It downloaded plot summaries and fanart for all my movies and TV shows, and it of course uses your music collection’s tags (which I’m a bit OCD about anyway).

The result is an instantly full and beautiful library. Here are some screenshots:

Remote configuration

XBMC found and used a hotplugged keyboard, the case’s built-in RF remote, and my lirc controlled mceusb remote all without issue right out of the box using default button mappings. I was impressed.

If you’d like to customize your remote behavior, there are two files involved: ~/.xbmc/userdata/Lircmap.xml and ~/.xbmc/userdata/keymaps/remote.xml. Defaults can be found in /opt/xbmc/system on an Arch install; just copy them and start editing.

Lircmap.xml will translate the device/button (as reported by irw) to an XBMC button string. Through this file, you can make it so that ... OK mceusb will register as “select”. Then, in remote.xml you can actually map select to an XBMC action, like “Select”.

The last little issue I noticed was that after playing a DVD, I couldn’t eject. This was fixed by adding the following line to the file /etc/sysctrl.conf:

sys.dev.cdrom.lock = 0

A reboot is required for the change to take effect.

pcm.dmixer {
  type dmix
  ipc_key 2048
  slave {
    pcm "hw:1,7"
    period_size 512
    buffer_size 4096
    rate 48000
    format S16_LE
  }
  bindings {
    0 0
    1 1
  }
}

pcm.!default {
  type plug
  slave.pcm dmixer
}

pcm:iec958 {
  type plug
  slave.pcm dmixer
}