General Forum

Re: DIY Beomedia 1

BeoIce — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 03:22:09 GMT

Here's a little update on my project:

If BS9000 and Beoport are in the same room option programming is option 0 for the beoport and BS9000 can be left to factory setting. All audio commands will be send through masterlink.

Tested the standby issue on the mini PC and it's the same as with the notebook. Standby does not work when Beoport is connected.

The overall performance of the new mini PC is very good, but the problem is that it can not run without a cooling fan and the fan is always audible. This doesn't make sense when you can't put the PC into standby when not in use.

On saturday another option came to my mind. On ebay kleinanzeigen I found a fully functional VIA EPIA MII mainboard - the same as build in a Beomedia - but with the 600MHz CPU and 1GB RAM included for 40€. I couldn't resist this offer.

The main advantage of this is that it can run fanless. As I want to use the DIY Beomedia only for for N.RADIO and N.MUSIC the CPU should be fast enough for doing that. You won't scroll through N.RADIO or N.MUSIC or won't add hundreds of new songs to your library everyday and I don't need it for photos or movies. The PS3 can do this much better. I won't use the internet browser too, as I have a netbook and an ipad.

Another advantage of this mainboard should be, that I can use an original Beomedia image. So no messing around with driver problems and registering Beomedia software.

I will keep you up-to-date on the project.

Regards

Martin

Re: DIY Beomedia 1

BeoIce — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 03:58:23 GMT

Yesterday I aquired an affordable harddisk drive for my beomedia project. Hope it will arrive this week so I can continue testing.

Yesterday I also tried Beoport on my notebook. It's an Intel Atom powered one, but Beoport software was so damn slow and powering up the notebook from energy saving mode with beoport connected was not possible, it was no fun to play around with.

Will see how things go when I connect the beoport to the new mini pc. Hope the wake-up problem is driver related to the notebook. It would be nice if pressing n.music or n.radio on the Beo4 will wake up the pc through USB on the beoport.

Regards

Martin

Re: DIY Beomedia 1

elephant — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:16:54 GMT

BeoIce:

elephant:

BeoIce:
beoport connected in the BV8 cabinet

when you began the project it was to connect to a non-B&O TV ... have you since then bought a BV8 ... or did you just like the cabinet !

PS Martin, see my long response above this post

You're right, it's not the BV8 television, it's the BV8 cabinet for the 40" televisions Lee once offered to beoworld members.

I will come back to your answers above. Thanks a lot for taking so much time to answer my questions.

Regards

Martin

Great looking set-up !!! Look forward to the results of your tests and investigations

Re: DIY Beomedia 1

BeoIce — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 07:03:58 GMT

elephant:

BeoIce:
beoport connected in the BV8 cabinet

when you began the project it was to connect to a non-B&O TV ... have you since then bought a BV8 ... or did you just like the cabinet !

PS Martin, see my long response above this post

You're right, it's not the BV8 television, it's the BV8 cabinet for the 40" televisions Lee once offered to beoworld members.

I will come back to your answers above. Thanks a lot for taking so much time to answer my questions.

Regards

Martin

Re: DIY Beomedia 1

elephant — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:43:51 GMT

BeoIce:
beoport connected in the BV8 cabinet

when you began the project it was to connect to a non-B&O TV ... have you since then bought a BV8 ... or did you just like the cabinet !

PS Martin, see my long response above this post

Re: DIY Beomedia 1

elephant — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:34:17 GMT

BeoIce:
As elephant suggested I checked the beoport manual yesterday and found out that, if a main audio system (in my case BS9000) and beport are in the same room, main audio system should be set to option 0, which means, as far as I know, ir disabled. Beoport should be set to option 2 with ir-eye connected, but this doesn't make sense for my kind of usage.

Hi my friend, I am tempted to change my avatar because until now no one had called me an elephant elgante´

Anyway, you ask good questions: I have checked my copy of the manual, and you are right, the diagram that corresponds to your setup does have the BeoPort's IR eye as being the "sender" (pardon the pun!) of the universe.

Like you I would have thought the better setup would be to have no BeoPort IR-eye and instead make use of the BeoSound's capabilities.

That is certainly how I have it configured with my BeoVision as the master - and no IR-eye on the BeoPort, and the BeoPort option set to OPTION 4 which makes sense; so I think you might need to leave your BS9K option set as it is, and try option 4 on the BeoPort.

According to my BeoSound 4's manual OPTION 9 (for an audiomaster) means "Used when your music system is connected to your video system and no speakers are directly connected to your music system. If you wish to change the Optioin setting to 0 from any other setting, change it first to 1 before changing it to 0." (tialics are B&O's emphasis)

So I am not sure where you are thinking of attaching the speakers ... to the BS9K or to the BeoPort. Perhaps it is a question of ease of placement, but for my part I prefer to have the speakers directly connected to the main systems rather than being reliant on the performance of the BeoPort.

Now for your other questions ...

BeoIce:
The question is, what happens when I set BS9000 to option 2 and beoport to option 0. Are ir-commands transfered to beoport via masterlink ?

I am guessing ... but I assume which ever device gets the commands is going to filter them against that device's capabilities. So for example, when a non-BeoPort device get's a [N-MUSIC] command through its IR-eye it will not be able to action it, and so it forwards it to the MasterLink and asks for an [N-MUSIC] source to start broadcasting analogue signals on the MasterLink. In on the other hand, the non-BeoPort was a music master, and received a [CD] command then it would action the command itself. Similarly a video master would action a [DTV] command, but broadcast a [CD] command, expecting a music master to answer.

But for the life of me I can't remember if the BeoPort Windows software treats the [CD] command as a request to activate its own CD, or send the command out ! (and I no longer have a Windows machine I can experiment with).

BeoIce:
Another thing which has gone through my mind this morning is a little bit complicated to explain. I assume that BS9000 is in opt. 2 and beoport in opt. 0. Beoport is connected to the little PC with video-out connected to the TV. What happens exactly when I press N.Music on Beo4 ? Will I be able to see the main windows of beoport software on the TV and navigate with the Beo4 as I normaly would do with a mouse ? Of course no cursor, but will I see buttons pressed or will I see actions ?

I am not sure OPTIONs will affect this question ... you have your TV attached via video-out, so you should see the BeoPort software in the screen. Your Beo4 commands should result in the ability to skip tracks, playlists, and so on. But it is *not* operating as a mouse! I imagine the Beo4 commands like [>] and [<] are translated into keyboard accelerators. You won't see the "buttons" being pressed, but if you have various BeoPort menus open you will see track name changes.

I hope that helps a little ... I am sorry that so much of it is guess work on my part !

Re: DIY Beomedia 1

BeoIce — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:52:05 GMT

As elephant suggested I checked the beoport manual yesterday and found out that, if a main audio system (in my case BS9000) and beport are in the same room, main audio system should be set to option 0, which means, as far as I know, ir disabled. Beoport should be set to option 2 with ir-eye connected, but this doesn't make sense for my kind of usage.

The question is, what happens when I set BS9000 to option 2 and beoport to option 0. Are ir-commands transfered to beoport via masterlink ?

Another thing which has gone through my mind this morning is a little bit complicated to explain. I assume that BS9000 is in opt. 2 and beoport in opt. 0. Beoport is connected to the little PC with video-out connected to the TV. What happens exactly when I press N.Music on Beo4 ? Will I be able to see the main windows of beoport software on the TV and navigate with the Beo4 as I normaly would do with a mouse ? Of course no cursor, but will I see buttons pressed or will I see actions ?

I hope you understand what I want to say ...

Regards

Martin

Re: DIY Beomedia 1

BeoIce — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:30:14 GMT

thanks for the info elephant

I already checked that. BS9000 is version MK3 with software 3.3 installed. This should work fine although there are some little bugs known. Perhaps, if everything works fine so far, I will update the BS9000 to the latest firmware 3.4.

Regards

Martin

Re: DIY Beomedia 1

elephant — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:41:28 GMT

BeoIce:
beoport is connected to a BS9000 via masterlink

just had a thought -- better check that your BeoSound 9000 is at the right version level for supporting N-MUSIC -- not sure how you do that, or what the level should be, but perhaps that most valuable software version thread will have the answer ?

Re: DIY Beomedia 1

BeoIce — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:34:54 GMT

Thanks elegant

I'll give it a try without the ir-eye. Shouldn't be a problem to connect everything for a quick test. If all tests complete succesful I can make everything looking nice afterwards. Hope it works, cause it's much easier for later installation.

I also want to wait for harddisk prices to become lower to get a large drive instead of the small drive I use for testing purpose.

Regards

Martin

Re: DIY Beomedia 1

elephant — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 15:12:19 GMT

BeoIce:
They are located in the same room, about 2 meters from each other.

Then you should be able to control the BeoPort with Beo4 signals that are sent on the MasterLink by the BeoSound.

And you leave out the BeoPort IR eye (which is different from the normal Active IR eyes, so I don't know if it would interface with the Linctronic)

Have you got a copy of the BeoPort manual ? It is on this site in the usual place. It will tell you what OPTION codes you need to set for your configuration.

Re: DIY Beomedia 1

BeoIce — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:53:46 GMT

They are located in the same room, about 2 meters from each other.

My plan is to hide away the little "pc" with the beoport connected in the BV8 cabinet. I already have a b&o ir-eye which I use for the lintronic box. Splitting the cable of this ir-eye will take much time, as it requires to remove the tv set from the wall, remove some mains outlets from the wall, move cables and so on and if it will work is another question.

To use the beoport software in a useful way, I want to have the vga-output connected to the non-b&o tv to see what I navigate with the beo4.

Regards

Martin

Re: DIY Beomedia 1

elephant — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 05:36:49 GMT

BeoIce:

What I'm unsure about is, do I need the ir-eye to control beoport through Beo4 even if beoport is connected to a BS9000 via masterlink ?

I think it depends if they are in the same room ... what is your plan ?

Re: DIY Beomedia 1

BeoIce — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 04:51:12 GMT

To give this thread an update I would like to give you some info about what I did inbetween.

After messing around with an original Beomedia 1 Windows XP embedded image I tried a fresh install of Windows XP Professional and used the Beomedia Setup from the image with some luck. I managed to get the beomedia software working, but it was not stable and some update function didn't work. Although the ML-Card in Beomedia 1 is a PCI device, installation of the software worked with the beoport, which of course is a USB device, too. Beomedia software was able to detect firmware version of my beoport.

But this is not what I want.

I will try Beoport software with Windows XP Professional, although it's not the same feeling as Beomedia 1, but it would be better regarding updated versions of Internet Explorer etc.

What I'm unsure about is, do I need the ir-eye to control beoport through Beo4 even if beoport is connected to a BS9000 via masterlink ?

Regards

Martin

Re: DIY Beomedia 1

Stoobietoo — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 06:00:52 GMT

Hi Martin,

Any news on your Beomedia Project? I am still very interested.

Stoobie