PiBox

Streaming just got easier, with DLNA and Roku

Sat January 09, 2016 in General / Linux / Movies / PiBox / Raspberry Pi / Video tagged DLNA / DVD / Fedora / Linux / music / Open Source / PiBox / Raspberry Pi / Roku / Video

One of the directions my PiBox project is headed is as a central hub for sensor management. This implies the ability to communicate between the PiBox and the sensor node using BLE or Wifi. PiBox can do that already over Wifi (and supports basic BLE communication though lacks a meaningful […]

Embedded project: 4 channel Arduino-based power controller

Thu November 05, 2015 in Arduino / Hardware / Holiday lighting / Raspberry Pi tagged 4 channel relay / adafruit / arduino / Linux / PiBox / sda/scl / signals / timer / wifi (updated 3647 days ago)

One of the longterm goals for PiBox is to integrate it into the home. I want to see the PiBox Server provide centralized communication for an array of IoT devices. One way to do this is with Bluetooth Low-Energy, aka BLE, aka Bluetooth 4.0. This specification allows very low power […]

PiBox: bluetooth for video means no omxplayer

Mon July 27, 2015 in Audio / Hardware / Linux / PiBox / Raspberry Pi / Software Development / Video tagged crosstool-ng / gcc / kernel / Linaro / mplayer / PiBox / Raspberry Pi / toolchain / Video / video player

This past weekend I took PiBox out in the trailer for a field trial. The box was mounted under a cabinet with power and HDMI wrapped around to a 7″ HDMI-input monitor. Power on worked fine and the system came right up. But not everything worked as expected. Here is […]

PiBox field trial results

Thu July 02, 2015 in General / PiBox tagged Android / BUI / digital TV / GTK+ / HDMI / HDMI cables / HDMI switch / Media Player / Media Server / PiBox / wifi

It’s taken more than 2 years but I’ve finally finished the first versions of the PiBox Media Server and Media Player. The cases are stained wood boxes from a hobby store but they provide me with information on how to deal with layout in a 3D printed case. It also […]

PiBox prototype cases

Thu June 11, 2015 in PiBox tagged Android / custom boards / digital TV / HDMI / Media Player / Media Server / PiBox / projector / prototype / toolchain

When I was just getting started with embedded development I found many tutorials on how to perform cross compiles required setting up some shell functions and variables before working on builds. This is a necessity for embedded work because the embedded build for the target platform won’t use the same […]

cdtools, because who has just one project?

Mon April 06, 2015 in General / Linux / Raspberry Pi / Software Development tagged angstrom / ARM / buildroot / embedded development / Fedora / git / java / kernel / Linux / metabuild / Metabuilds / OpenEmbedded / packaging / PiBox / rpm / toolchain / yocto (updated 3796 days ago)

I was job hunting from late November to late January. Since few of the people needed to do interviews tend to be available during the 12th month of the year, I was able to devote a lot of time working on PiBox development. However, once the new year rolled in […]

PiBox update: user and developer guides

Mon March 02, 2015 in PiBox / Raspberry Pi tagged Development / HGST / PiBox

I’ve been working on PiBox now for a couple of years. The immediate goal is a consumer-oriented device for video playback while not connected to the Internet. In other words, play movies while camping. I have longer term goals for it, but that’s where the project is aimed currently. At […]

Raspberry Pi: Kodi vs PiBox use case comparison

Fri February 06, 2015 in Hardware / Linux / Movies / PiBox / Raspberry Pi / Software Development / XBMC tagged amazon / DVD / hulu / Kodi / Linux-based devices / Media technology / nfs / PiBox / Raspberry Pi / Ripping / Subtitle / video playback / wifi / XBMC

Michael J. Hammel

Building a better today…because tomorrow is in question…