Roku Developer Program

[rogermjohnson]

Wow!!! Thanks for all the work. Just got it back running... testing further this evening. Again... Thanks!!!

[el_wubo]

Here's the latest pre-release. It contains Jim's fix to support the latest version of the Roku software along with a fix from Randall Mason that helps those who are installing on servers with no graphical environment.

https://github.com/netguy204/roku_media ... pball/next

Hope this helps! I'm glad people are still enjoying the channel.

[renojim]

Wow, he lives! Good to hear from you. Hope all is well.

-JT

[markhood]

Thanks JT and el.wubo! The MyMedia pre-release is working well here with the Roku 2.8 firmware and my Unslung Linksys NSLU2 running the Python server. Lots of great new MyMedia features since the release I installed in May. Well done!

Turns out I'm not getting squished videos either. And it seems that my Roku was updated to firmware 2.8 build 1150, not the newer 1158.

[Gunslinger2]

"renojim" wrote:

"bobspencer123" wrote:
... my media server is on a headless sheevaplug.

Very cool! I just got a Seagate Dockstar for less than $30. It took me a couple of days to get everything setup, but it works just great as a myMedia server.

-JT

could you go into detail about setting this up? I just got my DockStar in today, I specifically ordered one for this purpose & have it set up as a NAS drive at the moment.

[renojim]

I have to preface this by saying I am in no way a Linux expert, so there may be an easier way to do this.

Assuming you followed the steps here, the next thing is to install Python v2.6. I couldn't find a python26 package for the 'pacman' installer, so I started searching. I found a package that could be installed with the 'ipkg' installer, but then I had to install that. Follow this guide for installing ipkg. I think I also used the same guide to install samba, if you're interested. Once that's installed, I installed the Python Imaging Library which will also install Python: /opt/bin/ipkg install py26-pil

Once Python is installed, it's a simple matter of copying the MyMedia server code, editing config.ini, and starting the server. I haven't put it in any of the startup scripts, partially because I haven't turned off my Dockstar since I got it working and partially because I'm not sure where exactly to put it. Maybe one of you Linux wizards can advise. For now, I just start the server with: python rss_server.py > /dev/null 2>&1 &

I'm not sure if the Dockstar really has enough horsepower to run the imaging library, so you could just skip that and install python26. I haven't done too much experimenting with pictures, but I would like to compare with and without the imaging library.

I'm hoping I haven't left anything out. It took me a couple of days to get everything on my Dockstar right, but that had a lot to do with it not liking any of my SD Flash and/or the USB reader. I also never got the Dockstar to boot off of a hard drive, but I didn't look into the issue too much. I think it has to do with the boot code not giving the hard drive enough time to spin up.

Good luck! Let me know how it goes.
-JT

[jcm123]

"el.wubo" wrote:
Here's the latest pre-release. It contains Jim's fix to support the latest version of the Roku software along with a fix from Randall Mason that helps those who are installing on servers with no graphical environment.

https://github.com/netguy204/roku_media ... pball/next

Hope this helps! I'm glad people are still enjoying the channel.

Wanted to give a long overdue nod to all the effort, by everyone involved, that went into developing My Media. It is definitely my preferred method of streaming local media. Thank you! That said, I presume I am not alone in still experiencing the "squished" video for content that played fine prior to 2.8? Am I mistaken in waiting patiently for a "fix" from Roku to address the squished video experience?

[markhood]

"renojim" wrote:
Once Python is installed, it's a simple matter of copying the MyMedia server code, editing config.ini, and starting the server. I haven't put it in any of the startup scripts, partially because I haven't turned off my Dockstar since I got it working and partially because I'm not sure where exactly to put it. Maybe one of you Linux wizards can advise. For now, I just start the server with: python rss_server.py > /dev/null 2>&1 &

I'm using the Optware ports on a Linksys NSLU2 (slug) running the Unslung firmware. There is a diversion script in the normal boot procedure that starts up stuff in /opt/etc/init.d. In that directory I have a script named S70roku-server with the following contents:

#!/bin/sh                                                                       
# Start the MyMedia server for the Roku Digital Video Player                 

# Kill the server.  This is a python program so killall doesn't work.           
# awk also doesn't seem to work with Unslung, so use sed.                                    
prog=`ps | grep rss_server | grep -v grep | tail -1 | sed -e 's/ *\([0-9]*\) .*/\1/'`

if [ -n "$prog" ]; then
  kill $prog
fi

sleep 2
cd /opt/local/roku_media_server/server
nohup python rss_server.py > /dev/null 2>&1 < /dev/null &

Every script in /opt/etc/init.d is run in alphabetical order, so the script is named such that it starts after the system logger, sshd, and other Optware ports. You may need to change the line that grabs the server's pid from ps since ps output varies by Linux pedigree. You can do better if you have pkill or a working awk.

Don't know about the Dockstar though. It may run the boot scripts directly out of /etc/rc.d. Pretty much the same procedure, except you edit rc.1 in that directory to run the MyMedia server script.

"renojim" wrote:
I'm not sure if the Dockstar really has enough horsepower to run the imaging library, so you could just skip that and install python26. I haven't done too much experimenting with pictures, but I would like to compare with and without the imaging library.

Definitely not enough horsepower on a 266MHz Xscale-IXP425 CPU. I've already installed PIL on the slug though, so for now I don't give MyMedia any images. If I uninstall PIL, will that cause MyMedia to ignore any images it finds?

[el_wubo]

"markhood" wrote:
Definitely not enough horsepower on a 266MHz Xscale-IXP425 CPU. I've already installed PIL on the slug though, so for now I don't give MyMedia any images. If I uninstall PIL, will that cause MyMedia to ignore any images it finds?

Bummer. I wouldn't have been surprised if PIL/266Mhz was up to the challenge for modestly sized images (~2 mbits.) If you don't install PIL, MyMedia will serve the images to the roku without resizing them for thumbnails or for the slideshow. What this usually means is that the image poster view runs breathtakingly slow and the slideshow is pretty non-peppy as well... and I believe in older releases of the roku software could even crash the box. Maybe that doesn't happen anymore now though.

[markhood]

The performance isn't horrible on the 266 MHz ARM, just slower than I want to wait 🙂

I threw 25 moderately sized snapshots into the pictures folder. These were 3 - 4 MB jpegs, 2448 x 3264 pixels. It takes about 20 seconds to bring up the thumbnails, 30 seconds for each individual photo, and about 15 seconds between images for the slideshow.

I'm using a standard def TV for now, so it's not a big deal for me since the picture quality at that resolution isn't great for photos anyway. But I did put some images mixed in with my video folder and that seemed to slow down the browsing, so I removed them.

The MyMedia setup on my NSLU2 is great for what I use it for, which is streaming a moderately sized collection of videos to my TV. I wouldn't use MyMedia on an NSLU2 for my primary music server though; the folder-based browsing is too slow on that system for the number of songs and albums in my library. So for now I'll use MyMedia exclusively as a video server, until I migrate to the newer 1 GHz plug computers.