Xbmc.....Part 2, getting the android app to work with Fedora setup.

I have become a massive fan Xbmc and have begun getting it working to suit me via my F17 system. One thing I like about it is that I can controll it via remote. You have two choices, the first is a MCE remote control, I don't have one of these lying around (at the moment). Or two, the android app.

When I had Xbmc working on Chakra, the app worked great and was really easy to set up. With Fedora, not so. I found through some research that the problem was due to the channels used were blocked. I wasn't sure why till I checked the system firewall. Obviously Chakra either had no firewall or it wasn't working right. 

To get the android app to connect to the system I had to do the following.

1. Open the settings for the router, with the BT homehub, Xbmc was added to the access list easily.

Once that is done, open Xbmc on the computer and the app.

At this point I suggest you go to

 http://code.google.com/p/android-xbmcremote/wiki/Setup_Instructions_9_11_and_later

These instructions are well laid out and easy to follow and theres no point in me copying them!

There are however two additional steps for Fedora. 

1. Open the firewall GUI

2. Go to Otherports

3. Click add+

4. type in 8080 in the window that comes up, press enter and click Apply

5. Repeat above but this time add 9777.

You also need to make sure your user name and password are in the android profile setting.

That should work.

Any Question or commends welcomed!

Nighthawk

Xbmc in Fedora..part 1, getting the sound to work

Following on from my last post concerning my hunt for a distro for my tower PC, Fedora is working great. I have installed XBMC so that I can use the system as a media system as I use my laptop and Nexus 7 for a lot of things.

The only problem at the moment which I will try and fix in the coming weeks is the surround sound. It sucks, I remember this from before although I though that I had fixed the problem. It will require some research as I don't really know that much how the audio works on some systems and not on others.

After I installed the Xbmc on the system, I found that it worked alot better than when I used it before with Chakra, I don't know why this was. The first thing I had to do was get the sound working. I had to reset the audio via the terminal.

I do this each time I re install or when it goes wrong and have to check the settings to getting the surround sound working (or in this case its just semi working).

1. Open terrminal
2. Type alsamixer, press enter.
3. Press F6, this will give you the options for the sound card to use, in my case Invida, which may the problem in getting all the speakers working in F17. Select which one you want to use.
4. Press right arrow to move along the various out put setting, to raise the out put use the up arrow or down arrow to lower it. Also, it may pay to chance the channel setting from 2 to 4 or 6.
5. Press escape.

NOTE: There are times when your settings are not remembered by the system and you will have to go through this again!

Now open Xbmc, first check that it as sound, very often you will have to go in to settings and change the audio settings. In mine, I found that my webcam was listed for the sound card this was changed to the Nvida card.

The best results I found was to have all of the settings on 'Default'. The surround sound setting just didn't work (yet!). I need to check some wiki for more info on sound in Fedora as I am sure that this is what is causing the problem. Once I had the following settings, I had sound.

Audio Output   Analog
Speaker Configuration    5.1
Audio Output Device    Defaults(ALSA)

Nighthawk