Thursday, July 16, 2009

Hands free control of Entertainment System

In this article I will describe how to set up an entertainment system that can be completely controlled without the use of your hands. This capability would be of interest to anyone who has limited or no hand dexterity or anyone who has difficulties operating a traditional remote control unit.

Please read my April 13'th 2009 Blog entitled "Head-trackers and dwell-and-click software" as a starting point for this discussion.

The entertainment system can be controlled hands-free as follows:
  1. TV - channel/volume up/down, select Guide for immediate viewing or later recording
  2. Music - listen to your entire music collection by artist, song, genre, playlist or all your favorite cuts based on a previously assigned rating
  3. Pictures - view all your stored digital pictues
  4. Videos - view all your stored videos
  5. DVD - menu selections, fast forward/reverse, pause, stop, eject
  6. FM radio - dial stations by presets or frequency
  7. Internet Radio - select free stations by genre


In this blog I will describe what hardware and software you need to set up such a system. All the entertainment and computer hardware is standard, unmodified equipment which is available from any electronics retailers such as BestBuy, Costco etc. The software is standard Microsoft Vista and you also need an amazing free program called Webguide 4 from http://www.asciiexpress.com/webguide (NB: no longer available as of 2012  )

The Big Picture
The remote control
A laptop with head-tracker and dwell-and-click software will play the role of the remote control. In my case I have a standard Windows XP laptop with a Madentec head controller and the free Point-N-Click virtual mouse. The laptop sits on a stand from Airdesks www.airdesks.com. The stand allows me to place the laptop near to where I'm sitting out of the line of sight of the TV. It also gets a hot and heavy laptop off my knees. The laptop has a Wi-fi connection to a Wireless G or N router which is connected to a Hi-speed Internet service.
The entertainment system
The main video/audio component is another PC (laptop but ideally a desktop) with the Microsoft Mediacenter capability. All Vista versions with the exception of Home Basic have this capability. If you purchase a preconfigured Mediacenter computer it will likely have the correct version of Vista but double check this. The mediacenter PC should also be connected to the Wireless router. Preferably via a direct Ethernet cable rather than a wireless antenna.

The connector nightmare
You should carefully check the connection possibilities of the Mediacenter PC to make sure it will connect to your all of your existing components such as TV, antenna, cable/satellite set-top-box (STB) and to your surround sound system if you have one.
For example my STB has S-video out for video and for audio it has RCA and digital coax out so I had to make sure that the built-in TV tuner card in the mediacenter PC had matching input connectors. The first TV I used was a 10 year old analog TV with an S-video input so I had to make sure that the Graphics card in the mediacenter PC had a corresponding S-video output connector. I then upgraded my TV to a new LCD model with HDMI input connectors. My mediacenter PC only had DVI output but I was able to buy a DVI to HDMI adapter cable for a crystal clear digital video signal. Sound was carried over to my surround sound system via a digital coax connection. Sorry to get so technical but this connector business is unnecessarily complex and needs careful consideration. Also there are a variety of ways to make the connections. Bottom line take a list of your existing components to your retailer and ask for a matching mediacenter PC. It might also help if you take close up digital pictures of the connectors (usually the back of your components) and take them with you to the store.

Vista Mediacenter setup
After getting your hardware physically connected properly the Mediacenter setup is the easy part.
You tell the Mediacenter (hereafter referred to as MC) which television service you are with: antenna, Dishnet, Comcast, Bell TV, Rogers, etc and MC will setup your online TV guide. It will help you set up your set-top-box(STB) if you have one. The MC controls the STB channel selection via an IR blaster which comes with the MC hardware.
You tell the MC a little bit about your TV and your audio setup and you should be up and running for TV viewing and PVR function.

Music setup
You can play CD's in the normal fashion by loading each CD individually. But I wanted to have ALL my music from all my CD's available at all times so I decided to "Rip" all of my CD's to my MC computers' library. I used the Microsoft Windows Media Player (WMP) in Rip mode. As soon as you load a CD the WMP will transfer all your tracks to the MC in MP3 format. It will also automatically look up all the album info such as artist and track name, genre etc. so you can easily find the music you want. It even downloads a picture of the album cover art.
You can also import your iTunes tracks and any other MP3 tracks that you already own to add to your library. All tracks must be in either MP3 or WMA format and you simply stick them into the "My Music" folder.
I took the extra step of assigning a 1 to 5 star rating to every track, which in my case indicates how well I like the song. That way I can play all my favorites only or my favorites by genre (i.e. 5 star Reggae) or artist (i.e. 5 star Clapton) or by year etc. I assigned ratings to over 5,000 tracks, lots of work but well worth. Then I quickly backed everything up (12 GB) to three separate places. All this prep work was very labour intensive and I wouldn't want to have to redo everything if my MC computer blew up. Hence all the backups. Paranoid? I don't think so. Hardware failures happen on a regular basis.

FM radio
This function is built into the MC software. Just make sure that your MC TV tuner card includes an FM tuner.

The Magic Ingredient -Webguide 4
2013 - Please note: Webguide 4 is no longer available on the Asciiexpress website. I am still happily using it on my Vista MCE. It may be available on another Website so a Google search may find it. I am currently developing another solution that works on Windows 7 and 8. I will Blog my new solution soon.

Please note that Webguide 4 only works on a Vista Mediacenter computer. It does not work with Windows 7.

This delightful free piece of software allows your head-controlled laptop to be the remote control for all the functions and content of your Mediacenter computer.
Simply download and install Webguide 4 from www.asciiexpress.com/webguide on the mediacenter PC. There is a simple installation process to follow and when finished Webguide will give you a special website name.

To turn the laptop into a Mediacenter remote control you start your browser (Internet Explorer and Google Chrome are both ok, not sure about Firefox) and enter that special website name that Webguide provided for you on the MC. You then enter your userid/password and turn on the check mark next to Remote Control in settings which is the box with the 3 dots in the top right side of the Webguide 4 screen. Click on the picture of the Remote control Icon next to the 3 dots and a virtual remote control should appear on your laptop screen. Your headtracker and dwell-and-click software should now facilitate complete control of the mediacenter functions on a totally separate MC computer.

Just to clarify: the remote control computer (laptop in my scenario) can run any O/S since it communicates with the MC via a standard browser. Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 will all work on the laptop. The MC computer must run Vista only because of Webguide 4 compatibility issues.

Access your media from anywhere in the house.
If you turn the remote control checkmark off in settings then your family can be watching the main mediacenter TV in one room and you could be anywhere else in your residence or outside (in reach of your wireless router) and independently watch other MC video content or listen to your audio library content. Webguide 4 turns your laptop into a Mediacenter extender!

Final thoughts
There are many ways to implement this kind of system. I have heard that a Slingbox from Sling Media can also provide remote control functionality. I chose the Webguide 4 solution because it was free and was specifically designed for the Vista mediacenter. It works extremely well and is very stable. You need loads of hard disk space on the MC especially if you are planning to store many hours of video. I have a 500 GB drive and have occasionally been bumping against the limit.

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