XBMC Success story with almost completely web/php driven backend
#1
First off thank you all for the community forum and the massive help from all those enthusiast blogs it would have been much harder with out you all blazings paths before me. Added a new toy to the computer eco-system today.

It was touch and go there for a bit but it turned out better then I had initially planned.

I have been wanting to upgrade my media box which was hooked to my tv for a while now, this weekend I took the plunge. I am now the proud pappy of media box 2.0*.

The baseline consists of a ASRock ION 330Pro The high points are the Intel® Dual Core Atom™ 330 and the NVIDIA® ION™ graphics processor.

It has the XBMCFreak custom build of XBMC (Dharma Beta) on the front end with the Lucid Lynx (10.04) version of Ubuntu as it's core OS.

On top of that it also has a completely PHP/HTML back-end management system for all your media needs.

in no particular order...

Webmin for system/os Management
Apache http/php server Webserver (xbmcfreak)
Transmission Bittorrent Client
Sabnzbd NZB newsgroup Manager
Sickbeard TV queue & download manager
Couchpotato Movie queue & download manager
Newznab news indexing and nzb generation with rss feed sabnzbd intergration
Tonido Your own Personal cloud and openID server (also can do $webdav sharing)
Subsonic Podcatcher and Music Manager.

I use a Joomla based php site to iframe redirect all the various pieces into a cohesive unit using drop-down menus. Though to be honest I am trying to get Tonido to do the same basic thing.

As you can tell I am pretty proud of it, still have a few bugs to iron out but the tough stuff is done.

As well I believe that it should be capable of sharing a lot of the media straight to an android or iphone based smartphone, however since I don't have one I cannot test that.

Anyhow if anyone has any other suggestions or something I might have missed please let me know. Always looking for ways to make it better, since I am still fairly new to this all.

*The reason it is 2.0 is because 1.0 is my old desktop PC which has been doubling as my test bed it turned out so well I decided to keep it for my downstairs study.
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#2
Just do you don't feel too bad about the lack of replies.....

here's one.
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#3
Good job on this. Do you have any screenies? Willing to do an ISO for others?
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#4
nice work.

I just setup a similar thing using windows 7 on my htpc.

I use sab, sickbeard, couchpotato, and tightvnc for remote access. I know its nowhere near the difficulty of what you have accomplished, but kind of similar anyways.

Tonido looks pretty cool, I had never heard of it before. Thanks for the links!
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#5
Out of interest, what's the role of Tonido in your setup?
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#6
whats newznab ? can't quite get a handle on what it does.

Ah i see

http://www.newznab.com/

how and why do you run it ? Just curious
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#7
So, are you saying you are running your own nzb indexing service for your own personal use?

If so, why? when there are so many available...
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#8
@danmedhurst

I never expect a reply to a post, if they happen great, if not well I am more then happy to just brag.

I use Tonido for its remote cloud sharing capabilities for the most part. It has a lovely web-based interface and a redirect which works without putting a security hole into your firewall. As well it also has the OpenID server which I am still playing with. It is also possible to link multiple Tonido instances together into a virtual private network. Tonido is hopefully going to be the linkage between the various boxes I plan to build for my family and friends (The gifts you make yourself are the best gifts of all). So you can see not only what the others are watching but if they have anything to share. Tonido can also let you hook in webpages into its apps like interface which I also like but haven't gotten working right yet. I would like to dump Joomla for Tonido as the management panel.

@branlr

Basically I am using newznab to catalog and setup special searches that are not typically provided by other groups. For example I really like nzbs(dot)org but they do not have a specific documentary category which sources the documentary section of the newsgroups, it is all mixed into the TV category. Also I like being self-sufficent and if this software can duplicate 99% functionality of those services but locally, why wouldn't I do it. Just incase they ever decide to really aggressively go after nzbs providers, I can provide my own without missing a beat.

On another note I just added into the setup an Ampache install, however I am still not sure it is what I am looking for. Basically I am looking for something similar to iTunes but in a PHP Interface. Subsonic does the Podcast catching I want, but not the music management. Maybe Ampache will cover that aspect, I will have to check.

My final note is one of disappointment at finding out my TV is too old for my new Media box. I might have to use Media 1.0 on the upstairs TV until I replace it for something with actual HDMI inputs.
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#9
Nice setup, i actually tried Tonido on my box and its great (although i use mldonkey for my downloads) but still its a very nice web interface to manage the box.

I have only one problem with it, how did you add it to launch on boot? when i tried to add it to rc.local, it starts under the root account and not my local account, and hence when i try to login remotly, the login page ignores the changes i made to configex.xml which allows remote login ... i was wondering if you could help me out here

thanks and a let me know also how ampache works for you, i couldn't get video to stream over Tonido .
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#10
@megacrypto

Hmmm I know I got it to run under the local xbmc account, but I cannot remember how I did it off the top of my head. I will get back to you on that one. I think there is somewhere you can set the account it should run under in one of the config/php files. I will look when I get home later and see what I did, Tonido was one of the more difficult installs to get working right.
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#11
chanders Wrote:Good job on this. Do you have any screenies? Willing to do an ISO for others?

Being that I am an experienced computer tech type person but a complete noob when it comes to the finer points of Linux, I would love to do an ISO if only I knew how.
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#12
Thanks for posting this, I was looking for a web file manager for xbmc-live, and Webmin is exactly what I was looking for. Awesome.
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#13
Here's something I've been cooking up lately which sounds similar. XBMC, Sickbeard, Couch Potato, Tvheadend, Sabnzbd, Transmission, XWMM and a Trac server all running through apache. I then created a cron.hourly script which creates this dashboard type home page using html, css and iframes.

Image

The upcoming episodes section is in the iframe and is shown here containing sick-beard's coming episode page (which I themed with css to match).

All the stuff in orange link to the iframe. for instance I created html anchor links for the recent movies so it loads the xbmc movie page to the correct movie (in the iframe) which displays movie info and a play link (then taking it to the nowplaying with poster view). Unfortunately I had to remove posters from the xbmc movie page as it took too long to load the whole page then find the correct html anchor.

Still lots to do to finish it and unfortunately I doubt I'll be able to get it to a stage where I am able to share in full (as it is largely customized) but it does show some of what is able to be done with just html and a bash script. I am interested in sharing elements such as my edited css for sickbeard and couch potato to match the black and orange theme (inspired by plex) but it is quite messy as I am new to this stuff and most was trial and error.
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#14
Nick8888 Wrote:Here's something I've been cooking up lately which sounds similar. XBMC, Sickbeard, Couch Potato, Tvheadend, Sabnzbd, Transmission, XWMM and a Trac server all running through apache. I then created a cron.hourly script which creates this dashboard type home page using html, css and iframes.

Image

The upcoming episodes section is in the iframe and is shown here containing sick-beard's coming episode page (which I themed with css to match).

All the stuff in orange link to the iframe. for instance I created html anchor links for the recent movies so it loads the xbmc movie page to the correct movie (in the iframe) which displays movie info and a play link (then taking it to the nowplaying with poster view). Unfortunately I had to remove posters from the xbmc movie page as it took too long to load the whole page then find the correct html anchor.

Still lots to do to finish it and unfortunately I doubt I'll be able to get it to a stage where I am able to share in full (as it is largely customized) but it does show some of what is able to be done with just html and a bash script. I am interested in sharing elements such as my edited css for sickbeard and couch potato to match the black and orange theme (inspired by plex) but it is quite messy as I am new to this stuff and most was trial and error.

This looks cool! Can't wait to see it all fleshed out.
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#15
Nick8888 Wrote:Image

Still lots to do to finish it and unfortunately I doubt I'll be able to get it to a stage where I am able to share in full (as it is largely customized) but it does show some of what is able to be done with just html and a bash script. I am interested in sharing elements such as my edited css for sickbeard and couch potato to match the black and orange theme (inspired by plex) but it is quite messy as I am new to this stuff and most was trial and error.

That looks amazing! I'm guessing you need some basic to moderate scripting knowledge to pull something like this off?
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XBMC Success story with almost completely web/php driven backend0