Crazy / clever Sage (or other media) installations

[pjpjpjpj]

Spinning off of the chat in the Amazon Fire stick thread... I enjoy hearing about other people's uses for Sage, other than just on a standard living room or bedroom TV or whatnot. Anyone wanna share?

I don't have anything too crazy. I do have a small (15") TV in our master bathroom, with HDMI from the bedroom HD200. Our bedroom TV is still an analog tube TV, so I leverage the fact that the HD200 puts out HDMI and composite at the same time, and I can use both TVs on the same box. The room arrangement is such that we'd never need to watch two different things on the two TVs at the same time, so it works. We use it a lot, while one is getting ready for bed and the other is already in bed. The TV in the bathroom is also visible from the shower. We have an AVR in the bedroom which has A and B channels, and the B is wired to a dual cone speaker in the shower room, so you can hear the TV when in the shower. I've only really done that once or twice, but it works.

I also have the analog audio from the HD300 in the family room run through a small amp and then through a passive four-channel switch to serve our patio, kitchen, family room, and foyer. The switches are manual so it's not all app-controllable, but it works well as whole-home (okay, whole first floor) audio for parties and such. There is surprisingly no audible delay between rooms.

[btrcp2000]

Cool topic, I'll play. I have been messing with Sage since 2007, and was definitely one of those people who tweak it more than watch it. We have three "normal" places that I will spare you, these are the other ideas that popped up along the way.

Basement- Not too exotic, but lots of other things sprang from it. Finished it in 2006 (just a DVD player and PC with MyHD card then) and I worried that the projector (Panasonic PTAX100) was a waste. Turns out we use the projector more than the basement, and its now got over 2400 hours on it (see below). MyHD was declared a failure when it froze with a roomful of neighbors right after David Tyree's helmet catch in the Giants/Pats SB. Shortly after that I put an HD100 down there.

Garage Theater- Started to feel guilty about watching football inside when the weather was nice, and it felt like the Bengals were going to be on at night more often. This picture from 2007 is of the two $6 walmart shower curtains taped together (thanks to backyardtheater.com). Rarely do it anymore, as it is kind of a PITA to setup/takedown. There are now two projector mounts in the garage, one facing out the front door, one facing the back wall. Backwall works fine and requires little setup so we do that far more often.

Porch Theater- Got tired of inviting the neighbors to sit next to the garbage cans in the garage when we have a nice porch. A fourth identical projector mount is in the ceiling along with hdmi and power. It all runs off the same setup in the garage with a receiver I also put a chromecast in the mix this past summer when it became clear the reds weren't going anywhere. That has been a smash hit with the neighbors for summer evening boozing, and has led to bad ideas such as Soft Rock Saturday, Iron Eagle Marathon, Screaming Goats and other random youtube crapola.

Garage 2- This is the setup that runs the porch and garage. Projector can take some effort to set up, so I put in a splitter and this little lcd that swings around depending on whether I'm working in the garage or driveway. Other hdmi cables run to the two projector mounts mentioned earlier. Chromecast hangs from the ceiling so it is in range of the porch through a brick wall. I am using a Harmony remote with a remote extender so it can be controlled from the porch or driveway. Sometimes Daddy hides out here:

These things are as advertised by the way. Best Buy has them too, and will pricematch AMazon: http://www.amazon.com/Next-Generatio...er+kit+433+mhz

Treadmill- Major WAF points when this went in. She quickly became much more tolerant of the little hiccups here and there when she realized that it would cost us probably 2x as much to have anything close to all of this from cable or sat.

Kitchen- First iteration of this had nothing to do with Sage, it was a 3COM Audrey for you hardcore nerds who remember those. From there it became a Medion media computer purchased at ALDI in the cabinet, which cooked itself due to airflow, a few barebone minis that just weren't powerful enough, and finally a fullsize that lives on the basement next to the server and uses a cat5 VGA extender and some 40ft USB cables I found at Microcenter. This gets used all day every day as a computer with Sage Client in the background. The remote came with the Medion, best one I've ever seen. Range is ridiculous, I have the receiver under the wood floor so it works from the living room too. This setup is rock solid running Windows 8, only thing I can't nail is the touch screen, which doesn't seem to like the long USB cables and works intermittently. Small price to pay.

Server- This is where all the nerdy magic happens. Server is above the monitor, above it are the out of service r5000 dish boxes, and two TWC cable boxes. The box on the shelf upper left is the kitchen pc, which also provides video and sound to the living room tv directly above for when we want a big screen computer. Daddy hides here when its cold.

Phone- This is Google Chrome Remote Desktop to the server pc. No sound, but smooth video over 5ghz wifi. Tolerable over LTE (thank god for unlimited sprint, which is slowly sucking less and less). This comes in handy during March Madness and while we sat through a rain delay at the Myrtle Beach Pelicans game and were able to watch the Reds. Choppy, but good enough in the rain.

Hot Tub- This was one of my goals since we got the hot tub 10 years ago, but couldn't get it working until i finally understood the difference between 5ghz and 2.4ghz few weeks ago (thanks MattHelm!). Its a Surface Pro 3 connected to an AmpedWireless 5ghz router that is only a few feet away through the wall. Watched Ole Miss/Auburn with a drink (lower left) last night, Daddy will be hiding here whenever he can. The SP3 is nice to use as a second screen on Porch Sports Bar Nights whenever there is another game on. I am looking at UNIFI Ubiquiti hotspots because I seem to have no place where one 5ghz can cover everything, and I have to disconnect/reconnect to different APs.



I had been meaning to post something like this for a while once I ran out of ideas, and I think I'm there now that the hot tub works. Its been entertaining for the past seven years, and I would like to thank this forum and the creators of Sage, and I hope they see this. Might sound hokey, but the kids have learned at least a little about networking, how to solve problems by process of elimination, and other things. We have a group of 6 families who are extremely tight after years spent on the porch (known nowadays as Porch Thirty, which is declared open with a big blue beacon in the 2nd floor window) over springs and summers watching the Reds, Bengals, and obscure 1980s movies. All because of a souped up DVR!

[btrcp2000]

Heres the rest of the pictures...

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by btrcp2000

Kitchen- First iteration of this had nothing to do with Sage, it was a 3COM Audrey for you hardcore nerds who remember those. From there it became a Medion media computer purchased at ALDI in the cabinet, which cooked itself due to airflow, a few barebone minis that just weren't powerful enough, and finally a fullsize that lives on the basement next to the server and uses a cat5 VGA extender and some 40ft USB cables I found at Microcenter. This gets used all day every day as a computer with Sage Client in the background. The remote came with the Medion, best one I've ever seen. Range is ridiculous, I have the receiver under the wood floor so it works from the living room too. This setup is rock solid running Windows 8, only thing I can't nail is the touch screen, which doesn't seem to like the long USB cables and works intermittently. Small price to pay.

That's one heck of a Sage home! I have just one thing to add... who's the jerk who didn't refill the paper towels?

[btrcp2000]

That would be me. If you look closely you'll see that I am also behind on the dishes. She'd kill me if she knew any of these were out on the interwebz

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by btrcp2000

That would be me. If you look closely you'll see that I am also behind on the dishes. She'd kill me if she knew any of these were out on the interwebz

LOL! I actually thought the dishes were on the counter. I just assumed they were being actively used. But, seriously, that's a pretty impressive home setup you've got all around. Nice work!

[pjpjpjpj]

Little did I know when I started this thread that there would be an awesome post by someone in my friggin hometown. ....So what part of town are you in, and what time should I be there this Thursday night for the Bengals/Browns?

Actually, your post reminded me, I do have another "clever" setup that I completely forgot to mention. The wife and I, pre-kids, had been working out at the local rec center very early in the morning, and both discovered we liked the rowing machine. We had an old treadmill collecting dust in the basement unfinished area (since we used the rec center... and then had kids), so we cleared a corner of the unfinished area, I covered the walls with pegboard (it was just studs with insulation held up by vapor barrier), we bought a rowing machine and got out the old treadmill. I bought one of those dual-screen TV setups (meant for car headrests), with two 9" screens, and made sure it was a model that had RCA-in on BOTH screens (most don't). I installed one on the wall in front of the treadmill, and mounted the other to the top of the rowing machine. We go downstairs and work out early, before the kids wake up (5 am). As both machines are too loud for the little TV speakers and we didn't want an AVR (because that might wake the kids two floors up), I mounted cheap, powered, computer speakers on both the treadmill and rowing machine. Using the RCA composite out from an HD200, I bought some simple splitters for the RCA video, and ran long RCA cables to the video-in for both screens, then bought an RCA stereo-to-3.5mm stereo combiner/splitter and a headphone jack splitter, with long 3.5mm extension cables to run the audio to each of the sets of computer speakers. Works great. The wife and I work out 3-4 days a week, and plow through the sitcoms that we enjoy watching together, which not only keeps us healthier but reduces the DVR backlog greatly!


I do have a covered back patio and I ran power and HDMI out there when I was having it built. I did not think to run network cable (I should have!!) but I figure I can always do wireless, as my router is just inside a nearby window. I occasionally drag out a 32" TV out there to watch. However, when the kids get older, I can see hanging a sheet out there and getting a projector to do outdoor movies. All in due time....

[wayner]

I probably run one of the larger Sage installs in terms of clients. Here is my list:

1. Home Theatre Room HD-300
2. Kitchen HD-200
3. Master Bedroom HD-200
4. Second Bedroom (Kid 1) HD-200
5. Third Bedroom (Kid 2) HD-200
6. Guest Bedroom HD-200
7. Home Office HD-200
8. Exercise Room HD-200
9. Pool Cabana (May-October)HD-300

My main server is running Win 7 Pro 64 bit and I also have a SageTV license for my WHS 2011 server. I also have a couple more SageTV licenses, a couple of client licenses and a couple of PC licenses. I just bought three more HD-200s here so I think I have about 4-5 backup HD-200s.

I sync all content other than my RecordedTV from the Sage box to the WHS box so that I have a full redundant backup. If the Sage server dies I can get back up with just an extender reboot and point it at the other server, although I won't be able to record and the UI may be different.

The problem with that many extenders is that you run out of JVM. Three-Four is the max that I can run - this may depend on my UI which is Gemstone. And some of the Plugins have problems when you have too many clients - SageTCP server doesn't like it when you have ever connected more than 10 clients (including different PCs on Placeshifter). Having your power flash off is an issue for extenders not on UPS' since they all try to connect to the server. If I feel ambitious I could probably solve this, at least partially, by distributing the load between my Sage servers but then I would have to be more diligent in keeping the backup server up to date and looking the same as the main server. And I would have to figure out how to keep the metadata synced for newly recorded files.

The HT Room also has an HTPC although I don't generally run Sage on it. I am just completing an HTPC for the MBR that is a totally passive system - it uses an HD-Plex fanless case. The HT Room also has an XB360, XB1, Wii and cable box.

My latest project is building a Mobile Media server. It will primarily go in the car but it is something that you could take along while on vacation. I am using Plex for this system but I might install a SageTV license as well. This will be an old laptop with an external hard drive and a pocket router. My initial idea was to run Plex Media Server on this and then use clients on tablets or phones. But my wife's car, a Lexus RX450h, has two screens and a composite video input so I might run Plex Home Theater on the laptop and somehow get the video into composite mode onto these screens, likely using a VGA to composite adapter. If you want more info on this see my thread on the Plex forums.

The downside to using Sage in other interesting applications is the fact that you need a PC or extender to run it. Now that "real" Windows tablets are available and inexpensive that is one option. I am becoming increasingly interested in using Plex as a front end as it can run on PC, Max, Linux, RasPi, iPhone, iPad, Android, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Roku, ATV (jailbroken). Plex also seems fairly open in terms of having a UI that you can skin and has an API where you can do interesting things, not unlike Sage.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by wayner

But my wife's car, a Lexus RX450h, has two screens and a composite video input so I might run Plex Home Theater on the laptop and somehow get the video into composite mode onto these screens, likely using a VGA to composite adapter.

Isn't it ridiculous that car video screens still have composite RCA input? We got a new minivan last summer and it has them as well. The last excuse I heard was that it was for videogames (not for bringing along a VCR), but videogames pretty much all have HDMI or at least component now, right?

I bought a (powered) HDMI-to-composite gadget from monoprice last year for a family trip. I decided I wanted to be able to stream from our tablet (Samsung Galaxy 2) so I had to get a mobile hotspot gadget to provide the wifi for it... then I had to get the HDMI-out gadget for the tablet (which requires power)... I ended up with a power strip plugged into the one 110v receptacle in the car and wires everywhere. Had the wifi hotspot thing going, sending Sage via the Phoenix app from the tablet into HDMI, then through the HDMI-to-composite gadget, into the van TV. Crazy.

Well, it all worked well when I plugged it up and tested it before the trip. Then the kids never once needed it during the entire 28 hours of round trip driving.

[wayner]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Well, it all worked well when I plugged it up and tested it before the trip. Then the kids never once needed it during the entire 28 hours of round trip driving.

But you get our respect and a mod up in geek cred.

Last year when the family went to the Caribbean I set up a Sage install on my laptop with an external hard drive to hold all of the files and brought along a MCE remote and USB IR reader. I also brought along an extender. We didn't use the extender but the laptop was hooked up to a TV via HDMI and used extensively.

This new car/mobile server that I am setting up will mean that I always have this sort of a system ready to go.