PC Tech Thread

I hate them as I can't type on them (any Dell I've tried for the past three years) as the keyboard flexes and creates double letters that you didn't type.

Oh aye, a lad at work has one, I love the screen and I can tell the build quality is decent it's just the carbon looks too much like plastic for me. Those 1050s ain't miles ahead of 460s either so next gen mbp will be the winner.

You only feel that way about the crabon because you're a cyclist.

Let's not kid ourselves, carbon fibre is basically plastic.

My resdent cycling IT gurus

What do i need to do to create 'satelite' 'slave' PCs?

I was wondering how easy it would be to have raspberry pies dotted around the house to do things. Specifically I want to play music (using my choice of software, not using stupid proprietary apps).

That sounds like a lot of hassle. I'd think better would be either using Chromecasts or, if you want a more customisable method/media not supported by Chromecast/don't want to buy an amp, Raspberry Pi with your choice of music software, i.e. RaspyFi, Runeaudio, PiMusicBox, etc

You can add a DAC or for an all-in-one something like a HiFiBerry for a mini amp that plugs into the Pi.

Complexity will mainly depend on what your music source is and how you want to control it.

Id like to have music playing around the house without having audio cables running around the house.

I dont want to use bluetooth as its inherently lossy. I have a Pure Jongo as i thought that the app would simply provide the platform to use other apps like vlc or youtube.

I would love to either cast to my xbox AND satellite unit or use the xbox to act as master.

Where is the music coming from? MP3s on a hard drive, spotify, google music?

Mp3s... Im old skool. I like to keep my music.

I'm still a big Squeezeserver fan.... You can run a Squeezeplug server on a Raspberry Pi and then use something like picore on Rasperry Pi as client players. This then gives access to locally stored music and streaming services including radio stations.... It can be controlled from a web page and/or ios/android apps. I've been using and upgrading/improving mine for years and it's still really good .... and open source!

There's loads of options then.

Set a Raspberry Pi up as a server with the HDD with all the music on (using squeezeplug, Plex, Mopidy, etc), if you don't already have an always on machine that holds your music.

You can connect to this from Xbox, phone apps (if you want to use chromecasts) or Raspberry Pi running RuneAudio, picore, volumio, etc

and if you have multiple Pi's? Will they all play in sync with eachother?

You can, but I think Chromecast audios would be the easiest way forward. Have a play with all of the various apps that allow you to play music and cast and choose your favourite one.

cheers!

Amazon echo dot's ? or echos ?
I just ordered an echo dot, will be curious to see what it's like

Nah, only works with Amazon Music. It's also surprisingly difficult to choose something to listen to when you are thinking it up out of thin air rather than looking at a list of what you have. I've mainly resorted to ever more specific requests like "play me some british alternative 80s music". The playing music by telling it a lyric is occasionally fun.

It works with pandora, spotify and so on as of now.

http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/7/7/12118960/amazon-echo-update-music-source-options-tap-dot

Echo Dot works very well with Spotify. Also Audible.

I don't know what the difference is between the dot and the full echo, other than the speaker. I got the dot on Black Friday with a further £10 discount code so only cost me £30. Plays through the same speakers as my TV. Really happy with it so far.

Also controls my heating through Hive, which is nice. "Echo, turn the heating to 18 degrees".

I tried to get it set up to tell me the time of the next bus but my accent scuppered that. "echo, set northbound stop to 43809" - "sorry, I didn't understand walrus, mangrove, banana, 0, foxtrot"

hahaha that's awesome!

yeah I plan on using it for a whole bunch of stuff. I was trying to hack up my own on a raspberry pi but my mic wouldn't work ( PS3 Eye, recognized by kernel and alsa, but alsa-mixer says no mic)

You can "train" it by reading a series of phrases that it gives you but for the most part it seems to work fine.

For the heating, you can control separate zones within the Hive but as I only have one and wanted it to still be called "Home" within the Hive, I just created a group within Alexa called "Heating" and that becomes the trigger word.

Let me know if you find anything interesting to set up.

I might try Uber next.

Yes, I meant rather than MP3s on your local drive which is what Chainbreaker was asking about before.

They work nicely with the Hue lights and Netatmo thermostat for turning lights and heating on and off. Can also control anything with a logitech universal remote although I've found that pressing a button on the remote is far quicker than the slightly convoluted syntax. Same with IFTTT

It does seem to light up and say things a lot when I haven't said "Alexa" though which is worrying.

Any idea what's going on here:

Got new laptop for Mrs, she transferred all her files to NAS. Then I installed nas navigator software onto her new laptop, and all was fine.

Next time she logged on, windows says she doesn't have permission to access the network location (ie browse files on the nas).

How do I fix this?

Seems to have been caused by the home WiFi network being shown as a public network on her laptop.

No idea why...

Still find Windows 10 a bit meh.

best company name ever '; DROP TABLE "COMPANIES";-- LTD'

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10542519