Plex Media Player for OpenFrame

General discussion relating to the O2 Joggler, from the default O2 setup, to alternative operating systems and applications.
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roobarb!
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Plex Media Player for OpenFrame

Post by roobarb! »

Hey everyone,

Rapid post, just completed an easy-installer for Plex Media Player. After some fettling and a lot of dependencies, I managed to get a 32-bit .deb package created.

Though OpenGL is working (so the interface is not utterly painful) there is no hardware video decoding of H.264 because... well, thanks, Imagination Technologies. It does work just fine for audio though, so if you have your music and podcasts on Plex you might find this handy.

You will need the latest Ubuntu Bionic image on a USB stick. No internal memory for this one, all the dependencies take it over 1 GB. Fire up your Joggler, SSH in with username 'of' and password 'joggler' - the IP address is now shown on the login screen! - and then:

Code: Select all

sudo of-expand
It'll reboot - log back in and wait for the system message to say "Drive resizing complete.". Then:

Code: Select all

sudo of-install plex
Wait a while, there's a fair bit to download and install. When it's done:

Code: Select all

sudo reboot
Let me know how you get along with it.

Interestingly, at 1.3 GB this would be small enough to fit in the internal memory of an OpenFrame 2... which also has a mini-PCIe slot...

IMG_4844.jpeg
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roobarb!
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Re: Plex Media Player for OpenFrame

Post by roobarb! »

roobarb! wrote: Fri May 15, 2020 4:02 amInterestingly, at 1.3 GB this would be small enough to fit in the internal memory of an OpenFrame 2... which also has a mini-PCIe slot...
Sadly, using the BCM70015 Crystal HD card has not gone well. The kernel driver is old and only supports the quirky BCM70012 chip, which I don't have. I've managed to install the BCM70015 driver and the card is recognised, but getting recent software to use it is another matter.

I'll leave the Crystal HD card in the OF2 just in case I have an epiphany though. Breath holding is not recommended.
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pete
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Re: Plex Media Player for OpenFrame

Post by pete »

Here installed Plex server on my current combo MythTV and LMS server. I also ordered a mini PCiE SATA (not mSATA) and USB card. Only thing the card has are bare leads to go to an SSD drive. Ordered it from Russia and it appears that I may be the card before the end of the year.

Meanwhile will try the Plex player on the modded Ubuntu with 16 Gb SSD card.
- Pete
O2 Jogglers running EFI Ubuntu / Squeezeplayer
OpenPeak Voip Telephony / Zigbee tabletops hardware modded with Seabios / RTC / Ethernet ROM edits / SSD drives running XPe for automation screens

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mickchip
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Re: Plex Media Player for OpenFrame

Post by mickchip »

Just installed this, it does take awhile to install. Very impressed, a change from sqeezeplay.
20201130_171802.jpg
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hawsey
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Re: Plex Media Player for OpenFrame

Post by hawsey »

Looks great , good work Pete , @mickchip is that running on Ubuntu ? It looks very good .

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Re: Plex Media Player for OpenFrame

Post by mickchip »

Yes, just followed the instructions on this page and connected to my server. Did try a music video but it's a no go for video.
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hawsey
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Re: Plex Media Player for OpenFrame

Post by hawsey »

mickchip wrote:Yes, just followed the instructions on this page and connected to my server. Did try a music video but it's a no go for video.
Cheers , I still have a copy of the build that I was helped ( a lot ) with which was Squeezeplay front end GUI with Plex server running in the background , I was using it regularly until recently , I could access my music when out and about via my phone .
I changed service provider for internet which broke things unfortunately as I was using the router usb port to serve my HDD with music on and my new router doesn't have this .

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pete
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Re: Plex Media Player for OpenFrame

Post by pete »

OK so looked at one OF that I had configured with Squeezeplayer and redoing it.


Got the PCie to SATA/USB card from Russia yesterday. First time I have ever ordered anything from Russia.
Checked out the mini PCiE to SATA card. It has no chips on it and just wires to connect to a SATA drive. It must be an mSATA card?? Can you connect a SATA drive directly to a mini PCiE port? Way back did try an mSATA card which did not work.

Here is a picture of the two sides of the board. It has a SATA and USB connector on it.

hxxp://www.soarland.com/USB_SATA_to_mini_PCIe_ ... t-502.html

  • No need driver, suitable for any small size USB device into laptop, it can be used for USB Card Reader for micorSD/M2, USB Disk driver, USB WIFI or wireless card
    Slot type: mini pci-e
    Expansion: 5-PIN USB 2.0 data
    Fastest read and write speed: 30M/S
    Support full-height or half-height cards
    It only can support the mini pcie slot with normal USB deification
    Pls make sure the MINI PCIE on your motherboard supports USB signals before purchase
pcie-1.jpg
pcie-2.jpg
Is this an mSATA card?

I still have the Crystal HD card which did work originally with very first KODI (XBMC) Ubuntu 14.X build for the OF2 as I posted the results here while testing it on my test and open OF2 motherboard. I did post my results here on the forum some place.

I do have a test OF2 motherboard which has been removed from case to tinker with. It is a PITA to use these days as I was using painters tape to keep the touchscreen attached to the motherboard. This one has an aux USB port soldered to the camera wires on top of the motherboard.
- Pete
O2 Jogglers running EFI Ubuntu / Squeezeplayer
OpenPeak Voip Telephony / Zigbee tabletops hardware modded with Seabios / RTC / Ethernet ROM edits / SSD drives running XPe for automation screens

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pete
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Re: Plex Media Player for OpenFrame

Post by pete »

Rewrote the OF2 partition with current image and updated it.
Note with this OF2 had a running current desktop on the 2Gb partition.
I have another one here which is an OF1 running new Ubuntu from the built in 16 Gb SSD drive which I may test later.

The expand script sudo of-expand looks like it works but errors out and fails on reboot.

Command (m for help): The partition table has been altered.
Failed to remove partition 2 from system: Device or resource busy
Failed to add partition 2 to system: Device or resource busy

Will manually expand partition to 2 Gb.

The above ends in a boot loop.

So tried:

fdisk /dev/mmcblk0
choose "p" for check the disk. Remember the start sektors. Now
delete the 2nd partition with "d" and build the new partition with "n". My start sektor were at 62501.
At end use "w" to write.
So now you have to resize the new partition. resize2fs /dev/mmcblk0p2.

This also resulted in a boot loop.

So created an Buzz Ubuntu boot stick and used GParted to resize the partition.

Looking at the partition with GParted shows that it is trashed, exists but is unreadable.

Note: doing this on an Openpeak labeled OF2 device. (these came in an Openpeak labeled black box new).
As with all of my OF devices I have adding MAC addresses to the NIC ROM.

1 - Rewrote a new build to same partition.
2 - booted to Ubuntu 14.X desktop
3 - ran Gparted
4 - looked at mmc partition and it looks fine
5 - expanded mmc partition
6 - shut down OF2
7 - rebooted to new OF2 partition
8 - boots fine now using whole 2Gb mmc
9 - did an update and upgrade
10 - rebooted
11 - installed Plex client
sudo of-install plex
12 - free space

/home/of# df -l
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
udev 248984 0 248984 0% /dev
tmpfs 50692 3932 46760 8% /run
/dev/mmcblk0p2 1936676 938756 899672 52% /


13 - mapping a NAS Music share over to the client. (all of my music and video files are on the NAS box these days).

Same as Squeezeplayer.

Off on a rambling tangent....

A few months ago rebuilt NAS and built a new NAS using XigmaNAS and ZFS and 8 SAS drives (versus SATA drives).
Still learning how to use ZFS and I am impressed so far with it. Now have two identical NAS boxes (one is a backup of the other).
Been a bit bored here. ;)

One NAS box is in a UNAS case:
UNAS.jpg
and one is in a Silverstone case
silverstone.jpg
Version 12.1.0.4 - Ingva (revision 7683)
Compiled Monday July 20 16:25:15 CDT 2020
Platform OS FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE-p7 #0 r363366M: Mon Jul 20 16:59:25 CEST 2020
Platform x64-embedded on Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-3245 CPU @ 3.40GHz
System Time Wednesday December 02 10:46:17 CST 2020
System Uptime 15 Days 16 Hours 32 Minutes 37 Seconds
System Config Change Monday November 16 18:13:04 CST 2020

14 - got it connected to my Plex server (mentioned something about non secure connections).

15 - able to play music from NAS.

16 - volume is really low...ran alsamixer and increased volume, rebooted to see if volume stuck.

17 - volume is fixed

18 - Want the client to only access my Plex server for media rather than the internet.
Googling on how to do this....
- Pete
O2 Jogglers running EFI Ubuntu / Squeezeplayer
OpenPeak Voip Telephony / Zigbee tabletops hardware modded with Seabios / RTC / Ethernet ROM edits / SSD drives running XPe for automation screens

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pete
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Re: Plex Media Player for OpenFrame

Post by pete »

So it works for music but the GUI much slower than Squeezebox player.

I did install a Plex server years ago and removed it after a bit. Typically only use my cell phone (unlimited data et al) when out of the house and off when home.

Don't watch videos or stream live video on my tablets / phones. My children / grandchildren are always streaming video on their phones / tablets today.

When they visit I ask them to put the phones away in a kitchen drawer. (I've done that for the last twenty years).

Streaming live news video works OK and streaming SD video from NAS works but it is so so.

Remoting to the client via the server app works fine and is much faster than using the OF2 touchscreen.
- Pete
O2 Jogglers running EFI Ubuntu / Squeezeplayer
OpenPeak Voip Telephony / Zigbee tabletops hardware modded with Seabios / RTC / Ethernet ROM edits / SSD drives running XPe for automation screens

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pete
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Re: Plex Media Player for OpenFrame

Post by pete »

Just another side note....

I was working on two of the original O2 Jogglers (not Openframe - these are labeled Jogglers).

Both booted with an O2 logo ROM. Sometime in my rewriting of the Emmc I bricked them both to only show the O2 Logo.

I put the old Ubuntu 14.X boot stick in and keyboard and did the blind typing thing ==>
1 - hit escape repeatingly while booting
2 - type fs0:boot or fs1:boot
3 - I was able to boot to the USB Ubuntu stick
4 - decided to rewrite the rom from the O2 rom to the Avaya rom
sudo su
modprobe fh
cd /home/joggler/Desktop
dd if=avaya.rom of=/dev/fh count=1 bs=1024k
5 - using gparted wiped the Emmc
6 - booted with newest Ubuntu 18.X provided by Andy.
7 - wrote the newest to the emmc
8 - booted to OS and
9 - cd /usr/local/sbin
10 - ran
./of-install squeezeplay
11 - rebooted and was good to go with the Squeezeplay OS as the Plex client will not fit on the 1Gb emmc on the original O2.

This redoes my original 3 O2 Jogglers running Squeezeplayer to newest Ubuntu 18.04,
- Pete
O2 Jogglers running EFI Ubuntu / Squeezeplayer
OpenPeak Voip Telephony / Zigbee tabletops hardware modded with Seabios / RTC / Ethernet ROM edits / SSD drives running XPe for automation screens

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pete
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Re: Plex Media Player for OpenFrame

Post by pete »

Found a maybe way to install Crystal HD drivers in Ubuntu 18.04 ==> hxxp://duckfly-tw.blogspot.com/2019/12/x61x61s-linux-mint-192-ubuntu-1804.html

1.先安裝crystalhd driver:
sudo bash
git clone https://github.com/dbason/crystalhd.git /usr/src/
mv /usr/src/crystalhd /usr/src/crystalhd-0.1
dkms add -m crystalhd -v 0.1
dkms build -m crystalhd -v 0.1
dkms install -m crystalhd -v 0.1
modprobe crystalhd
cp -f /usr/src/crystalhd-0.1/driver/linux/20-crystalhd.ruls /lib/udev/rules.d/ <--勿省略,以免非root使用者無法開啟設備

2.檢查crystal hd是否有正確載入driver:
lsmod | grep crystalhd
-> crystalhd 110592 0
dmesg | grep crystalhd
->...
->[810.638520] crystalhd 0000:02:00.0 Starting Device:0x1615

3.安裝smplayer, mpv, gstreamer1.0-crystalhd, libcrystalhd3
apt-get install smplayer mpv gstreamer1.0-crystalhd libcrystalhd3
(VLC測試撥放會說 buffer deadlock prevented 而失敗,因此改用smplayer+mpv)

4 .重開機,抓個測試影片來測試:
http://jell.yfish.us/media/jellyfish-40 ... d-h264.mkv
直接先用mpv來撥放(其中--vo=可改gl, sdl, xv試試):
mpv --hwdec=crystalhd --vo=gl jellyfish-40-mbps-hd-h264.mkv
-> DtsDeviceOpen: Opeining HW in mode 0
-> Enable single threaded mode

使用smplayer透過mpv播放:
exit(離開root bash)
smplayer(開啟smplayer)
Options/Preferences/General
General/Multimedia engine: mpv

Options/Preferences/Performance
Allow frame drop 勾選
Allow hard frame drop 勾選
Performance/Decoding/Hardware decoding: crystalhd

再用smplayer播放 jellyfish-40-mbps-hd-h264.mkv
檢視選單 View/Mplayer/mpv log
看看是否有跟mpv播放一樣的log

或者改直接播youtube試試:
sudo curl -L https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
mpv --hwdec=crystalhd https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0p1bmr0EmE

5.若要移除cyrstalhd driver, 可照以下步驟:
modprobe -r crystalhd
dkms remove crystalhd/0.1 --all

不過最後發現i915內顯驅動似乎仍有問題,造成opengl輸出的buffer無法建立,因此1080p用硬解後mpv播放反而更卡...後來發現改用smplayer+mplayer播放超順!算了就這樣吧 囧


Going to try on my taken apart Openframe 2 test motherboard.
- Pete
O2 Jogglers running EFI Ubuntu / Squeezeplayer
OpenPeak Voip Telephony / Zigbee tabletops hardware modded with Seabios / RTC / Ethernet ROM edits / SSD drives running XPe for automation screens

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