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44 Articles

Docker-Powered Remote Gaming With Games On Whales

July 13, 2024 by 15 Comments

Cloud gaming services allow even relatively meager devices like set top boxes and cheap Chromebooks play the latest and greatest titles. It’s not perfect of course — latency is the number one issue as the player’s controller inputs need to be sent out to the server —  but if you’ve got a fast enough connection it’s better than nothing. Interested in experimenting with the tech on your own terms? The open source Games on Whales project is here to make that a reality.

As you might have guessed from the name, Games on Whales uses Linux and Docker as core components in its remote gaming system. With the software installed on a headless server, multiple users can create virtual desktop environments on the same machine, with each spawning as a separate process on the host computer. This means that all of the hardware of the host can be shared without needing to do anything complicated like setting up GPU pass-through. The main Docker container can spin up more containers as needed.

Of course there will obviously be limits to what any given hardware configuration will be able to support in terms of number of concurrent users and the demands of each stream. But for someone who wants to host a server for their friends or something even simpler like not having to put a powerful gaming PC in the living room, this is a real game-changer. For those not up to speed on Docker yet, we recently featured a guide on getting started with this powerful tool since it does take some practice to wrap one’s mind around at first.

3D Printer Streaming Solution Unlocks Webcam Features

April 20, 2024 by 7 Comments

While 3D printer hardware has come along way in the past decade and a half, the real development has been in the software. Open source slicers are constantly improving, and OctoPrint can turn even the most basic of printers into a network-connected powerhouse. But despite all these improvements, there’s still certain combinations of hardware that require a bit of manual work.

[Reticulated] wanted an easy way to monitor his prints over streaming video, but didn’t have any of the cameras that are supported by OctoPrint. Of course he could just point a cheap network-connected camera at the printer and be done with it, but he was looking for a bit better integration than that. In the process, he demonstrates how to unlock some features hidden in inexpensive webcams.

He set about building something that wouldn’t require buying more equipment or overloading the limited hardware responsible for the actual printing. A few of his existing cameras have RTMP support, which allows a fairly straightforward setup with YouTube Live once Monaserver is set up to handle the RTMP feeds from the cameras and OBS Studio is configured to stream it out to YouTube. Using the OctoPrint API, he was able to pull data such as the current extruder temperature and overlay it on the video.

One of the other interesting parts of this build is that not all of [Reticulated]’s cameras have built-in RTMP support but following this guide he was able to get more of them working with this setup than otherwise would have had this capability by default. Even beyond 3D printing, this is an excellent guide (and tip) for getting a quick live stream going for whatever reason. For anything more mobile than a working 3D printer, though, you might want to look at taking your streaming setup mobile instead.

Stream Vinyl To Your Sonos Without The Financial Penalty

November 13, 2023 by 47 Comments

One of the unexpected success stories in the world of hi-fi over the past decade has been the resurgence of the vinyl LP as a musical format. What was once old hat is now cool again, but for freshy minted vinyl fans there’s a snag. Hi-fi itself has moved on from the analogue into the digital, so what can be done if your listening comes through a Sonos system. Sonos will sell you a box to do that of course, but it’s as overpriced as 2023-pressing vinyl. [Max Fischer] has a far better solution, in the form of a Raspberry Pi loaded with open source software.

At the vinyl end is a Behringer audio interface containing a pre-amp with the required RIAA response curve. This acts as the source for the DarkIce audio streamer and the IceCast2 media serer, all of which even with the cost of a Pi and the interface, is considerably less than the commercial device.

We’re guessing that a more humble interface coupled to an older RIAA pre-amp could cut the cost further, and we’d be hugely curious as to whether a simple mic pre-amp could be used alongside some DSP from the likes of Gnu Radio to give the RIAA response.

Either way, he’s made a handy device for any 21st-century vinyl fan. Meanwhile if you’re one of the streaming generation seduced by round plastic discs, we’ve gone into some detail about their audiophile credentials in the past. And if you have found yourself a turntable, of course you’ll need to know how to set it up properly.

Streaming Video From An ESP32

September 5, 2023 by 11 Comments

The ESP32, while first thought to be little more than a way of adding wireless capabilities to other microcontrollers, has quickly replaced many of them with its ability to be programmed as its own platform rather than simply an accessory. This also paved the way for accessories of its own, such as various sensors and even a camera. This guide goes over taking the input from the camera and streaming it out over the network to multiple browsers.

On the server side of things, the ESP32 and its attached camera are set up with MQTT, a lightweight communications protocol which uses a publish/subscribe model to send information. The ESP32 is configured to publish its images only, but not subscribe to any other nodes. On the client side, the browser runs a JavaScript program which is able to gather these images and stitch them together into a video.

This can be quite a bit of data to send out over the ESP32’s compact hardware, so there are some tips and tricks for getting more out of these little devices, including using an external antenna for better Wi-Fi signal, or omitting it entirely in favor of Ethernet. As far as getting a lot out of a tiny microcontroller, though, leveraging MQTT really helps the ESP32 go a long way. These chips have come along way since they were first introduced; they’re powerful enough to act as 8-bit gaming consoles too.

Thanks to [Surfskidude] for the tip!

Using An Old Smartphone In Place Of A Raspberry Pi

April 27, 2023 by 63 Comments

The Raspberry Pi was a fairly revolutionary computing device when it came on the scene around a decade ago. Enough processing power to run a full Linux desktop and plenty of GPIO meant almost certain success. In the past year, though, they’ve run into some issues with their chip supplier and it’s been difficult to find new Pis, which has led to some looking for alternatives to these handy devices. [David] was hoping to build a music streaming server and built it on an old smartphone instead of the ubiquitous single-board computer.

Most smartphones are single-board computers though, and at least the Android devices are fully capable of running Linux just like the Pi. The only problem tends to be getting around the carrier or manufacturer restrictions like a locked bootloader or lack of root access. For [David]’s first try getting this to work, he tried to install Navidrome on a Samsung phone but had difficulties with the lack of memory and had to build the software somewhere else and then load it on the phone. It did work, but the stock operating system kept killing the process for consuming too much memory.

Without root access, [David] decided to try LineageOS, a version of Android which, among other benefits, is typically much more configurable than the stock version of Android that is shipped with smartphones. This allowed him to disable or uninstall anything not needed for his music server to free up enough memory. After some issues with transcoding the actual music files he planned on streaming, his music server was successfully up and running on a phone that would have otherwise been relegated to the junk drawer. The specific steps he took to get this working can be found on his GitHub page as well.

[David] also mentioned looking at PostmarketOS for this job which is certainly a viable option for some, but the Linux distribution for phones is only supported on a few devices. Another viable alternative for a project like this if no Raspberry Pis are available might be any of a number of Pine64 devices that might also be sitting around gathering dust, like the versatile Linux-based Pinephone.

Audio Old And New Meet In Perfect Harmony

December 30, 2022 by 20 Comments

There’s an uneasy meeting in the world of audio between digital and analogue. Traditional analogue audio reached a level of very high quality, but as old-style media-based audio sources have fallen out of favor there’s a need to replace them with ones that reflect a new digital audio world. To do this there are several options involving all-in-one Hi-Fi separates at a hefty price, a cheaper range of dongles and boxes for each digital input, or to do what [Keri Szafir] has done and build that all-in-one box for yourself.

The result is a 1U 19″ rack unit that contains an Orange Pi for connectivity and streaming, a hard drive to give it audio NAS capability, plus power switching circuitry to bring all the older equipment under automation. Good quality audio is dealt with by using a Behringer USB audio card, on which in a demonstration of how even some digital audio is now becoming outdated, she ignores the TOSlink connector.

The rear panel has all the connectors for power, USB, network, and audio laid out, while the front has an array of status lights and switches. We particularly like the hand-written lettering, which complements this as a homebrew unit. It certainly makes the Bluetooth dongle dangling at the back of our amplifier seem strangely inadequate.

If audio is your thing, we had a look at some fundamentals of digital audio as part of our Know Audio series.

GB Interceptor Enables Live Screen Capture From Game Boy

December 22, 2022 by 10 Comments

[Sebastian] had a tricky problem to solve. Competitors in a Tetris tournament needed to stream video of their Game Boy screens, but no solution readily existed. For reasons of fairness, emulators were right out, and no modifications could be made to the Game Boys, either. Thus, [Sebastian] created the GB Interceptor, a Game Boy capture cartridge.

Thanks to the design of the Game Boy, there’s plenty of access to useful signals via the cartridge port itself. [Sebastian] realized that a non-invasive capture device could be built to sit in-between the Game Boy and a cart, and send video to a computer. Unfortunately, there’s no direct access to the video RAM via this port, but [Sebastian] figured out a nifty workaround.

The build uses a Raspberry Pi Pico. The chip’s two cores emulate the Game Boy’s CPU and Picture Processing Unit, respectively. Doing this, while having the chips keep up with what’s going on in the Game Boy, required overclocking the Pico to 225 MHz. The system works by capturing data from the cartridge’s memory bus, and follows along with the instructions being run by the Game Boy. By doing this, the Pico is able to populate its own copy of the video RAM. It then spits this out over USB, where it can be displayed and streamed online as desired.

There are some edge-case limitations, but for its intended purpose, the system works great. Currently, the hardware is usable on Linux and Windows, though it does require some fiddling in the latter case. Files are on Github for those eager to build their own. If you simply want to dump carts rather than stream from your Game Boy, we can help there, too. Video after the break.

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