Being a geek, I decided that using a TV to view TV wasn’t really the way to do things.
So instead, I decided to find a way of viewing Saorview on my PC.

So the easy way, is to get a DVB-T receiver for a PC, and tune to the channel you want to view. I’m not going to show you how to do this, because the guys at mpeg4ireland already have.

I’m going to show you how to receive every Saorview channel at the same time.
Although I’m sure you’re not going to be able to watch them all at the same time…

First, you need a DVB-T receiver.

I used a €40 Hauppauge Nova-T USB Stick.

Then you’ll need MumuDVB. You’ll need at least version 1.6.1
I got the latest release from here.
Yes, Ubuntu has a version in their repo’s, but thats version 1.6. It will NOT work. (well, if you only want to receive the radio stations and the test pattern, then 1.6 is for you!)

Plug your DVB-T card/stick in, make sure it gets recognised and you get an entry in /dev/dvb

$ ls /dev/dvb/
adapter0

Install dvb-apps

sudo apt-get install dvb-apps

Grab the wideband tuning file from the mpeg4ireland site and use it to scan for channels.

scan wideband > channels.conf

Make sure there’s something useful in your channels.conf
The start of each line should be a channel name, followed by a frequency.
If there’s something in there, make a note of the frequency that you see.
In my case, since I’m getting signal from Three Rock Dublin, my frequency is 738000000 (or 738Mhz)

If you don’t get anything, you might have some problems. So I suggest doing some research on Saorview using the mpeg4ireland site to see if you have coverage.

Now, unpack MumuDVB and build it.

tar -zxvf mumudvb-beta.tar.gz
cd mumudvb
autoreconf -i -f
./configure
make
sudo make install

Then create a config file (mumu.conf). Make sure you set your frequency correctly to the one you extracted from channels.conf earlier. (Divide the long number by 1000000 to get MHz).

freq=738
autoconfiguration=2
autoconf_radios=1
autoconf_ip_header=239.192
multicast_ttl=5
sap=1
sap_default_group=Saorview
sap_organisation=RTENL

Now start up MumuDVB using this configuration. There will be loads of debug output, just so you can see what its up to.

sudo mumudvb -c mumu.conf -s -t -vv -d

Then install VLC on your PC (or another PC on the same network).
Start it up, and press Ctrl-P to get the Preferences.
In the bottom left, select Show settings All.
In the Tree, select Playlist > Service Discovery.
Enable Network streams (SAP)
Click Save.
Press Ctrl-L and wait 10 seconds.
You should see a folder caller Saorview.
Expand it, and double click the channel you wish to view.

OR

Launch VLC, and open the Network address udp://@239.192.0.0:1234/ (Should be RTE One)
udp://@239.192.0.1:1234/ should be RTE Two.
udp://@239.192.0.2:1234/ should be TV3.
etc…

Voila!
If you poke around in the VLC options, you’ll notice that Teletext works too.
There’s even a Program Guide that has the next 7 days line-up in it. (Tools > Program Guide)
Subtitles work, and on some channels there may even be a second Audio stream.

Now do it on another PC, and view a different channel at the same time. Continue until you get bored.
For fun, check the CPU usage of the mumudvb process.
On my system it only uses around 5% of 1 CPU since its not actually doing very much. Not bad…

The process will be spewing out loads of stats, like Bit error rate, Signal Strength and SNR. Their meaning is self evident.
Every 5 seconds it will also output Traffic information, which is quite interesting since it displays the actual Bandwidth used per channel.

As an exercise for the reader, I’ll leave you to figure out how to get it to start up in the background.
Personally, I run it in a screen session so I can easily open it up again and see the Signal Strength, etc.

Note: RTE Two is broadcast in HD, and viewing it may be a bit CPU intensive.

Freedom

Recently, she’s decided that anything that squeaks, shouldn’t. So she makes it.

Video after the break

Looks like some smart people at MIT have been studying the aerodynamics of birds and planes, and have designed a Glider that can perch on a wire (like a bird).

Read on to watch a video of it in action.

I could go on with all the complaints that I’ve heard over the last 24 hours, and all the stupid reasoning behind those complaints. But I won’t. I’ll try and be helpfully informative.

So we’ll start with the facts:

• Seacom is one of the Submarine fiber cables that connect South Africa to Europe.
• There are other ways out of South Africa to Europe, that do not rely on Seacom.
• Residential ADSL users are quite far down the list of priorities for most ISP’s.
• Business users on leased lines account for significantly more income than ADSL users.
• You get what you pay for.

Your choice of ISP should take all of these facts into account:

• Does your ISP have multiple international circuits?
• Are these circuits physically diverse (ie: not the same cable).
• Are you actually paying for a service that will make use of the backup circuits in the event of a failure?

Chances are, unless you have a leased line service, and you pay something in the region of R20000 a month for it, you will be affected by the Seacom problems.

It would be incredibly naive of any ISP to expect that a single upstream provider will be up 100% of the time. Seacom do not promise a 100% uptime, so how can you expect that level of service if you rely solely on them?

The solution for the ISPs? Use one of those other forms of international connectivity. Such as the SAT3-SAFE cable. Sure, thats expensive, so only use that for your “premium” customers. Like those guys paying R20000+ a month for their leased lines. They’ll get what they pay for.

And that there, is the difference between the R900 you pay a month for 4mbit ADSL, and R20000 per month for 4mbit leased line.

You get what you pay for.

So, this one will be short and simple, as there are a thousand different ways to do an OpenVPN Server on linux, but this way will make it work the same way its configured in my mini-guide.

Start be installing OpenVPN on your Linux machine.
In Ubuntu or Debian, this is as easy as

sudo apt-get install openvpn

Lets get the Certificates in the keys directory, if you haven’t already done it as part of the certificate generation mini-guide.

sudo mkdir /etc/openvpn/keys

Put your server .key and .crt in here, as well as your ca.crt

You will also want to copy the dh1024.pem from your certificate store.

Then, create a configuration file (we’ll call it server.conf), in /etc/openvpn/

sudo vi /etc/openvpn/server.conf

And stick the following in it:

port 1194
proto tcp
dev tun
server 10.1.0.1 255.255.255.0
ca /etc/openvpn/keys/ca.crt
cert /etc/openvpn/keys/ovpn-server.crt
key /etc/openvpn/keys/ovpn-server.key
dh /etc/openvpn/keys/dh1024.pem
ifconfig-pool-persist ipp.txt
keepalive 10 120
user nobody
group nogroup
persist-key
persist-tun
status /var/log/openvpn/server-status.log
verb 3

Save it, and restart openvpn

/etc/init.d/openvpn restart

And that should do it.

If you want to NAT all traffic out towards the Internet, giving the VPN users internet access, add a masquerade rule. Assuming eth1 is your internet facing network interface.

sudo iptables -t nat -I POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

Simple as that!

So, here’s the template that they all use. (Caution, contains a few naughty words)

I’m so proud of myself, that I’m posting pictures to celebrate!

Dirty Desks

Clean Desk

Every 2nd person who figures something out on their own, is writing up a HOWTO.
This isn’t a problem. Its the fact that they’re calling it a “Hack” thats getting on my nerves.

A Hack is where you take something, and make it do something it was never designed to do. Not using something that was designed to do something, to do something slightly similar. Thats not a hack, thats an adaptation.

Well, thats my rant for the day. If anyone wants to sponsor some real gadget hacking, let me know and I’m sure we can work something out

And they all involve gadgets of some description…

Anyone want to fund my exploits?