Technology

I Can Finally Stop Tinkering With my Media Center, For Now…

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I make a conscious effort to limit what personal family details I post however I do enjoy writing this blog. That means I typically focus my writing around technology. I find tech interesting and it’s a huge part of my life. Not the largest part however big enough that there are plenty of topics to write about. Looking back at my blog posts over the past few months I thought I talked extensively about my media center setup challanges. I was surprised then to realize that I haven’t written about my evolving use of my Apple TV 4 since I purchased it late last year: My New Apple TV.

I was happy that on day one the new Apple TV ran the latest version of the Plex app. The challenge I had was that Plex is only half of my media center/TV watching set up. Content purchased from the iTunes store makes up part of the other half of my use case. Live TV takes up the rest. The big roadblock after I got my Apple TV was it couldn’t stream live TV. I have a HDHome Run from Silicon Dust that takes my cable card and streams my cable TV to any networked device that can receive it. The Apple TV does not natively support this. Silicon dust does not have their own app for the Apple TV (yet anyway). Initially that was extremely frustrating. It required me to maintain other device just so we can watch live TV. That complicated media center use for my wife. Ease-of-use is critical for her and I. For her she just wanted it to work reliably. For me I don’t want to get frantic calls or texts that my daughters can’t watch curious George because something hokey is going on.

Luckily for me after the new year I stumbled across not one but two applications in the Apple TV app store that supported streaming TV from an HDHome Run. I got into the beta program of one app however there were some challenges with the audio being out of sync with the video. That was a problem that I had with my Kodi Media Center on my Raspberry Pi. I then found the second app which cost about $15 buy however it was out of beta and it looked too promising not to try it. I am so glad I did. It worked perfectly. Now I was able to have Plex, iTunes, and live TV all on my Apple TV. That enabled me to simplify the media center substantially and thus make it easier to use.

The streaming TV app works pretty flawlessly. I was able to clean up the cables and devices in my media Center when I no longer needed my android TV, Raspberry Pi OSMC, and Mac Mini running Plex. All those devices at one time or another were testbeds that failed in one way or another. I still have one Raspberry Pi plugged into an HDMI cable in my media Center however that is usually just for when I’m building something. My media center experience is not dependent on it though.

Experimenting and finding the most optimal set up for us for TV/media consumption took a pretty long time. I am glad the technology caught up to to the requirements that I was looking for. The setup has been pretty stable for the past several months. I haven’t made any major changes to it since getting the T streaming app. I have been adding additional apps to the Apple TV however the basic configuration doesn’t change. I do want to try getting a game controller and seeing if there are any good games on the Apple TV.  I no longer have an Xbox 360 so at present nomgaming platform of any kind. Of course I haven’t played an Xbox game in four years don’t miss it all that much most of the time.

A New Mac Mini Please…

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My desktop computer at home is a 2012 Apple Mac mini. At the time I got the slightly upgraded version with the fusion drive and 16 gigs of RAM. Four years later it is starting to show its age. For most people it would probably still be a perfectly good computer however there are certain functions I’m noticing I need more power.

I would love to retire this Mini and relegated to act as a backup node on my Bittorrent Sync network. The challenge that I have is that the current Mac Mini model is from 2014. I cannot justify myself to buy a brand-new computer with technology that’s two years old to replace a four-year-old computer. My choices then are either purchasing iMac, build myself a Windows 10 or a Linux machine. My only other option is to wait for the mini to be refreshed.

For me Windows is not practical. I haven’t used Windows as my primary computer for work or professional life in years. I use a Windows computer when I need to at work and I have virtual machines for when I need it however living on one at home day in and day out just doesn’t seem like something I want to do. I have been wanting to build a Linux desktop however today it doesn’t offer me all the software I would need to replace my Mac. The iMac is compelling however I have not been a fan of the all in one computers. I’ve owned several iMacs and had challenges with some of them. Every time I think man those are cool I remember my burn in issues I had on to back to back iMac’s. Other reasons to avoid an iMac is I have been eyeing a bigger monitor than my current 27 inch. I would love a 34 inch widescreen however the current mini I have cannot support the resolution for one. If I do end up getting a second desktop running Linux I would want to plug it into the same monitor. I’m trying to stay is future proof on whatever I buy now as possible.

Since I haven’t been able to come up with a solution I am happy with I continue to wait. Every Apple announcement I hope they will refresh the Mac Mini and then sadly they don’t.

I know the one last option I have that I didn’t mention prior since it is super expensive is the full Mac Pro desktop. The cost alone is a nonstarter for me. Add to that it has not been refreshed as long or longer than the mini makes it not a viable option for me.

As Tom Petty says the waiting is the hardest part. Now I wait some more…

Mac Quicken Update

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I’ve been using Quicken 2016 on my Mac for a few weeks now. I have had less issues regarding duplicate transactions than I did with Bankify. That’s the good news. There are some growing pains however. Not everything works as well as I would like. There’s one stock that the system won’t find so I have to manually updated if I want to get the correct values.

I haven’t had as much problems with reconciling my accounts as I did with Bankify however it hasn’t been all roses and rainbows. I’m not sure if it’s just issues I didn’t catch in the migration or issues in downloading of the data. It is definitely easier to reconcile however than the old system. So my main objective has been successful.

Other challenges I’ve had with finding things. Editing a payee or category wasn’t a straightforward as I thought it would be. There is no menu option to go to payees. You have to start typing in a payee and then click on the edit button to bring you up all of the payees in window to edit them. If you don’t know that it’s frustrating. The iOS app didn’t seem that useful however I haven’t played with it that much. Of course I haven’t played with that much because it didn’t seem that useful.

 

All in all I’m hoping Quicken improves with a new Quicken 2017 soon however my challenges are not enough to want me to go back to Bankify. I’ll see how things are going in another month or so.

Hello again Quicken, goodbye Bankify

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For the past few years I’ve been using iBank / Bankify for my personal financial management. I documented my move to iBank in a previous post. Finding a Mac compatible financial application was the final app that I needed to completely go Mac only not require a virtual machine for my personal use.
I’ve been generally okay with iBank now Bankify however there been some lingering challenges. First and foremost I keep getting duplicate transactions even after I downloaded from my bank. What that means is I sometimes have to spend hours each month trying to reconcile my accounts because a single transaction might have three or four transactions in my register. It also might turn out that several of those transactions if the account transfers might show up as a transfer to the wrong account thus throwing off balances across multiple accounts.
This year one of my financial goals was to automate bimonthly banking and bill payment as much as possible. This bug has caused challenges to completing the objective. This month I had a renewed desire to find an alternative. I tried you need a budget however the downloading of transactions from my bank seemed to be clunky. It also focuses on budget only. That’s important to me however I need an app that can do more. My sites then turned to Quicken since their 2016 Mac upgrade it seems to have been a big improvement over the 2015 one. I know it doesn’t have all the same features as the Windows version however I wanted to stay native Mac. I did contemplate trying the Windows version however I don’t think I need some of the advanced features that the Mac version does not offer. That is why today I bought Quicken for the Mac 2016.
The import process went surprisingly painlessly. My export from Bankify went over without any problems. The import of that file to Quicken also appears to of been painless. I need to go through each account and confirm the balances make sure everything is correct. For now it looks like this is the easiest migration I’ve had to do. In the past I went from Quicken for Windows to Mac and then back again. Then I went from Quicken to Bankify. Each of those migrations was painful and took a lot of time to validate things right or to tweak the process in order to get a good copy of my data. Part of my problem is trying to keep and migrate 16 years of data. I don’t need it but I want it and since it’s all in one file should be straightforward to migrate. I do have an additional eight years of data in other files that I don’t migrate but I have all of my financial transactions going back to my freshman year in college in some sort of backup or another. At some point soon I need to archive old transactions to an off-line backup so I don’t have all of it on an Internet connected machine. That’s my next step.

Teaching Alexa New Commands

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Tonight I taught my Echo to turn on and off my media center using my Harmony Hub.  I showed MC and she was not impressed.  I am starting to think unless Alexa makes her a full breakfast and delivers it to her in bed she won’t be impressed by what it can do.

I also got the echo to take its own task list items I give it and add it to Trello so it is useful for me.

Next up is integrating smartthings commands.

BitTorrent Syncy Network Phase II

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Since around the new year and trying to figure out what next phase of my private cloud backup network would look like. The design was originally leveraging several raspberry pi’s however practice only one remains at a remote location. The remaining remote locations I’m using old Mac Minis. Even the one Pi I do have deployed is inoperable and needs to be rebuilt. I’m not sure if it’s the Rasbian version of BitTorrent Sync are generally anyone expelled for sync but I had several problems with the Rasbian  installs losing their license identity. What happens is I then have to re-add the BitTorrent Sync pro license and reindex all my shares on that node. It’s annoying and I’m concerned though because option at some point.

At the same time I’ve been looking at ways to better secure the remote data. All of my systems are at friends and families houses so endpoint security’s been less of a concern then on the network security however when BitTorrent Sync announced encrypted folders I was extremely curious. After playing around with it for a while I have opted not to use the encrypted folders however it’s something I’m still thinking about for the future.

On a side note I’ve been contemplating a Lenox desktop to complement my Mac. I shopped around and found a nice inexpensive Zotak. I picked one up and put a 120gig SSD and eight gigs of RAM in it. I wasn’t sure if I was use it as a desktop or to replace my BitTorrent Sync Pi. Right now I’m having keep a replica copy of my data at home to test it out. I’m currently running go to 14.04. It’s been running pretty well however I did have one or two anomalies with sync folders so I am not yet ready to deploy it in the wild. My goal in a long-term is to replace all the minis with something like the Zotak. The new boot to install also increases that new to 4 TB of storage versus the raspberry Pi I have deployed with a 1 TB hard drive.

As part of my incremental upgrades I have put a 4 TB drive in one of the remote minis and the other has a 2 TB drive. That gives me some headroom since fully seated backup is around a terabyte.

Holding off on any additional drive upgrades until I can confirm that the Ubuntu based Zotak is working well. If it is I hope to pick up another one two.

The raspberry Pi’s are not going to go to waste. I’m using one of them has an extra replica copy at home for BitTorrent Sync. I have a higher tolerance for failure for that since it’s an extra copy at home of my data. I’m installing some applications on another one. Future projects for the remaining ones include a possible reverse proxy, Wi-Fi hotspot and or WebCam. I just need to find the time for all these projects. For now just want to finish my backup solution upgrade.

And if you’re reading all this thinking yourself do I really need a four node private cloud network the answer is of course not. The other answer is it’s really six nodes if you count the three I’m running at home. In the end I didn’t save the money using a private cloud  since even though a lot of the equipment was lying around there was some upfront costs that I won’t realize unless I use the system for 2 to 3 years. The reason to do it however was more because I can and because I wanted control over my information. I’m glad I’m continuing to tinker with this since I’m learning a lot and a lot of fun.

iPhone 6S or Not

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Ah September.  Fall is almost upon us.  That means iPhone upgrade season.  I admit that typically I have upgraded phones annually.  That ended when when the iPhone 5S came out.  There was just not enough compelling reasons for me to upgrade so I skipped it.  Last year the 6 was significant enough of an upgrade and I needed  new phone so the decision to upgrade was simple.  The harder part was deciding between the 6 or 6 Plus.  The 6 won out.  This year I have to ponder the same issue.

The 6S may not be enough of an upgrade however the force touch does seem nice.  It boils down to I likely do not need to upgrade however I am going to anyway.  I save away money every month with the assumption that I am going to upgrade and I can sell the 6 with enough resale value that I am don’t get sticker shock from the upgrade.

Suck it Indiana Jones

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Suck it Indiana Jones.  I too have found the holy grail.  Well the Holly Grail for me in relation to my media center experience.  After searching for a solution that works that includes all my requirements I finally think I have it in one device.  My Apple TV 4.

That device in and of itself maybe was 1/3 of the solution.  For me a Media Center is not complete without my media library accessible via Plex or Kodi.  I prefer Plex since that is what I use as my server however I would have settled for Kodi.  Plex turned out to be available on the new Apple TV on day one.  It worked great.  The main other piece of the puzzle missing was the ability to watch live TV.

To save $20 a month I dropped my TiVo a few months ago.  I was just not using it enough to justify the expense.  MC loves her live TV thought so I needed a solution.  I bought a HDHomeRun Prime.  The problem has been I haven’t been able to find a good live TV streaming client that seamlessly worked on any device other than my old Sony Google TV.  My home built OSMC didn’t work very well.  It was very choppy video.  The Kodi setup I built on my Mac Mini worked ok for the live TV however it didn’t play my Plex content very well.  It also required switching HDMI inputs to get to my iTunes content.  That was a challenge when the HDMI switcher didn’t work and MC couldn’t get the girls their 15 minutes of Seasami Street sometimes in the morning.

I had been using the new Apple TV with the Sony Google TV as an overlay on the Apple TV.  I did something similar with the Google TV when I had my TiVo.  It still required two devices and two remotes to work.  It did work but is not very elegant.  I also want to rid myself of all Google devices so having to rely on the old Sony Google TV is an annoyance.

Today however everything seems to have changed for me. Yesterday I got an invite for a beta program of one app that will allow me to use the live TV stream from my HDHome Run natively on my Apple TV.  I setup the app today to give it a try.  It worked but it is clear that the app is still beta.  I am hopeful that this app will flesh out their issues and will work well.

In the mean time however as luck would have it I found another app in the Apple TV App Store that I hadn’t seen the last 3 or 4 times I browsed the store for live TV streaming Apps.  This time I found “Channels”.  For $15 it claimed to do everything I wanted in live TV native in the Apple TV.  I figured I would give it a try.  After some drama related to two step authentication and my Apple ID I was able to purchase the app and give it a test drive.  From the 15 minutes of playing around with it I am pretty impressed.  It doesn’t have the audio / video out of sync issues that have experienced on several platforms.

With this app if it continues to be functional I am able to par down my media center to just my Apple TV the front end, Plex running on my Synolog as my back end along with my Silicone Dust HDHomeRun for TV streaming (using a cable card).

Getting to this setup has been a multi year process of trial and error.  If it proves to be reliable I will be very pleased and hopefully the configuration will be simplified enough that MC and soon the girls won’t have any problems using it.

For now I am pleased with the turn of events that gave me my holy grail of media centers!