Fun with WiFi

[Cascade]

When I first got my dish for FTA I didn't have a clue where I was pointing it. I had no signal meter, just a Nexus PCI card in my PC.
Instead of waiting to buy a signal meter I decided to get creative and use my wireless LAN and my PocketPC so I fired up Windows Media SDK and ProgDVB and set the WMSDK to broadcast (Over my network) the signal/quality meter for ProgDVB and opened the stream on my iPaq..
I took my PocketPC outside to the dish, keeping one eye on the screen and started scanning for a signal, there was around half a second lag from the encoder buffer but was perfectly useable.

I can also stream anything coming into my PCI card to my iPaq, say for example I'm on the toilet and wanna relax and watch TV (j/k)

This is the signal meter on my screen:

This is the resulting encode on the iPaq:

 

[PSB]

Ingenious!

 

[Cascade]

It was fun to do, I was nervous about taking it outside (Was a birthday gift from the wife) I use my el-cheapo signal meter now, it'll be cheaper to replace when a rogue squirrel tries to eat it.

 

[timmy1376]

I always hate to drag up an old thread, but this is exactly what I am wating to do. Set out with the laptop and see the meter, and I tried the ProgDVB stream thing, but it just lets you watch channels. So how exaclty did you get that to work? Was it just the WM encoder? How do you get it to send an screen as video??

thanks,
tim

 

[Cascade]

Hi Tim, use "Capture area of screen" or "Window capture" in (I think it is) Broadcast Live Event.
If you have a DVCam or a webcam it's probably easier to setup a simple webserver on 8080 on your intranet.
It's been so long since I did that I'd almost forgotten about it.

Dragging up old threads can be fun

 

[iammike]

I always hate to drag up an old thread, but this is exactly what I am wating to do. Set out with the laptop and see the meter, and I tried the ProgDVB stream thing, but it just lets you watch channels. So how exaclty did you get that to work? Was it just the WM encoder? How do you get it to send an screen as video??

thanks,
tim

Tim,

If you've already got the wireless lan in place, you could just use VNC. It's a freeware product we use at work to fix our user's PC's when they get into trouble. You can control the remote PC just like you were sitting right there. There's also quite a few commercially available programs that do the same thing.

Mike

 

[timmy1376]

I tried the broadcast live event, but it only allows me to use the webcamera, and the capture screen does not allow me to view the video from a server type connection.


Mike:

Where do I find the VNC you are talking about? Will remote connection within XP do the same thing??

 

[Cascade]

Will remote connection within XP do the same thing??

Yes, although probably at a slower refresh rate, VNC is very fast with only a few ms delay which you won't notice.
You'll need to install the server on your main machine and the client on the machine you're taking outside.

http://www.realvnc.com/download.html

 

[iammike]

Yes, although probably at a slower refresh rate, VNC is very fast with only a few ms delay which you won't notice.
You'll need to install the server on your main machine and the client on the machine you're taking outside.

http://www.realvnc.com/download.html

We use remote connection also. I haven't really noticed an appreciable speed difference compared with VNC.

 

[pdnettles]

Appearently I'm way behind here, but...where can I pick up ProgVB?

PD

 

[Rick in MD]

One could always try at their website..

Its ProgDVB by the way, not ProgVB
http://www.progdvb.com/