Daniel's musings on IT

How much does a Sonos Connect:AMP (ZonePlayer 120) cost to run?

2012-01-01T18:30:00.000-08:00

I've borrowed a Power-Mate Lite from a mate and have taken some readings to monitor Sonos power usage as I wasn't sure how much it would cost me to run three Sonos Connect:AMPs (ZP120) all year in-case it was worth considering put them on some sort of power timing device to turn them off overnight.

I'm on Red State energy at and have set the readings at 28 cents per kWH which is the "Summer step one" rate ex-GST.

Here are the readings of the Sonos players in an idle state connected via the WIFI bridge. I let the Sonos boot, and then reset the Power-Mate let it monitor the device for 10 minutes.

So just under $50 to run three Sonos players on idle for an entire year. Better than I expected.

Here are the Power-Mate readings streaming Absolute Classic Rock Radio over the WIFI bridge at half volume with 8" Polk Audio Ceiling Speakers attached.

The meter was reset while the music was playing and run for about 5 minutes.

$23.78 Australian dollars a year at 27c per KWH (85.347kWh in a year). Cheaper than I thought really for playing music non-stop at a reasonable volume for a whole year.

I've also finally gotten around to repairing the damage to the ceiling in the kitchen after installing the kitchen speaker. I initially glued the gap with liquid nails and braced it with a piece of timber on a step ladder. After drying there was still a gap remaining on some parts of the crack which I then cleaned up with a Dremel (with a sander attachment) and then puttied up with remaining gaps white Wood Master which I got from Bunnings. I let the Wood Master dry and have since sanded it and it now just waiting to be painted.

Before

After
(without painting)

Speakers installation in the rear of the house

2011-11-27T23:30:00.001-08:00

Wow - what an effort, a Sunday and Monday well spent.

The plan was to install the bathroom, kitchen and patio speakers.

First I drilled down from the roof in to the study and fed up four runs of Monoprice wire from my roll (300ft 12AWG Enhanced Loud Oxygen-Free Copper Speaker Wire Cable - $85). In the picture below you can see the built in robe in the Study and the my internet connection (Bigpond Cable).

Future data cabinet location in the Study.

Next week I am having an electrician install a power point in the built-in robe and I will use the highlighted shelf as my "data cabinet" for my router, Sonos amplifiers and Drobo-FS NAS. Eventually I will have a white conduit covering the cables coming down into the walk in robe.

The wire in the roof I ran from beam to beam by attaching a staple to each beam and then attaching the wires to the beams using a cable tie. This seemed to be the best method recommended by the Polk DIY Speaker installation guide. This guide is very helpful and I would highly recommend it to anyone preparing to install ceiling or wall speakers.

The speakers I was planning to install were not in the main roof, rather in the back of the house, a lean-to which consists of the bathroom, kitchen and the back wall of the house. From the main roof we ran the four speaker wires through a conduit cable (bought in a roll of 10m from Bunnings). Four cables were the limit for the thickness and we used string to pull the wires through one at a time.

As seen below, the roof on the lean-to is very thin and is not accessible from below so we had to remove the roofing sheets.

Removing the sheets was quite easy but replacing them probably the hardest part of the job and required extra hands as it was very difficult to replace them as it was hard to push them back in above the beam under the housing sheet (which eventually had to come out) as well as cutting a hole in the sheet for the conduit. Replacing the sheets turned the one day job into a two day affair.

For the kitchen and bathroom speakers I chose to use Polk Audio RC60i In-Ceiling / In-Wall Speakers (Pair, White) based on positive reviews on the Sonos forums and a friend whom had previously had Polk equipment which sounded fantastic.

The kitchen speaker was quite easy to install from above. Roughly where I wanted the speaker I traced the outline from the template sheet and then drilled a hole in one side and cut out the hole from the ceiling with a jig saw. I then had the speaker pushed up from underneath while they were screwed in from below.

Ceiling speaker from above

Ceiling speaker in the ceiling.

The crack occurred later when I accidentally mistepped replacing the roofing sheets. A repair job for another day.

The bathroom speaker was a bit harder as it was under a fake ceiling. The original ceiling made of small slats, plaster, horse hair and god knows what had to be broken through to get to the top of the fake ceiling.

We then drilled a hole down from the roof and cut up from the bathroom into the fake ceiling using a small drywall/gyp-rock saw using the template supplied with the speaker.

Hole into bathroom under the original ceiling.

Speaker installed from below and connected.

Speaker without the grill attached from in the bathroom.

The sound from the Polk RC60i speakers is very good and I am glad I did not go with the RC80i (8 inch) speakers for these rooms as it would have been overkill. I have a pair of RC80i speakers which I am planning to put in the bedroom in the upcoming weeks and compare the sound then.

At the moment I have them connected as left and right channels to the Sonos Connect:AMP. I am searching for a solution to have them produce mono noise instead of stereo to these rooms.

For the backyard patio speakers I chose a pair of the Definitive Technology AW 6500 Outdoor Speaker (Single, White) based on very positive reviews. I managed to get a good deal for a pair, and they where much larger than I expected when I received them.

Using the backing plate which can be detached from the speakers I marked and drilled two into the rear wall of the house. I then installed two dynabolts (12mm/70mm). The dynabolts were overkill as they can hold up to 280 kilograms each but seemed to be a good thickness to bolt the bracket to the wall.

Right speaker

Left speaker

The sound from AW6500's is amazing. There are overkill for my medium sized backyard and the smaller AW5500s would have most likely sufficed. The front part of the V shape is aimed to where there will be people and the rear side woofer bounced bass of the walls.

Mission complete! And apart from the accidental crack in the ceiling I am very happy with the result. I'll provide another update when the bedroom speakers go in comparing the sound between the 6" inch and 8" inch speakers.

Sonos project off to a cracking start....

2011-11-23T04:02:00.001-08:00

The crack being the noise when I inserted the power cable into my second Connect:AMP (The AMP previously known as Sonos ZonePlayer 120) without switching the voltage switch from 110 to 230.

Luckily it turned out that I wasn't the first brain child to attempt such a power up. Rather then post my Connect:AMP back to the USA, I decided to void my warranty by replacing the fuse myself.

I ordered a minimum quantity of 10 replacement fuses from RS (http://australia.rs-online.com/web/p/products/3772203/) and then set to work disassembling the Connect:AMP by roughly following the useful Flickr stream by at0mac.

1. Firstly I peeled back the sticker on the back and removed the screws below. There are also two screws between the white and red RCA plugs which I just pulled out through the actual sticker.

2. From underneath, using a small flat head screw driver I peeled back a corner of the rubber feet and then removed the screws in each corner.

This revealed the WiFi antenna on the bottom on a backing plate.

3. I unscrewed the backing plate and carefully put the wires through the white cable holder so I could folder over the backing plate to reveal the bottom of the board.

3. Lightly reassemble the bottom - we'll need it later and remove the top cover. The top cover apparently just "pulls out", but I had quite a bit of trouble with this and ended up causing a little bit of damage to the top cover trying to leverage out the top with a flathead screw driver. I had much better success by threading a wire (or string would do) through two of the holes in a corner and pulling up with a pair of pliers.

4. This revealed the top backing plate. Remove all of the screw (including the hidden one under the warranty/shock sticker). Remove the plate.

5. I missed a photo here, but at0mac has it in his Flickr steam. At this stage you need to remove the WiFi board shown at the top of the picture.

6. This allows access to the fuse soldered onto the board (the orange-brown circle seen below).

7. This is where you might need help from a friend with soldering experience. Find matching fuse pins on the bottom of the board. Heat solder on the fuse pins and remove the fuse and install the replacement fuse.

8. Reassemble Connect:AMP.

9. Very important - Switch the voltage on the amp to 230V before connecting to power :)

If everything is done correctly, the Sonos white LED will hopefully flash while booting and you can connect with the Sonos Desktop software.

This weekend I hope to get in the roof to run some speaker cables and mount my Definitive Audio AW6500 speakers on the veranda in the the back yard. Then I'll connect them to my newly repaired Connect:AMP :)

Here's all of my equipment to install in the upcoming weeks-

2x Connect:AMP
2x Definitive AW6500 Outdoor speakers
Pair of Polk Audio RC60i ceiling speakers (Bathroom + Kitchen)
Pair of Polk Audio RC80i ceiling speakers (Bedroom)
100M of 12AWG Speakerwire (Monoprice)

PAR2 and UNRAR for Drobo-FS

2011-11-16T18:51:00.001-08:00

Big thanks to Jesper Noehr (jespern) on the Drobo Space forums for cross-compiling unrar and par2 for the Drobo-FS. These binaries are used for SABnzbd to ensure the integrity and extract downloads.

You can get the binaries here:
https://bitbucket.org/jespern/unrar-drobofs/downloads/unrar.tgz
https://bitbucket.org/jespern/par2-drobofs/downloads/par2.tgz

Great work Jesper!

For those looking to get SABnzbd and other related programs running on the Drobo-FS, no sweat, you just need to get Python from Drobo Ports. Drobo Ports is a great site for getting the latest complied binaries for your Drobo and learning how to cross compile yourself.

I would love it see a guide on setting up a Scratchbox2 environment for compiling Drobo-FS apps.

How to watch Netflix, Hulu, and BBC IPlayer from Australia

2011-11-12T16:27:00.000-08:00

Sign up for the service Unblock US. This service changes your DNS settings and redirects certain domain requests to proxy servers to allow access from overseas IP addresses.

This will allow access to standard free services, such as BBC IPlayer.

If the service you are signing up for requires an American credit card (not all do), you can sign up for a virtual visa or mastercard at Entropay. Entropay charge about 5% to "load" money from your real card to a new virtual card.

If the service requires a post code or address many people just make one up. I use my freight forwarding address from MyUS.com. MyUS.com gives you a real address in Florida, which you can use as a shipping address for items (such as electronics) which stores like Amazon or Ebay auctions won't ship out of America. There is a free version of the service which has more expensive shipping.

Drobo-FS slow transfer speed on Fritzbox

2011-09-26T20:57:00.000-07:00

For a couple of months now I have been frustrated by slow performance copying from my Drobo-FS NAS.
Transfers were happing at about 100mbps maximum. Two other friends with Drobo-FS units were also reporting the same problem so had we accepted that slow transfer speeds. After a copying session and being once again annoyed by the performance I realised that we were all using FritzBox (highly recommended) ADSL routers.

Searching for FritzBox performance issues I managed to find an blog post Kelvyn Taylor by that identified the the problem to be actually related to the Fritzbox ADSL router, not the Drobo!

If the Drobo-FS is connected to any port other than LAN1 the ports will be in "Green" mode and not negotiate at higher speeds to save power. You can make these changes in the FritzBox configuration in the Energy Monitor settings.

Performance has now gone from 10MB/s to and acceptable 40-50MB/s.

Source: http://kelvyntaylor.blogspot.com/2011/01/beware-fritzbox-7390s-green-lan-mode.html

Disable TakeControl from listening on TCP port 80

2010-10-05T23:21:00.000-07:00

By default TeamViewer binds to TCP port 80 on the local machine. Although TakeControl does have a slightly delayed start-up to allow other processes to bind to this port first, sometimes it still overrides other slower starting services (normally web servers) from binding to the local port.

The following Automated Task script (save as VBS) can be uploaded to GFI MAX RM as a user-defined script to automatically make a registry change to prevent the TakeControl Host service from binding at all.

This shouldn't actually affect the standard TakeControl functionality.

http://db.tt/ozStJUJ

Using GFI MAX RemoteManage to monitor DataLock backups

2010-09-29T00:48:00.000-07:00

The script below can be configured as a Daily Safety Check from with-in GFI MAX RM to monitor the status of DataLock backups by parsing the log files for a result.

You need to add the path to the DataLock log file folder as the script command line for the script to work correctly. i.e. "C:\Users\administrator.domain\.obm\log\9284305749693\Backup".

Script here: http://db.tt/S5XIoEe

Remember to save the script as a VBS file before attempting to upload the script the GFI MAX RM Dashboard.

Using TakeControl Viewer on a Team TakeControl host?

2010-08-03T21:17:00.000-07:00

At the moment it is not possible to use the TakeControl Viewer on the same computer that has the TakeControl Host service installed. This is a problem if the actual partners performing the remote support sessions have the Advanced Monitoring Agent installed on their own workstations.

The only workaround I have found so far is as follows:

Download TeamViewer Portable (http://www.teamviewer.com/download/version_5x/TeamViewerPortable.zip) and extract to a folder on your computer.
Make a file association between TVC files and the TeamViewer Portable executable as seen below.

Before trying to establish a connection by running a TVC file from Internet Explorer (Clicking TakeControl in GFI MAX RM):

a) Exist TeamViewer from the Taskbar.
b) Stop the TeamViewer services from the services control panel.

If anyone has found a better way to do this, let me know!

Forcing Attended Remote Control in GFI MAX Remote Management

2010-07-29T18:43:00.000-07:00

Suprisingly, after TakeControl functionality (TeamViewer) was added to GFI MAX RemoteManagement we have had a few partners inform us that their customers are only comfortable with attended remote support and there needed to be an option for this.

The VBS script below can be run as an GFI MAX RM Automated Task (or be modified to run as a login script) and changes the TeamViewer configuration to request permission for the user when the session is established.

The script also makes another change, allowing for the exception that unattended remote support is allowed when target workstation/server is not logged in.

Script available here:
http://db.tt/1AmtQZ

Updated 12/08/2010 - In some cases the logic wasn't correct depending on how TeamViewer had been configured.

Using GFI MAX RemoteManagement to check for free disk space on a volume

2010-07-13T23:02:00.000-07:00

GFI MAX RM allows you to check for free disk space on mounted drive letters, however if you have a volume mounted as a folder you are unable to perform the standard disk space check.

The script below allows you to check the available disk space on a mounted volume as a GFI MAX RM agent user script specifying the mounted folder name and minimum free disk space threshold (in GB) as parameters.

Download the script here: http://db.tt/mJBAzQ

Note: Make sure to include the trailing \ in the folder name. i.e. "C:\Files\"

Using GFI MAX RemoteManagement to reset lost domain administrator password

2010-07-12T02:53:00.000-07:00

A GFI MAX RM customer changed their domain administrator password and then lost the password and with no other administrator accounts were effectively locked out of their server.

Luckily they had the GFI MAX RemoteManagement agent installed on their domain controller and were able to run the following command (as an automated task) to remotely reset the password for the domain administrator account.

cmd.exe /k net user administrator password1! /domain

(password1! being the new password)

This has been tested on Windows 2003 and 2008 domain controllers.

Note: The new password will need to meet the domain password security requirements to be successfully changed.

Much easier than the current recovery methods of creating offline password resets CD (if necessary) and run once services. No reboot necessary!

Using GFI MAX RemoteManagement to monitor Microsoft Forefront Client Security definition files

2010-07-12T01:04:00.000-07:00

I have modified a VBS script for checking the Microsoft Forefront Client Security AV/AS Definition files (originally found here) to monitor if the definition files have been updated in the last 24 hours and report the status using the GFI MAX RemoteManagement Agent.

Credit to Turranx for writing the original script and working out how to retrieve the correct definition information from the binary files!

Script available for viewing/download here: http://db.tt/COu0Cb