Don't throw away that Wii, don't let Nintendo do the repair, do it yourself on the cheap!
Does your Wii:
- spin up the disc but then shows a read error?
- refuses to spin up the disc at all?
- random disc errors/errors when playing?
In 99% of all read error-related problems, lens replacement is the solution.All you need is a new lens from eBay. All Wii's in every region have the same lens so don't bother buying a lens which has "US" or "EU" in the title. Just buy the cheapest.
eBay link here
Besides that, some handy tools and some patience (if you don't have any experience disassembling electronics you might wanna take the evening off).
Ready? Go and watch the howto here: http://youtu.be/HuLq-YuV4eo
So I've been into Wii modding lately and have always been eager to buy fake stuff from eBay because I question their quality and don't like buying a plastic brick.
This time however I was looking for a second Wiimote and found one on eBay which would cost me 8 dollar (free shipping). Because I live in Europe it would cost me 6 euros. Really a bargain for a new Wiimote so I bought and paid the item.
(fake one shown at the bottom)
The Wiimote arrived today and yes, there are some differences:
- The overall logos and characters which are printed on the buttons and Wiimote itself, differ a bit from the original. The "Home" button color is a bit more dark blue colored, the "1" and "2" are a bit bigger and use a bit darker shade of grey etc.
- The "1","2", "A" and the D-pad feel almost the same (some very small differences here).
- The "A" button is a bit bigger. Which is not that bad, in fact I kinda like it that way.
- The "Home" button is not as "sunken" as the original but is a bit more raised and together with the minus and plus button, feel a bit different (harder to push).
- One of the things I expected to be of a lower quality would be the speaker. And in fact the quality does differ a bit from the original but not that much. It sounds a bit more "canny".
- Vibration: less than the original. When you play Mario, bowser doesn't seem that angry at you anymore (consider that a disadvantage).
- Behavior: it connects as fast as a normal Wiimote in exactly the same way, behaves the same and responds at the sensor bar and on your screen like the original.
Overall
What can I say, it's not like the original but it's close. It doesn't have that classy Nintendo button feel on all of the buttons, doesn't have the original Wii logo printed like it should, doesn't vibrate that much and the speaker quality is a bit less and, and.. it just costs 8 bucks.
So if you don't want to spend too much cash on your second (or only) Wiimote, consider buying one from eBay, it won't let you down.
The first part in a series posts of handy packages for your Synology NAS system.
History (skip this part if you want)
Hi everyone. It’s been a while since my last blog post. Lots of things changed since my last post. Luckily, some things never seem to change; my passion for technology for instance(hardware/software/electronics/tweaks/tips).
After a pretty rough ride testing FreeNAS 8 a year ago, I moved to a Synology NAS. Not really a DIY NAS I know and some people will hate me for this but in time I learned that a NAS is a very important piece of hardware which should run stable, solid, fast and would have great support (and community support). That’s why I chose Synology and bought a DS212+ at first but then moved to the DS412+ which I currently own.
That popular cube-oriented game from Mojang. Runs well for a few players but make sure to stop/start the package once in a while to flush the memory (it uses a lot).
SABnzbd, SickBeard and CouchPotato (package source: http://packages.synocommunity.com)
Our favorite downloaders! Ready to download for your Synology.
[Tutorial] All your favorite downloaders on FreeNAS 8 (amd64, ZFS)
What's up people? Long time no see. Yeah I know. Have been running FreeNAS 7 for over a year, everything very stable. Few weeks ago I thought it would be time to finally take the step and upgrade to FreeNAS 8. So I bought the hardware, set everything up and started searching the interwebs on how to get my favorite downloaders working on the new FreeNAS 8. Few weeks later I got (most of it) running.
The bad news: auto startup and shutdown. Can't seem to get them working. So for now, you have to use a startup script, every time you boot your server.
It's kinda like tethered booting your jailbroken iPhone 4.
Anyways. If you're like me and just want to get everything running and don't reboot your NAS every hour, grab a beer and let's go!
UPDATE 7 DECEMBER 2011
- Modified startup.sh and shutdown.sh a bit. and made them available for download only. Copy/pasting would truncate the code.
[NOTES]
- This tutorial is a simplified version of the tutorial on the FreeNAS forums created by "asforme", which again is a modified version of "delicatepc"'s script. Many thanks to these guys.
- amd64 means support for 64-bit processors. Intel CPU's with 64-bit are supported!
- Like the previous tutorials, we're going to use "Zeta" as our disk mount. This is a ZFS mount. Of course create and/or use your own mount every time this name is mentioned.
- Obviously, change the IP address in the tutorial to your own IP address.
- Turn on SSH by going to your FreeNAS webinterface -> services -> SSH. Make sure "login as Root with password is checked".
- Copy and paste commands which are more than 1 row long, into a text editor first to make sure everything gets executed as it should.
- Create a share (AFP, CIFS, whatever..) to access your disk mount, we're gonna need it later on.
1. Open a SSH connection to your FreeNAS box using Terminal (OSX) or Putty (Windows). In OSX this is done by opening Terminal and typing:
ssh -l root 192.168.1.250
(login with your admin password)
2. We're going to create a directory to put our downloaders in.
mkdir /mnt/Zeta/downloaders
And move into that directory:
cd /mnt/Zeta/downloaders
3. Next we need to download all needed packages to get our downloaders working.
Yes, this is one big command. If you watch closely, you'll see the packages get installed.
If you're running the i386 build of FreeNAS 8, you could try this tutorial by changing "amd64" to "i386" in the above command.
If you get "broken pipe" or "file not found" errors, check if your network configuration is set in FreeNAS. If the error still occors, it could be that paths have changed at the FreeBSD server. Try to find out what the correct paths are by FTP'ing to ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/....
4. Extract the downloaded packages using the foreach command. That way, we don't have to use the extract command for each one of the downloaded packages. Way faster.
Besides that, we're extracting only the bin and lib folders so no unneeded files like README's get copied.
foreach fn ( *.tbz )
tar -xjf $fn bin lib
end
If you get any error's here, don't worry, that's normal.
5. Cheetah seems to be weirdly packaged so we need to do some extra stuff here.
At the moment of writing, 0.6.10 is the latest SABnzbd version. If you're reading this tutorial at a later time, make sure you grab the latest package. Just change "0.6.10" to the newest version number.
Next, unpack SABnzbd.
tar -xvf SABnzbd-0.6.10-src.tar.gz
Move it to a new folder called "SABnzbd".
mv SABnzbd-0.6.10 SABnzbd
And remove the compressed package:
rm *.gz
Create a new directory for the SABnzbd config file:
mkdir sabconfig
7. Next up is CouchPotato, our Movie watchman.
Fetch the latest version of CouchPotato:
9. Next up, a fairly new downloader: Headphones. Does the same thing as Sick Beard and CouchPotato, only for music. Try it!
Fetch the latest version of Headphones:
Next up, we're going to create the startup.sh file. We're gonna use this file to fire up our downloaders and later on (in an updated tutorial) set this file as a startup when we run our FreeNAS server.
There were some problems when the startup.sh file was created using nano. Thing was; users seemed to just copy the rows of text into nano, which leaded to truncated text. So if you want to do it right, I advise to mount your share (Zeta) in Windows/OSX/Linux/whatever and create the startup.sh file in your /mnt/Zeta/downloaders/ directory from there.
10. Stay in your ssh session and set permissions for your downloaders folder.
Go one folder down:
cd..
And change permissions:
chmod 777 downloaders
Now you can freely add files to your downloaders directory. Create a file named "startup.sh".
Download the file from here.
11. Launch your startup script by typing the following:
bash /mnt/Zeta/downloaders/startup.sh
That seems to be it guys. If someone manages to get the startup working, please let me know.
I'm working on a shutdown script. this is the script for now and should be working for the downloaders. Run this script when you're planning to reboot your NAS.
I always found the volume/brightness increment in OSX was fairly big. And I always thought there was no way of gradually changing the volume/brightness level.
Please do keep in mind though that you'll have to know what you're doing when visiting risky websites. Although there aren't any viruses for Mac (yet..), there still is a small chance that some script/software could ruin your Mac.
If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, this is like the crown on your hard work at getting SABnzbd running on your FreeNAS. Access your SABnzbd server from anywhere, scroll through RSS feeds, add something and run it/watch it when you're home.
[Tutorial] CouchPotato on embedded FreeNAS 0.7.2 (i386)
So at last, after a long time I've discovered how to get CouchPotato on the embedded FreeNAS system. A comment I got from Rowan Taubitz gave the breakthrough. Thanks again!
UPDATE 18dec. 2010
- Removed a step.
- Fixed some typo's.
- Added note at the bottom.
UPDATE 3dec. 2010
- Added upgrade steps.
UPDATE 9nov. 2010
- Added shutdown script.
This tutorial is based on my SABnzbd tutorial which can be read here.
So what does CouchPotato exactly do? Well it kinda does the same as Sick Beard but for movies. Get it? No? You can add movies to it's "wanted" list. It then searches for them at the usual spots (added in your settings) and sends them to SABnzbd. It also searches for better qualities when they come available and replaces the old one. So imagine this example: You've added a movie, the DVD-rip comes available, CouchPotato downloads it, after some time(this can be changed) CouchPotato checks again, the Blu-Ray rip comes available and sends it to SABnzbd.
More information on this available here.
Ok let's get to it.
1. Open a SSH connection to your FreeNAS box using Terminal (OSX) or Putty (Windows). In OSX this is done by opening Terminal and typing:
ssh -l root 192.168.1.250
(login with your admin password)
2. Set your temporary folder to one with more space:
setenv PKG_TMPDIR /mnt/Zeta/extensions/tmp/
3. Set the package site from which we're going to download:
11. Next we're creating a file (like in the Sick Beard tutorial) to shutdown the app in a proper way. Go into your CouchPotato folder and create the script:
cd /mnt/Zeta/extensions/couchpotato
nano sd.sh
12. Paste everything you see below but change the ip, port number, user and password of your CouchPotato app.
15. Now reboot your FreeNAS system, wait for it to be up and running again and access CouchPotato:
http://192.168.1.250/5000/movie
That's it. Now configure your CouchPotato by entering your SABnzbd ip etc. etc. Should be pretty straightforward.
16. Got a comment from "technologiq" on the upgrading process of CouchPotato and it seems to be upgradeable from source. And therefore easy as pie.
Just go to the settings of CouchPotato (the black gear, next to "Logs") .
17. In "General", check the box next to "Use updater" and click "Save".
18. From now on, you will be noticed if there is a newer version available just like in the image above. Just click "update now" and after a minute or so you'll be using the newest version.
Note: If you want to backup your CouchPotato settings (when your FreeNAS installation is fried for some reason), you'll have to backup 2 files: data.db and config.ini (found in the CouchPotato install dir).
After a fresh install, run CouchPotato once, shutdown, then replace them back and run again.
Good luck and please report if you have any problems or questions.
[Tutorial] Upgrade SABnzbd on embedded FreeNAS 0.7.2 (i386)
Installing SABnzbd is one thing but how to upgrade to a newer version of SABnzbd? The few steps needed to accomplish this get explained here.
[NOTE] This tutorial is based on this tutorial. When you installed SABnzbd differently on your configuration you'll have to modify the folders and commands written below.
[NOTE #2] Replace the version (0.5.5) by a newer one if there is one available.
1. Shutdown SABnzbd via it's web-interface. For the Plush skin this is done by going to Options > Shutdown.
2. Open a SSH connection to your FreeNAS box using Terminal (OSX) or Putty (Windows).
In OSX this is done by opening terminal and typing:
ssh -l root 192.168.1.250
(login with your admin password)
3. Go into a temp folder. I prefer to keep everything in the same place so I'm going to use the same temp folder from SABnzbd installation tutorial.
cd /mnt/Zeta/extensions/tmp
4. Download the latest public SABnzbd release by firing up your browser and navigating to: http://sabnzbd.org/download/. On the site there are three big buttons which host downloads for different platforms. Choose "Python Source (Linux, etc)".
Now, don't download the file but instead cancel the download and copy the URL currently displayed in your browser address bar.
Go back into your SSH session, paste the URL, and run the command:
[Tutorial] Sick Beard on embedded FreeNAS 0.7.2 (i386)
After the SABnzbd tutorial I thought it was a small step to create a tutorial for Sick Beard. Well it did cost me some more time than I've originally thought but I just had to share it. For you who don't know what Sick Beard is, click "Read More" to see what you have been missing!
UPDATE 18dec. 2010
- Added backup note at the bottom.
UPDATE 3dec. 2010
- Added upgrade steps.
UPDATE 9nov. 2010
- Edited the location of the Sick Beard location. Previously it would be placed in "/mnt/extensions/sickbeard". Thing is, when you want to do an update, you'll have to come up with another map name to run Sick Beard from. My solution is to place every version of Sick Beard into the /sickbeard/ folder, each with its own folder. Advantage is that you don't have to come up with another map name each time you download a new version. Second, you have every version placed nicely into its own folder (no clutter). And third if a newer version doesn't work you can easily change the startup script to your previous folder and run the old version until you solved any problems with the new one.
UPDATE 9nov. 2010
- Edited startup command in step 18.
This tutorial was made using this great guide, a lot of Googling, testing, some more testing and even less sleep.
So here it is. But first, what is Sick Beard exactly? Well it's an automated TV Show download utility in which you set your favorite TV Shows and every week when a new one comes out, it does its work. It also automatically renames the downloaded shows in an understandable format for your media player. For example Plex or XBMC. Pretty damn useful if you don't want to miss out on your favorite TV Shows and can't be in front of your TV every time their on. And even more cool, want them in the best quality available!
[NOTES]
- Like the previous SABnzbd tutorial, we're going to use "Zeta" as our disk mount. Of course create and/or use your own mount every time this name is mentioned.
- Copy and paste commands which are more than 1 row long, into a text editor first to make sure everything gets executed as it should.
1. Open a SSH connection to your FreeNAS box using Terminal (OSX) or Putty (Windows). In OSX this is done by opening Terminal and typing:
ssh -l root 192.168.1.250
(login with your admin password)
2. We're going to put Sick Beard in our previously created "extensions" folder (SABnzbd tutorial). Of course you can use your own folder if you want to.
cd /mnt/Zeta/extensions
mkdir sickbeard
3. Now we're giving the -also previously created- group "sabnzbd" access to the Sick Beard folder. Again, change if you like.
chgrp sabnzbd sickbeard
chmod 770 sickbeard
4. Download the latest Sick Beard source from GitHub and unpack it.
5. Check the folder name of the unpacked Sick Beard file and move the folder to a new location.
ls
6. There should be a folder named something like this: "midgetspy-Sick-Beard-fe0abd3". Then move this folder to a more logical location (the folder from step 2.).
9. Go into your browser, enter your FreeNAS ip, followed by port number 8081.
http://192.168.1.250:8081/home
If that seems to work, you're done with the installation, yay! Next up is configuring Sick Beard.
I'm not going through the whole configuration thing of Sick Beard since there is a great guide to configure everything located here. I will only go through the essentials when using Sick Beard on FreeNAS.
10. In the Sick Beard web-interface, go to Config > General.
- Add a login if you're going to access Sick Beard from outside your router or just want to protect against people in your own home network (scary).
- Set the logging directory to an absolute path. Something like this:
/mnt/Zeta/extensions/sickbeard
11. Go to Config > Episode Downloads.
- Set the NZB action to "SABnzbd" if it wasn't already set.
- Fill in the details of your SABnzbd at the box on the right.
- Set your TV download dir to your SABnzbd TV download dir.
/mnt/Zeta/downloads/complete/tv
12. Open the SABnzbd scripts folder (create one if you don't have one). Then open the Sick Beard folder titled "autoProcessTV" that you got with your Sick Beard installation. Copy all the contents over into your SABnzbd scripts folder.
13. Rename the "autoProcessTV.cfg.sample" to "autoProcessTV.cfg".
14. Open autoProcessTV.cfg in your favorite text editor. Change the host, port, username and password values to the appropriate settings for your Sick Beard server.
Then save and close it.
15. Open the SABnzbd web-interface and go to Config > Categories and set the "tv" script to: "sabToSickBeard.py".
16. Next we're going to take care of the automatic startup and shutdown of Sick Beard. Go ssh into your FreeNAS box.
cd /mnt/Zeta/extensions/sickbeard
nano sd.sh
Paste everything you see below but change the ip, port number, user and password of your Sick Beard app.
And the command below for the shutdown of Sick Beard:
/mnt/Zeta/extensions/sickbeard/sd.sh
Type: Shutdown
19. The final step. Open sabtosickbeard.py in your favorite text editor and change the first line to:
#!/usr/local/bin/python
20. Test everything by rebooting your server and checking if your Sick Beard web-interface opens. For configuring and setting Sick Beard to work I'm gonna redirect you to the official forum and site.
21. An extra added step here if you want to update your Sick Beard automatically. Go to "config" > "general" and check the box next to "Notify when new versions are available".
22. From now on you'll see an "update now" bar appear when a new version is available. Just click "update now" and wait for about a minute. Afterwards your Sick Beard is updated to the newest version!
NOTE: If you accidentally f*ck up your FreeNAS installation for some reason or you just want to backup your settings and programs, these 2 files need to be backed up and placed back after reinstall: sickbeard.db and config.ini.
Have a beer.. or two and enjoy your usenet-PVR! :)
[Tutorial] SABnzbd on embedded FreeNAS 0.7.2 (i386)
Here it is. Yet another tutorial on how to install SABnzbd on your FreeNAS with embedded install. Because I used a few additional or different steps than most tutorials I've read through, I've decided to write my own tutorial.
UPDATE 18dec. 2010
- Using SABnzbd 0.5.6
- Using FreeBSD 7.3 packages instead of 7.2.
- Python 2.6.4 install included (for CouchPotato and future use).
UPDATE 16oct. 2010
- Everything fixed and tested. Have fun!
Most of you who come to this page should have a bit of knowledge about what SABnzbd is. For those who don't, a brief explanation. SABnzbd is a usenet download tool, just like Grabit or Newzleecher. The cool thing about SABnzbd is that it does everything for you: you upload an NZB file to SABnzbd (via one of the many ways) and it will begin downloading the files from usenet. Afterwards it checks your files (Parity check), optionally repairs and unpacks them. Just let it run and view your files afterwards! And all by using a customizable web-interface that can be accessed from anywhere by (almost) every device that has internet on it. Pretty cool huh?
[NOTES]
- For big commands, split up in 2 or 3 lines, copy and paste them in a text-editor first. To make sure you get command right as it should (with spaces, etc.).
- This tutorial is based on this tutorial with a few minor adjustments.
We will be using a custom mount named "Zeta" which will be named several times throughout the tutorial. Change this with your own mount name. Mounts can be created and modified using the Disks > Mount menu at the FreeNAS web-interface.
Of course change the ip address stated in the tutorial with your own FreeNAS ip address.
1. Open a SSH connection to your FreeNAS box using Terminal (OSX) or Putty (Windows).
In OSX this is done by opening terminal and typing:
ssh -l root 192.168.1.250
(login with your admin password)
2. Because we can't install any additional packages on the FreeNAS embedded install, we are going to create some custom install directories on our harddrive. Also we will create a folder to store the SABnzbd config file.
cd /mnt/Zeta
mkdir extensions
cd extensions
mkdir sabnzbd
mkdir var
mkdir usr
mkdir tmp
3. Before we go to the next step, go into the FreeNAS web-interface and create the group: "sabnzbd". Then assign some users to the group, which are going to access the folder.
4. Next we're creating the SABnzbd download folders (of course you can change them to your own likings).
cd /mnt/Zeta
mkdir downloads
chgrp sabnzbd downloads
chmod 770 downloads
cd /mnt/Zeta/downloads
mkdir blackhole
mkdir complete
mkdir incomplete
mkdir scripts
chgrp -R sabnzbd blackhole
chgrp -R sabnzbd complete
chgrp -R sabnzbd incomplete
chgrp -R sabnzbd scripts
chmod 770 blackhole
chmod 770 complete
chmod 770 incomplete
chmod 770 scripts
5. Then link the default package installation folders to the previously created ones:
mount_unionfs -o w /mnt/Zeta/extensions/usr/ /usr/
umount -f /var
mount_unionfs -o w /mnt/Zeta/extensions/var/ /var/
setenv PKG_TMPDIR /mnt/Zeta/extensions/tmp/
6. Install packages required by SABnzbd:
(note: if you can't install packages you'll have to set your DNS servers to -for example- this OpenDNS servers: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220. At your FreeNAS web-interface >System > General.
8. Change the SABnzbd python script to point out to the correct Python install dir:
nano /usr/local/share/SABnzbd-0.5.6/SABnzbd.py
8.1. Modify: "!/usr/bin/python" to: "!/usr/local/bin/python"
Next press CTRL+X to exit, Y to overwrite and ENTER to confirm the filename.
9. Now we're going to add the system folder links and SABnzbd to the FreeNAS startup scripts.
Go to your FreeNAS web-interface and to Advanced > Startup scripts.
Choose the "+" icon and enter these commands: (save after each command)
mount_unionfs -o w /mnt/Zeta/extensions/usr/ /usr/
Type: PostInit
(This command will make sure the system folder "usr" gets redirected to your harddrive.)
In my opinion, the 2D-like dock in OSX always looked more clear to me. Especially the indicator bullets at the bottom of an application. Too bad that standard, the 2D dock is only available when aligned vertically on the screen.
Just testing some HTML editors since I've always worked with Adobe Dreamweaver. Coda and Espresso look like good alternatives. Currently trying Espresso for 15 days.
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