by Zé Barbosa, on March 24th, 2012 What about to listen to nRP (our home based station broadcasting music 24/7) on your Nokia E52 or similar?
First of all you need to setup your Internet connection through your mobile service provider (usually quite expensive!) or a local WLAN. When you’re done, then you can play around with your Nokia menu following these steps:
MENU → MEDIA → RADIO → RADIO INTERNET → CHOOSE CONNECTION → TURN ON → SEARCH → OPTIONS → ADD STATION MANUALLY → TYPE ADDRESS (http://nrp.selfip.net:8000/) → TYPE STATION NAME (nRP) → SAVE → BACK → FAVORITES → SELECT → LISTEN
From then on, our radio will be on your “Favorites”. So easy when you own a cellphone with radio features. Only a little detail: if you need to connect your Nokia E52 to MAC address protected WLANs, then you need to know your Nokia’s MACs. Follow step 2:
- Dial *#2820# to display Bluetooth MAC address
- Dial *#62209526# to display the WLAN MAC address
Enjoy our webradio…
by Zé Barbosa, on February 3rd, 2012 Due to technical reasons, current economical crisis and lack of listeners, this station will be broadcasting daily only from 8:00am to 10:00pm. As a matter of fact, keeping on air a station without listeners makes no longer any sense. This solidarity action with the overall poverty in Portugal suits us very well…
May the gods be with us…
by Zé Barbosa, on January 13th, 2012 Friday, 13th! A good day to remind you that I do not take any responsibility over the results you might get if you follow instructions shown in this, the previous and the next posts about this very same subject. I strongly advise you to skip this post and similar ones if you know nothing at all about computers, routers and Internet/Intranet networking. Run away from bad luck, will you?
Last part of previous post about this very same subject ended up with the wrap-up of topics and following steps to get a Samsung TV set connected to Internet or, generally speaking, to a home LAN and make it share music and video with a local computer. See it here.
Our LAN or Intranet
As a matter of fact we want to have home a simple network which I show here schematically:
Let’s split the above diagram into three parts:
- The very upper part, the cloud, represents your ISP or Internet Service Provider. In my case is the Portuguese company ZON Multimedia, providing high-speed Internet, over one (1) hundred TV channels and Phone service with free calls up to a certain limit, all this through optical fiber. Your Internet router type will depend on your provider. Here in this section there is only one thing you have to do: paying the bill every month which in my case is about 50 euros. Expensive, isn’t it?
- The block at the middle, represents your initial installation:
- the Internet router provided by your ISP (ZON-HUB)
- the phone set provided by your ISP
- the external hard-disk which you can connect to your ZON-HUB (USB plug) to share media in your LAN. Yes, ZON-HUB can be used as a DNLA server but with many limitations. Meaning, if you have a TV set, DNLA compatible, it will detect your ZON-HUB as a media server. Exactly like my TV set does…
- a desktop which you should wire to your ZON-HUB using one of its four (4) ports and will be used as media server. For this purpose, see if it is really a good machine (fast CPU, 2GB DRAM at least, high storage hard disk, kind of 500GB to 1TB).
- a laptop which you can wireless connect to ZON-HUB
- The block at bottom: the one you want to implement additionally:
- the Client Bridge router, D-Link DIR-320, to extend our home LAN
- the TV set, Samsung AllShare compatible, we want to use to share multimedia
- a laptop of our girl friend, guest, who visited us to surf on Internet instead of doing other nice things
If you look at the diagram with the attention of someone that is paying attention, even being a beginner like me, you will see some sets of numbers split by dots. Those are the IP address or Internet Protocol address. An IP address is an unique number that every computer or computerized device connected to Internet or to an Intranet is assigned to. Tipically, the IP address assigned to the router provided by your ISP is 192.168.1.1, which is the case of ZON-HUB. Of course, I will not spend time explaining IP addresses because if you still don’t know this, then it’s time to say “Houston, we have a problem!”.
While any computer directly connected to ZON-HUB will get an IP address from it (DHCP function), the IP address of computer PC1, which we will use as media server, should be set manually out of the DHCP range previously defined in the ZON-HUB. In this case, 192.168.1.33, because the DHCP range was defined by me from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.32. However, we will get back to ZON-HUB configuration.
Preparing the Client Bridge
The first hard work is flashing the slave router, the D-Link DIR-320 in this case. And hard means really hard! The firmware you need to install on DIR-320, the DD-WRT, is free of charge. In my opinion it’s much better than the originally installed on that router. But its installation needs the patience of a scientist. A wrong step may bring your router down to the vegetative state. Anyhow, you’re a courageous technician so the question now is what and how to do it? Just read following questions and click given links. Do not start any action over the router without being sure that you really understood what you have to do and without reading my tips after following questions.
- What is the Internet address of DD-WRT developers? http://www.dd-wrt.com/
- Where do I find the DD-WRT firmware? Click here.
- How do I flash my D-Link DIR-320? Click here.
- How do I configure the DIR-320 as Client Bridge? Click here.
Now that you already have read the above questions and the documents I gave you links to, it’s time to provide you some pragmatic knowledge and wise tips. Referring to previous fourth (4th) questions:
- let’s assume you will change, later on, the ZON-HUB DHCP range from 192.168.1.1 to 192.168.1.32 which is more than what you probably need to connect just a couple of computers, and/or printers, and/or game consoles.
- Give your DIR-320 an easy but clear name: ClientBridge is good enough. However, this is not relevant for the normal performance of this router.
- Step 4: I would choose 192.168.1.200, very much out the chosen DHCP range cause you just need to avoid any action of ZON-HUB DHCP over this computer.
- Step 7: with no further arguments, choose ‘WPA2 Personal’, AES, cause it was the only one working in my case (see picture). WPA is already fairly secure, don’t worry. Yet, if you’re still worried then use additionally on ZON-HUB the best protection: MAC address filtering.
- Step 12: the router DIR-320 is an old one so it won’t show you the ‘n’ option. Choose ‘Mixed’ and you’ll be ready for ‘b’ and ‘g’ standards. The router ZON-HUB works already on the ‘n’ standard but for short distances this is not relevant. It will be one of the changes you have to perform on ZON-HUB.
- Step 17: assuming the DHCP range said previously, let’s give the DIR-320 the last IP address of this range, meaning, 192.168.1.32. It’s risky because even being the last is still inside the DHCP range, which can cause IP conflicts on your LAN due to replication of same IP address on different machines. I assumed that the probability of a router assigning the last IP address of its DHCP range in a small LAN like home ones (with just a couple of computers) it’s very low. Nevertheless, if conflicts happen then you need to assign DIR-320 with an IP address out of the DHCP range, let’s say 192.168.1.100.
- Step 20: assign WAN port to a switch gives you a fifth normal Ethernet port. It’s good to do this because like so you can connect to DIR-320 one computer more – five (5) maximum – and like so you kill any doubt about the function of this port (WAN port is for connection to an Internet source).
- Step 26: doing so turns DIR-320 into a very much undangerous slave. All security will depend on ZON-HUB only which is much more practical for WAN/LAN control. Bear in mind that the only danger on a home LAN comes from wireless connections because without a proper wireless security anyone within a range of hundreds of meters can connect to your LAN.
Preparing the ZON-HUB
Once you have your Client Bridge configured you need to discharge all your fears of touching the ZON Multimedia hardware, meaning, the ZON-HUB router. There are a couple of parameters you need to change for having it accepting the new client, the DIR-320. Let’s then go step by step, easy and confidently but, once again, read everything very carefully before you take any action over your hardware:
- Take your laptop and make sure its configured for obtaining automatic IP address and DNS – remember we had to set this manually to configure the DIR-320.
- Wire connect your laptop to ZON-HUB, open your browser and type 192.168.1.1 which is the original IP address of the ZON-HUB router.
- Input your username and password to access ZON-HUB. You can find them in the manual supplied with the router, if you haven’t changed them meanwhile.
- Go to ‘Local Network (Rede Local)’ » Settings (Definições).
- Change ‘Last IP address (Finalizar endereço IP)’ to 192.168.1.32. For some applications it’s very much recommended to place some computers out of the DHCP range!
- Click Apply (Aplicar).
- Go to ‘Local Network (Rede Local)’ » Wireless and change ‘Mode 802.11′ to ’802.11 b/g Mixed’. Again, ‘n’ standard doesn’t work with DIR-320.
- In the same page disable WPS. We do not need it. Good practice: always disable or throw away what you don’t need.
- Change Security (Segurança) to WPA2.
- Change ‘Encryption Algorithm (Algoritmo de encriptação)’ to AES.
- Change ‘MAC filtering’ to ‘Allow (Permitir)’. Next step will be boring cause you need to navigate between screens for every MAC address you need to input. I stronly recommend MAC address filtering.
- Enter all the MAC addresses from machines you want to connect to ZON-HUB. This is a wireless protection therefore you must use the wireless MAC addresses here. Don’t forget to include the DIR-320 wireless MAC address.
- Hit’Apply (Aplicar)’ then OK.
- You must perform a warm restart or even a cold restart of your ZON-HUB. A warm restart can be achieved by clicking the link ‘Restart (reiniciar)’ on the top right corner of ZON-HUB panel. A cold restart can be achieved by just switching off ZON-HUB and then on after a while off.
- WARNING: after ZON-HUB and DIR-320 are up and running you might not see DIR-320 IP address in the list Home » ‘Network Map (Mapa da rede)’! This happens because ZON-HUB hardly handles updating of wireless clients and it’s much worse if the client is another router wireless connected. Don’t worry, even not listed the DIR-320 will run.
- WARNING: you must test Internet connection on your actual machines because security parameters have been changed on ZON-HUB. Notice that we did not change the security key but probably you need to change the security mode and encryptation on the client machines. You also need to check it out regarding the wireless connected computers because now you have a MAC address filtering. If you entered a wrong MAC address, your computer won’t connect to ZON-HUB. That is the purpose of MAC filtering!
Where are we now? We’ve got a picture of our home LAN. We have both routers already configured. Router ZON-HUB and client machines are up and running. We haven’t tested the new section of our home LAN. You have to wait until next post. Writing this technical handbooks requires work like hell and I am just a newbie, a beginner who doesn’t earn a single cent for this…
May the gods be with you…
by Zé Barbosa, on January 5th, 2012 Yes, sometimes I remind myself I am a graduated electrical engineer and then I start dedicating part of my free time investigating stuff which has no secrets at all to others but are a pretty much black hole for me. That was the case when one of these days I looked at my very beautiful, old and discontinued 32″ LCD TV set, model part number LE32-C550-J1WXXC, a nice creation of Samsung, and I decided I wanted it connected to Internet. Reading the part number which defines the model, you can see I am talking about a C-series or 5-series TV, information that will be relevant at some point of this technical wandering. By the way, speaking of technical wanderings, LCD refers to the technology used for the screen emitting image which is one among four technologies:
- CRT or Cathode Ray Tube – the old and fat boxes depending on an electronic tube to generate image. It’s dead!
- Plasma Display – the very first technology of the slim line. It’s dead!
- LCD or Liquid Crystal Display – The current and most used technology. It’s dying!
- LED Display – the very new generation. Still expensive but amazing!
 Nowadays, modern TV sets are almost by themselves a complete media center as they are able, beyond their main function which is to show you hundreds of TV channels, to read audio files (like mp3) and video files (like avi or Audio Video Interleave). To achieve that, meaning, to use your TV set as a music player or home cinema source, recent TV sets have a wide choice of sockets where you can plug several types of devices like a PlayStation or X-box, a camcorder, a DVD player, a CD player or even your computer, either it is a laptop or a desktop. Gold over blue, you can also connect your TV set directly to Internet without needing a PC in between. Referring to the above mentioned TV set, you can even wireless connect it if you buy the highly expensive link stick wireless adapter from Samsung, part number WIS09ABGN, connect it to the USB socket on the rear or side panel of your TV and hope to be a lucky guy if the wireless adapter and your Router (computing) are compatible.
Going short, a good TV set needs the following additional sockets to complete your happiness:
- USB, to connect pen-disks, hard-disks, etc;
- composite video (RCA), to connect to VCR, Blu-Ray player, camcorder, etc
- component video (Y/Pb/Pr, RCA), to connect video beamers, etc
- scart (euroconnector 21 pins) audio/video, to connect to VCR, DVD player, TV, camcorder, etc
- HDMI and DVI, Digital Visual Interface, for high definition video and audio, to connect to DVD player, Blu-Ray player, cable box, satellite receiver, etc
- PC audio in/out (3.5mm jack), to connect to a computer
- PC image VGA (D-sub 15 pin), to connect to a computer
- Ethernet (RJ45) to connect to Internet router/modem
For those having a medium-class economical power, to have home some devices like LCD TV sets, computers and at least a router through what you get your paid Internet, it is a pretty much normal thing. It’s my case: I hired ZON Multimedia, a fucking expensive and arrogant ISP (Internet Service Provider), therefore I have installed a ZON-HUB router which, actually, owns a very nice design.
Where are we now? We have a Samsung TV set, we have a ZON Internet router, we have at least one computer where we have stored thousands of mp3 and movies and now we want to connect our TV to our home LAN, Local Area Network. Making it easy, we want our TV set connected to Internet, we want it to give us music and movies when our house is full of friends whom we want to impress positively. Ok, good reasons to buy the Samsung link stick:
- Easyer to get. Go to Worten, FNAC, Radio Popular or whatever monster supplier of consumer electronics and buy a wireless USB adapter for your TV. Mandatory: tell the seller exactly the brand and the complete model part number of your TV set.
- Easier to install. Unpack it and just plug and (almost) play.
- Easier to complain! If it doesn’t work because the adapter has a social issue with your router you can go back to the store where you bought it and start claiming loud and clear.
- You don’t know any other way to connect your TV to your router.
Now, good reasons to not buy the link stick:
- Pretty much expensive! Something between 60 and 80 euros.
- It works (if it works!) only on that specific TV set.
- Does nothing more than assuring a wireless connection between your TV set and your router.
- You know a couple of things about home network, you know you can use a spare router to connect your TV to Internet and you love technology challenges
Good, now that you accepted the challenge let me tell you advantages of using an additional router to connect your TV to your home LAN:
- You can use that additional router to power up your local network: you can use it to connect other devices, wiring them or not.
- You can use the additional router to extend the wireless range of your main wireless router.
- Using different words, you can have your main router in your living room and connect other devices somewhere else in your house (eg: upstairs in your son’s room) without passing Ethernet cables through.
- You can spend a great time switching on and off a couple of routers and PCs.
- You can tell your friends you’re an ace, “creme de la creme” in home networks, computers, multimedia and Internet.
Where are we now? You have decided to use an additional router to extend your home network and like so to connect your TV to Internet and to the mp3 and movies you have stored on your computer. Before you start, you need to know a couple of other things. Let’s start with AllShare, a protocol to share media files using a Samsung TV set by means of DNLA. Meaning, in fact we are talking about DNLA but with a name given by Samsung, mixed with a couple of minor changes. If you want to know more about DNLA, just click the word and you will be redirected to Wikipedia. Explaining the concept DNLA it is not part of this post’s scope, therefore let’s step forward. What it is important here is you to check if your TV is DNLA compatible. If it is not, stop reading this post here because it won’t contribute to your happiness.
Another important check action is you to get very much familiar with your additional router and somewhat familiar with your ZON-HUB router. Regarding the first, you gotta know a lot about routers and DD-WRT compatibility. Regarding the latter, a few parameters must be changed if you want to connect it to a second router in the way we need to connect them. If you have not a DD-WRT compatible router or if you don’t want to touch your ZON-HUB because you don’t know how or you’re just afraid of doing it, stop reading this post here because it won’t contribute to your happiness. Anyhow, many of the thoughts and truths revealed here are very often applicable to other hardware than the one I specify here.
It is the time now to introduce you to my additional router. Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce you to the old D-Link DIR-320 which is a model already discontinued and about what I don’t know what is its actual replacement. What your router has to be:
- wireless IEEE 802.11 b/g/n standard, knowing that ‘b’ is dead, ‘g’ is dying and ‘n’ is the new generation
- a four (4) ports Ethernet hub
- DD-WRT compatible. This is because we need to install on it the DD-WRT firmware which is the only one I am sure it can make a router to work on one out of six wireless modes:
- Access Point (AP)
- Client
- Client Bridge
- Adhoc
- Repeater
- Repeater Bridge
This DIR-320 will be a slave router or, by other words, this additional router will connect to your ZON-HUB router on a very passive basis because it will be configured as Client Bridge. Working this way, the DIR-320 is no more than a wireless link (bridge) between the room where you have your main router, probably your office, and the room where you want to connect your main TV and other computers, which I believe they will be in your living room. This means as well that this slave router will not be in charge of complex functions like Firewall (computing) or DHCP which will be exclusively part of the ZON-HUB job. All this will cost you nothing if you already own a spare router or will cost something about sixty (60) euros if you have to buy a router. You may ask, for that price why don’t I buy the Samsung dongle which costs about the same? Well, my advice is: read again the pros and cons a few paragraphs behind this point.
Where are we now? You already know you will need:
- a DNLA compatible TV set
- a ZON-HUB router or similar connected to Internet and with free access to configuration
- a DD-WRT compatible router
- the DD-WRT firmware
- a normal computer into what we are free (Administration Rights) to install some software
- a couple of Ethernet cables, 1.5m long
- lots of spare time
- a strong desire to succeed
Now, you just need to wait for the next part of this post. Among other things, in the next part you will know what additional software you have to install on your computer in order to have your TV set sharing the nice music and naughty movies you’re legally storing there.
Meanwhile, may the gods be with you…
by Zé Barbosa, on December 21st, 2011 Starting today, the very much appreciated internet radio given by the name of net Radio Porto or, short version, nRP, no longer has its own website. If you’re looking for the great music you were used to hear on nRP, be my guest and look around here the player which will assure you listening hours of music from heaven…
The Internet radio most probably will be off while its website is being transferred and some maintenance on its server is running as well. It will be back, as usually…
At the same time, this weblog is being revamped to become more suitable to integration of nRP and, later on, to integration of “Roaming, free the image” as well. Centralized control is very often the best solution and patience for web design is no longer what it used to be.
So help me the gods…
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Revamping This Due to integration of a photo-blog and a net-radio, this website is being revamped, mainly its audio/video content. For this reason, some of the links to video-clips and audio songs might result on message errors pointing to missing media. We apologize for this. We're trying to be as fast as devil steals good people's souls...
2011-Dec
The Webmaster Book Of The Day
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Portuguese Homestyle Cooking
— by Ana Patuleia Ortins, in 2008-09-30
Everyone loves Mediterranean food. But how many of us are familiar with genuine Portuguese cooking, a melange of Mediterranean, mountain, and Atlantic coast influences? The...
See book cover!
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