Correct keyboard layout (QWERTZ) with Logitech K400 attached to an Android HDMI stick

I've bought an HDMI stick with Android 4.4.2 to connect a TV to the local network (stream, DLNA) and the internet (Video portals etc.). The stick comes with no input device whatsoever. So I decided for a wireless Logitech K400r keyboard. Unfortunately the keyboard layout used by Android seems to be American (QWERTY) although the language and location settings are set to German. So I neither get Umlauts nor special signs correct nor do the media keys of the K400 work. But there is an easy way to make all this work. I've recently seen some people suggesting to install an app called External Keyboard Helper to fix things, which comes in a demo and a pro version, the latter with costs. Fortunately I didn't need any of these for the Logitech keyboard plus I got all media keys of this keyboard to work in just three steps without any cost :)

Step 1

First I went to the Google Play Store and installed the Logitech Keyboard Plus app by Logitech Europe S.A. (See? No external stuff and without costs. Ignore anything that's written in its description about Bluetooth.)

Step 2

Then I opened the settings section and went for Settings > Language and Input (Einstellungen > Sprache und Eingabe). Under KEYBOARD & INPUT METHOD (TASTATUR & EINGABEMETHODEN) I activated the entry called Logitech keyboard (Logitech Tastatur) as shown below.

Step 3

Now a click on the field above that is called Default (Standard) and (here) defaults to Deutsch - Android-Tastatur (AOSP) ...

... opened a popup called Choose input method and there I've chosen Logitech keyboard (Logitech Tastatur) as shown below and confirmed it.

The default now is the Logitech keyboard:

Finally ...

... it's done. The keyboard now behaves as expected and also the media/function keys do work. It is however not possible to adjust or configure anything, because this presumes a confirmed Bluetooth pairing between the keyboard and the android device and the K400 is not a Bluetooth device. It would probably be a good idea for Logitech to make this app usable for all available Logitech keyboards, even USB and Unifying(TM) ones. Update: As of now it is possible to cancel the Bluetooth pairing attempt without leaving the application. So this app in fact can be used for USB and Unifying(TM)-based Logitech keyboards.

Install automatically starting XBMC to N54L microserver under Debian Wheezy 7.7

This is a followup to my previous post about getting sound output from the Sapphire Radeon HD 6450 card in my HP N54L microserver via HDMI. This post will describe, howto install XBMC from Wheezy backports and how to automatically start it. Again, there are vaious ways and I'll only describe mine. Further, this is, what I did so far: enable the audio output for the Radeon card and install X.org together with lightdm.

Step 3 - Install XBMC

This is a pretty easy task. I've chosen to install XBMC 13.2 from the Wheezy backports repository.

# apt-get install -t wheezy-backports xbmc

Step 4 - Automically start XBMC

There are various ways; some involve starting it a s a service using init scripts für sysvinit or upstrart or systemd. You'll easily find them. I've chosen to create a user, automatically log him into X and start XBMC. The user is called xbmc.

# adduser --home /home/xbmc --add_extra_groups xbmc

I used to choose a password. But I wonder, if using --disabled-password would work too? Next I adjusted /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf. Below are only the differences to the stock version of this file. I haven't touched other lines.

[SeatDefaults]
greeter-session=lightdm-gtk-greeter
user-session=XBMC
autologin-guest=false
autologin-user=xbmc
autologin-user-timeout=0

The file /usr/share/xsessions/XBMC.desktop is the stock one, no changes made. After restarting lightdm:

# service lightdm restart

XBMC is started automatically. If anything goes wrong or doesn't work, I suggest to check /var/log/auth.log, /home/xbmc/.xsession-errors and /var/log/lightdm/*.log. In a few cases it seems necessary to login the user xbmc manually once although it wasn't necessary here.

JFTR: When I checked /var/log/auth.log I saw a few errors and installed gnome-keyring too:

apt-get install --install-recommends gnome-keyring

Step 5 - Useful packages

There are some packages, which might be useful running XBMC, e.g.

• udisks
• upower
• usbmount

Conclusion

I'm now running XBMC on top of Debian Wheezy on the N54L microserver without a bloated desktop environment. The system automatically starts the XBMC session on start/reboot. Video and sound are working fine, though it was necessary to install recent firmware and a recent kernel from Wheezy backports to get it done.

Thanks to the whole OSS community for aksing, for answering, for blogging, for using and for continue developing! I currently enjoy the results :)

Getting the audio over HDMI to work for the HP N54L microserver running Debian Wheezy and a Sapphire Radeon HD 6450

Conclusion: Sound over HDMI works with the Sapphire Radeon HD 6450 card in my HP N54L microserver. It requires a recent kernel and firmware from Wheezy 7.7 backports and the X.org server. There is no sound without X.org, even if audio has been enabled for the radeon kernel module.

Last year I couldn't get audio over HDMI to work after I installed a Sapphire Radeon HD 6450 1 GB (11190-02-20g) card into my N54L microserver. The cable that connects the HDMI interfaces between the card and the TV monitor supports HDMI 1.3, so audio should have been possible even then. However, I didn't get any audio output by XBMC playing video or music files. Nothing happened with stock Wheezy 7.1 and X.org/XBMC installed. So I removed the latter two and used the server as stock server without X/desktop and delayed my plans for an HTPC.

Now I tried again after I found some new hints, that made me curious for a second try :) Imagine my joy, when (finally) speaker-test produced noise on the TV! So here is my configuration and a step-by-step guide to

• enable Sound over HDMI for the Radeon HD 6450
• install a graphical environment
• install XBMC
• automatically start XBMC on boot

The latter two will be covered by a second post. Also note, that there is lot of information out there to achive the above tasks. So this is only about my configuration. Some packages below are marked as optional. A few are necessary only for the N54L microserver (firmware) and for a few I'm not sure they are necessary at all.

Step 1 - Prepare the system

At this point I don't have any desktop nor any other graphical environment (X.org) installed. First I purged pulseaudio and related packages completely and only use ALSA:

# apt-get autoremove --purge pulseaudio pulseaudio-utils pulseaudio-module-x11 gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio
# apt-get install alsa-base alsa-utils alsa-oss

Next I installed a recent linux kernel and recent firmware from Wheezy backports:

# apt-get install -t wheezy-backports linux-image-amd64 firmware-linux-free firmware-linux firmware-linux-nonfree firmware-atheros firmware-bnx2 firmware-bnx2x

This put linux-image-3.16-0.bpo.3-amd64 and recent firmware onto my system. I've chosen to upgrade linux-image-amd64 instead to pick a special (recent) linux kernel package from Wheezy backports to keep up-to-date with recent kernels from there.

Then I enabled the audio output of the kernel radeon module. Essentially there are at least three ways to do this. I use the one to modify /etc/modules.d/radeon.conf and set the audio parameter there. The hw_i2c parameter is disabled. I read, that it might cause trouble with the audio output here although I never personally experienced it:

options radeon audio=1 hw_i2c=0

JFTR: This is how I boot the N54L by default:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi=force pcie_aspm=force nmi_watchdog=0"

After rebooting I see this for the Radeon card in question:

# lsmod | egrep snd\|radeon\|drm | awk '{print $1}' | sort
[..]
drm
drm_kms_helper
i2c_algo_bit
i2c_core
radeon
snd
snd_hda_codec
snd_hda_codec_hdmi
snd_hda_controller
snd_hda_intel
snd_hwdep
snd_pcm
snd_seq
snd_seq_device
snd_timer
soundcore
ttm
[..]
# lspci -k
[..]
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Caicos [Radeon HD 6450/7450/8450 / R5 230 OEM]
        Subsystem: PC Partner Limited / Sapphire Technology Device e204
        Kernel driver in use: radeon
01:00.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Caicos HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 6400 Series]
        Subsystem: PC Partner Limited / Sapphire Technology Radeon HD 6450 1GB DDR3
        Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
[..]
# cat  /sys/module/radeon/parameters/audio 
1
# cat  /sys/module/radeon/parameters/hw_i2c 
0
# aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
# aplay -L
null
    Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
pulse
    PulseAudio Sound Server
hdmi:CARD=HDMI,DEV=0
    HDA ATI HDMI, HDMI 0
    HDMI Audio Output

At this point, without having the X.org server installed, I still have no audio output to the connected monitor. Running alsamixer I only see the S/PDIF bar for the HDA ATI HDMI device, showing a value of 00. I can mute and un-mute this device but not change the value. No need to worry, sound comes with step two.

Step 2 - Install a graphical environment (X.org server)

Next is to install a graphical environment, basically the X.org server. This is done in Debian by the desktop task. Unfortunately tasksel makes use of APT::Install-Recommends="true" and would install a desktop environment and some more recommended packages. At the moment I don't want this, only X. So basically I installed only the task-desktop package with dependencies:

# apt-get install task-desktop xfonts-cyrillic

Next is to install a display manager. I've chosen lightdm:

# apt-get install lightdm accountsservice

Done. Now (re-)start the X server. Simply ...

# service lightdm restart

... should do. And now there is sound, probably due to the X.org Radeon driver. The following command created noise on the two monitor speakers :)

# speaker-test -c2 -D hdmi:0 -t pink

Finally there is sound over HDMI!

Step 3 - Install XBMC

To be continued ...

Idea: A new toy (ein neues Spielzeug) ... HP Microserver N54L

Ich fertige regelmäßig Backups meiner Systeme an. Diese werden auf der Systemplatte meines Notebooks abgelegt und via rsync auf mobilen Speicher dupliziert. Hierzu verwende ich eine USB-Festplatte. Diese enthält auch Medien-Dateien und wird regelmäßig an den Fernseher angeschlossen. Prinzipiell halte ich meine Daten daher für sicher. Aber vor kurzem stieß ich an die Grenzen ihrer Kapazität.

Schon länger habe ich nach einer Alternative gesucht, nicht zuletzt da heute viel größere Festplatten möglich sind und mein Laptop über einen eSATA-Anschluss verfügt, der schneller als USB2.0 ist. Meine bevorzugte Variante war ein FANTEC DB-ALU3e Gehäuse mit einer WD Red WD20EFRX 2TB (5400 RPM) Festplatte, die für den 24/7 Betrieb zertifiziert ist (und zudem über eine ausgezeichnete Reputation verfügt). Die Kombination lief sehr gut und schnell, sieht edel aus, benötigt aber eine externe Stromversorgung. Ich kann Sie als Speicherlösung absolut empfehlen.

Allerdings hatte ich zu diesem Zeitpunkt noch weitere Ansprüche, die mit der o.g. Lösung nicht zu befriedigen sind. So trage ich mich bereits länger mit dem Gedanken an ein RAID-1-NAS. Außerdem spiegelt sich die Beanspruchung meiner Notebook-Festplatte durch das Pakete-Bauen für Debian im S.M.A.R.T.-Status wieder. Daher wollte ich diese Arbeit an einen robusten lokalen buildd-Boliden abgeben und habe über den Kauf eines günstigen Rechners nachgedacht. Ein NAS verbraucht aber deutlich weniger Strom als ein Desktop-Rechner.

Also wie lässt sich ein buildd und ein energiesparendes NAS vereinen? Per Zufall stieß ich bei einem lokalen Händler auf den HP ProLiant MicroServer N40L. Das Angebot klang super und so entschied ich mich zum Kauf meines neuen Spielzeuges: ein HP ProLiant MicroServer N54L, der zukünftig folgende Aufgaben verrichten soll:

Datensicherung

Die Sicherung der Daten erfolgt cron-gesteuert auf den RAID-Verbund in eine gesonderte (verschlüsselte) Partition. Der S.M.A.R.T.-Status der Festplatten wird via smartd überwacht. Sollte eine Platte kaputt gehen, bestehen gute Aussichten, die Daten zu retten. Eine zukünftige Option wäre auch noch ein RAID-6 Verbund.

NAS / File-Server

Das Gerät verfügt über bis zu 6 SATA Anschlüsse. Davon werden vier standardmäßig via Wechselrahmen belegt. Die mitgelieferte 250GB Festplatte wird vorerst das Betriebssystem aufnehmen und an den drei verbleibenden Anschlüssen werden zunächst drei WD Red WD20EFRX 2TB (5400 RPM) Festplatten als RAID-5-Verbund für den notwendigen Platz sorgen. Letzterer lässt sich ohne Erweiterung nur via Software-Raid und mdadm realisieren.

buildd

Betriebssystem wird Debian GNU/Linux. Der Hauptspeicher wird auf mindestens 8GB ECC-Ram aufgerüstet.

HTPC (XBMC)

Der Microserver lässt sich nicht als Massenspeicher an einen Fernseher anschließen. Daher soll vorr. XBMC in Verbindung mit einem USB3.0 BR/DVD-Player den Server zum Entertainment-Gerät erheben.

Das ganze soll möglichst wenig Strom verbrauchen und leise sein. Zum Anschluss an das lokale Netzwerk habe ich mich für WLAN entschieden, da kein Gigabit-Ethernet vorhanden ist. Folgende Teile benötige ich für "meinen" Server:

Server

HP ProLiant N54L MicroServer mit Turion II Neo 2,2 GHz, 2GB RAM/250GB HDD - ca. 200 EUR (lokal)

Belüftung / Lautstärke

Scythe Slip Stream Gehäuselüfter 120mm 800RPM 11dB - ca. 9 EUR (SY1225SL12L)

Scythe Slip Stream Gehäuselüfter 120mm 500RPM 7,5dB - ca. 8 EUR (SY1225SL12SL)

Netzwerk

TP-Link TL-WN722N(C) 150Mbps USB-Adapter - ca. 15 EUR (TL-WN722N(C))

File-Server

3x WD Red WD20EFRX 2TB 5400 RPM SATA600 für NAS 24/7 - ca. 95 EUR / St. (WD20EFRX)

buildd

8GB (2x4GB) Kingston ValueRAM DDR3-1333 CL9 ECC Modul RAM-Kit - ca. 85 EUR (KVR1333D3E9SK2/8G)

16GB (2x8GB) Kingston ValueRAM DDR3-1333 CL9 ECC Modul RAM-Kit - ca. 145 EUR (KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G)

HTPC

Sapphire Radeon HD 5450/6450/6570/6670/7750 PCIe 16x Low-Profile passiv/aktiv - ca. 25..100 EUR (11166-45-20G, 11190-09-20G, 11191-27-20G, 11191-02-20G, 11192-18-20G, 11202-10-20G)

SILVERSTONE PCIe 1x USB3.0 2xInt 2xExt - ca. 21 EUR (SST-EC04-P)

Logitech K400 od. Keysonic ACK-540RF - ca. 40 EUR (920-003100 bzw. ACK-540 RF)

BR/DVD-Player od. Brenner mit USB3.0 Anschluss - 50..100 EUR

LCD-Mod

LDC Display Modul mind. 4x20 - ca. 10 EUR

Interessant ist auch noch die Option einer echten RAID-Karte. Ich stieß dabei auf die IBM ServeRAID M1015 (46M0831) und diesen Hinweis. Kauft man stattdessen den "Schlüssel" zur Freischaltung des vollen Funktionsumfanges, dann bezahlt man (lokal) zusätzlich ca. 150 EUR! Aber das nur BTW.

Nützliche Links:

• HP MicroServer N40L Wiki
• HP ProLiant MicroServer N36L/N40L/N54L Sammelthread