I spent some time the last few weekends hacking on a product I first developed in 2004: MCE Controller. MCE Controller lets you control a Windows Home Theater PC (or any PC) over the network. It runs in the background listening on the network (or serial port) for commands. It then translates those commands into actions such as keystrokes, text input, and the starting of programs. Any remote control, home control system, or application that can …Continue reading
I love git. I love GitHub. But GitHub doesn’t seem to appreciate open source projects that require hosting more than source code. MCE Controller is an open source Windows app intended to be used by non-developers. This means it has an installer, online documentation, and requires a discussion forum for support for end users. GitHub never really provided great support for this kind of project. For example, there is no forum/discussion feature (although some claim …Continue reading
By popular demand (shocking, I know), MCE Controller now supports RS-232 in addition to TCP/IP connections. This means that you can now control any Windows PC via the serial port. MCE Controller is an open source application I built for my home control system. It makes it easy to integrate Windows PCs with other devices and control systems. Any device that can send strings over TCP/IP or (now!) a serial port can now send commands …Continue reading
MCE Controller allows you to remotely control another Windows PC on your network. For example it allows you to simulate a press of any button on the Windows Media Center IR remote control from another computer; if MCE Controller receives the string “mypictures” it will tell Media Center to go to the “My Pictures” page. Today a user asked how to send Unicode characters such £ and € and I added this functionality to the …Continue reading
[UPDATED: Feb 11, 2012 – Version 1.4.0 Released] MCE Controller enables the remote control of a Windows PC over the network. It runs in the background on a Windows PC listening on the network for commands. It then translates those commands into actions such as keystrokes, text input, and the starting of programs. I wrote MCE Controller in 2003 for my own home control system. In 2004 I released it publicly so others could use …Continue reading
MCE Controller, allows you to simulate a press of any button on the Windows Media Center IR remote control by sending a text command to a TCP/IP port on your Media Center computer. For example if MCE Controller receives the string “mypictures” it will tell Media Center to go to the “My Pictures” page. I wrote this app in back in ~2003 for my own use so I could integrate Media Center with my Crestron …Continue reading
Once again the most amazing consumer product Microsoft has ever created, Windows Home Server, has saved my family [disclaimer]. Today I was in a meeting and I got a text message from my 15 year old daughter. It read (spelling and txt errors verbatim): “daddddd o my god. i think i just deleated all my pictures from freshmen year. please call meee!” I texted her back “Ok, don’t touch anything. I’ll call you when I …Continue reading
From the Windows Home Server Team Blog: The team is pleased to announce that Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 has been released to manufacturing (RTM) and is now available on the Microsoft Download Center! This update fixes the data corruption bug that was found in Windows Home Server in December (and has great new functionality too). From Wikipedia, regarding the song “Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead!” from the movie The Wizard of Oz: The …Continue reading
Today, instead of being the GM for Windows Home Server, I was simply a user… For the last two weeks my wife has been giving me the gears because the voicemail attachements from Vonage refused to play in Outlook on her computer. It was one of those weird software problems that defied logic. All other types of attachments opened fine. I could send her an email with a .wav file attached and it would play …Continue reading
Late last year I “discovered” Karl Schroeder when I read Sun of Suns: Book One of Virga. Recently he released the 2nd book of this series titled Queen of Candesce: Book Two of Virga and I finished it this weekend. Like the first book I thoroughly enjoyed it. Like the first book, I found a few too many “convenient” plot alignments. But overall, Karl paints an amazing picture of a “world” that is extraordinarily rich …Continue reading
09-22-02 107.jpg Originally uploaded by ckindel I just updated my Windows Home Server with Ed Halloway’s PhotoSync Beta 2. This Add-in for Windows Home Server automatically ensures that all photos stored in a particular folder on your home server are automatically published to your Flickr account. I have a shared folder on my home server named \\server\screensaverpics. Every time we offload photos from a camera I copy a few of the really great photos to …Continue reading
See my post over on the Windows Home Server team blog announcing the availabilty of the Windows Home Server SDK!
Stop Digital Amnesia SWAG Originally uploaded by ckindel. Have you checked out www.stopdigitalamnesia.com yet? We put this website together as a teaser for our announcement of Windows Home Server at CES. It is funny and informational!This photo is of some of the SWAG we gave out at CES to go along with the marketing campaign.Oh, and if you are posting screen shots of Windows Home Server on Flickr and tag them with “windowshomeserver”, “whs”, and …Continue reading
This morning I used Windows Home Server’s Compter Backup capability to “upgrade” my main workstation’s HDD. Here’s how I did it… My main PC at home has a 60GB WD Raptor 10k RPM drive in it. For some reason that escapes me, long ago I had configured it such that I was only using one of these drives and I had it partitioned into two partitions (C: 40GB and D: the rest). Why I did …Continue reading
ComputerWorld has a comprehesive review of Windows Home Server. “I found Home Server to be intuitive to use and very effective at backing up data as well as monitoring my home network’s health. Its simplicity and automation will make it a winner with many home users. More technically savvy users, however, may find its limitations frustrating. Microsoft has done a great job of hiding the complexities of server management in Home Server. … For my part, …Continue reading
Fake Windows Home Server screen. This is weird. I can understand people who have too much time on their hands creating fake product images of products that are not available yet. For example all of the mocked up images of Apple’s products that show up on Engadget regularly.I get that.I also sorta get the fact that when the Wikipedia article for Windows Home Server appeared (the day we announced in January) it had a fake/mocked up …Continue reading
Terry over at We Got Served posted a nice run through of what the setup for Windows Home Server beta 2 is like. He took pictures along the way and if you are curious to see what it looks like before you get your beta kit take a gander. We Got Served Note this is probably the last post I’ll make for a while; I’m off to Africa for vacation. We are going to the Serengeti!
Until OEMs ship Windows Home Server hardware the only way to run Windows Home Server is on a machine you provide. The hardware requirements are pretty meager: An x86 CPU with roughly the same horsepower as a 1GHz Pentium III. It will actually run on less (I had it running on an old 550MHz Pentium III for a while), but for a reasonable experience you want something in this range. My current box at home …Continue reading
Whew! I finally finished River of Gods by Ian McDonald this weekend. I categorize River of Gods as a “Great story but a PITA to read book”. Here’s the deal: I shouldn’t have to work to read a science fiction novel. To me “a great read” just flows…I start reading the first chapter and 17 hours later I close the book and say “wow”. The books I love to read don’t make me tired. I …Continue reading
My team (the Windows Home Server team) now has a blog. Here’s the abstract for this new blog. This blog is managed by the Windows Home Server team at Microsoft. Our goal with the blog is to educate and inform families with multiple PCs about how Windows Home Server will help them easily store, protect and share their treasured photos, music, videos and documents. We hope you enjoy the blog and find it a good source of …Continue reading
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