Mac Geekery

Galleon is a relatively new project that allows any system with Java to host a wide range of services for your TiVo, ranging from getting news and weather, to archiving your TiVo video and serving your own video to your TiVo. The best part is that this requires no hacking of your TiVo. All of this can be accomplished via the public HME APIs that TiVo has made available to developers.

Having recently installed this software and seeing how useful it is, I wanted to talk a bit about it with some articles on MG. In this first one, I’ll go over installation and basic setup of Galleon. Later, I’ll talk about some more advanced arrangements you can make with Galleon.

At its core, HME is a very simple idea: a program runs on your computer that provides services on the TiVo in the form of pictures and sound, and takes input from the TiVo to trigger changes on the computer. Galleon is a host program, written in Java, that uses a modular architecture to provide a wide range of services ranging from news (RSS) and weather (with forecasts, radar, and local alerts) all the way to podcasting and videocasting (audio-only) support. In fact, with TiVo’s ToGo and GoBack features, Galleon can also take video from your TiVo and send it back, turning your computer into an additional TiVo in the home, essentially.

A complete list of features as of 1.6 includes such things like: an RSS reader for reading news on-screen; an MP3 player that uses either using your iTunes playlists, custom M3U playlists, or by presenting an organized display based on ID3 tags (no AAC support as yet; does support streams); a photo browser that navigates a hierarchy and gathers all photos for display; a Shoutcast client that uses the streams listed on Shoutcast a weather module that includes local status, forecast, radar, and NWS alerts for your area; a webcam viewer a basic e-mail client a local movie listings module; a viewer for Internet slideshows which are just photo attachments in an RSS feed; and videocasts which requires some tweaking to get working right but does work.

Installation

Installation of Galleon can be very easy. Just make sure you understand that you’re going to have to get a little dirty to get started and that you’ll also need to do a little thinking about how you want things laid out in your home network as well.

Requirements

• TiVo Series 2 with version 7.2 or later software
• Mac OS X 10.3 or 10.4 with the absolute-latest Java updates
• A home network that your TiVo and home computer share
• (Preferred) Static IPs for your TiVo and computer
• (Preferred) Few other processes running on the desktop

To gauge, I’m running this on a G4/450 and things have a slight delay, but it’s more than acceptable for what I get.

Preparation

Your Mac should be on the same IP subnet as your TiVo. Both should, ideally, have a static IP on your home network (you’ll see why in later articles). Ideally, your HME server (the Mac) will have one interface so that ZeroConf works correctly both ways or, if you have two, you have the primary interface as the local LAN. If you have something special, you’ll have to do some manual configuration later that I don’t go into here.

Obtain the Package

Go to the Galleon downloads page and get the Mac OS X package. If you’re unskilled in the geekery of Java class paths, don’t even think about getting the ZIP file. Even if the Mac package is behind, get the Mac package. If you’re good with class paths, get the latest ZIP and have at it.

Because the package installs into /Applications/Galleon this article will use this to base file paths off of when needed.

Install

If you’re using the package file, double-click and run through it.

If you’re using the ZIP file, find a handy place and run the Unix directions on the Galleon install page. Understand that the Mac package comes with two scripts: run.sh and gui.sh. These set the class paths and then run the JAR with the proper arguments for the server and the GUI interface, respectively. It would be best to make sure these exist and work for you now.

Start

You’re going to want this to run in the background all of the time so you don’t need to worry about it, but Galleon requires the run.sh file be run while in the bin directory, which means you get to dive into Terminal and have at it. Usually.

It’s widely-known that I’m launchd’s bitch. It stands to reason I got that working within minutes.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>net.sourceforge.galleon</string>
        <key>ServiceDescription</key>
        <string>TiVo HME Server</string>
        <key>Program</key>
        <string>/bin/bash</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>/bin/bash</string>
                <string>/Applications/Galleon/bin/run.sh</string>
        </array>
        <key>RootDirectory</key>
        <string>/Applications/Galleon/</string>
        <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
        <string>/Applications/Galleon/bin/</string>
        <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
        <string>/Applications/Galleon/logs/galleon.err</string>
        <key>StandardOutPath</key>
        <string>/Applications/Galleon/logs/galleon.log</string>
        <key>Nice</key>
        <integer>5</integer>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
        <key>StartInterval</key>
        <integer>30</integer>
</dict>
</plist>

I’ve done a few things here that are more than the basic, required elements. I’ve rooted the process in its own root directory, niced the process so it doesn’t take the machine over, put the output of the program into logs, and told it to make sure it’s running every 30 seconds to give it time to die completely if/when it does die.

If you want to just run this from Terminal, as you should during testing, do so as such:

$ cd /Applications/Galleon/bin
$ ./run.sh

Either way, get it started.

Setup and Run

Once the server portion is running you’ll need to do basic setup which, for this install article is “add a module and prove that it’s working.”

First, run the GUI:

$ cd /Applications/Galleon/bin
$ ./gui.sh

You will have to do this every time. What you can do is save these two lines in a text file, add “#!/bin/sh” at the top, call it “Galleon.command” and then set the execute bit. Then when you open it in the Finder, Terminal will run the commands for you.

In the GUI go to the File menu and pick Properties. Enter all the information for your TiVo, if needed. Close this and go to File again and then New App. Enter “News” for the title and pick “RSS” for the type and hit OK. Pick News from the list and then add a feed (like, say, “Mac Geekery” and “http://www.macgeekery.com/node/feed”) and hit Apply.

Go to your TiVo and get to TiVo Central. Pick Music and Photos and then, if you have 7.2, you’ll have the option for “Enable Home Network Applications” (if it’s “Disable” then leave it alone). If you see “Enable” here, pick it to turn it on. If you’ve done things right then “News” will show up here. Pick it and you’re good to go.

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