Posts Tagged ‘Slingbox’

Slingbox Setup with Wireless Ethernet Bridge

By Chief Oddball on November 10th, 2009 at 1:27 pm

Filed under Journal ··· Leave a Comment

From time to time, I’ll post something here that’s primarily a note to myself. You might wonder why I don’t simply write this down in a document and store it on my computer someplace. In addition to my hope that these notes may offer some value to others as well, the reason is largely organizational. After all, as I back up stuff, move files around and archive things, eventually I can’t remember where I put that one file across all of the various terabytes of storage. But in the case of notes I’ve left for myself on this site, I can always find them in an instant.

So last night I was wrapping up work for the day at around 10:00 and decided that I should plug the Slingbox back in, after not having used it for a while. Actually, it was Apple who had suggested it to me earlier in the day, since we’re going to be on vacation this weekend and it might be fun to use the Slingbox while traveling. Because the Slingbox SOLO doesn’t have built-in wireless, and because it’s situated at the opposite end of the house from my main router, I needed to hook up a second router in bridge mode. Unfortunately, the network setup confounded me for some time, as I seemed unable to remember how to properly set up my second wireless router. I finally figured out what I was doing wrong, so here I’ll describe the setup that worked for me.

First of all, my primary router is a Linksys WRT54GL version 1.1, running Tomato firmware 1.25. The secondary router is an older WRT54G version 2, running HyperWRT Thibor 15c, which I put into bridge mode so the Slingbox could be plugged into it and still have access to my wireless network. With that established, here are the steps:

Primary Router

  1. Set up Static DHCP so the secondary router always gets the same IP address. I assigned it 192.168.1.149, which is the last assignable IP in my DHCP range.
  2. Forward the Slingbox port (5001 by default) to the secondary router’s internal address (192.168.1.149 in my case).

Secondary Router

  1. Change the router’s mode to Wireless Ethernet Bridge.
  2. Configure the wireless settings to match those on the primary router (SSID, security type, password, etc.)
  3. Change the Internet access mode to “Static IP.”
  4. For the router’s Internet IP, enter the same IP you assigned it in your primary router. (Again, in my case that was 192.168.1.149.)
  5. Enter your primary router’s address in the Gateway field — mine is 192.168.1.1.
  6. Enter a subnet mask of 255.255.255.0.
  7. For the router’s internal address, I think I entered 192.168.1.2. I don’t think this is too important.
  8. Disable the DHCP server. A device that you plug into the secondary router will be assigned an IP by the primary router.

That should get it working. Strangely, when I was Googling around for help on setting this up, I found a huge load of articles that all seemed to describe a different way of getting this to work, and none of them gave me the right advice. In the end, amusingly, it was an article in Sling Media’s own knowledge base that gave me the clue I needed — I should have gone there to begin with.

Comments (0)

Slinging Around the World…or Across the House

By Chief Oddball on October 9th, 2008 at 11:45 pm

Filed under Reviews ··· Leave a Comment

Whenever I visit Thailand, as Apple and I often do, I inevitably miss being “plugged in” to the entertainment and news media I’m used to having here in the U.S. Whether it’s live updates on the day’s happenings from CNN, the latest local news from our hometown, or even just a voice speaking English (heh heh), American media — for all its faults — quickly becomes something I wish I could more readily get my hands on.

This week, I installed the final component in a system which I hope will alleviate this problem: a Slingbox Solo. The Slingbox is a set-top device that takes the video output from a device of your choice — for example, your TiVo DVR — and “slings” it over the Internet to any location on Earth.

When you install the SlingPlayer application on your computer or mobile phone, you can “catch” the sling signal and, essentially, watch American TV from your patio in Thailand.

SlingPlayer with TiVo Series 3 Remote

SlingPlayer with TiVo Series 3 Remote

Setup of the ‘Box was fairly easy — I connected it to my TiVo HD’s component output, and attached it to my network via the old WRT54G I’d converted to a wireless Ethernet bridge. The first test was to try watching TV from my desktop computer — an effortless challenge, I was soon to see. It works flawlessly and beautifully over my wireless LAN, even from the opposite end of the house. I can stream a detailed VGA picture at full frame rate with no hiccuping or hitches, with a bitrate upwards of 6000 kbps.

Tonight, I took the testing procedure a step further and went down to my parents’ house so I could do a remote test. Again, everything worked beautifully, and I was surprised at how good a picture you can get out of a relatively small amount of bandwidth. I adjusted the SlingPlayer’s bitrate lock to simulate the amount of bandwidth I expect to have in Thailand, and even using HVGA resolution, the picture was still very detailed and very watchable.

The real test will be to try the Slingbox from a very distant location, which I won’t really be able to do until prime time. The big bottleneck with a connection from Thailand will be latency — if it’s too high, no amount of bandwidth on either end will save it — and issuing remote commands will be awful. We have a couple of different options for Internet in Thailand, though, so I’m hoping at least one of them will be an acceptable solution.

As far as connectivity, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Sling Media employs their own method of locating your Slingbox on the Internet. I had registered a Dynamic DNS domain name in advance, thinking I would have to connect manually to my home router, but it turns out this is not necessary. Each Slingbox has a unique “Finder ID,” and Sling Media maintains a directory server that stores information on how to reach your Slingbox. The box itself routinely pings the directory server so that the information is kept fresh. When you install SlingPlayer, you can login to your Sling Account and the rest of your connection is handled automatically. Still, I’m keeping the Dynamic DNS hostname active just in case the Finder ID method fails (you can use either method to connect to your Slingbox).

SlingPlayer also comes with a host of controls for bandwidth, resolution and picture quality optimization. It can either adjust the stream dynamically based on your Internet connection quality, or you can set a few ground rules you want it to follow (for example, you can force it to use a higher resolution, or a fixed bit rate). You can also set a password to access your ‘Box, and if someone else is using it when you try to connect, it will give you their IP address so you know who it is.

I got the Slingbox for $158 with a $20 instant rebate and free shipping at NewEgg.com. NewEgg apparently drop-shipped from a supplier in Jacksonville, so I even got it the very next day. Based on what I’ve seen so far, this is one nifty piece of hardware that’s well worth its price tag. If you want to watch your stuff on the go, I can think of no better way.

Comments (0)