BubbaMon

Only for BUBBA|SERVER

What is bubbamon?

Not long after I bought my Bubba I also bought a Pinnacle SoundBridge, a media player that plays streaming music on your stereo. While playing with it I noticed one can control what is displayed on the display. This made me think it would be neat to show information from my Bubba on the SoundBridge display. A couple of days later I had my first version of bubbamon up and running.

Bubbamon will collect information like harddisk usage, harddisk temperature, uptime and information about active downloads. This information is then presented on the SoundBridge display, each download on it's own screen showing name, progress and download speed.

Here are two pictures showing what the screens look like. Sorry for the crappy quality, I'll update them as soon as I get a chance.

First screen, showing bubba information.
This picture show the first screen with information about bubba.
Following screen, showing download information.
...and this is what the download screen look like.

Installing bubbamon

As of version 0.6, Bubbamon became fully "debianized". This means it is a debian package and installation should be a breeze. The older versions were a bit more complicated to install so I decided not to include them here. If you want one of them, let me know.

Download BubbaMon v0.7

  • Requires: Bubba firmware 0.51.2
  • Released: Feb 9, 2008.

Once you've downloaded the file to your bubba, log on to bubba and become root, then type: dpkg --install bubbamon_X.Y_all.deb (replace X.Y with latest version). This will install the package (you'll be asked a couple of questions during installation).

Mode of operation

Bubbamon was designed to run in one of two modes:

  • Cron mode
    When run as a cron job, cron will start bubbamon with a set interval. Each time it is started, it will display all screens with a set interval. You can only navigate in menus when cron is running bubbamon.
  • Daemon mode
    When run in daemon mode, bubbamon will run in the background. Menus are available at any time by pressing MENU_HOME key three times.

Using bubbamon

No matter what mode you select, bubbamon will cycle through all screens with a set interval (except in manual mode which requires user action to start bubbamon). Each screen, starting with bubba information screen, is then displayed. When all screens have been dislayed, the SoundBridge is returned to the state it was in when bubbamon started. Note that while any screen is showing, you have the ability to navigate between the screens with the remote control.

Menus

First item is always the status screen, showing uptime, harddisk usage and temperature.

Next screens will be the active downloads, if any. Each download screen show the name of the file being downloaded, a progressbar showing how much has been downloaded so far and next to this is the download speed.

Remote control

Whenever bubbamon is running, you have the choice to control what is displayed with the remote control. The following keys on the remote control are handled by bubbamon:

  • MENU_HOME Press three times to activate menu if nothing is showing but bubbamon is running. If menu is already showing, pressing again will take you to the first screen.
  • UP/DOWN Use up and down to navigate through screens.
  • EXIT Exit will leave the menu, closing it and return SoundBridge to previous mode.
  • SELECT When showing a file download, this will cancel the transfer. You are asked to confirm this by selecting YES or NO with left or right keys. Press SELECT again to confirm selection. If no key is pressed within 30 seconds, operation is aborted. That is, the file transfer will continue. You may cancel the operation with EXIT key, which will take you back to the menu.

Older versions

Here you'll find older versions if for some reason you want any of them.