Plex

December 3, 2018

Sonarr & Deluge Auto Extract and Delete Files

So I recently made the change from using Sickrage & Medusa to switching over to Sonarr.  I honestly don’t know why I didn’t make the change sooner.  The interface is nice and straight forward and there is absolutely no lag.  However it did take a few days getting everything to work properly.  The hardest thing was getting Sonarr / Deluge to extract packed rar/zipped TV shows and then later remove the files.  Also before I forget let me say I was a huge qBittorrent user before this; so switching over to Deluge was a little bit of a learning curve. 

Anyways here’s what I did to accomplish Sonarr and Deluge extracting the files then moving the episode to its TV hard-drive location and finally deleting the packed files/torrent.

 There are two plugins you need to install inside of Deluge first.

Simple Extractor is pretty straight forward where do you want to extract the files.  Since I’m using Sonarr everything that comes from the Sonarr application gets a “label” or a category assigned to it such as “tv-sonarr“.  So this will extract the zip contents in the same directory.

Next is configuring the AutoRemovePlus plugin for Deluge.  

Change Check every to 0.1000.  This will have the plugin check your torrents about every 2 and a half hours and delete any that meet the criteria.

Change Maximum Torrents to the number of torrents you want to leave seeding at any one time. If you want the torrents to clear out as quickly as possible, set it to 0.

Change Remove by to Seed Time and set the value to 0.166. This is measured in days, so this setting will clear out torrents that have been seeding for 4 hours. You don’t want to set this to 0, because that runs the risk of removing torrents before your server has the chance of importing the data.

For Exempted Trackers, add any trackers that you don’t want to auto-remove. Private trackers often require you to maintain a certain ratio, so you will want to leave those seeding for as long as possible. In my example above, I have empirehost.me, ipt.af, and iptorrents.com, which are three trackers that IP Torrents uses.

I’ve tested this for several days now and it works flawlessly.  Just remember it won’t remove the content from your tv-sonarr folder until 2 and a half hours.  This gives sonarr sometime to catch up with itself.

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June 28, 2018

Fire TV Cube and PLEX Media Server are you using it correctly?

I love using PLEX Media Server and since all my DVDs have been backed up to my computer.  I no longer need to take media to each different rooms of my house.  So anyways I recently purchased a Fire TV Cube which is a hands-free Amazon TV experience.  I liked using the Plex feature and I could ask it commands such as “Alexa, Ask Plex to Hackers” and it would load up the 1995 Movie Hackers.  However it only worked sometimes.

I would always get the following errors:

  1. The Plex Companion was not running or could not be found.
  2. The Plex Default Video Player is not set.  Would you like to set one now?

I was confused why I was getting these errors so I decided to ask a question on their forum.

Turns out I’ve been using the Fire Cube & Plex wrong all along.  Alexa Skills can’t actually open apps by itself yet.  So the Plex App has to already be running.

So every time you want to “Ask Plex” something via Alexa, you need to make sure Plex is running behind it.  I totally understand it now.

So first you can say:  “ Alexa, open Plex “.

Then once it’s opened you can trigger the Play command.  “ Alexa, Ask Plex to Play Hot Tub Time Machine “.

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June 27, 2018

Amazon Fire TV Cube using PLEX, Blink Cameras and More

I recently purchased an Amazon Fire TV Cube how does this differ from the Fire Stick or the 4K Streaming box.  Well it’s hand’s free.  Another game changer for me is ability to control the TV without having to purchase a new Smart TV.  I have 2 kids and its constantly a struggle finding one remote let alone two.

What I love about this device is I no longer need my TV’s actual remote.  I can say the following commands and they just work perfect.

  • Alexa, Turn on the TV / Turn off the TV
  • Alexa, Turn up the Volume / Turn down the Volume  – this will also adjust your soundbar or AV Receiver.  ( I’m a huge Sonos user and I just ordered the Sonos Play Base & Sub woofer, so we will see if they play together ).
  • Alexa, Switch to BluRay, Switch to Cable
  • Alexa, Tune to ESPN

I can also literally sit anywhere in my living room even if the volume is on high and the Fire TV Cube will hear me.

What I really love about the Fire TV Cube is the hands free PLEX Media Server experience. 

Honestly, I’m a huge Plex user and supporter almost all of my media is ripped to my computer were I do not need physical copies of my discs any more.  I can be sitting anywhere in my living room and say “Alexa, Ask Plex to Play Hackers movie” and within seconds Hackers (1995) will be playing.

Common Voice Commands

You can get started with some simple voice commands:

  • Ask Plex what's On Deck?
  • Ask Plex to suggest something to watch
  • Ask Plex what's new?
  • Tell Plex to play The Big Lebowski
  • Tell Plex to play music by Bob Marley
  • Tell Plex to pause
  • Tell Plex to stop

Fire TV Cube and Blink Cameras

I currently use Blink and Blink XT camera’s outside and I cannot wait for them to add the following support to be able to watch the Camera clips on my TV.  I tested the commands yesterday everything works however the ability to

  • “Alexa, Ask Blink to Arm My Home System”
  • “Alexa, Ask Blink to Disarm My Vacation System, My Pin is…”
  • “Alexa, Ask Blink What is My Status?”
  • “Alexa, show the <camera name> camera”   (Not implemented yet into the Fire cube).
  • “Alexa, hide the <camera name> camera”    (Not implemented yet into the Fire cube).

 

Fire TV Cube and Sonos Surround Sound

So I’m a huge fan of Sonos, I have the Play 1 and Play 3 speakers throughout my entire house.  Every room to be exact.  I wrote some other articles in the past about my doorbell being connected to my Sonos and when the mailman opens my mailbox it play’s a sound throughout all the speakers in the house at certain times of course.  This time I decided to take the jump and purchase the Sonos Play Base & Sub woofer for my living room.  Once I can get an electrician to install (2) outlets on at the higher ends of my ceilings I’m looking to go for the entire 5.1 experience.

The Playbase and woofer are scheduled to arrive this evening and I will post back on how my experience is with the Fire TV Cube.

 

Some of the bad features and it’s probably just me: 

  • I’m still getting use to all of the play commands for example I seem to keep getting stuck on an app when I say “Alexa, Tune to ESPN” it seem’s if I’m on an App lets say the Food Network it try’s to find ESPN related videos inside of the Food Network app.
  • Another weird thing it seems the cube will output Audio of its external speaker rather than through the TV or the receiver.  This is kind of driving me nuts.  I actually wish it didn’t say anything out of the speaker at all.  Going to look tonight to see if there’s an option to disable.
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