Digital Maricopa

Upon my first visit to the library, I wanted to give an early review of the setup there. The library is a great place to study, research, and chill while reading a book or surfing the web. Being a generally quiet area, the ability to surf quickly and with little interruption should be prevalent. After sending the kids off to pick out some books and nestling in a quiet corner, I began my review.

I use four factors in judging how well a WiFi hotspot is setup. Cost, Ease of Use, Speed of Service, and Ambiance. Each one is graded on a scale of 4, with 4 being the highest and 1 the lowest.

Cost: Free. The setup is totally free with no strings attached. I didn’t even have to get a library card to surf. Pretty sweet in my book. I give them the awesome 4 for this one.

Ease of use: The access point was an easy find. There were no captive portals so logon was a brease. I don’t remember if the SSID was unique, but at the library, that was the only one in range. I give them a 4 for this.

Speed of Service: I have selected my usual servers for this test. Again, this service is Qwest.

Basic single DSL connection. Not something a gamer is looking for. I fear that since a lot of people will use this point and bog down the connection, I will give them a 1. At least bump up the service some.

Ambiance: The library is supposed to be quiet. I did notice a lot of kids running around, and lots of people on the computers. It wasn’t loud, but I could get annoyed if I stayed there much longer than an hour or so. I go with a 3 simply because it is a very public, although quiet, place.

Totals:
Cost: 4
Ease: 4
Speed: 1
Ambiance: 3
___________
Final Score: 12

This is a good place to do your surfing if your looking for a semi-quiet place to sit down and surf the web. If your board and want something else to do, grab a book on your way home. This offers advantages that other places can’t offer, I just wish it was a bit quieter and faster. Still, a great place to surf.

Tully’s is a coffee shop located in the Fry’s Marketplace.  Just inside the doors, near the floral area, you can sit down and have a cup of your favorite coffe drink while watching TV or just watching frugal shoppers walk by.  Coffee is decently priced and good. I decided to review the wireless setup at this little joint to see if it holds up to the traditional hype of a coffee shop.


Cost:  FREE!! It already beats some other coffee shops with their pay to play service.  Easily scoring a 4 here.


Ease of Use:  Connecting to the access point is easy. You just look for the Tully’s SSID and hook up. No secure connection to the system.  Little unsafe for a user, but still easy to use.  Score of a 4 here.


Speed of Service:  Here is the test of the three servers. The Service provider is Quest Communications.





 

Having one person on the service is speedy enough for very basic internet surfing. 2 and your pushing it. 3 and it gets pretty slow. Pings do get high though. Going with a 1 here since it is a very basic DSL connection.


Ambiance of the Area: Tully’s has three tables, a small bar near a wall, and a couch and two chairs around a coffee table with a TV. The setup is nice, but your in a grocery store. Also, you are very close to the electronics section so you will hear things like music videos on bunches of TVs, people complaining to the service counter, and lots of announcements for phone calls on line 1. I had a less noisy time at McDonalds. Definately a 2 here.


Totals:
Cost 4
Ease 4
Speed 1
Ambiance 2
______________
Final Score 11


Likes: Coffee!!
Dislikes: Noise. Slow internet speeds.


Probably good to use this for a quick read online while having a coffee. Nothing hard core. Do bring some earplugs unless your gonna watch some TV.

Sitting under the ramada watching the kids play, I decide to pull out the laptop and write a very anticipated review of the WiFi here at Pacana Park.  We have a soccer game today so we are out and about early as it still reads in the 60s here so at least the laptop will run nice and cool. Me on the other hand should have brought a jacket.

 

Pacana Park is where anything recreational happens in Maricopa. Parks and Recreation maintain this park very well with its large lake, two baseball fields, tennis courts, basketball courts, and room for a large soccer field.  The place is very active on the weekends and you can rent out the very ramada I am sitting at for parties and such.  Heck, their is even a grill right next too it.  Now down to business, the WiFi.

 

Cost – Free service. I anticipated logging in on an Orbitel connection with my email, but it was not needed. They get 4 points for that.

 

Ease of use – Again, just like Arena, their is no specific access point that says “Pacana Park”.  I was only aware of this access point due to having my Orbitel ISP (which may change shortly, more to come).  The access point is listed as “Orbitel comm” and has a strong signal here at the ramada near the playground. No start page here so it is easy access to get to the web. I just would like to see an access point that has an SSID that relates to where your at. I give a 3 here.

 

Speed of Service – Again, testing the three servers to see how this service performs.

 

 

Pings were good and low as can be expected by cable internet. Speed was adequate to do web surfing and play games on it if you like. I give them a 4.

 

Ambiance of the Area – It is a public park. Lots of people on the weekend. I would doubt their would be a lot of people here on a weekday. Quiet for the most part. Great place again to have the kids go play and leave you to your work. 4 here.

 

Totals:

Cost 4
Ease 3
Speed 4
Ambiance 4
————————
Final score: 15

 

Grab the kids, give the wife a break and head over to the park. You will be a hero in everyone’s eyes and still get to have your internet in peace.  Maybe even run a live webcast so the relatives can watch the kids soccer game back east (If your into that kind of thing).

Sitting down to have a beer and watch some sports all while surfing the web has to be one of the best ideas ever.  That is why I looked forward to reviewing Arena Sports Grill here in beautiful Maricopa.  This local establishment boasts a decent price for food, lots of TVs for sports, and Wireless internet access.  Kids love eating here since they get ice cream after their meal and can watch their favorite sports team play. I am more interested in the internet access, so here is my review.

As previously discussed, I rate WiFi hot spots on 4 different catagories: cost of service, ease of use, speed of the service, and ambiance of the area.  Each one has a possibility of scoring 4 points. The higher the score, the better the spot.  Here is how Arena scores.

Cost of service: FREE!!  Can’t get much better than that.  Definate 4.

Ease of Use: When searching for the wireless access point at Arena, none of them specifically say “Arena”.  In fact, their were quite a few hot spots near by, including the college area next door that I was getting a great signal from by sitting on the far wall booths. The access point is marked as “Transcend Broadband”, the provider of the internet link.  I think that changing the SSID on the router would be a good way to not get confused and connect to a point near by.  Maybe Transcend is offering this to Arena free as a benefit to the customers, but their little WiFi sticker on the front or a nice start page would do better advertising for them.  I give Arena a 3 here.

Speed of the service: Here is where I test the speed of the network. This was performing in the evening so it should show some slowdown for people at home using their internet as well.  Transcend is the internet provider of this access point, and I am currently testing them against Orbitel as ISPs here in Maricopa.  Anyways, test results.







These speeds match up to the high tier Transcend Broadband package. Downloads and uploads were great. Pings were a little high for my preferences, but for internet surfing this won’t matter that much. Going with another 4 here.

Ambiance of the area: This is a bar and grill. I can see this getting loud on sunday afternoons, or during big games. Otherwise, it isn’t bad for getting your surfing done. If you get bored with surfing their are lots of games to catch, and even a pool table to help burn away the time. Food is prompt and the owner is very nice at greeting his guests and making sure they feel right at home. You won’t get bothered here while surfing. I give it a 3.5.

Totals:

Cost: 4
Ease: 3
Speed: 4
Ambiance: 3.5
————————
Final Score 14.5

Arena scores well with their WiFi internet access. They do a great job of combining a great sports bar, and wireless freedom in one spot. Also, kudos to the restaurant for having gift certificates available at www.restaurant.com. This gift certificates make for great cheap meals on a budget.

Orb is a program that I have been enjoying over the past year and have had many good times with it. It is a program that enables the user to stream their home media to an internet browser.  I have used this program to watch TV shows while at work on break, listen to music, and watch movies.  This will be a how-to on setting up your own system to do the same.

An excerpt from the Orb about page states:

“Orb is based on an elegant, robust and scalable architecture and is the first of its kind to allow consumers mobile access to all of their digital media. Orb’s software architecture leverages the best features of today’s popular standards while abiding by current digital rights management solutions. The Orb embedded Solution is a set of software platform capabilities which the consumer electronics device manufacturer can port and integrate in its devices to differentiate its connected product lines, and build media and services management applications, rapidly, efficiently.”

The program allows you to stream your TV stations, music, and video to a browser you’re sitting at.  The software is put together very well and will also do updates when you’re away from your system. You can also upload media that you have purchased or made back to your home system. My personal favorite way to use Orb is to watch TV.  This was a blast last year watching the football games at work on a projector. Everyone gets to see how the game is going without having to step out of the area and they get their work done at the same time.

A standard computer has all the parts necessary to stream your music or your movies that are saved on your hard drive. If you want to watch TV as well, you will need to have a TV tuner card installed in the PC as well.  Supported tuner cards will need to have MPEG-2 support.  It is necessary to also have a high speed internet connection. The higher the upload speed on your home connection the better the picture or sound can be. Download on a broadband connection is always pretty high, but uploads are usually cut down to prevent people from running servers on a home connection. Orbitel’s 8Mb down/768Kb up is a good connection to run this on (it is what I used).  I will be trying Orb this year on Transcend’s 9Mb down/ 2Mb up connection.

To start, download and install the program. The link for downloading is http://www.orb.com/en/download_orb. Download the language that you speak (I only fluently speak English). After downloading, begin the install.  The program install is pretty straight forward. Choose your directory and read the terms of use and it will install the program. Then you will move into the setup of the program.



Orb will attempt to connect to the internet.  This is supposed to set off your firewall or antivirus so that you can change the rules in them to “always allow access” thru them.



After allowing access to the internet, you will need to setup your Orb account with your computer. This login will allow you to login to your home Orb PC .  Use an email address that you can access. This will be needed incase you lose your password.



Next, Orb will add the locations of the default Windows folders to your Orb access. This includes the My Documents, My Music, My Videos, and My Photos folder. You can change this at anytime which I will show later.  Your system will also be tested to make sure that it can support the encoding of both the video and audio for internet streaming.



If your system is up to the task, you will get a green light and a go to move on.



The next part allows you to setup the Orb program for your local network. This makes it visible on the network to other systems and compatible game systems.  It will ask you how you connect your system to the network. Answer how you have them setup. A Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and a Wii can all play this media on your TV for you.



If you have a tuner installed, it should be detected at this point. If not, the setup should complete.  Here are the additional setup images for a tuner.



The next few pics are the same ones you will see if you use the small icon in the corner to setup the program at a later date.  Select how you connect to your cable.  The tuner I have is a Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-1600 which has both an analog and digital tuner on it.  The first setup will be for the analog tuner.  This will allow the card to get the Orbitel channels 2-99 without having my box connected to the card.



After putting in your zip code, it should pull up the providers in the area. Select the proper one.



Now for my digital tuner.  I will set this one up selecting the option “Broadcast-Phoenix-Phoenix (Prescott) for over the air digital channels. After completing selection of the channels you have you will be finished!



After clicking on close, it will open up your web browser to a web page so that you can connect to your server. This first time link will have links to support for the program. To login to your computer for streaming go to https://mycast.orb.com/orb/html/login.html. Here is the login page for the account you created.  Once logged in, you can go to the TV/Webcams page and watch TV (if installed) or your webcams (again if you have them installed).  Also, Audio, Video, Photo, and Documents and see what you have on your pc.

If you need to specify new directories on your system so that you can see the media you have, right click on the icon for Orb in the lower right corner and select configuration.

The first tab allows you enable streaming of webcams, setup a tv tuner (if you just installed it or changed providers or channels), and set a path to where your recorded TV will go. Oh yeah, THIS WILL RECORD THE TV SHOWS YOU WANT!!! I haven’t used it much, but if you know your going to miss a show, use Orb to save the show and watch it later in your videos channel.



The media tab shows you the locations the files you want to stream. The default Windows folders from earlier will be shown here. I use a different hard drive for all my media so I added them for each category by clicking on the add button and browsing to the file locations.


The Advanced tab holds a bunch of options.



Enable automatic updates – This allows you to initiate an update to the home server from a browser. It will shutdown the program, update it, and restart it.

Start Orb when Windows starts – This puts the program on startup when you start the computer.

Run Orb when I am not logged in – To run the program, someone has to be logged in. Clicking on this will run the program while no one is logged in. Their will be a dialog for a user name and password. You may need to setup a password on your user account for Windows for this to work properly.

Debug mode – Generates lengthy log files for developers to test and see reactions of the program.

DirectStream – These are the ports needed for streaming. Click on check to see if they work. If you need to change the ports, they are changed here.

Enable File browser – This enables the documents part of the program. You will be able to surf your hard drive and find files you need and download them if needed.

Enable UPnP AV Media Server – This makes your media server visible on the local network.

Use UPnP for DirectStream – This will utilize UPnP to open the proper ports on your router so that the streaming will occur. If you don’t have a router between you and your modem, you can leave this off.

Enable Contact Manager – if you have Contact Manager enabled, ALL user accounts registered on your Orb PC will have access to your email contacts.

Codecs – You can select specific codecs you want for encoding. I suggest reading up on codecs and stream encoding before making any changes here.

The users tab helps you add additional users to your system. My personal user account allows me access to my movies, music, and TV.  I have another account setup for coworkers to use the system just for the TV part of it. You can setup each additional account just as you did with the first account created.

Congratulations!  You have setup your Orb computer. Now, go and stream your media where ever you want!

I figured I would give a quick start to reviewing WiFi access in the area. Mc. Donalds is my first attempt at this so please bear with me.

 

After ordering food and sitting down in the children’s playland area with the rest of the parents that just want the kids to expel the bundled up energy, I opened the laptop and started on my WiFi trek. Testing systems around the area sounds like fun to me and I wanted to come up with a review system that will also make it easier for you to make your choices in using WiFi in the area.  If you have any comments or suggestions to these raitings feel free to post your comments.

 

First:  Cost of service. This should be a high priority. Lots of businesses are charging or giving away their service and with pennies being pinched right now, this is a good place to start.

 

Second:  Ease of use. The service start page needs to be clearly laid out (if their is one), and if you need to pay for the service, their needs to be multiple ways to pay for the service easily.

 

Third:  Speed of the service. It is not like your gonna play WoW or do some heavy downloading on these services. Some places will not pony up the speed though just to save a buck on bandwidth costs.  I will be looking and rating these services against a standard cable modem connection (5Mb down/515kb up).  Also I will use speedtest.net for the testing. I will use Phoenix, New York and Houston for the testing.

 

Fourth:  Ambiance of the area. Yeah, the service may be free, speed great, and be a really cool setup for their web connection, but sitting in a dumpster of a business is still not a place I would want to do my surfing.

 

Each level will be graded on a 4 point system. Total possible is 16 points. I may change this later to some other scale (colors, gold, etc.) but for now 4 points should be enough.

Now on to Mc. Donalds here in Maricopa.

 

Cost: To use the McDonald’s WiFi service (provided by Wayport) it will cost you 2.95 for two hours. The price is more than I would like to see. I figure a buck an hour is max most of the time. This is offset however in my case since I can send the kids to the playland and have them play for a couple hours without much interruption to me. I think the extra 50 cents an hour is worth it.  Rating of 2.5 here.

 

Ease of use: When you connect to the access point here, the first web page you will see will show you how you can connect to their WiFi here. Credit card can be use, or if you have a Wayport account already, you just log in.  Their is the possibility of coupons out on the web as well. Easy to use, self explanatory, I give it a 4.

 

Speed of Service: I ran the test 3 times to verify the speeds. Here are the results (as reported from speedtest.net)

 

Pings are in the 100-150 range on average. Higher than I like to play first person shooters, but good enough for the internet. Download of 1.5Mb per second is low. I believe having Wayport as the provider means having a T1 connection. (1.5Mb down/1.5Mb up). Their is upload limits set, but they are acceptable. I am the only one using the service so I am getting full download. I would like to see how it handles multiple connections some time. Giving it a 3 here.

 

Ambiance of the area: It’s Mc. Donalds. Doing your WiFi in the main seating area when your alone will make it look like your on lunch break. Doing it in the children’s area with a child makes it look like you want a break. It isn’t too comfy here and the table is kinda small. Nobody bothers you though and you can get more food quickly if needed. I give it a 3.

 

Totals:

Cost: 2.5
Ease: 4
Speed: 3
Ambiance: 3
——————-
Final Score:12.5

Likes:Child friendly, quick food and free refills.

Dislikes: Noisy, Can be crowded, and I have to pay