Driver Available for Soundgraph OEM LCD / UltraBay

[ralphy]

A little while ago, a limited API was published, complete with demonstration code for the Soundgraph LCD. I notice that complaints continue that about MediaPortal not supporting Soundgraph's LCD (eg in Silverstone's GD01) on Soundgraph's website.

Well hopefully, not any more ...

Here it is - a basic 16x2 line display driver for the Soundgraph LCD (as opposed to the long supported VFD) - it's not a perfect driver because it does not support the graphics capabilities of the pixel array, icons, or non-english characters. But it did work on my system, although as I am not a MediaPortal user, so there may be some operational issues that I didn't uncover in the testing, particularly when the system is under load. (eg I did not have my tuner set up)

I would have prefered to have written a dll to install into the LCDDrivers folder, but, as I have said before elsewhere, I am not a programmer, and have no idea how to get the MarshalAs code in LCDHypeWrapper to get the details from the new iMonLCD C# driver.

Installation:

• Replace the ProcessPlugin.dll in mediaportal\plugins\process with the same named filed in the attached zip file
• Replace the SG_VFD.dll in mediaportal with the version 5 SG_VFD.dll in Program Files\Soundgraph\iMon.

Please see here for the latest update

[hirscho]

ralphy

Thanks a lot for this plugin. Just tested it out for a few minutes and what I could see is that it is working fine except for this fancy symbols I don't need anyway. Of course you have to set the plugin mode in the front view menu of the iMON manager. Maybe JoeDalton will help to make it a "standard" display plugin.

Again thanks. Good work for "non programmer" ;-)

hirscho

hirscho

[ralphy]

You're welcome hirscho.

It's great to get some feedback to find that someone has been able to successfully use the plugin, particularly given the several posts asking for support of the LCD in MediaPortal.

I see there are now eight views of the attachment, so there must be a few others out there who have got it to work as well, otherwise one assumes there would be several posts asking what's wrong!

[armarni]

Hi Ralphy

I tried it last night and it seems to work grat for me so far, so many thanks for your hard work. I'm very new to media portal, building my first sysyem around it, and my next headache is getting either an mce remote or the one supplied with the imon display on my silverstone gd01 case to work with the cases inbuilt IR receiver.

[mimk97]

ralphy,

thanks for this great work :-)

but it didn´t work on my pc :-(
In the ExternalDisplay Plugin set the Driver to" IMON USBLCD Driver 1.0" Windows is telling me that a Problem was found
And must close the Software.

Any Idea´s???

[ralphy]

Originally Posted by hirscho

Of course you have to set the plugin mode in the front view menu of the iMON manager.

I do not have to do this for my Version 6 iMon Manager (see below). I also note that you refer to making this setting in 'frontview'. The only place I can choose external plugin is under "options", not "frontview". Maybe you are running an older version of iMon Manager?

Originally Posted by armarni

my next headache is getting either an mce remote or the one supplied with the imon display on my silverstone gd01 case to work with the cases inbuilt IR receiver.

Aramini, I will assume that you can get the remote working without using the plugin.

I am able to get the iMON remote control working together this plugin without setting iMON Manager to use external plugins (via the options setting). The trick is to start MediaPortal first, and then start iMON Manager. I know it's a drag, but I think what happens is that iMON Manager checks first to see if the display 'isinited', and if it is, then it knows that another application has control of the display, and then it won't try to use it. But the remote control still works. The only other downside is that you don't get to see the disk icon flash when it receives an IR signal, or showing the bars when you change the volume.

I have also got this plugin working with my Hauppauge remote.

Remember, I use version 6 iMON Manager downloaded from the Silverstone site.

Originally Posted by mimk97

In the ExternalDisplay Plugin set the Driver to" IMON USBLCD Driver 1.0" Windows is telling me that a Problem was found

I should have mentioned in this forum that the driver to select is "SoundGraph iMONLCD USB Driver V1.0". I included this information in the README.txt in the distribution instead. Also choose 16 chars by 2 lines.

I suspect that the driver you a chosing is the LCDDrivers subfolder, but as you found out, doesn't work.

[mimk97]

Originally Posted by ralphy

I do not have to do this for my Version 6 iMon Manager (see below). I also note that you refer to making this setting in 'frontview'. The only place I can choose external plugin is under "options", not "frontview". Maybe you are running an older version of iMon Manager?

Aramini, I will assume that you can get the remote working without using the plugin.

I am able to get the iMON remote control working together this plugin without setting iMON Manager to use external plugins (via the options setting). The trick is to start MediaPortal first, and then start iMON Manager. I know it's a drag, but I think what happens is that iMON Manager checks first to see if the display 'isinited', and if it is, then it knows that another application has control of the display, and then it won't try to use it. But the remote control still works. The only other downside is that you don't get to see the disk icon flash when it receives an IR signal, or showing the bars when you change the volume.

I have also got this plugin working with my Hauppauge remote.

Remember, I use version 6 iMON Manager downloaded from the Silverstone site.

I should have mentioned in this forum that the driver to select is "SoundGraph iMONLCD USB Driver V1.0". I included this information in the README.txt in the distribution instead. Also choose 16 chars by 2 lines.

I suspect that the driver you a chosing is the LCDDrivers subfolder, but as you found out, doesn't work.

I´ve choose "SoundGraph iMONLCD USB Driver V1.0" :-)
But the System shows an Error (see Attached).

[hirscho]

Hi all

Sorry for the confusion. You don't have to set the plug-in mode under options-->third party of the iMON manager. The result would be that your are not able to use your remote anymore. Just right-click on the iMON manager icon in the right side of the windows bar. In the menu select imon tools-->front view. You get another pop-up where you can choose the plugin mode only for the display (Don't ask me about the Soundgraph interpretation of usability ).
Another option would be to set the button "never start" in the front view option of the iMON manager. The disadvantage will be that the display does not go off in standby mode.

hirscho

[armarni]

Originally Posted by

I am able to get the iMON remote control working together this plugin [U

without [/u]setting iMON Manager to use external plugins (via the options setting). The trick is to start MediaPortal first, and then start iMON Manager. I know it's a drag, but I think what happens is that iMON Manager checks first to see if the display 'isinited', and if it is, then it knows that another application has control of the display, and then it won't try to use it. But the remote control still works. The only other downside is that you don't get to see the disk icon flash when it receives an IR signal, or showing the bars when you change the volume.

I have also got this plugin working with my Hauppauge remote.

Remember, I use version 6 iMON Manager downloaded from the Silverstone site.

Thanks for the help, I'll try that and report back any problems.

[ralphy]

Originally Posted by mimk97

I´ve choose "SoundGraph iMONLCD USB Driver V1.0" :-)
But the System shows an Error (see Attached).

mimk97,

The only thing I can think of is that your version of SG_VFD.dll in the MediaPortal folder might be the wrong one. It should be version 5, not version 3.

The other thing to note is the plugin was compiled using the 2.3 RC source code, but I've tested it on 2.2. I have no idea what the compatibility is like with pre-2.2 releases, so that could be another issue.