Screen saver for Panasonic plasma thru RS232 ?

Hi!

I will have in near future panasonic plasma screen which gives possibility to use RS232 connection to control from PC (switching on/off, changing aspect ratio etc). I'm wondering if it is possible to develop plugin in MediaPortal to enable screensaver functionality (when pause or user is not active in menu then MP turns off plasma and turn on when some activity is going). I can write something like this since it isn't very complicated to do normally (I mean normal windows application), but I need to know if it is possible in MediaPortal at all.

Regards

wozio

[Mr.Mitchell]

Should be doable. You can make a process plugin that periodically checks the state of the player so you can check if it has been paused for a certain time. Probably you can also register for key/actions so you should be able to figure out when the user is idle.

Sounds like a nice project to get into MP plugin programming.

Hi,

Thank for reply.

In the meantime I downloaded source code for MP and see in architecture doc file that there is plugin class IOutputDevice... but I see magic words "in future" also...

Well, I will continue looking into code and see what will born from this.

BR
wozio

[Smirnuff]

Sounds like a nice project to get into MP plugin programming.

I'd be more than happy having to spend a couple of late nights working on this, if it were mine .

As Mr Mitchell says, its definately doable and it shouldn't require a massive amount of effort. Start with a stand alone app that can control your plasma screen and then integrate into MP, taking a look at the power scheduler should be a good start.

Hi,

I have new idea about this....
Since there is possibility to send what aspect ratio plasma should have (4:3, panorama etc) it would be great if MP will send commands depending of video source, I mean, size and type of video.

Heh, but this one in future.

One more thing: at this moment it is easier to modifiy existing MP code to send messages to some application when some events occur than writing plugin since there is no good plugin interface. But it will be uncompatible with future releases.

OK I will start developing standalone app.

Oh, yes one more thing: is this possible to receive all windows events in MP plugin? I do not really have experience with visual C#...

wozio

And one more thing :-)

I think developing flexible and easy plugin interface should be prioritised...

BRs
wozio

[Smirnuff]

I think developing flexible and easy plugin interface should be prioritised...

Is there anything about the existing interfaces that make these features more difficult to implement?

C# has WndProc methods in much the same way as C/C++.

Is there anything about the existing interfaces that make these features more difficult to implement?

No I don't think so, this feature is very basic. I was talking more general, right now writing plugin which requires from MP a lot of information isn't easy (as far as I know from reading this forum.

--edit--

For example problems with writing plugin for LCD/VFD - there is no easy way to get from MP all required information.

Second thing: for writing plugin there is need to have all MP sources (still: as far as I know). In my old C/C++ world there was only need to have header files with classes definitions and docs about methods, properties etc.

BRs
wozio

[Smirnuff]

>> there is no easy way to get from MP all required information

GUIPropertyManager holds most of the information your likely to want to display on an VFD.

>> header files with classes definitions

Agreed that things ain't like they used to be but then you are subject to a whole lot less restrictions the way MP does it. And in my experience, writing a quality SDK (whether it be COM, API calls etc) requires a hell of a lot of effort which if MP offered, would more than likely mean that MP had a lot less features or half of those features wouldn't be available to the plugins.

I was pleasantly suprised by how quickly I was able to get into writing plugins for MP and best of all, you can manipulate just about anything in the source from within a plugin without having to request or implement changes to the SDK.

I can send you some code for either style of plugin, stripped to its bare minimum if you'd like?

I can send you some code for either style of plugin, stripped to its bare minimum if you'd like?

Yes it would be great!

Send it please to piotr.xx.wozniak@ericsson.com