LCD plugin supporting more than 70 display types (now with full graphics support!!!)

[JoeDalton]

This is the old thread about the ExternalDisplay plugin.
The thread is locked, so you can not add messages to it, but I keep it here because it contains a lot of useful information about this plugin and the displays it supports...

I will delete a number of messages from it that do not contain useful information or questions...

JoeDalton

[talos]

I have the Samsung equivalent VFD and it works well for me too, although with music playback the band name and album aren't displayed. I suspect you get this info from the database as I haven't scanned my info in - although it is in the id3 tags.
Also, I've noticed that if I fullscreen the visualisation, the VFD goes blank after exiting.
Well done so far, though!

[JoeDalton]

Originally Posted by talos

I have the Samsung equivalent VFD and it works well for me too, although with music playback the band name and album aren't displayed. I suspect you get this info from the database as I haven't scanned my info in - although it is in the id3 tags.
Also, I've noticed that if I fullscreen the visualisation, the VFD goes blank after exiting.
Well done so far, though!

The info that is displayed during music playback comes from the MediaPortal property manager, so I guess the music player doesn't set this info correctly when it has to read it from the ID3 tags, instead of the database.

About the display going blank after fullscreen visualisation, I'll look into this. It could be that it shows some weird information during fullscreen visualisation, because I can't detect the difference between fullscreen video playback and fullscreen music visualisation (yet), so the plugin thinks video is playing, instead of music. Maybe that is why it is going blank when you exit fullscreen visualisation. As I said, this is something I'll look in to.

[JoeDalton]

I just uploaded a new version.
This version shows the current channel and the running TV program (if available in TV Guide) in the My TV module.

I also changed the music display a bit, so that it doesn't try to display the artist and album info when they are not available in MP.

Next on my TODO list is to extract the configuration for the logic to decide what info to display and put it in the XML configuration file. This way the user can tweak the display himself.

I also want to contact AllanConquest (the author of the LCDSmartie plugin). I think we can combine forces. I could add a special display type for LCDSmartie. LCDSmartie could then use the logic in my plugin to get to the information to show on the display, and this will make my (our) plugin usable for owners of other display types too.

[no_idea]

@JoeDalton

Tried your plugin a few minutes ago and it doesn´t show anything on my Sasem 2x16 VFD which is manufactured by Samsung.

You say 378 is the used parallel port but I can´t set anything else than 3F8, 3E8, 2F8 and 2E8 in my bios and xp.

LCD-Smartie and Girder are doing fine.

Ideas?

Thanks, no_idea.

[JoeDalton]

Originally Posted by no_idea

You say 378 is the used parallel port but I can´t set anything else than 3F8, 3E8, 2F8 and 2E8 in my bios and xp.

The adresses you are mentionning are for serial ports, not parallel ports.

I've put a new version online that supports other addresses too.
If the address you want is not in the proposed list in the setup screen, edit the mediaportal.xml file and directly set the (decimal) address you want.

[no_idea]

@JoeDalton

Still nothing. Do I need the DRIVERLINX Port I/O Driver? Tried LPT1 & 2 both with and without dlportio.

LCDSmartie and Girder (LCD32 3.8) doing fine.

Sorry, no_idea

[JoeDalton]

My plugin only needs the inpout32.dll that is provided in the zip file to be present in the MediaPortal folder. (Where MediaPortal.exe is located)

Are you sure that:
- your display has a HD44780 compatible chip?
- is 2x16 characters?
- is attached to the parallel port?
- the Type in the setup screen is set to HD44780?
- No other LCD programs (like LCDSmartie) are active?

If you are able to answer YES to all questions, then I'm running out of ideas.

YES :evil:

All I get is a jumping cursor.

no_idea

Sorry, I doesn´t ment, I am angry about you. Just the little devil behind my neck.

no_idea