Updated iMON (Soundgraph) LCD Driver

[Drudixx]

ralphy,

I have managed to get it working. The version of SG_VFD.dll has to be version 5.1.0.1201, any older it will not work.

Thanks for your help.

Drudixx

[Johan]

I am using the latest software and drivers from Soundgraph homepage. Don't know exactly which version I have at the moment.

Cybrmage, is your information working with the drivers provided by Soundgraph or is it Antec drivers?
You seems to have some knowledge about this.

Do you think you can help ralphy to complete the plug-in a bit?

I would love to see
- turn off function when going to standbye.
- other contrast as darkaz pointed out.
- åäö working for us Swedes

[cybrmage]

iSP: sorry... from one of your replies I got the impression that you were working on programming... oops...

Johan: it will work on either.... THEY ARE THE SAME... The DLLs are the same, the SYS files are the same... the only difference between the Antec package and the SoundGraph package is the main program.

The Soundgraph iMON program available on their website is 6.0.1.101... but as soon as you install it, it auto-updates to 6.0.1.202... so it is equivilent to the one shipped by Silverstone. The Antec program is v6.0.1.702... so it is a newer version... but it is still a crippled version of the Soundgraph version (they may have changed the version number to differentiate it... I don't know).

The Soundgraph software WILL driver the Antec VFD (when appropriately patched)... but will not driver the Antec LCD... the Antec LCD firmware version (0xA1) does not appear anywhere in the Soundgraph program... and that appears to be all that the program uses to determine the allowed capabilities of the display.


Re: contrast... the contrast is controlled by a single byte... but it only supports 64 levels... although the last 25 seem to be useless... A value of x0a (10) seems to work very well...


Swedish characters shouldn't be a problem... the LCD is a 16x16 graphics display... and the drver uses an embedded font... fixing the font should be trivial.. as should the contrast and turning off the display (or displaying the clock)...

I've already tried to contact ralphy (not here... on the LCDsmartie forums) but have not heard back from him yet... His API reference and experiments were the basis of my experimentation and the LCDsmartie driver I wrote (although I got a little fancy with some of the options... slow weekend 8-} ).

If ralphy doesn't make the changes then I'll take a look at doing them... but it will take a me little while... my development laptop just went in for repairs and I haven't finished setting up the replacement machine yet... and I'm not that familiar with the mediaportal software (my main PVR is SageTV)....

[iSP]

Well I'm not working on any programming as I can't, but in the recent months I wished more often that I could, so I could fix certain things myself, but have no idea where to start and how long it would take before I could do something like this.
Actually if you'll be starting on this I have one major thing I would want to discuss with you in pm, there's one function available on this lcd I think should work slightly different from the imon software, which is possible.
As I got much time for the next couple of months if youneed to have some stuff tested feel free to pm me.

[darkaz]

Thanks for the info cybrmage - sounds like you've been working on some lcd stuff yourself?

as I'm getting stuck into this now to try and get all the various bits functioning correctly (at least for the lcd in my antec case) it'd be good if we have one concerted effort rather than everyone doing their own thing? - sounds like ralphy is a bit snowed under at the moment (fair enough too! )

let me know if you (or anyone else reading this) is wanting to help out with this development

if it's easier - john(at)igeek.com.au

[Kossan]

I really looking forward to some progress.
When i use the graphic-mode i got the swedish special char (åäö) but then i
miss the "time/timeleft".

Is it all up to the plugin in MediaPortal to use the icons (MPG,WMV,VIDEO,MUSIC) in the display?

[JoeDalton]

I comitted ralphy's iMonLCDg driver in SVN, so it should be available in the next SVN builds. I also tried to add some minor improvements:

• tried to fix the flickering when using text mode
• turn off display when shutting down MP

As I don't own an iMon display myself I'm depending on you to test it...

Joe

[darkaz]

great stuff Joe - I'll have a look at it tonight and let you know how it works

I'm also hoping to have some time both tonight and over the weekend to look at the contrast issues and start playing with the "icons" available on the screen.

[cybrmage]

darkaz: I sent source code changes to ralphy yesterday. It fixes the contrast issues and adds ability to turn off the display or display the built-in clock (selected by the backlight control)... but that was before the driver was committed to SVN by JoeDalton... i've attached and updated version of the committed file here (obviously... remove the .txt 8-} )...

I've already got code for icon control in the LCDsmartie driver, and the GBPVR driver... I haven't yet determined how I can determine the system status in MediaPortal... any ideas??

[JoeDalton]

Originally Posted by cybrmage

darkaz: I sent source code changes to ralphy yesterday. It fixes the contrast issues and adds ability to turn off the display or display the built-in clock (selected by the backlight control)... but that was before the driver was committed to SVN by JoeDalton... i've attached and updated version of the committed file here (obviously... remove the .txt 8-} )...

I've updated the driver to include your changes.

Originally Posted by cybrmage

I've already got code for icon control in the LCDsmartie driver, and the GBPVR driver... I haven't yet determined how I can determine the system status in MediaPortal... any ideas??

The DoWork method in ExternalDisplay.cs has some code to determine the current MP status, but is limited. Unless MCE, MP does not have a status that indicates in what module the user is navigating...

Joe