2 ideas for plugins. Looking for a way to join the devs (1 Viewer)

[knutinh]

Hi. I am trying to figure out what cool stuff I could look into.

1) Clap sensor. Concept is simple : clap your hands and an event is made, routed to a keyboard command for instance.

Especially usefull inside a HTPC as it could listen to the audiostream output while listening to a mic input. That should make it possible to filter out loud peaks in the music/film, meaning that the error rate should be a lott better. Can also have an adaptive threshold. Can also have directive sensing (using 2 or more mics) so that you can control MP, while your girlfriend cannot :-D

I have a very simple algo up and running in Matlab.

2) Sony A1/A1-2 control interface drivers. Essentially making a driver sustituting IR drivers so that a Sony amplifier/dvd player with this interface can be controlled electrically as opposed to infra-red.

I have a hacked par.port driver that I was able to use for turning on and off my Sony amp. However, this project is essentially put on the shelf for now. The driver would take full control of executiuon while sending commands (a few millisec) - the only way I found for timing 1s and 0s manually.


best regards
Knut Inge

 

[FlipGer]

Hi,

nice ideas.

The best way to get involved is just doing some stuff (creating a plugin) and post it on the patche section of MP. You can also try to contact the devs via IRC!

Flip.

 

[mzemina]

knutinh - Regarding your 2) idea, if I could request a feature already (the best time to request features is during design) is if you could look at this plugin to solve not only your Sony amplifier/dvd player is for any external device which would allow control (ohter than IR control). I was thinking if you could set it up to allow a CommandControlFile (CCF, yes I know that term/file extension is used already) which could be read for any device that you have connected to, that would be great. Then any changes or modifications could be made with a new/modified ccf file. You would have to allow in your configuration screen the ability to control multiple devices. I would think in addition to the CCF files your configuration would need to allow event (maybe that is farther down the road) control?

Mike

 

[knutinh]

How does this compare to what for instance Girder allows today?

What I have is a dumb driver to allow physical control of a Sony proprietary interface. I can see that writing drivers for any propriteray interface would be difficult without access to the hardware and documentation, and probably outside my skills.

Are you thinking of rs232 interfaces or anything else in particular?

I am thinking of a kind of boot up/down script that would switch on my tv and amplifier after I switched on my HTPC (to avoid loud sound pops), and then swithching the tv to the correct AV input. This way, any member of my household would only have to click a single power switch.

Regards
Knut

 

[mzemina]

knutinh - girder is a very powerful, hard to understand, closed source, commercial tool. It would be great to get a free, opensource, simple to operate plugin to work hand-in-hand with MediaPortal.

When you say you have a dumb driver. Did you develope it?

I've seen on an alternate HTPC frontend (MainLobby) that creating plugins for various vendors AV equipment has been thing that a couple of developers have sunk their teeth into. Almost always it requires vendor documentation and most of the times it does require the hardware, depending on the complexity of the commands being sent to the equipment.

I was thinking whatever protocol is needed to access the available AV equipment as long as it has a communication port.

Sounds like you have a purpose. Forget about what I would like to see. If you have the ability and the drive to make it happen - I say go for it! That is the whole point behind open source software. If someone else wants to turn what you have created into a more elaborate controlling subsystem then they have the basics to work off of.

Mike

 

[knutinh]

I found the source code for a XP driver for parallel port, setting individual pins to 5V or 0 V. I then "hacked" this so that setting these pins was timed to a 0.6ms clock (using some special windows high resolution timers). I ran a Matlab script doing an exhaustive search through all legal bit inversions (as commands was effectively 12, 15 or 19 bits only), and I observed the behaviour of my Sony surround recevier.

Note that a special cable has to be made between the par. port and the serial Sony amp interface with a couple of components (effectively an inverter using a transistor and a resistor).

Note also that the commnads are documented, but not in any fashion that I could use. Therefore, I have only found "power on" and "power off".

As you can see, this is an experiment close to hardware and realy should be treated as for instance a IR eye/driver by a higher level command and control thing.

best regards
Knut Inge