LCD plugin, programmer needed. (1 Viewer)

[Bosso]

It looks like it's not too bad to write to a standard HD44780 compliant parallel port LCD. But what I want to know is what other sorts of displays are out there that would need supporting too.

Writing to an HD44780 is not to hard.
I've written drivers for them in embedded systems (single chip computer).

But you're probably right. There are for sure other display types that needs support, but a HD44780 would be a start...

I can help doing the low level drivers, but I will be on vacation a month from now on.

/Bosso

 

[vbap]

@Allen:

Great to see you've made some progress - I've followed your trail at the smartie & iMon forums - you've been busy!!

I asked HdWagner (who wrote the LCD plugin for Meedio and was considering porting his plugin to MP) the same question about by-passing LCD software and getting the plugin to write directly to the LCD. IIRC, he said it would be quite "difficult".

What I would imagine, is that programs like Smartie and jaLCDs do a lot more than just write to the display. The value in these programs are the "screen" management and the existing plugins (eg system info, MBM, etc). I think you might end up re-creating the wheel if you start by-passing smartie. Users will want options on how to buikld there screens and you will have to write a large configuration tool, etc. But if that's the challenge you're looking for, go for it!

Bear in mind, at the Meedio forums, one of the guys did a detailed trial of all the LCD software programs, and found smartie to be the most efficient in terms of CPU usage. You may also want to ask on smartie forums what to expect in v6.0 that may help with your decision whether to bypass or not.

Good stuff!
Danny

 

[AllenConquest]

ShowShifter has an LCD module that doesn't use Smartie or jaLCD, so I was thinking about something like that. But I get your point about configuration. At the moment I'm just working through what screens output what data. I don't supppse this is documented anywhere.

The think I liked about jaLCD was that you can take to it via a tcpip socket and make it change to your display. It appears that Smartie can't do that. But for now I'm going with Smartie. Hopefully any work done on this can be reused later if I change my mind.

 

[lugiber]

I agree with vbap that it would be better to write a plugin as an interface for existing lcd software than letting mediaportal "speak" directly to the lcd. Mainly because writing a plugin for a specific lcd drastically reduces usability of the plugin as there are so many different lcd controllers on the market.

But what I want to know is what other sorts of displays are out there that would need supporting too.

As far as i know the most common paralell displays are the ones based on HD44780 and KS0108 (graphical lcd).
And for serial displays there are matrix orbital and crystalfontz.

Here´s a small list of lcdsoftware that i use:

Lcdhype (http://www.lcdhype.de.vu) supports HD44780, SED1351, KS0107, KS0108, HD61830, SED133x, T6963c, M50530

Jalcds (http://www.jalcds.de) supports HD44780 and crystalfontz serial lcds

lcdsmartie (http://lcdsmartie.sourceforge.net) supports HD44780, crystalfontz and matrix orbital displays

lcdc (http://www.lcdc.cc) supports matrix orbital

Hope this was somewhat useful to you and good luck with the plugin!
/Peter

 

[AllenConquest]

I've a problem that hopefully one of you guys has come across before. How do I tell what is currently playing (DVD/Video/Music/TV). Obviously I want the LCD to display the correct data depending which is being viewed.

My first thought was to do it based on the screen ID, but that's no good if you go back to the home page and the video is playing in the background.

Any ideas ?

 

[jf2020]

I also agree that the focus for now should be on getting the info out of MP rather that trying to develop a new LCD driver. When we have that, writing a plugin for almost any of the existing LCD programs is something that should not be to hard to do based on the exemples I've seen so far. This could also be some kind of generic interface that can have other use than LCD.
Another advantage of using an external program is that you can keep it running and displaying info even if MP is not running. (Yes I know it's bad but I'm sometimes using my HTPC without MP running...). Also a plugin will use CPU too so at the end I'm not sure that there will be a big advantage here. Maybe someone can make the whole LCD Smarties a "plugin" to MP, so clicking on the configure plugin in MP setup brings the LCD Smartie configuration dialog...

I'm currently using LCD Smarties with a serial Matrix Orbital 4*40 and this program is great. I really would like to see a plugin for MP just like the current LCD smarties plugin for Winamp. As soon as Winamp is launched and plays something, it gets displayed on the LCD.

 

[vbap]

@allen:

I think this has something to do with it:

Its relatively easy to use the PropertyManager - you just have to know the tag names, (e.g. #currentmodule).

Is there a #NowPlaying tag or similar? Are the tags documented or do you need to inspect the source code?

Haven't downloaded the MP source yet, so I haven't checked out that Class...

 

[samuel337]

I've a problem that hopefully one of you guys has come across before. How do I tell what is currently playing (DVD/Video/Music/TV). Obviously I want the LCD to display the correct data depending which is being viewed.

My first thought was to do it based on the screen ID, but that's no good if you go back to the home page and the video is playing in the background.

Any ideas ?

I've PM'ed you with some code I knocked up for the web interface - its in VB.NET code, but its pretty easy to read.

@allen:

I think this has something to do with it:

Its relatively easy to use the PropertyManager - you just have to know the tag names, (e.g. #currentmodule).

Is there a #NowPlaying tag or similar? Are the tags documented or do you need to inspect the source code?

Haven't downloaded the MP source yet, so I haven't checked out that Class...

There's no definite list, but here's some:
#title
#file
#artist
#duration
#TV.View.title
#TV.View.channel
#TV.Record.duration
#TV.View.description
#selecteditem
#selecteditem2
#currentmodule

What I've done to discover these is to create a process plugin that subscribes to the onPropertyChanged event, and write these to the log file.

You could, of course, look through all the source code...

Sam

 

[AllenConquest]

I really would like to see a plugin for MP just like the current LCD smarties plugin for Winamp. As soon as Winamp is launched and plays something, it gets displayed on the LCD.

Maybe you could help me out here. I don't have the WinAmp plugin on my system at the moment. Does it really switch directly to the WinAmp screen as soon as anything starts playing? I can't see how LCDSmartie can be controlled to switch to a specific screen from a plugin. Is there something in your configuration that does this ?

 

[jf2020]

@ Allen Conquest. Sorry for te delay in the response but here what I can say about that:

LCD Smarties has a very nice feature besides display which is its ability to define actions (second tab in the LCD Smarties setup). Actions include changing the current displayed Theme (Goto Theme) and also going to a specific screen (Goto Screen). Other actions are Backlight on/off, PlayWave, Execute a command (can be very useful), Freeze,Unfreeze Screen, etc. This can be used when you have a small keypad or just a few keys connected to your LCD to control the PC.

The interesting part here is that according to the documentation, plugins can cause actions to happen by placing a $dll command in the condition part of an action. I tink that this is the way to display a specific screen when MP plays something.


http://lcdsmartie.sourceforge.net/plugins.html