LCD plugin supporting more than 70 display types (now with full graphics support!!!) (1 Viewer)

[arnauddash]

If somebody need the SDK to control the AOpen EA65 Panel. Here you are, ...

ftp://ftp.aopen.com.tw/pub/xccube/ea65/manual/avcubevfd sdk.zip

There is also a MCE-Driver which handles the remote and the display (for EPG/MSN-Messages/ID-TAG/...), if it is easier to handle it via a driver-link.

Unfortuantly I am not able to do it for myself, in case of my time resources.

Many Thanks i. a.
Regards
Sven

Actually, I have an external program that displays MediaPortal status to the VFD of the XCube..
I use it for personal use, it's not very configurable and displays exactly what I want... But if there's enough interest for it, I could expand it a bit and make it available for everyone..

(PS. My program claims the entire COM2 port, but I use a Serial Port Sharing program to use the Remote and the VFD at the same time, and it works really well that way..).

Also, the XCube only has 9 characters on the display and my program scrolls the text when it's longer then 9 characters.. Also, it uses all the little "icon" pictures on the VFD display.. When an MP3 plays, it turns on the little MP3 icon light.. when recordings it turns on the recording light.. etc.

Does anybody have some news about AOpen EA65 VFD model & type so that I can use it with MP ?

Sven, are still willing to share your tool ?

Thanls

 

[HiT]

Can you send me this (you can PM if you prefer)? I also use a NetMos card (I didn't want the parallel cable to loop out through the back - keeps everything inside). I have problems with the VFD display (a 16x2 HD4478) corrupting after some period of time. Happens with LCDSmartie and now also MediaPortal.

Thanks,
vbap

Hi Vbap,

I got the info from the following link, in the zipfile there is a simple testprogram (VB4) lpttest it's more flexible than mine. I made my button tool based on that, to turn my HP-printerport to EPP. It does the same but with fit parameters..

This is the link to the zipfile: http://www.lvr.com/files/ppc.zip
enclosed you'll find the lpttest example. It enables u to switch port parameters.

I can send you the compiled version if you don't have a compiler at hand.
Don't see any options to enclose it in this message.

HiT

 

[JoeDalton]

Sorry I didn't reply sooner but I was on a little vacation...
Seems you helped eachother very well in the meantime. Nice!

I test de encoding iso-8859-1 for the french language but my lcd don't display the French carateres only chinesse

It's very cool your translation table (translateFrom-->translateTo)

PS: The backlight stay on, even after having left MP

If your display shows Chinese characters, than you have no other option than using the character translation table you mentionned above.
I'll have a look at the backlight issue... My display doesn't have a backlight, so it is a bit difficult for me to check what is wrong

what is the usage of "MediaPortal Property Setter V1.0" ?

MediaPortal has a number of internal properties that keep for example the name of the song currently playing etc... My plugin uses these properties to build the text that should be displayed on the LCD. For people that are interested, turn on the "Show Property Browser" checkbox in the plugin configuration to see them in action.

The PropertySetter driver puts the display lines that my plugin has generated in some of those properties. What's the use of that? Well, AllenConquest has made a nice LCDSmartie plugin that can query MP properties. To make LCDSmartie configuration really easy, one could just query the properties that my PropertySetter driver creates, instead of querying all other properties and building the texts for themselves.

As far as I know, AllenConquest's plugin is somewhat limited in what information can be retrieved from MP... I'm sure Allen will correct me if I'm wrong :wink:

 

[JoeDalton]

Thanks AC - but I still can't find it to download. The only link in the first post is for an older version and the plugins page on MP doesn't seem to have it either - if somebody could kindly tell me where the plugin can be downlaoded from I'd be grateful!

Mike,

If you have installed MP 0.1.3.0, you already have my plugin.
Please check the MP Configuration program. Look in the plugins section.
There you can enable and configure my plugin.

Please note that it will not be visible in MP itself. It justs sends its output to the configured LCD device...

Good luck...

Joe

 

[JoeDalton]

Re: LCD display Dign HV7SQ case

I build a HTPC using a Dign HV7SQ case. I use media portal for more than 1/2 jear and it is a great program. There is one thing i don't get working and that is the LCD screen. Does anybody get it working? and who can help me with this minor problem.

Wietze,

I think your case has a Sasem OnAir USB VFD display. Unfortunately that is not directly supported by my plugin. But I saw that the Uneed site has some settings to get it to work with Girder. You can then use the Girder driver in my plugin to send the generated display lines to Girder.

There is some info in this thread on how to use my plugin in cooperation with Girder...

Joe

 

[JoeDalton]

Those of you who have a display with more than 2 lines and have altered their ExternalDisplay.xml file to get lines >2 to work: I am interested in your ExternalDisplay.xml file...

Can you please send it to me? This will help me to provide decent default values for other users out of the box. Not all MP users are familiar with XML and their bottom lines stay blank at this moment...

You can send your file to the following email adress: joe_dalton[at]skynet.be

:!: Your help can make this plugin better :!:

Also, if anyone has ideas what the (future) UI for editing the message rules should look like, you can send them to the same address. Please keep in mind that I want to keep it as simple as possible... Most of the other LCD tools I have tried were way too complicated for me. That is why I started my own plugin ;-)

Joe

 

[T-Square]

Hi Joe,

I'll send you my xml file as soon as I'm at home.
But the main problem is that there is not enough useful information in the Property Manager to fill more than 2 lines.
If I f.e. browse through the MediaPortal menu, I only can show #currentmodule and #selecteditem.
But I would like to show the whole menu (with my 7 lines display this should be no problem).
I did add these information to the Property Manager by myself, but this was not very easy to do and the result was not perfect.

Did you know if there are any plans to add more information to the Property Manager?

 

[JoeDalton]

Thanks T-Square,

I don't know of any plans for adding menu information to the Property Manager.

I do agree that showing (a part of) the full menu would be a nice addition. I'll discuss this with the rest of the MP developers. There must be a way to get to this information...

Joe

 

[Netwalker]

Hi,
is it possible to indicate the progress bar on the display in place of the time while watching dvd?

 

[T-Square]

Hi Netwalker,

I think a real progress bar is not so easy.
At the moment ExternalDisplay is only based on text functionality, which is ok because many users anyhow don't have Graphic LCDs.
But perhaps in the future someone could add graphic support (this also would be nice for tv channel icons, MediaPortal logo, analogue clock etc).
But right now you easily can show #currentplaytime, #duration and with #currentplaytime/#duration also the percental position in the video.
Isn't that good enough?

T-Square