LCD plugin supporting more than 70 display types (now with full graphics support!!!) (2 Viewers)

[JoeDalton]

I don't know what size your current display is, but I advise you to choose one with a parallel connection. Serial connections are too slow for graphical displays as there is a lot of data to transport. All of the displays I've encountered so far with USB connections have some kind of USB to parallel or USB to serial converters, so they really are parallel or serial ones internally.

The only graphical LCD I have in my possession is a 160x128 T6963c with parallel connection I got from tkortell. I believe he is selling them quite cheap. You can always contact him if you’re interested.

Joe

 

[Aquarius]

Great Job, Joe !

Hi all,
a big hand to Joe for this fabulous extension.

As lots of people share the same problem creating accented characters, perhaps we shall collect the efforts at one place ?

I have some small WEB-space where we could collect them. Just send me a PM with your <CustomCharacters> section out of ExternalDisplay.xml and I'll post the link.

I'll start working on the German "Umlauts" at the weekend, provided it is still that much raining as it is today....

Regards
/Gerd

 

[CHli]

I don't know what size your current display is, but I advise you to choose one with a parallel connection. Serial connections are too slow for graphical displays as there is a lot of data to transport. All of the displays I've encountered so far with USB connections have some kind of USB to parallel or USB to serial converters, so they really are parallel or serial ones internally.

The only graphical LCD I have in my possession is a 160x128 T6963c with parallel connection I got from tkortell. I believe he is selling them quite cheap. You can always contact him if you’re interested.

Joe

Thanks Joe for the advices and the great plugin update.

 

[MrMad]

There is a bitmap calculator at http://www.piclist.com/techref/io/lcd/gfxcalc88.htm that you can probably use too (you just have to turn your head to the left when editing your character)

 

[BugsBunny]

I do seem to have the same problem as BoelShit and Nemulate

Ahhhh yes, that's true... The "Now Playing" screen doesnt use the tags in MP like in other screens (#current.playing.artist etc.) I already mentioned it in the My Music plugin thread but no reply... Also you will notice that when going out of My Music and into e.g. My Movies the VFD won't be updated when a next song is being played except for the duration part... It's not really a LCD bug but more a glitch in MP....

Though it's strange that sometimes the artist/song is displayed correctly. Most of the time it's empty and sometimes the wrong artist/song gets displayed (info of artist/song that was played earlier).
The time ist displayed correctly all the time.
Really strange problem - hope it can be fixed sometimes.

 

[trosty]

Custom defined characters

Nice feature, thanks a lot!!!

Do you still need a 4-lines-sample-xml-file? You mentioned a few pages ago but never since (and also did not react to my offer).

 

[JoeDalton]

Yes please! It is always nice to have some examples of customized externaldisplay.xml files...

 

[JoeDalton]

:arrow: I just added another long awaited feature: Text Mode Progress Bar!!!

example: [#####------]

How to get it to work?
Get the latest SVN version.
Then, edit the ExternalDisplay.xml file (of course ;-)) and add a TextProgressBar tag, like in the PlayingMusic section in the following example:

  <Message Status="PlayingMusic">
    <Line Alignment="Left">
      <Property Value="#Play.Current.Title" />
      <Parse Value=" by #Play.Current.Artist">
        <NotNull Value="#Play.Current.Artist" />
      </Parse>
      <Parse Value=", from the album #Play.Current.Album">
        <NotNull Value="#Play.Current.Album" />
      </Parse>
    </Line>
    <Line Alignment="Left">
      <TextProgressBar StartChar="[" EndChar="]" ValueChar="#" FillChar="-" Length="20">
        <ValueProperty Value="#currentplaytime" />
        <TargetProperty Value="#duration" />
      </TextProgressBar>
      <Text Value=" (#112)">
        <NotNull Value="#paused" />
      </Text>
    </Line>
  </Message>

It supports the following options:
StartChar is the character to display at the start of the progress bar.
EndChar is the character to display at the end.
ValueChar is the character draw the bar's value with.
FillChar is the character to fill the rest of the bar with.
Length is the total length of the bar (including start- and end characters)
ValueProperty is the property to use to calculate the bar's value.
TargetProperty is the property whose value represents a full bar (100%).

Hope you like it...
Joe

 

[tomtom21000]

Hi Joe,

had no time to test some of the new stuff you posted but sounds promising.

Now, today I detected a little "bug".

To reproduce, try the following:

set option in mp setup/general to "close to tray"
open mp
go to music
enter a folder (album)
play a song
press close (mp goes to tray)
result: song plays and display shows song info and time <- O.K.
wait for song change
when next song plays
result: second song plays and display shows no song info but it shows the time info of the second song O.K.<- not quite O.K.

This is what I do often, listen to music, close mp to tray and surf the web with normal firefox browser. In this situation the song info in the display would be really usefull.
Probably a smaal issue as the time is displayed ok anyway.

It is here mp version 0.20 + svn 12/08/06
The display I use is Imon VFD

tomtom

P.S. when you enlarge mp from tray again the external display instantly shows the infos correct again

 

[trosty]

:arrow: I just added another long awaited feature: Text Mode Progress Bar!!!

example: [#####------]

Great, thanks for adding!

As I do not use SVN versions unfortunatly I have to wait for the next patch/update to test - and I am really looking forward to 8) .