LCD support (2 Viewers)

[Anonymous]

...The only problem about this is that the VFD display is an USB one and you only get the driver and a girder plugin with it. Does anybody know how to use this display with the plugin HdWagner is developing?

Girder should be fine. If Girders LCD plugin works for you (and you find out how to set it up), that's all you need.

 

[Schrauber]

Did you try LCDHype. Im not sure, if it supports your LCD. But its able to control USB displays.

 

[Schmidti]

But next week I'll find out wich data is already sent around and which data the plugins and the core will have to send to the plugin.

to HdWagner:
something new about the developement? Interest in what`s going up!

 

[Anonymous]

But next week I'll find out wich data is already sent around and which data the plugins and the core will have to send to the plugin.

to HdWagner:
something new about the developement? Interest in what`s going up!

Same here, really looking forward to this

 

[Anonymous]

something new about the developement?

I spent the weekend with spying on the messages MedioPortal sends around.
A typical message reads like

Message=GUI_MSG_GET_ITEM
Sender = 0
Target = 50
Parameter = 10

This way MedioPortals core (Sender=0) queries the menu item number ten (Parameter=10) from the to-me-unknown target #50.

The reply is not sent this way.

I guess only #50 knows the clear text name of item #10 - so the LCD plugin had to ask #50 at the very moment the plugins spies #0 doing this (doubling the traffic in MediaPlayers message system).
This MIGHT be the way to read the content of menus and filelists.

Now if the users presses "Escape" to navigate back in the menu hierarchy, the parent menu is made visible (not created again, it was simply hidden), so a LCD plugin had to keep the parent menu in memory as well. In general, a LCD plugin had to imitate every aspect of MediaPortals menu management.

Copying big parts of MediaPortal just to get the menus is NOT the way to go.



Well, we have modules. Let's see what they do.

- The video module. The core (not the video module) tells us, that playback has started and sends the file path of the currenty played video file. Hooray! Something useful!
- The music module. The core tells us, that playback has started and gives us the file path of the currenty played music file. No ID3 tags. This is lousy, but it could be worse...
- ... like in the picture module. Nothing is sent while displaying a picture. Cool.

Okay. What do we have? Modules, keeping their knowledge. A core, keeping its knowledge as well, but revealing some secrets of some of the modules.

This said, it is possible to write a useless LCD plugin. It seems impossible to me to write a useful LCD plugin at this state of MP and its modules.

Okay, somebody might reprogram the core, the message system and the modules... I won't, because I can't.

 

[lugiber]

This is bad news, in my opinion mainly because of the problems with menu information.
Media info can be displayed by using external players (winamp, zoomplayer etc). So in my opinion media info is not a problem.

Hopefully the menu problems will be resolved in a future release of mediaportal. HdWagner will you keep a lookout for this or have you given up completly?

/Peter

 

[Anonymous]

No, I haven't given up.

The part of the plugin which sends data to various LCD softwares is complete, as is the part that reacts to MP events/messages and the part that processes generic messages.

What's missing is the "capturing" of generic messages and the entire menu stuff - so giving up would be a waste of time...

 

[lugiber]

That is good news!
Does this mean that your plugin could be used to change lcd screens, to load the winamp screen when i am listening to audio etc.

/Peter

 

[Anonymous]

That is good news!
Does this mean that your plugin could be used to change lcd screens, to load the winamp screen when i am listening to audio etc.

/Peter

Yes and no. The plugin will give you two possibilities:
Either displaying the data that *should* come from the MusicPlayer module or sending the LCD software a variable like "MediaPortalIsCurrentlyDoing='MusicPlayer'", so that the LCD software can decide by itself what to display.

 

[lugiber]

Cool!
Just let me know if you want someone to try it out. I am currently using two different lcds. And by january i'll probably have three.

/Peter