LCDSmartie plugin (3 Viewers)

[lugiber]

Is the #TV.View.Percentage command broken in the new plugin? I can't get any output from it. I am using media portal 0.1.1.1.

/Peter

 

[lugiber]

Allen i have been thinking about the cpu consumption of mediaportal and lcdsmartie when using your plugin. Could this be caused by lcd smartie constantly "asking" media portal which screen is active with the $dll(LCDMediaPortal.dll,5,#id,) action. Is there a way to do this more effective than it is done at the moment?

/Peter

 

[AllenConquest]

Allen i have been thinking about the cpu consumption of mediaportal and lcdsmartie when using your plugin. Could this be caused by lcd smartie constantly "asking" media portal which screen is active with the $dll(LCDMediaPortal.dll,5,#id,) action. Is there a way to do this more effective than it is done at the moment?

/Peter

Do you see this high CPU as well then? I don't. At the moment I can't see any other way of getting this information. You could try playing with the DLL check interval on the 'misc' tab in the setup. I've already overridden this setting so that the minimum interval is 1000ms, but you could try larger settings. This will have the side effect of delaying the update of the screen when the channel changes, but this might not matter too much.

It would be nice if there was an event driven method of getting the details for MP. But I'm not sure even that would help with LCDSmartie, because the way that works if my repeatedly calling the DLL function at the specified interval. I would have to check something to see if the screen has changed, or are you thinking of something different. All suggestions are welcome.

 

[lugiber]

On my 3ghz (intel with hyperthreading) cpu at work lcdsmartie uses about 6% cpu when media portal is turned off and 33% when it is running. Media portal uses about 2% when smartie is turned off and 16% with smartie is turned on. This definetly has to do with my config using $dll(LCDMediaPortal.dll,5,#id,) to change screens. Because when i remove all the 18 referenses to this function the cpu consumption returns to normal.
I know nothing about programming so this is a stab in the dark. Could this be caused by the fact that smartie requests the "#id" from your plugin which requests the #id from the external control plugin which in turn requests the #id from media portal?
Could your plugin be set to "deny" requests for #ids that are not active? Or perhaps "remember" which screen is active so that the #id requests can be kept to a minimum. The cpu consumption (in my opinion) clearly has to do with too many #id requests.
Sorry if these suggestions are stupid, but remember i can't do any programming.

/Peter

 

[lugiber]

You could try playing with the DLL check interval on the 'misc' tab in the setup. I've already overridden this setting so that the minimum interval is 1000ms, but you could try larger settings. This will have the side effect of delaying the update of the screen when the channel changes, but this might not matter too much.

Thanks for the tip! I tried setting the interval to a value larger than 1000ms but smartie can't store that large values. Just for testing purposes i tried setting the value to 10ms but found no difference in cpu consumption.
Are you using the same verion of the plugins/media portal as we do? Perhaps you have a newer version of the external control plugin than we do and that is why you have no problems with heavy cpu load.

I am using media portal 0.1.1.1, the latest version of your plugin together with lcdsmartie canio (the latest beta release). I'm just trying to figure out why i am experiencing problems that you are not. There must be some way to solve this

/Peter

 

[AllenConquest]

I have just uploaded version 2.6 of the plugin. This uses an updated version of the External Control Plugin, so these files need to be updated too.

An extra function (8) has been added. This exposes the Recorder Object in MediaPortal. The available parameters are listed in wiki.

I will consider how I can cache the value returned when using #id in function5. I'm not sure how I'll do this, so it may take a few attempts to get it right.

 

[lugiber]

An extra function (8) has been added. This exposes the Recorder Object in MediaPortal. The available parameters are listed in wiki.

Cool! Works great! Could you considder adding a text output to the IsAnyCardRecording flag? Just something like "rec" or "*rec" while you are recording and nothing or perhaps just a " " when nothing is being recorded. That way you could show on the lcd if media portal is recording no matter which screen is currently active.

I will consider how I can cache the value returned when using #id in function5. I'm not sure how I'll do this, so it may take a few attempts to get it right.

Looking forward to this. The new plugin (smartie and media portal) still uses a lot of cpu. I have yet to discover if it affects media portals preformance while recording/playing movies. Let me know if you need testers.

Last but not least. Keep up the good work! I am always intrigued by the new features you manage to put in your new releases.

/Peter

 

[ThomP]

Questions from a future user

Hi, I'm not a Mediaportal user yet, but I've been skimming this thread (and the WIKI-page) since I'm considering MediaPortal for my future HTPC which will have a VFD display.

I see a lot of requests for LCD/VFD navigation, but I can't see if it has been implemented? Since music playback is one of the primary uses for my HTPC I really "need" to be able to navigate the music module without having to turn on the TV - I don't think I need menu-navigation, because I guess I can program a button on my remote to jump to the music-module. Is this possible?

Another concern is the languages. Is the character conversion hard-coded or is it a table/file that can be edited by the user? - The reason I'm asking is that the conversions I've seen in the thread are not "standard" for danish, even though some of the letters are. Denmark uses the following special characters and conversion:
æ-->ae
ø-->oe
å-->aa
Æ-->Ae
Ø-->Oe
Å-->Aa
Can the plugin be set up to handle them correctly?
And what i the display can actually handle those characters - wil lthey still be converted? My display (Noritake 32*140 graphical) does have european character sets, so if I ever get around to making a LCDSmartie plugin for it I hope it can display the characters correctly.

 

[AllenConquest]

Cool! Works great! Could you considder adding a text output to the IsAnyCardRecording flag? Just something like "rec" or "*rec" while you are recording and nothing or perhaps just a " " when nothing is being recorded. That way you could show on the lcd if media portal is recording no matter which screen is currently active.

Yet again I have put the power in your hands :wink: Both function6 and function8 will now return the second parameter if the property returns true. So for example you could even put $Flash(REC$)$ as the second parameter and get some flashing text on your LCD :roll:

Last but not least. Keep up the good work! I am always intrigued by the new features you manage to put in your new releases.

Thanks for the support. Things had gone a bit quiet and I was wondering what to do next.

Allen

 

[lugiber]

Yet again I have put the power in your hands :wink:

Thats what i like about your plugin, the possibilities are endless.

Both function6 and function8 will now return the second parameter if the property returns true. So for example you could even put $Flash(REC$)$ as the second parameter and get some flashing text on your LCD :roll:

Didn't know that, just tried it out, its really cool! I guess i must read the wiki more thoroughly next time around
Is there a way to get rid of/hide the param1 when you have defined a param2? It would be great to get rid of the "0" in top of the window when nothing is being recorded.

Things had gone a bit quiet and I was wondering what to do next.

At the present i feel the plugin is complete. I can't think of anything else i would like to implement (except for the few things i have allready told you about). Thats why i've been quiet.

/Peter