Parallel Port Power Control Plugin (2 Viewers)

[Rhys.Goodwin]

Hey that's great that it's working. I find SVN for meadiportal to be fairly stable these days. Would you find it usefull if I provided a .exe file that can set/trigger pins via command line so that it can be scrippted and set to run at system startup? Hey Porro where about are you from?

 

[porro]

Hi Rhys. My name is Marco and I'm italian. (sorry for my english )

Make me understand, you want to make a .exe file so you can set/trigger pins without MP. You mean in this way that to recompile your plugin it's not needed every time a new version of MP it's going out.

But if you make a .exe file then it's possible to use it in MP. My idea is to watch tv and at the same time enter MP menu and set light ON or OFF (I use PC like HTPC).

You already make me a big favour editing your plugin just like I said so I don't want to abuse your patience...Make .exe only if you wish and if you have time.

 

[Rhys.Goodwin]

Hey Marco your english is fine . Of course turning light and subwoofer etc On/Off with in Mediaportal is the main idea but if you have the problem where bios/windows causes the pins to trun things On/Off during startup then you could use a .exe after startup to reset everything to off. (I already use a program like this but the current version only support 4 pins and dosn't support trigger mode But if you would find this program useful then I can just modify to support 8pins and trigger mode) But maybe this won't work in your situation?

In my case it's not a very big problem since I run my media pc 24hours but it's still useful to have everything automatic.

 

[porro]

Now I'm using only 4 pins so you don't have to edit your program but anyway It's not useful in my case because my eletrician made a system to turn light on/off with relays (because there are 2 or 3 manual switches for every light) so I send triggered signal to every relay of every light.
My PC set pins on for 9,7 sec on start and 0.9 sec on shutting down so I've no the problem of resetting pins. Now I'm building a scheme like picture I posted so I use pin 8 to disable pin 2,3,4,5 just for the time pin 8 is ON. Yes I know, in this way I can plug only 7 devices instead of 8 but at the moment I'm using only 4 lights.

 

[Rhys.Goodwin]

Hey Marco,
As my only offical tester (and maybe my only user ) Have you found any bugs? If not I'll submit this release to the plug-ins download page.

 

[porro]

Hi Rhys!!

It seems to work fine. There's only a thing about the screen in mediaportal:

did you set position of buttons in your .dll? Because I've each button close together even if I edit skin with MP skin editor.
I checked .xml and it's ok but when I start MP nothing is changed.
This thing is in both version you made.
Anyway it is not a big problem so don't worry because your plugin is stable.

Just in my case I've got a problem: (2 transistors get failure, maybe It's due to use tester for checking voltage); 2 realys have always 4.3 V when pins are ON and 2.7 V when pins are OFF so I think It's because of transistors. In these days I'll buy some BC547 and I hope to fix it.

Bye

 

[porro]

Pictures

Hi. I post 2 pic of my device...

 

[Rhys.Goodwin]

Nice work! That looks awesome! Is it all working ok now?

 

[porro]

Yes. Now it's working but I'm waiting for electrician to plug it with lamps.
I hope he's coming soon, then I'll tell you if everything work...
Can you tell me if you set buttons positions in .dll because even if I edit skin positions are the same everytime?

 

[Rhys.Goodwin]

Hey Porro, sorry for taking so long to get back to you havn't been on the forum for a while. yes the positions are specified in the dll, the reason being is that depending on which button is enabled will dpend on where it is. So if button 1 and 7 and 8 are enable in setup then they will all be drawn next to each other rather than having a big gap between 1 and 7, if that makes sense. there maybe a better way of doing it I think? Are you using the plug-in? is it causing problems? are the buttons overlapping?

cheers,
Rhys