Soundbridge VFD (1 Viewer)

[Khryo]

Hi,

I don't know if you are aware about this product, but I bought one and find it wonderfull for playing music without having to turn on the TV!

It works with UPnP and retreive the songs of MP through the WMC server ... well , why am I posting this here?

Look to the picture :

It is a full graphical VFD display with 280x16 pixels for the M1000 and 512x32 pixels for the M2000, and they use the wellknown Noritake VFD.

Got the point? No? It is using Ethernet interfaces (LAN and/or WiFi) to play music and also control the display!

By a simple Telnet session, you can control the VFD through the LAN, I made some tests myself with Girder, and with a simple LUA script was able to send messages to the VFD...

Here are the available commands:

help - displays this list
rect x y w h - draws rect
framerect x y w h - frames rect
point x y - draws point
line x1 y1 x2 y2 - draws line
blit x1 y1 x y w h - blits from (x,y,w,h) to (x1,y1)
slide x n - slides the display x pixels n times
font n - chooses a font
color n - chooses pen color
text x y "text" - draws text
marquee "text" - slides text across the display
clear - clears display
quit - quits sketch

You just have to make a telnet to the device IP , port 4444 and enter in the Sketch menu , then you have the control of the display. If you do an exit, the display is back to its normal view (music still playing both case).

SO , what do you think? This can be a great remote VFD for MP, without having to integrate it to the PC with USB/Serial/Parallel controler,etc... you can hide the PC, and let only the SB visible

Do you think, it will be difficult to add this "special" VFD in the LCD plugin?

 

[mzemina]

A plugin for this or maybe a plugin for Slim devices (Squeezebox2 http://www.slimdevices.com/) would be a very nice addition! These devices have access to SlimServer which would be a very nice addition that allowing MP to act as a front-end or controller would be very nice indeed!

Any developers out there looking at creating a plugin for these? Or the Squeezebox2?

Mike Zemina

 

[mzemina]

.bump.

 

[mzemina]

Wonder if this thread should be moved to the feature requests forum? Not sure if any potential developer looks here?

Mike

 

[rtv]

Maybe you should ask JoeDalton or some other plugin developer..

 

[mzemina]

Maybe you should ask JoeDalton or some other plugin developer..

I did ask Joe and he said "...I did some tests myself with the telnet commands, but don't have lot of time to play with right now"

So it look like it will have to wait.
Mike

 

[JoeDalton]

If the display is supported by Girder then I have good news for you:
As of version 0.1.3 (or the current CVS builds) my ExternalDisplay plugin has a "Girder" display type that supports sending information to Girder.

Every 300ms, it sends the "MPDisplayUpdated" event to Girder and passes the generated lines along...

I hope this will get you started getting this display to work in MP...

Joe

 

[rtv]

Thumbs up JoeDalton - keep up your good work!