Zalman HD135 VFD (VlSys Mplay) (1 Viewer)

[cybrmage]

select which driver

"VL System Mplay Driver v1.0(xx_yy_zzzz)" where XX = month, YY = day and zzzz=year of the driver release.

with what parameters?

Port = whatever serial port your display is connected to.
Columns = 20.
Rows = 2
#chars to scroll = 1;

everything else can be left at their default values

am i too stupid?

You don't REALLY want an answer to this question, do you?? (Just Kidding!!)



Here is the updated driver. The problem with loading and editing of the remote mapping file has been fixed.

Please let me know how (or if) it works...

Regards,
CybrMage

 

[Herr R aus B]

Hmphtz...

I didn't know, that it would appear immediately. I thought i would have to select the driver from the list of drivers... bla... Forgive a newbie, but I am still struggeling and I am still used to the XBMC, where things are different.

As for your driver: Selecting it results in a little (!) right to the VFD selection combo box. Hovering it says "Unable to open COM3", but COM3 is present and NOT occupied... any ideas?

Anyway - after Rebooting this was gone, therefore I lost my Screen Resolution - was set to 1080i, which produces a terrible flickering on my LCD - can't be associated with your driver, hm? (Kidding back!)

Then opened configuration again - with no (!) at this time. Then clicked the "Advanced" button and got the (!) again.

Then closed the onfiguration utility, started MP, saw something on the VFD and then got a crash (Dialogue box says: "MP crashed unexpectedly" - as if crashs were wanted or expected at any time... *grin*)

Rebooted the entire system, started MP again and got the crash - so far it seems to be reproducable

Greets

Axel

 

[cybrmage]

Herr R aus B: post your mediaportal.log and configuration.log so I can see what is causing the crash...

 

[Herr R aus B]

Herr we go...

The picture shows the setup dialogue for your driver. What about that line prefix field? Should it be blank?

configuration.1.log is when i got this red ! because of unaccessible COM3 after pressing "advanced"

configuration.2.log is after restarting configuration and no pressing of "advanced"

mediaportal.log is directly after crash

maybe that's helpful for you

axel

 

[cybrmage]

What about that line prefix field? Should it be blank?

The prefix field is not used (graphical holdover from a previous driver test)... and has been removed.

maybe that's helpful for you

Yes... The logs were helpful.

Here is a new version... hopefully it will work this time 8-}

Regards,
CybrMage

 

[Herr R aus B]

Hi,

as I just have several recordings going on I wont be able to test the new version before tomorrow. I will report immediately


Somethings,

Axel

 

[-Manfred-]

Remote is now working with all buttons and overall this is really good, much better than MHC's MP remote support.

There is still 3 bugs in this driver (or are they called features )

1. First time setup can't create xml mapping file at all and thus this is unusable. That was ok with previous driver.

2. When setup ran succesfully it will open com port but never releases it. So when entering MP display doesn't work as com already reserved.

3. Unexpected crash. Scenario ???

All logs are named respectively. Can you please add the source also. This was fun to make/assist etc. and I learned a lot.

/m

 

[Herr R aus B]

Hi Manfred!

Did you by chance try to use a different remote? My additional problem is, that i don't wanna use the M-Play Remote, because I have this Medion MD81035 and I wanna us it for all my devices. Somehow I have the impression, the MHC sensor can't cope with the signals from the MD81035. As I am not quite in this IR stuff - are there different transmission protocols or something like this?

Greets

Axel

 

[Herr R aus B]

Yes... The logs were helpful.

Here is a new version... hopefully it will work this time 8-}

Regards,
CybrMage

Here is my report for version C. The VFD now shows reasonable things. But german Umlaute (ä ö ü ...) are not displayed - see the attached pictures where the file name says what should be displayed. Is this maybe a VFD issue? or is it a MP issue? Where can these display texts be configured?

I still experience this red exclamation mark (see attached screen shot) in the configuration and as Manfred already reported, it's not possible to save a new remote configuration. I wanted to switch the action for PwrOn/Off to "Standby Windows" instead of "Exit MP". Due to this issue I also attached two configuration logs.

Furthermore I experienced, that the configuration program keeps running although it was stopped (see attached screen shot). I just ran into that, because i couldn't delete the old version's DLL file which obviously was allocated by the process. This might be a general issue...

Btw (well...) thanks for all your efforts! I am thinking of diving into coding myself, coz my wishlist for a reasonable driver is rather long. Unfortunately as I am no coder anymore but project leader now i got stuck somewhere with MFC 4.2 coding, which was (light)years ago. Now I am just a little bit into Java - dunno if i would make it to get into the .NET and C# thing - especially as there's no free development tools like in the Java world - or are these express versions M$ once spit out suitable for MP plugin development?

Anyway - I am looking forward to test the next version of your driver. And then the version, that will be able to do the fan control, talk with different remotes etc blabla... Even better this might also be a windows background service, that would replace that crappy MHC application. Such a service could do the fan control, offer an IRTrans server and a display interface (maybe also socket based) so that the plugin for the display would "only" be a litle socket client... Doing it as a SOAP based web service would be even better... Btw (again) is there an API to control the TV scheduler from external devices? As this ist a .NET application it would be great, if all functions would be accessible f.ex. as web services... I am going off topic... sorry But if you did THAT, you'd always get free accomodation whenever you'll make it to Berlin ;-) Especially as I have lots of sympathies for canadians, as I spent a great time with a bunch of somewhat sleepy but very friendly Ontarians - I should move to Toronto, but thats off off topic...

Axel

 

[Herr R aus B]

Grmbl...

What I didn't realize is the following. Using your driver, the option to switch on/off the PC (or putting it in rsp. waking it up from standby mode) using the remote is gone. This obviously is done using the MHC software shipped with the VFD. Of course this software can't be run, when your driver's accessing the VFD It'd be interesting to find out abut all the possible command codes that can be sent to the VFD over the serial port. There's a guy here called Dero who obviously did that and coded his own solution. I already asked him, whether he'd share his results. No reply so far. I also wrote an email to VL System, but I doubt that they would hand out any documentation to me...

I'll see whether I can provide some sniff logs regarding the communication between the MHC software and the VFD. But I doubt that I'll really would find out, what is what. BEfore I make efforts-would that be of any interest?

Axel