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Win XBMC on iMON Display (LCD / VFD) for Windows - Printable Version

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+--- Thread: Win XBMC on iMON Display (LCD / VFD) for Windows (/showthread.php?tid=84166)



- migr - 2010-12-24

sockenelk Wrote:would really like to try this out - but I've got a starter problem: when installing the imon-software I want to go to Options and set to plugin-mode (as in your readme) - but there is no option to set that anywhere in the whole imon manager... Eek

Using win xp, Zalman hd160 with LCD display, latest imon driver, dharma release version

anyone has a advice?

cheers

are u saying you dont have the "plugin-Mode" option?
If so, you need to get the latest Imon software and patch it too as that option wasnt there in older versions. Im currently running iMON_7_90_0702_01 and then i patched it with iMON_Patch_7_91_0929_Beta.
Follow the links on the 1st page of this thread to both of those and you should be right.


- andyking30 - 2010-12-27

Montellese Wrote:This is possible by activating the "Control mode" option in the XBMC options.



I'll have a look at it. Maybe it has something to do with the RecentlyAdded script not starting the episode properly (e.g. directly starting the file and not the library item) which leads to XBMC not providing any information about the currently playing file.

HI Montellese

Enabling the control mode stopped the display from crashing after selecting a tv episode from the "latest episodes" window. However, it now only displays the episode name and not the series name with it. I'm guessing this is because how xbmc reports it. I'll double check this and get back to you.

One question: is there any way to format the episode format string option to display a leading 0 for series and episode under 10 e.g. S01E01 instead of S1E1?


- Montellese - 2010-12-27

andyking30 Wrote:Enabling the control mode stopped the display from crashing after selecting a tv episode from the "latest episodes" window. However, it now only displays the episode name and not the series name with it. I'm guessing this is because how xbmc reports it. I'll double check this and get back to you.
Yeah it simply displays what XBMC shows you on the screen as a label.

andyking30 Wrote:One question: is there any way to format the episode format string option to display a leading 0 for series and episode under 10 e.g. S01E01 instead of S1E1?

Not yet but I plan to add this feature once I get some spare time to work on this again (because it annoys me as well).


great tool - robertvg - 2010-12-28

One thing that I find a little annoying is that the text (song or movietitle) already restarts when the last letter comes on screen at the right side of the display. For titles that are just longer then what fits onscreen this gives the effect of constantly from left to right and back moving text.
Would it be possible to let the text continue to scroll all the way to the left untill the last character has disappeared and that it would start to appear at the left side of the display with the first character of the text ?


- Montellese - 2010-12-28

robertvg Wrote:One thing that I find a little annoying is that the text (song or movietitle) already restarts when the last letter comes on screen at the right side of the display. For titles that are just longer then what fits onscreen this gives the effect of constantly from left to right and back moving text.
Would it be possible to let the text continue to scroll all the way to the left untill the last character has disappeared and that it would start to appear at the left side of the display with the first character of the text ?

The main problem is that there is no way to know whether a text will scroll on the screen or not. I already tried things like counting the number of characters displayed but it does not work because every character uses a different amount of pixels of the display and knowing the amount of pixels for every possible UTF-8 character is not an option.

What I could do is increase the time between the moment the last letter reaches the end and the moment it starts scrolling again. Maybe I'll make it configurable so everyone can define what he/she prefers.


- htpc guy - 2010-12-28

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001B8Y09C/ref=oss_productI am migrating my system from a crappy case to a nice Silverstone case with this display.

I'm currently using an MCE remote. Will I have to uninstall Lirc before following this tutorial? If so, how do I go about doing that?


- robertvg - 2010-12-28

Montellese Wrote:The main problem is that there is no way to know whether a text will scroll on the screen or not. I already tried things like counting the number of characters displayed but it does not work because every character uses a different amount of pixels of the display and knowing the amount of pixels for every possible UTF-8 character is not an option.

What I could do is increase the time between the moment the last letter reaches the end and the moment it starts scrolling again. Maybe I'll make it configurable so everyone can define what he/she prefers.

What if you would simply add 15 spaces to the displayed text?
Of course then also short texts would start to scroll....


- jinzane - 2011-01-01

this programs works perfectly with my silverstone mfp51.
is there a way that it will automatically uninitialize when i exit xbmc?

thank you so much for this program. :-)


- cartman1337 - 2011-01-02

I love this tool, it's so much better than what iMon offers out of the box. Smile But I have a question.

I don't like scrolling text on the display, so I don't want to have the file name/title running around during playback. Most of the other variables available in the field are also quite useless to me. Would it be possible to add a variable to show the current system time in there instead?

On my system the option to select system time instead of the text "XBMC" in library mode is also grayed out. I'd love to have that option there as well.


- Montellese - 2011-01-02

htpc guy Wrote:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001B8Y09C/ref=oss_productI am migrating my system from a crappy case to a nice Silverstone case with this display.

I'm currently using an MCE remote. Will I have to uninstall Lirc before following this tutorial? If so, how do I go about doing that?
I'm not sure if that display is an iMon display because the screenshots look different than what the iMon displays offer. Furthermore I have never used Lirc so I can't help you in that matter, sorry.

robertvg Wrote:What if you would simply add 15 spaces to the displayed text?
Of course then also short texts would start to scroll....
Exactly Confused

jinzane Wrote:is there a way that it will automatically uninitialize when i exit xbmc?
Unfortunately this is currently not possible although I'd love it myself as well. I have already requested that the possibility to do this should be added to the next version of Soundgraph's iMon Display API...

cartman1337 Wrote:I don't like scrolling text on the display, so I don't want to have the file name/title running around during playback. Most of the other variables available in the field are also quite useless to me. Would it be possible to add a variable to show the current system time in there instead?
I'll see what I can do.

cartman1337 Wrote:On my system the option to select system time instead of the text "XBMC" in library mode is also grayed out. I'd love to have that option there as well.
This option is greyed out on all systems because I haven't implemented it yet Wink


- andyking30 - 2011-01-03

andyking30 Wrote:HI Montellese

Enabling the control mode stopped the display from crashing after selecting a tv episode from the "latest episodes" window. However, it now only displays the episode name and not the series name with it. I'm guessing this is because how xbmc reports it. I'll double check this and get back to you.

One question: is there any way to format the episode format string option to display a leading 0 for series and episode under 10 e.g. S01E01 instead of S1E1?

Hi

I looked into this and xbmc is reporting correctly the series and episodes names so the problem lies somewhere with xbmc on imon. I have noticed from time to time that the display loses where it was and is a step or two behind.


- Montellese - 2011-01-03

andyking30 Wrote:I looked into this and xbmc is reporting correctly the series and episodes names so the problem lies somewhere with xbmc on imon. I have noticed from time to time that the display loses where it was and is a step or two behind.

What exactly do you mean by "xbmc is reporting correctly the series and episodes name"? Do you mean in the XBMC GUI (e.g. in the video player's OSD)?

The delay with control mode comes from the delay of the periodic request that has to be sent to XBMC. First there is a fixed period in which xbmc on imon asks XBMC for the actual position. Then there is a delay until XBMC provides an answer. And then there is a delay until xbmc on imon has processed the response and displays it on the display. So if you browse through your collection very quickly it might well happen that all those delays end up in being a step or two behind. If XBMC would send a message everytime the user changes the focused element in the GUI this could probably be highly reduces.


- jinzane - 2011-01-03

how about disconnecting xbmc on imon automatically when i exit xbmc ? is there an option?
cause when i right click the window tray icon of xbmc on imon, there's an option there xbmc:disconnect and imon:uninitialize.

it would be nice if there will be an option that it will uninitialize and disconnect as soon as i exit xbmc automatically.


- Montellese - 2011-01-03

jinzane Wrote:how about disconnecting xbmc on imon automatically when i exit xbmc ? is there an option?
cause when i right click the window tray icon of xbmc on imon, there's an option there xbmc:disconnect and imon:uninitialize.
"Uninitializing" imon in this context means that xbmc on imon frees the "plugin mode" of imon manager. You can have multiple programs similar to "XBMC on iMON" running simultaneously but only one of them can actually access and control the display. Therefore as soon as XBMC closes xbmc on imon uninitializes the imon plugin mode and allows other applications to control the display.

jinzane Wrote:it would be nice if there will be an option that it will uninitialize and disconnect as soon as i exit xbmc automatically.
This is the default behaviour but it does not uninitialize the display itself (because as I stated many times this is currently not possible) but the display's plugin mode.


- andyking30 - 2011-01-03

Montellese Wrote:What exactly do you mean by "xbmc is reporting correctly the series and episodes name"? Do you mean in the XBMC GUI (e.g. in the video player's OSD)?

The delay with control mode comes from the delay of the periodic request that has to be sent to XBMC. First there is a fixed period in which xbmc on imon asks XBMC for the actual position. Then there is a delay until XBMC provides an answer. And then there is a delay until xbmc on imon has processed the response and displays it on the display. So if you browse through your collection very quickly it might well happen that all those delays end up in being a step or two behind. If XBMC would send a message everytime the user changes the focused element in the GUI this could probably be highly reduces.

When i go to "http://127.0.0.1:8080/xbmcCmds/xbmcHttp?command=GetCurrentlyPlaying" on my local machine after selecting a tv episode from the 4 recent episodes list, the lcd only shows the episode name but the the above link reports it correctly.

The display bug i mentioned secondly seems to happen more often after selecting from the 4 recent episodes list.