In development, a girder lcd/vfd frontend that gives you an audiotron like interface to MC9.
Need a few beta testers - prelim documentation follows.
Mike
LCD Master
Screen and Menu System for LCD Displays
Intro
Writing documentation is not something I like doing - so this is short but hopefully gives a good idea of what LCD Master does. Today’s Home Theater PC’s often include an LCD display to show information from various media players. Existing programs for using LCD’s are limited in ability and do not provide an easy method to integrate information from different sources. The limited real-estate of the LCD display makes it difficult to display more than a small amount of system or player information. Also, with the advent of high end HTPC’s (i.e. Atech Fabrication) which now have player buttons and powermate knobs, a method to control the HTPC is needed.
LCD Master is a Girder program for use on a Home Theater PC (HTPC) to display media player information, system data, weather, CallerID etc in a highly configurable manner on an LCD display. Any number of screens can be created. Display is controlled by setting screen priority levels and cycling times. For example, weather data and system status screens are assigned a priority of 1. These screens are cycled with each other using user specified cycling times. If Zoom Player is started, its screens take over because they have a priority level of 2. Now suppose CallerID data arrives – this screen is given a priority of 3 and overwrites the Zoom Player screen. The CallerID screen expires after a short period and the Zoom Player screen again is displayed. This is all controlled by LCD Master. The user designs the screens and assigns priority, cycling and expiration times. Existing screens are automatically updated in the background even when they are not being displayed.
LCD Master also allows users to create menus to control the HTPC using any input device (similar in concept the Audiotron). This allows using the HTPC for audio playback without turning on the computer monitor. The included menus also provide controls to change the volume, control Media Center 9, Zoom Player, load DVD ISO’s and shutdown or restart the computer
LCD Master consists of 2 components – the core routines which provide a rich set of functions to create, modify, and delete screens and menus, and a set of pre-designed screens to interface with Zoom Player, Media Center 9, Weather, CallerID, Windows Instrumentation, and CoolMon. Adding other programs is easy; requiring a moderate understanding of Girder and LUA.
The program is consists of over 8000 lines of LUA code. Hence, it is somewhat complex and formal documentation of the inner workings does not exist. It was written for my own personal use and is being distributed for personal use only. The best way to start with it is to examine the included screens and menus. The code is fairly well documented and this should provide some help. Unfortunately, building and configuring an HTPC requires a moderate amount of computer savvy and getting this program running is no different.
Author
Topic: Audiotron Media Center 9 (Read 2910 times)