Detailed event infos

[dazzyb2k3]

Thanks a million Gomer. It's a little late for me to try tonight but will give it a go tomorrow and report my findings. Don't worry about updates i'm just happy to have anything remotely intereting on my LCD with GBPVR

[dazzyb2k3]

Gomer,

Excuse the ignorance but I obviously have to substitute "whatever,whatever" for something. Can you give me some idea. I've only ever run LCD smartie using the in built functions so I don't have much experience of plugins.

Thanks

[Gomer]

Gomer,

Excuse the ignorance but I obviously have to substitute "whatever,whatever" for something. Can you give me some idea. I've only ever run LCD smartie using the in built functions so I don't have much experience of plugins.

Thanks

Sorry about that, whatever,whatever just means that you can type pretty much whatever you like here since I don't use these fields yet, Smartie forces plugins to always accept two strings as parameters... So if you just copy the $dll(...) exactly the way I wrote it will work.... You could also use $dll(SmartiePlugin,1,hello,there) but it will display exactly the same thing. The important part is the number (1 in this case), that determines which of my functions the line will use...

Good luck!

[dazzyb2k3]

Hi Gomer,

Got up early this morning to fiddle around with your plugin. I configured everything as you sugessted, ran the config to enable it and loaded GBPVR but the display was blank. Ran the config one more time, did a reboot and it works!!! (Really love the recording now/next info)

Thanks for all your efforts. I was pretty much resigned to never having my VFD working in GBPVR. Now everything looks great

We should wait for the next release when the channel info will be fixed, come up with a bit of doccumentation and put this on the Wiki. I'm sure there are a lot of people who would like Smartie support. I'd be happy to do all this if you don't have the time and are prepared to release the plugin in it's current form. I haven't spotted any obvious bugs yet but it's early days.

Just for reference i have an Imon 2X16 VFD (USB Version)

Thanks a million Gomer/Sub - this is community support as it should be.

[Gomer]

I'm glad you like it. Yes, when the TV Preview thing is fixed I guess putting it out on the Wiki could work. I do want to add some more formatting options as well (I'm not happy leaving it all up to smartie the I do it now ) and possibly a neater IPC method but we'll see. If you want to help with some docs and stuff that would be excellent...

I'm thinking about adding a check for whether the recording service has gone nuts as well and restarting it. Since I have on 3 occasions so far ended up with 6 hour+ recordings of 30 minute shows due to the recording service simply not stopping when it should. I was planning to check whether the currently recording show really should be recording (=whether the time is more than the specified end time of the show + padding afterwards) and if it shouldn't be simply restart the recording service.

BTW: In the latest release, does your GBPVR crash when pressing the TVGuide button while watching TV? It does everytime for me, and only in the latest release....

Cheerio!

[dazzyb2k3]

Hi Gomer,

Good luck with the development. I agree that more formatting options would be cool as Smartie does tend to 'take over' a little. Fantastic idea about the recording service too. I've had this a couple of times and it would be an extra safeguard.

I don't know how easy this would be to achieve but I always thought it would be cool if the LCD could show you now/next data so you could see what was comming up on the current channel (I'm suspecting this might require quite a bit of extra work on Sub's behalf though!)

Whenever you've got any updates let me know and i'll be happy to test it on my system.

Can't help you with the epg crash. I honestly can't remember the last time GBPVR crashed for me (the main reason I use it) and it gets better with every release. (I do have an issue with 0k recordings after standby but I think that's more hardware related). Have you tried changing the skin? Only the default Blue skin works reliably at the moment. Might be time to dig into Sub's encyclopedic brain again.....

[csy]

Hi Gomer - I hope your still out there,

I too have the iMON 2x16 VFD display in my silverstone case and have followed dazzyb2k3 footsteps (thanks dazzy!) After a bit of playing around I found that I needed to download and install the CommonGBPVRUtilities.dll file and now it is running.

The default info displayed is GBPVR and date/time and it does display TV channel info, but I'm wondering if it is supposed to display other info as well?

When playing a video it displays an exception error with lots of numbers, and no info on other gbpvr functions like FM radio. Is this normal?

I am very keen to have it display the FM radio station name.

[dazzyb2k3]

Hi csy,

I know gomer is still active but quite busy with other stuff. He's promised further development and I hope he can find the time because I believe a smartie plugin is much more suitable - particularly as USB lcd/vfd's become more common.

Just as a side issue - I was thinking of getting an FM tuner while I wait for DVB radio support. Do they work well in GBPVR and which tuner do you use?

[csy]

Hi Dazzyb2k3, thanks for putting me onto this plugin. I have got it working on LiveTV but that is all. Does it work on other gbpvr functions for you?

I'm using the inbuilt FM tuner within the ATI 550 TV card which works well without the Smartie plugin, but when the Smartie gbpvr plugin is added into gbpvr then the FM tuner has clicking sound @1/2sec intervals and the sound is distorted in general. When you remove the smartie gbpvr plugin, the FM tuner returns to normal with good sound again.

[Ambro]

Great stuff - my first post here as this plugin has completed the GB-PVR experience; .

A report on the error mentioned earlier - I too receive a 'DLL: External Error' when the switch is set to '1' & I'm viewing a recording. Haven't had a chance to test LiveTV yet.

Am I correct in assuming the '1' switch only shows the name GB-PVR, or is there anything else? (if so I will just type in GB-PVR instead!!!)

Cheers to all involved - great app.