LED status monitor

[alex060670]

@betlit

BTW: how and when is the drive-space-checking done? I am afraid of heavy disk access that could prevent my machine from going to hibernate... :eek: Is it done by checking the amount of free space ONCE when recordingstatus.bat fires paraLED.exe or is done periodically?

Greetings, Alex

[betlit]

So 'all' means the LED is switched on, if drive c is low ... as well as drive d is low... as well as... (logical AND);

and 'single' means that the LED is fired is ONE (or more) of the drives runs out of space, jep?

yes, thats the way it works.

PS: At the moment, I use D1 and D2 as indicators for recording activities on my two capture sources. In the future, I have to use D2 and D3 for that, right?

not necessarily. paraLED uses the _values_ given in the config to determine which pin is set to high you can set them to whatever you want.

so you just can add a fourth led on pin d3 and change paraLEL.xml to:
<diode1>1</diode> --> LED on d0 is used for gbpvr-check
<diode2>8</diode2> --> LED on d3 is used for disk space-check
<diode3>2</dioede3> --> LED on d1 is used for the first tuner
<diode4>4</diode4> --> LED on d2 is used for the second tuner
<diode5>16</diode5> --> LED on d4 is used for the third tuner
<diode6>32</diode6> --> LED on d5 is used for the fourth tuner
<diode7>64</diode7> --> LED on d6 is used for the fifth tuner
<diode8>128</diode8> -->LED on d7 is used for the sixth tuner.

[betlit]

@betlitBTW: how and when is the drive-space-checking done? I am afraid of heavy disk access that could prevent my machine from going to hibernate... :eek: Is it done by checking the amount of free space ONCE when recordingstatus.bat fires paraLED.exe or is done periodically?

uhm... i used a standard-function... (diskFree()) i did not check it, but i think it simply calls the win32 api function GetDiskFreeSpaceEx.

the check is done periodically. and because i'm lazy, it is performed every time the gbpvr-frontend-check is performed (<frequency>-tag in ParaLED.xml). i may change this in the (near) future.

when i did some tests, i did not notice any disk activity... but frankly, i forgot to check if my machine still goes into hibernation.
i will check this and try to get more information about how diskFree gets the free amount of space.

[betlit]

as i thought: GetDiskFreeSpaceEx is used to get the amount of free space on the disk(s).
i was unable to find information _how_ the function actually collects the data, but as it seems the way its doing it causes no disk activity.

my machine goes to hibernation running paraLED (performing both checks every second) without problems.

[velocityboy]

How long could the cable be made for this? I'm thinking of making a parallel to RJ-45 converter (D0-D6 and G7) and then using a small project box with another RJ-45 jack wired to the LED's. My GBPVR PC sits in another room, so running an ethernet cable would be the easiest way, and with 8 wires I could use 7 for signal and one for a common ground. How is everyone else wiring theirs up? Maybe someone could post pics of their setup?

[betlit]

i don't think you run into problems with this setup. but the resistor value of standard cat-5 cable is near 0 (well... at least i think it _should_ be *g*).

i'm at work at the moment and it seems a multimeter does not belong to our standard office-material-supply *g*...
i will check this ASAP at home and get back to you.

if a cat-5 cable _does_ have a resistor value too high to be disregarded, you should use a lower LEDs resistor (just substract the resistor of the cable from the calculated resistor for the LEDs)

[betlit]

the network cables i have at home all a resistor value of about 1.2 ohm per 10 meter.

so theoretically you would have to reduce the LED resistors by 12 ohms if you use a 100m cable. *gg*

meaning: unless your cable isn't really _really_ long, you can ignore its resistor.

[chewy747]

does anyone know of any links to set this up using serial RS232 to control this? I am using my parallel port to display PC information. I know it can be done, I just cant find any info

[betlit]

its a bit more difficult... you can experiment with e.g. a MAX7219 from maxim, but paraLED in its current status will not be able to push something through serial.

[chewy747]

what I would like to have is have say 3 led's, 1 light up when hard drive space is near full, 1 half full, 1 almost empty. Any ideas?