2007-02-12, 04:25 PM
Been using GB-PVR as a High-def PVR for a couple months, and it's been great. The one thing I really missed from my TIVO series 2 that I used to use, however, was the little red light that would go on to indicate that a recording was taking place. I really like being able to verify with a quick glance (without turning on my TV, or something like that) that something was getting recorded when I thought it was getting recorded.
So, I started looking for a solution. I saw the "blinky" plugin (http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Plugin/Blinky), which seems cool, except for I have the keyboard hidden away behind everything, and I didn't want to have to bring it out just for that purpose.
So, I started thinking about other ways to do this, so I thought of using an LCD device, which could not only tell me if something was recording, but also could give me more feedback on the LCD display. Anyway, I didn't do a whole lot of research, but after about 5 minutes I found this LCD device: http://pertelian.com/index.php?option=co...&Itemid=48 There may be others available for cheaper, I don't know. (Like I said, I didn't do a ton of research, and this looked quick and easy to setup.) It's a 4 row by 20 column display, and it has a backlight that can be turned on or off, which would seem like a good way for me to indicate if recording is happening or not. By reading their forum and their documentation, it has an API for .NET or C++, so I went ahead and ordered it. I didn't use the included software they use to be able to stream stuff to their device, as that was too specific, but rather wrote my own code to control it using their API.
Of course, I started out looking for a simple recording status indicator, which I got with the controllable backlight, but I also got a 4 line LCD display, so I had to figure out what to use that for.
What I ended up doing was this:
On line one of the LCD, I put the system time, updated every second. (Not really needed, but what the heck.)
On line two, I rotate weather information that I grab from some XML feed from the National Weather service. Stuff like temperature, wind, windchill, heat index, etc. (My wife likes that stuff.)
On line three, I rotate system stats, like free space on my harddrive and system uptime. (Will probably add current CPU usage percentage, and CPU temp.)
On line four, I put either the name of the show that's currently being recorded, or, if nothing is being recorded, I'll put a rotating list of the eight most recently recorded shows.
When something is recording, I turn the backlight on, and if nothing is recording I turn the backlight off. A very good and easy to see recording indicator. (The main reason I got this thing in the first place.)
I put it in a cozy spot near my A/V equipment, and voila! I have my recording status indicator, along with a few other status-type things.
I didn't make this using the GB-PVR plugin architecture, since I wanted to get something quick and dirty programmed, so it's a standalone console app running in the background. (I use parallelProcessing.bat to run a utility to tell my application that something is recording, and postprocessing.bat to run a utility to tell my application that it's done recording.)
Another thing I've thought of implementing would be a "warning mode", which would flash the backlight on and off in one second intervals, if something bad happens, like the hard-drives almost fills up, or if the GB-PVR recording service stops, or something like that, that would be an easy indicator of a problem to investigate.
Anyway, just thought I'd post this to see if anyone is doing anything similar, or had other ideas of what to do with something like this with GB-PVR.
If, for some reason, other folks out there had this LCD device, or planned on getting one, I would consider turning this into an actual GB-PVR plugin, so it's more tightly integrated. (I've never looked at the plugin architecture, but I assume you can get events indicating when recording starts and stops so I could ditch using the processing batch files that I have to use now.)
So, I started looking for a solution. I saw the "blinky" plugin (http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Plugin/Blinky), which seems cool, except for I have the keyboard hidden away behind everything, and I didn't want to have to bring it out just for that purpose.
So, I started thinking about other ways to do this, so I thought of using an LCD device, which could not only tell me if something was recording, but also could give me more feedback on the LCD display. Anyway, I didn't do a whole lot of research, but after about 5 minutes I found this LCD device: http://pertelian.com/index.php?option=co...&Itemid=48 There may be others available for cheaper, I don't know. (Like I said, I didn't do a ton of research, and this looked quick and easy to setup.) It's a 4 row by 20 column display, and it has a backlight that can be turned on or off, which would seem like a good way for me to indicate if recording is happening or not. By reading their forum and their documentation, it has an API for .NET or C++, so I went ahead and ordered it. I didn't use the included software they use to be able to stream stuff to their device, as that was too specific, but rather wrote my own code to control it using their API.
Of course, I started out looking for a simple recording status indicator, which I got with the controllable backlight, but I also got a 4 line LCD display, so I had to figure out what to use that for.
What I ended up doing was this:
On line one of the LCD, I put the system time, updated every second. (Not really needed, but what the heck.)
On line two, I rotate weather information that I grab from some XML feed from the National Weather service. Stuff like temperature, wind, windchill, heat index, etc. (My wife likes that stuff.)
On line three, I rotate system stats, like free space on my harddrive and system uptime. (Will probably add current CPU usage percentage, and CPU temp.)
On line four, I put either the name of the show that's currently being recorded, or, if nothing is being recorded, I'll put a rotating list of the eight most recently recorded shows.
When something is recording, I turn the backlight on, and if nothing is recording I turn the backlight off. A very good and easy to see recording indicator. (The main reason I got this thing in the first place.)
I put it in a cozy spot near my A/V equipment, and voila! I have my recording status indicator, along with a few other status-type things.
I didn't make this using the GB-PVR plugin architecture, since I wanted to get something quick and dirty programmed, so it's a standalone console app running in the background. (I use parallelProcessing.bat to run a utility to tell my application that something is recording, and postprocessing.bat to run a utility to tell my application that it's done recording.)
Another thing I've thought of implementing would be a "warning mode", which would flash the backlight on and off in one second intervals, if something bad happens, like the hard-drives almost fills up, or if the GB-PVR recording service stops, or something like that, that would be an easy indicator of a problem to investigate.
Anyway, just thought I'd post this to see if anyone is doing anything similar, or had other ideas of what to do with something like this with GB-PVR.
If, for some reason, other folks out there had this LCD device, or planned on getting one, I would consider turning this into an actual GB-PVR plugin, so it's more tightly integrated. (I've never looked at the plugin architecture, but I assume you can get events indicating when recording starts and stops so I could ditch using the processing batch files that I have to use now.)