System Plugin - 2nd Test Release (4th Feb)

[imilne]

Following on from this thread, here's the second (and hopefully final) test release for the new System plugin.

Changes since last weekend's release are as follows:

- Power options are now in their own popup
- Menu options can now be enabled or disabled again
- Menu options are now Back, Update EPG, View, Power, and Service RS
- Alt+R keyboard shortcut for 'Power'
- Added an optional PIN prompt before allowing access to the Power options

[ATTACH=CONFIG]32930[/ATTACH] [ATTACH=CONFIG]32931[/ATTACH]

In case anyone was wondering, the plugin only does its monitoring while active. As soon as you move away from it, then it stops everything it was doing and should be using zero CPU time, although on my htpc it seems to use 0% even when it is running. I was a little worried the new hardware monitoring - that refreshes every second - would cause a hit, but Windows seems really good at returning those numbers without effort. The disk space/tuner monitoring updates every 15 seconds. The network monitor is a cumulative total of all upload and download activity across all active network cards.

Iain

[imilne]

One other thing. I like my gigabytes of disk space in powers of 2 (1024) but my network bits in powers of 10 (1000). I can make these configurable if anyone really wants it in 'proper' (wanky) SI standards.

Iain

[imilne]

I've updated the first post with another new version. It adds a check that disables the keyboard shortcut to Shutdown (Ctrl+S) if the PIN stuff is active, and now forces a refresh of the EPG details after a manual update (thanks Martin).

Iain

[jam_zhou]

is the only way to disable the shortcut key to have a PIN? CTRL+S is mapped to stop on my remote I think that this can be dangerous on my set up.

[imilne]

is the only way to disable the shortcut key to have a PIN? CTRL+S is mapped to stop on my remote I think that this can be dangerous on my set up.

For now, yes, but you could enable the "always confirm before shutting down" option too.

Iain

[bgowland]

One other thing. I like my gigabytes of disk space in powers of 2 (1024) but my network bits in powers of 10 (1000).

I don't get this. Are you saying if your network speed was, for example, 65536 bits/sec the plugin would show it as 65.5 kb/s rather than 64.0 kb/s?

[LegioX]

Feature Request: It would be great if this could display environmentals like fan speed, CPU temp, etc as well. Could this possibly be added into a future release?

[imilne]

I don't get this. Are you saying if your network speed was, for example, 65536 bits/sec the plugin would show it as 65.5 kb/s rather than 64.0 kb/s?

I was going by what I read here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_rate) which states that "binary prefixes have almost never been used for bitrates", so the plugin's kilobits are bits/1000 rather than bits/1024. I can make it configurable easily enough though.

Feature Request: It would be great if this could display environmentals like fan speed, CPU temp, etc as well. Could this possibly be added into a future release?

Unlikely, unless there's a standard API for doing it? I thought this sort of stuff was very manufacturer specific.

Iain

[bgowland]

I was going by what I read here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit_rate) which states that "binary prefixes have almost never been used for bitrates", so the plugin's kilobits are bits/1000 rather than bits/1024. I can make it configurable easily enough though.

OK, so is this really a useful statistic for people to have?

I have a broadband connection which is X Mb/s but it can take 10x as long to download a 1MByte file from blah.co.uk in the UK as it takes to download the same file from blah.com in the US. I don't understand the relevance of monitoring local network 'speeds'.

[imilne]

Maybe you want to know why that download from blah.com in the US is taking 10 times longer. Maybe you're doing multiple simultaneous recordings to a NAS drive and you want to see how much data is going across the network. Maybe you want to see what data rate some streaming content from the youtube plugin in coming in at.

Maybe you don't care and just comment out the display in the skin file...

Iain