Snapstream Firefly Plugin

[JohnL]

Alright, Ive posted and heard nothing back. I have read that it is possible to develop plugins for GB-PVR in VB.net, and I have some experience with that particular language. So... The birth of an idea comes forth.

Would it be possible/not too difficult to make a plugin that would replace, or run with the snapstream software that would intercept the commands coming over the usb subsystem and interpret them for GB-PVR? I was thinking of getting a USB sniffer to see what the commands look like coming over the bus and then writing a little something that would look for those commands and then send GB-PVR the appropriate command (A sendkeys, or some sort of API command to have gb do what it needs to do)

I'm playing with the idea in my head and I think its doable, but I dont know if its worth it (ie, is there someway to get the damn thing to work that I havent tried yet? :confused: )

Any ideas on how to tackle this? (how to even get a plugin started?)

[sub]

Its probably best to keep this as some external program, and just send keystrokes to GB-PVR. Thats how the Hauppauge remote works.

Unfortunately I dont know anything about the Firefly remote, so I cant give you pointer on where to start.

[JohnL]

I would like to use the hauppauge remote that came with my 150, but it stops working intermittently
Plus I think it would be a good idea to add support for another remote, for those who dont like the hauppauge one. I know I like the feel of the firefly much better, personally anyways. But your verdict is that it would be a bad idea to make a plugin to recieve these commands and pipe them to gbpvr with sendkeys?

[sub]

I just think its a better to build an external app that receives notifications from remote, and sends the keystrokes to GB-PVR, rather than a plugin. This is how pretty much every other remote control seems to work

I would have thought the firefly would already have this type of arrangement. Are you sure you cant configure it for GB-PVR, and just set up the mappings of buttons to keystrokes? Sounds a bit odd if you cant do this already.

[JohnL]

I have used this walkthrough:
http://gbpvr.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Manual/Firefly

but it seems that the controlkey doesnt work. ie, the direction, OK, and exit keys work (number keys too) because its a simple one key command, but if I try and send ctrl-q, it doesnt work... none of the rr, ff, play or stop buttons work (as a matter of fact, I tried to make the music button on the remote hit f4 to go to the music library, and that doesnt work either)

I was thinking of trying to use girder, but i dont want to spend another $20 if I can avoid it. I need a second tuner

[sub]

The profile thing looks pretty flexible. It must just be something very simple stopping it working fully. Did you read the tutorial it refers to? http://forums.snapstream.com/vb/showthread.php?t=15113

[sub]

That page refers to http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/defaul...stopic.asp, which sounds like he has done "controlkey" thing incorrectly.

[JohnL]

Yeah on the microsoft page it says to put a ^ in front of the key that you want to append a control keystroke to... so I do this:

Code:

<Actions Button="Play" Description="Play">
    <SpecialKeyAction Type="Down" Key="ControlKey" />
    <SpecialKeyAction Type="Down" Key="p" />
    <SpecialKeyAction Type="Up" Key="p" />
    <SpecialKeyAction Type="Up" Key="ControlKey" />
  </Actions>

Or

Code:

<Actions Button="Play" Description="Play">
    <SpecialKeyAction Type="Down" Key="^p" />
    <SpecialKeyAction Type="Up" Key="^p" />
  </Actions>

neither of those work

I have posted in the support forum about this and no one has replied at all. I figured someone might have gotten it working and would tell me how they did it, but no one answered. So I thought about this plugin idea...

[JohnL]

oh duh, I havent tried doing {^}p yet... I'll try that when I get home and bring an update (and maybe try and update the wiki? ive never used one, lol)

edit
well actually it looks like it will need to be formatted like so i think ^(p)
then again, it looks like that is supposed to be used to do something like ctrl+e+c ^(ec)

why cant things just work?

[sub]

It looks like you could also do

Code:

<Actions Button="Play" Description="Play">
  <KeyAction Keys="^P" />
</Actions>

If it doesnt work, its really more a snapstream support question. I'm sure they'll be able to easily tell you what is wrong with it.