Silverstone iMON VFD Status Plug-in

[lbeagley79]

I recently purchased a silverstone case with the iMON VFD and was looking for a way to get information to display what was playing and the playtime/duration. It took quite some time to setup, but now it works like a charm.

Below are the steps I used to get this working properly for anyone who is interested in setting this up on a silverstone VFD case that uses a USB connector.

1.
Download the 'getstatus' tool from the following site and follow all instructions for installation:
http://www.sage-community.org/index....tStatusInstall

2.
Download a program called 'LCD Smartie' and a required Sage plug-in dll and ini file:
http://lcdsmartie.sourceforge.net/smartied.htm
http://www.nolberger.se/Sage/LCDSmar...lugin1.0.3.zip

3.
Download the required USB drivers and iMON VFD ini file to make your VFD work with Smartie (for some reason this file can only be downloaded with IE - firefox will NOT work):
http://happy.happy.nu/download/alpha/pdll0002.zip

4.
Extract the Smartie LCD software into your program files directory or which ever of your liking. In the plugins directory, extract the following 2 files:
pdll0002.zip
LCDSmartieSagePlugin1.0.3.zip

(You should now have Sage.ini, Sage.dll, imonvfd.ini, and usbport.dll in your plugins directory. Not sure if the demo.dll file is necessary, but I left it there)

5.
Load up the Smartie software - a great tutorial can be found at: http://www.nolberger.se/Sage/LCDSmartie/

For reference, I am using version 5.3 with the following 2 command lines:
$dll(sage.dll,5,0,2) $dll(sage.dll,2,0,)
$dll(sage.dll,8,0,h:nn:ss)/$dll(sage.dll,7,0,l#h:nn:ss)

6.
Under Smart LCD settings, configure as follows:
LCD size -> 2x16
LCD type -> Matrix Orbital
COM port -> USB Palm

7.
If Smartie is configured properly, you should see what is playing and duration. One more thing, make sure the iMON VFD software is configured for 'plugin'. You can also disable the other display modes of Smartie so only show information is displayed (instructions are in step 5).

I hope these instructions are accurate. It took quite some time to get my VFD working the way I wanted. If there are any questions, I'll try my best to help.

lbeagley79

[dagar]

Awesome. Thanks IB!

[lbeagley79]

Thought you might enjoy this one! I'm still excited that it's ACTUALLY working

If you get stuck, let me know. It took quite a bit of fooling around to make it function correctly.

[dagar]

I'll be looking at it, hopefully, this w/e. Thanks

[mightyt]

AWESOME! I was just asking about this ...

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...5&postcount=17

I can't wait to try your solution ... Thanks very much lbeagley79 ,,,

I am in the process of pulling my new Sage server together ... I got the Silverstone LC10m ... Which one do you have? Of course the LC18 with that touch screen is sweet, but wasn’t there when I got mine.

Oh … Did you figure out how to program the iMON remote to work with SageTV? I have another thread about that as well ...

http://forums.freytechnologies.com/f...ad.php?t=13463

Thanks, T.

[lbeagley79]

Hey T,

I bought the LC16m. I wanted LOTS of room for hard drives!

I got the iMON remote working incredibly well with Sage. All the important functions are mapped to corresponding keys. I will make an attachment of my config file when I get home from work (I'll give instructions how to do this later when I'm at my computer).

Check back later and you'll have a great working iMON remote!

LBeagley79

[mightyt]

Wow ... The L16m lets you have up to 7 drives not including the DVD!! That's what I was looking for too ... mine will allow 5 drives plus the DVD. Pretty much the best I could find at the time.

It looks like you got the bigger, better remote as well ... Wonder if mine will work the same ... ??

How are your fans? Mine were pretty noisy ... I replaced them with some SilenX and reduced from 29dBA to about 8dBA!! I also put a fanless Antec PS in there and a Thermalright XP Copper CPU Heatsync. So far this thing is virtually silent! I'm still in the middle of it though ... We'll see what happens when I get more than one drive in there!! I bought some HD Grommets to reduce vibration, but there wasn't enough room to install them ...

Anyway, I look forward to hearing how it goes with your remote ... Will check back later ...

Thanks again LBeagley79!

T.

[lbeagley79]

Hey T,

I'm using the two standard case fans, stock heatsink for athlon x2, and the fans on the PSU. The fans are too loud for my liking, but my motherboard had a feature called "cool n quiet" that I just enabled in the BIOS. After doing so, the volume level dropped dramatically by regulating the fan speed.

It worked like a charm! The 5 drives are not a noise issue which is surprising.

Have you tried setting up the display for the VFD using the setup procedure listed above? I noticed that broadcasting the TCP/IP for display using the LCD Smartie software caused my internet connection to stop functioning.

I found that the standard TCIP/IP address used for the localhost was causing the problem. I changed the following settings in the sage.properties file to the following settings:

nielm/getstatus/bind_addr=192.168.x.xxx
nielm/getstatus/port=20000

Where the x's are set to the same IP address as used on my sage system. Saving the sage.properties file and restarting SageTV fixed the problem. No more hang ups with internet while broadcasting the TCP/IP info to Smartie.

If anyone has tried my setup, I hope this helps.

LB

[mightyt]

Yep ... Anyway to keep that fan noise down is definitely a win! Wish my mobo had that feature. A few of the guys around here highly recommended mCubed, but I am not sure I really need it any more.

I will try both you VFD and Remote customizations this weekend and let you know how it goes!!

Thanks for all your effort!!

T.

[gongzero]

I'm not using a Silverstone case or iMON software -- however, I've just received a Matrix Orbital VFD (specifically, the VK202-24-USB 2x20 model) for use with SageTV.

I've yet to download or connect anything as I want to be 100% certain I won't wreck my nice, stable Sage installation.

Aside from changing the "Smart LCD" settings to 2x20 rather than 2x16, would this guide work for my purposes as well?

Also, if anyone has the Anders Nolberger plugin, would you PM me? His site is down.

TIA!


-A

[spockware]

Just curious... how does this setup show music when you have Sage's Random playback on? I often turn off the TV after starting a boat-load of music and would like to see what is next even if random.

[lbeagley79]

Very good question! I have not tried sage with music yet, but I imagine it should show what is playing and the current time/overall time just as movies are displayed. I'm not sure if you can configure it to show what is going to be playing next, but that would be a sweet setup.

If you try it out with music, let me know how it works. Eventually I'll import music into sage, but just haven't gotten around to it yet.