Remote Wonder support

[AJ Bertelson]

Nielm, did you update the remote wonder plugin to work with V2.

I am going to work with girder this weekend on my remote wonder.

[BigGator]

nielm..
you've got that many commands to work?

When I tried it - it seemed like only up-down-left-right worked on menus... home (stop) didn't seem to work... nor did FF/RW..

I'll try it again today to double check.. maybe for some reason the plugin isn't working right on my box.
"-)

[BigGator]

I just tried again...
absolutely none of those commands are working... it's like the Remote Wonder doesn't see that Sage is running at all..

do I need to reinstall the plugin?
"-)

[mlbdude]

I assume the window class name has changed with Sage 2. Has anyone tried just updating that in the remote wonder plugin config file?

[nielm]

D'oh! Thanks mlbdude, I had forgotten I had done that...

in C:\Program Files\ATI Multimedia\RemCtrl\Plug-Ins\SageTv.ini,
in the [config] section change
SageTvWinClass=sage.ae
to
SageTvWinClass=sage.d

Restart the ATI RW appl and you should be sorted, at least for some of the buttons some of the time!

I will make a new release when the Beta becomes more stable

[BigGator]

That did it!!
Thanks!
"-)

[jominor]

Originally posted by BigGator
That did it!!
Thanks!
"-)

Ditto. I did have to change the "Live TV" mapping to "TV", but otherwise, I'm back in 2.0 beta business.

Thanks! I it now much less likely that I will be replace my RW.

[Scriber]

Nielm -- While I have no clue as to why that change was needed my RW is back and that is good!! Thx.


Jominor -- I agree the RW is soooo much better than the H remote. The only advantage to the X10 of course is the IR control of the TV - what the RW lacks. I hoped the RW2 might have IR but from nielm's post/image that's no go. One Sage/TV remote for $40 ain't bad though.

[jominor]

Originally posted by Scriber
Nielm -- While I have no clue as to why that change was needed my RW is back and that is good!! Thx.


Jominor -- I agree the RW is soooo much better than the H remote. The only advantage to the X10 of course is the IR control of the TV - what the RW lacks. I hoped the RW2 might have IR but from nielm's post/image that's no go. One Sage/TV remote for $40 ain't bad though.

Duh! You know, since the RW uses a rf and works through walls, I placed my receiver in my fishtank case. My PC is behind the fishtank and out of sight.

I've been wondering, since this works through walls, why are people so gung ho about IR. I completely forgot about TV remotes.

You've just muddied my waters. Thanks :-)

[AJ Bertelson]

But you can program girder to work to do some IR commands though if you have a IR blaster.

I tired to use this last night but it was hard to read on the HTPC. http://www.girder.nl/help/gettingstarted/index.php One of the reasons I like the remote wonder software is that it is pretty easy to configure the available pluggins but I am thinking about slowly moving to girder for 2.0

[msm]

Moving to Girder is well worht the effort if you are thinking about expanding your setup further, or are going to be using some none standard equipment. The number of plugins is staggering and a new LCD plugin has just been written so i am looking to trying that out

It is well worth the effort to learn...at the moment I am trying out plugin writting to see how that goes.

Matt

[nielm]

Scriber: The plugin needs to know how Sage identifies it's window to see whether it is the foreground app... This is done with the Class Name, and the it changed between 1.4 and 2.0...

Version 2.0.11 changes the use of navigation keys quite a lot...
Left arrow sometimes no longer takes you back to the previous screen.
There are 2 new commands: Forward and Back, the last one being required to go back to the previous screen in most cases...
The Options key no longer does anything useful.
The Info key is now very useful, as it brings up menus/options in the guide and recordings screens..

I have updated the ini file to handle this:
I have added Forward and Back to the Custom commands list (Sage|Next Screen and Sage|Prev Screen) I recommend mapping Prev Screen to a key near the arrows, perhaps C).
The 'Menu' key now brings up the info screens in the guide and recordings screens...

I cant think of a good button to put 'Back' on... I tried stop, but it does not feel right... The other possible one is the tick key on the number pad (currently toggle favourites), or the 'stopwatch' key (currently time scroll)... But maybe the fact that 'left' does not always work is a bug!

New ini file attached...

[Deadbolt]

Need help as I am a Girder newbie. I am using SageTV 2.0.11. Couple questions for the RW which I am using with Girder:

1) Can I use the red Power button to sleep sage? If not, can I deactivate it so if I hit is by accident doesn't shutdown sage, or ask me if I want to shutdown sage.

2) Can I map a button to go directly to the Sage Recording list?

3) Can I map a key to go to the "now showing" in full screen.
Ex1) I'm prevewing a show while scrolling down the recording list and want to go full screen with the previewing show without scrolling back up to the show and selecting "watch this."
Ex2) I have left a show and am in some other menu area and want to go back to the show that I was watching without going through the recording list again.

EDIT #1: I was looking at the above plugin download. What is the purpose of the top paragraph of commented out commands...just to give us the full command set? How would I add one of these features to the acitve set in the lower section that is not commented out?

Any help much appreciated!
Thanks a ton!
Deadbolt.

PS - I'm almost to PVR-350 nervana...if only it initiallized the PVR-350 UI overlay imediatly I'd be there. Right now I have to at lease preview in the Recording listing before it shows the UI correctly (aligned correctly on the screen). Also it would be nice for the UI to stay up when playing music through the soundcard (I understand why the 350 won't output it)...instead of going to striped screen. Also, for some reason when I sleep sage, the 350 shows the screen saver for a half second then goes to striped bars until I wake and preview a show.

[justme]

Apologies for going offtopic, but:

if only it initiallized the PVR-350 UI overlay imediatly I'd be there. Right now I have to at lease preview in the Recording listing before it shows the UI correctly

Since this seems to be a Hauppauge issue and it's been around along time(in one form or another), maybe it's time for a workaround to be built in to sage. My Tivo starts up with this weird Mpeg playing in the background. If Jeff could have Sage play a very short Mpeg(intro to Sage) when sage is first started this should intialize the 350 and solve the problem of needing to do something that manually use the 350s HW decoder.

[Deadbolt]

That would be sweet...maybe an mpeg2 screensaver..and if the screen saver was just a looped mpeg2 file, that would solve the sleep issue too.

[Deadbolt]

Is the above sagetvplugin by nielm for the ATI RW software or for Girder? I get an error "Not valid plugin" with the ati software.

Deadbolt

[Deadbolt]

I found an interesting thing with girder....If I map girder so that on "Go to sleep" it powers off then waits...for as long as the wait time is the Sage Screensaver shows in the 350 UI. After that I get the bars. I can jack up the wait time to achive the screen saver I want but then I can't interupt the wait cycle.

Deadbolt

[nielm]

Deadbolt: It was written for versions 1.4 or 1.5 of the RW software...
I don't have a RW II, and don't have the software v2, so I don't know if it works with that or not.

EDIT: The above download is only the updated ini file for the plugin to update the command list for SageV2b -- you still need the DLL file that was part of the original plugin. Maybe you are loading the ini file into the RW software, not the DLL?

[nielm]

Deadbolt: And in answer to your other questions:

There are 2 ways of using the RW with Girder: either still using the ATI software with a Girder plugin; and not using the ATI software at all and using the X10 plugin for Girder.

The first way gives little benefit over using my plugin. The second way gives full control of all keys within Girder (including the normally unchangable TV, DVD, Power and Guide buttons, and different actions for button Down, Up, and Repeat).
But you have to spend a lot of time and confusion learning how Girder works and configuring it to do different actions for a key depending on which app is active. It also means you have to use Girder to control the mouse (see my other post in this thread).

1) Red power button to sleep sage: You can do this in my plugin. If you edit sage.properties (while sage is shut down) and set 'sleep_on_close=true', then sage will go to sleep when Alt-F4 is sent (which is what the red power button does) this is mentioned in the readme.txt included with my plugin. If you map another button to execute sagetv.exe it will pop it up again.
In Girder map the Power button to the Power command and it will both sleep and pop up Sage.

2) Button to go to Sage Recordings: only in Girder by defining a multigroup (macro) that sends 'Home' then 'Enter'. Similarly Library: Home, Downx5, Enter

3) Button to go to Full Screen TV: in my plugin you can map the Sage\View TV action to a custom button (A-F) and this will return you to full screen TV mode showing whatever is currently showing. In Girder, you can map the TV command to do the same thing.

As you guessed, the top section of the ini file is just to give the full command code set. To change the mapping of a key, change the 3-digit code assigned to it. To add a new custom command add and entry in the same syntax as the other custom commands already in the file... Compare the ini file in the attachment above to the ini file in the initial plugin version to see how I changed the 'Menu' key and added new custom commands 'Back' and 'Forward'. (This is also meantioned in the readme.txt of the original plugin zipfile)

Girder is massivley powerful and because of that massively complicated - I wish you luck learning it.. I have spend several weeks so far getting it to work for me (so that I can use the video functions on my TV remote with Sage!)...

[AJ Bertelson]

I have been working on Girder today and getting the remote wonder to work with sage2.0

I am pretty darn close to having it done and I will post it later today.