Developer Challenge: Make SageTV "Tweet"?

[Brent]

Originally Posted by wayner

You may not want the MPAA to see what your watching, ie. Currently watching 'Movies/Torrents/Inglourious.Basterds.Telecine.avi' or even worse, 'Movies/Adult/Torrents/Deep.Throat.DVDrip.avi'

Oh crap! Did my GeekTonicHTPC twitter account share that ?

But good point. And it does open you up to privacy issues so I recommend people use it with a private account - I just haven't done it thus far.

[wayner]

The alias function seems to work well Slugger - the only thing I don't totally understand is what you put in for the aliases on the Server page as opposed to client page. Is this for SageClient and for watching on the server (something I don't/can't do since my server is WHS)?

By the way, how do Placeshifter clients show up?

[darcilicious]

Originally Posted by wayner

You may not want the MPAA to see what your watching, ie. Currently watching 'Movies/Torrents/Inglourious.Basterds.Telecine.avi' or even worse, 'Movies/Adult/Torrents/Deep.Throat.DVDrip.avi'

Ha!

I'm not that silly ;-) Anyhow, MPAA isn't after the downloaders/watchers, but the uploaders/sharers...

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by wayner

The alias function seems to work well Slugger - the only thing I don't totally understand is what you put in for the aliases on the Server page as opposed to client page. Is this for SageClient and for watching on the server (something I don't/can't do since my server is WHS)?

By the way, how do Placeshifter clients show up?

On the server tab, you add aliases for SageTV (PC) clients only and those aliases are used only for the UI connection/disconnection tweets.

On the clients tab you register UI context names for extenders, placeshifters and the local client. These settings are used for the "watching xyz" tweets and the UI conn/disconn tweets will also look for aliases for extenders/placeshifters as well. Since extender/PS context names are also how the client connection is registered, I can simply grab the alias name from the clients tab. However, PC client connections are registered on the server by IP address so this is why I have the input on the server tab. However, if you wanted to tweet "watching xyz" for PC clients then you must also install SageTweet on the client PC and run a separate instance from there - and in that case you'd have to register the client as 'SAGETV_PROCESS_LOCAL_UI'.

Hopefully that makes sense to everyone? All of this comes about because the Sage server isn't able to know what a Sage client is doing, all it knows is that it connected to the server (or at least this is all that's available via the Sage API). So to tweet when a client pc has connected, you have to do on the server, but to tweet what that client is watching requires an installation of SageTweet on the client. Not pretty, but it's about the best I can do unless I require the remote API to be installed on the client and then I can do some queries remotely and keep everything to a single installation. If enough interest for something like that was shown, I might consider that for a future enhancement.

[darcilicious]

Thanks for all your awesome work!

Here's my feedback: I'm running this on Windows XP on a remote client. I've got the tweeting working but I'm having issues in getting the SageTweet client page to "forget" bad configuration settings.

There doesn't seem to be a way to remove any rows there so I set the badly configured clients to "don't tweet". However, if I reload the page and click on the Clients tab, the dropdown reverts back to tweeting (with the twitter account listed). Restarting the SageTV (client) doesn't help either.

Otherwise, everything else seems to be working really well!

Thanks so much for including computer clients :-)

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

Thanks for all your awesome work!

Here's my feedback: I'm running this on Windows XP on a remote client. I've got the tweeting working but I'm having issues in getting the SageTweet client page to "forget" bad configuration settings.

There doesn't seem to be a way to remove any rows there so I set the badly configured clients to "don't tweet". However, if I reload the page and click on the Clients tab, the dropdown reverts back to tweeting (with the twitter account listed). Restarting the SageTV (client) doesn't help either.

Otherwise, everything else seems to be working really well!

Thanks so much for including computer clients :-)

Yeah, I'm able to reproduce both problems (can't disable client tweeting and can't delete rows from clients tab). I'll look at them hopefully tomorrow - at the very least it'll be the next thing I fix when I get a chance to open up the source code again.

[Brent]

I'm getting multiple tweets after adding the client alias.

Example:
Tweet1: GeekTonicHTPC Remote UI(s) Disconnected: 'MBR';#SageTweet
Tweet2: GeekTonicHTPC Remote UI(s) Disconnected: '0016e8ae563a';#SageTweet

Same device. I get the same duplication of tweets when watching a show.

Do you think I set something up wrong or is it a bug which I should add to the project page?

[wayner]

I am not getting the multiple tweets that Brent mentioned, the alias function seems to be working perfrectly for me so far. For example here are a few examples from this morning:

wk_SageTweet Currently watching 'Isabella's Shows/Elmo/"Elmo's Musical Adventure": "Elmo's Musical Adventure"' on TV Room #SageTweet 22 minutes ago from SageTweet

wk_SageTweetRemote UI(s) Connected: 'TV Room'; #SageTweet 22 minutes ago from SageTweet

One question - does anyone have a good logo to use for System Messages? I am using the Sage green logo for regular tweets but for system messages I would like something more appropriate - maybe in Red or an exclamation mark superimposed over the Sage logo to draw attention to the severity of the message.

[darcilicious]

Maybe this?

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by Brent

I'm getting multiple tweets after adding the client alias.

Example:
Tweet1: GeekTonicHTPC Remote UI(s) Disconnected: 'MBR';#SageTweet
Tweet2: GeekTonicHTPC Remote UI(s) Disconnected: '0016e8ae563a';#SageTweet

Same device. I get the same duplication of tweets when watching a show.

Do you think I set something up wrong or is it a bug which I should add to the project page?

Not sure yet. I'm not seeing the duplicate behaviour myself so not sure what the issue is yet. Is it still happening consistently? If so, then while it's generating duplicate tweets, visit:

/sagetweet/ShowConnectedClients

Is it listing the same device twice? What it sounds like to me is that the Sage server somehow thinks the same device is connected twice and that's what's messing up SageTweet. That's just my initial guess, I'll wait for your response.

Or... do you have SageTweet installed on more than one box? Perhaps on a client and the server? If so, the duplicate tweets would have been masked because I've discovered that Twitter silently drops a tweet if it's the exact same text as the previous tweet. And now that you've set up an alias on one machine you actually get different tweets and so the duplicates will be posted.

Or if the multiple install scenario is not applicable... then there may be a possible bug in the plugin cleanup code such that an upgrade left two instances of the tweet monitor thread running. If you stop Sage and restart it (stop the entire Sage service not just the SageTweet plugin) do the duplicates stop? This scenario would surprise me b/c I'd definitely have been affected by it during development.

[wayner]

Here are a couple of logos:





They actually look better in the .png files since the background is transparent and not black as it appears in this forum.

It was actually pretty easy to change the green logo to red - just move the hue slider down a wee bit in Paint.net

[wayner]

A few comments after using this for a few days:

Slugger (or anyone else) can you verify that the low disk space tweet works? I set mine up and I should have gone through the warning level but I didn't see a tweet about this.

Other Issues - More Twitter than SageTweet
I tried to set up the Tweets via SMS but it doesn't seem to be working. I did get the confirmation SMS from Twitter but I haven't received any other SMS's. Is it possible to get the Tweets to go to your email rather than SMS? My cellphone is a Blackberry so SMS or email are the same to me except that email is cheaper. I am also less likely to notice an SMS during the day as I don't generally monitor my Blackberry when I am on my PC and SMS only go to your phone - emails go to your phone and PC.

I haven't really used Twitter before and it can be dangerous if you PVR sports - which I do thanks to Sage. On Twitter this weekend I learned from Steart Cink who won the golf tournament before I watched the final round. I am also a rugby fan and Trevor Immelman's Tweet let me know who won the South Africa vs. Australia match before I had a chance to watch it. Be careful who you follow!

[darcilicious]

Getting "spoiled" is not unique to twitter ;-) Just like you have avoid radio/tv sports news until you've watched your recording, you should avoid internet sports news

Also, twitter itself can be quite flaky. The search in particular has been in bad shape most of the day today (and I think they're actually working on some things regarding search) -- the vast majority of my sagetweet generated tweets aren't showing up...

[wayner]

Originally Posted by darcilicious

Getting "spoiled" is not unique to twitter ;-) Just like you have avoid radio/tv sports news until you've watched your recording, you should avoid internet sports news

True - but I don't normally have to worry about South African rugby results as they're not generally on Google News.

[wayner]

Slugger - one more thing. It looks like Sagetweet displays Title: SubTitle for show. If there is no subtitle it seems to repeat the title again. For example :

Currently watching 'Isabella's Shows/Elmo/Opposites Attract: Opposites Attract' on Bedroom

Would it make more sense to omit the Subtitle field if it is not populated rather than duplicate it?

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by wayner

A few comments after using this for a few days:

Slugger (or anyone else) can you verify that the low disk space tweet works? I set mine up and I should have gone through the warning level but I didn't see a tweet about this.

Yeah, this doesn't seem to be working at the moment either. I'll add it to my list of things to do next time I get a chance to play with the source code.

Other Issues - More Twitter than SageTweet
I tried to set up the Tweets via SMS but it doesn't seem to be working. I did get the confirmation SMS from Twitter but I haven't received any other SMS's. Is it possible to get the Tweets to go to your email rather than SMS? My cellphone is a Blackberry so SMS or email are the same to me except that email is cheaper. I am also less likely to notice an SMS during the day as I don't generally monitor my Blackberry when I am on my PC and SMS only go to your phone - emails go to your phone and PC.

I haven't really used Twitter before and it can be dangerous if you PVR sports - which I do thanks to Sage. On Twitter this weekend I learned from Steart Cink who won the golf tournament before I watched the final round. I am also a rugby fan and Trevor Immelman's Tweet let me know who won the South Africa vs. Australia match before I had a chance to watch it. Be careful who you follow!

I'm sure there are some 3rd party apps that will send emails instead of SMS, but I'm not aware of any off the top of my head (I prefer the SMS msgs instead).

[wayner]

Thanks Slugger - what about the issue on omitting subtitles in the Tweet when they don't exist - does that make sense to you and is it feasible?

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by wayner

Thanks Slugger - what about the issue on omitting subtitles in the Tweet when they don't exist - does that make sense to you and is it feasible?

What's the issue with subtitles?

[wayner]

With shows that don't contain subtitles it repeats the Title - see post 95 above. Generally movies do not have a subtitle so when you are playing back a movie file it will provide redundant info. Here's another example: Currently watching 'Movies/Evil Under the Sun: Evil Under the Sun' on Bedroom

[Slugger]

Originally Posted by wayner

With shows that don't contain subtitles it repeats the Title - see post 95 above. Generally movies do not have a subtitle so when you are playing back a movie file it will provide redundant info. Here's another example: Currently watching 'Movies/Evil Under the Sun: Evil Under the Sun' on Bedroom

Yeah. Ok, the problem there is that the API is returning the file name (or some form of it) as the title and the metadata title of the video as the subtitle. It's not the case that the subtitle is null/empty string, otherwise it wouldn't repeat.