Using SageTV actions to trigger events.

[panteragstk]

Here is what I'm trying to do:

I am going to start significantly upgrading my media room soon and I need some advice on getting SageTV to trigger events so I can program EventGhost to recognize the events to trigger equipment (i.e receiver, tv, lights, ect.). The reasoning behind this is simple. I would like my lights to dim when I start a movie. SageTV generates events in the log file that I hope to be able to grab for this purpose.

Here are the "events" and what sage puts in the log file.

Selecting My Music or pressing the music button on the remote causes this to be written into the log: Launching screen My Music. When this screen is selected I would like for my receiver to go into pure direct (no sound processing) mode instead of whatever sound mode I watch tv/movies in.

Selecting My Videos or pressing the videos button on the remote causes this to be written into the log: Launching screen Sage Movie Wall. I'd like the lights to dim and when the movie starts playing, I want them to dim and go off. When pause is hit they go to up to half power. I don't want this to happen when watching TV so I need it do be dependant on this screen.

Same with TV. "Launching screen TV Explorer" is written to the log.

I'd love to be able to be able to trigger other events based on these actions within SageTV. Right now, I can't think of a way to get sage to work that way. I know this is an unusual circumstance, but I like sage to be the center of my theater.

I know how to get everything else working except the lights and musc part. All I need to do is capture those events some how. I hope you guys think of something I can do to get this to work. Help?

[razrsharpe]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I know how to get everything else working except the lights and musc part. All I need to do is capture those events some how. I hope you guys think of something I can do to get this to work. Help?

It's probably easier to do this with a universal remote.... that being said if you want to do it from sage i would look into somethign like this: If youre only interested in performing actions when going from the main menu to a sub menu... you can inject studio code into the sagemc_menu.xml file... this is what pathfilterexpressions does, or setting property items for the menu... sooo...you can use the ExecuteProcess api call in the menu item to run EventGhost from the command line.. I'm not familiar with EventGhost so I'm assuming that you can all it from the commandline...

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by razrsharpe

It's probably easier to do this with a universal remote.... that being said if you want to do it from sage i would look into somethign like this: If youre only interested in performing actions when going from the main menu to a sub menu... you can inject studio code into the sagemc_menu.xml file... this is what pathfilterexpressions does, or setting property items for the menu... sooo...you can use the ExecuteProcess api call in the menu item to run EventGhost from the command line.. I'm not familiar with EventGhost so I'm assuming that you can all it from the commandline...

I need to look into how to use studio then. Until now, I've always found something on this forum that would do what I wanted. Thanks for the suggestion.

[panteragstk]

I've done more research on this.

I asked eventghost forum if there was a way to get events from sage into eventghost. This is the post....

I'm using EventGhost 0.3.7.r1436, and I am trying to get an external progran (SageTV) to send commands to EG. How do I need to configure EG to receive commands from an external source? It would be easy if SageTV's screens and functions regestered as events, but they don't. The only thing that registers in eventghost is the window being activated or destroyed. If I could get SageTV actions (select TV, or movies, or whatever) to send a specific function to EG I'd be the happiest person ever...
BTW, I'm trying to get EG to send commands to my A/V receiver so the sound mode can change depending on what I choose in SageTV. I'd also like to expand this into lighting control (lights dim when I start a movie) and other things. Basically I want SageTV to tell EG what I want EG to tell other software/hardware to do.

Thoughts?

What I would do is to configure Sage to somehow send some weird keystroke that EG would catch with its keyboard events plugin.
So.. On some action Sage presses for example ctrl+alt+shift+numpad* and then EG catches it and then does what it is supposed to do.

I configured my system with X-Fi Mode Changer this way and it works very well in conjunction with EG; fortunately, the mode changer has the ability to send hotkeys/keystrokes. If Sage does not have that ability.. well.. then I am writing in vain. Check the plugins for SageTv, there could be something..

So. Is there a way to get sage to emulate keyboard strokes? Like when adding commands to an external program in the sagemc_menu.xml? I think all I would have to do is have sage initiate a sequence of keys to trigger certain events. The question is: what code would I have to put in the xml to get it to do that?