andy vt's tools & blog

Hi,

I am a new user of LCDWriter and so fare I like it alot but now I am having a bit of trouble and I am note sure if your program has anything to do with my volume knobe on the case not working. I just did a clean install of Windows 7 64-bit and did not install M.Play this time but now my volume knob is not working but it was working under my old install of Windows 7 64-Bit with M.Play installed, Does this have somthing to do with LCDWriter or do I need to install software from Monuel to get this working?

Thanks for your help,

Ray

The volume knob works slightly differently from the other input received from the device so adding support would require more effort than I want to put in for something I'd never use.

Any chance to make you change your mind?
It's not like I would use it very often either, it's more a "I know that it's broken" thing. You know what I mean?:)

Maybe you are willing to provide sources and some pointers to let others spend time on implementing the volume interface? In any case, I would be glad to help...

The source for my implemenation is already availiable.

You just need to write a harness to load it, add some debug logging, and play with the knob.

Thanks for the quick reply and the pointer to the source.

I had a look at your code: by hooking into the read method, I can check for volume knob commands and replace those with the remote's volume button commands which are supported by lcdwriter. This way, I could simply emulate the remote and the customized writer dll would seamlessly integrate into lcdwriter.

Do you think this is possible, or did I miss something?

Sounds about right, but it's been a while since I've looked at it :)

I already got your code working. There were some issues with logging, presumably you changed something in the core code since then, but the rest looks fine.

I'll continue working on it at the weekend - as soon as the job is done, I can provide you with a patch to integrate the volume knob functionality into your main application if you want to.

I have finished the implementation. Is it possible to upload the patch (and maybe also the compiled dll) somewhere on your site? Seems like the forum option is disabled for ordinary users.

However, there seems to be a small problem in the core code. I never used the Moneual remote until today. I'm afraid to tell, but lcdwriter doesn't handle the remote's "volume down" button correctly, maybe Moneual changed something in recent revisions of the case. "volume up" and "mute" work like a charme (and so does the volume knob right now), but "volume down" is also interpretated as "volume up" by lcdwriter, which makes both the remote and the volume knob useless...

If it's not too much to ask: could you please have a quick look at your core code (possibly IRemoteControl) and tell me the byte commands lcdwriter expects for "volume up" and "volume down" (my remote is sending 0x0A and 0x0E respectively). With this piece of information, I can provide a fix for both the remote and the volume knob without having you to touch the core code.

Thanks a lot!

My last post is still hanging in the moderation queue, but I need to give an update now.

First I thought the remote commands could have changed with a new revision of Moneual's case, because lcdwriter doesn't understand "volume down" sent by the remote. I started to reverse engineer lcdwriter's internal command for "volume down" - and figured out that it has none*. Instead, the commands 0xA and 0xE both map to "volume up". 0xE is sent by the remote as "volume down", so I am quite sure that there is a small bug in the current version of lcdwriter.

Now we have a few alternatives: I would be greatful if you could fix lcdwriter. You only have to search for the handler of the remote commands 0xA and 0xE, and change the latter one to turn volume down instead of up. Nothing serious, only a few minutes, if at all.
If you cannot spare the time to fix this bug, I could very well link to winmm.dll by myself and change the volume within my customized COM port driver. But this would take a lot more effort compared to fixing lcdwriter, and cannot be considered a good patch, more a dirty hack.

I would appreciate your cooperation very much - it would be a shame to have Moneual's crazy volume knob interface implemented now without anyone profitting.

 

* at least not in the one-byte-commands, but I don't think multi-byte commands are used for control issues, and I won't try all 4-byte commands. ;)

This is acutally much easier to fix than all of that :). I just need to change the key mapping (you can do this locally too).

 

Ha, that was too easy! Took me one hour of debugging... ;)
Now the knob is working fine, thanks a lot!

I've sent you the patch via email.

Does the lack of volume knob control in lcd writer affect the ability to turn the volume up and down? Everything on my remote works except for the volume buttons. The buttons appear to manipulate the media center volume control but the volume itself does not go up or down. Its a pain having to use another remote to manipulate the volume.

1) Lookup 2 posts. The keymaps aren't setup correctly.

2) After doing that, which volume doesn't change? MC, the system, AVR, etc.

I did have to change the keymap to get the down volume to display on the screen. The Media Center displays volume control fine and appears to go up and down but the actual system volume never changes. It works when using the M.Play software, it just doesn't work using LCDWriter.

So you see the volume change indicator in MC, but it doesn't change the system volume?