What is the future for the LCD plugin ?

[siwilson]

I love this plugin, I would just like to see a few additions to it. Is there any planned development for this ?

I would gladly help where I can. I can do most things except for writing it, which I guess is not much help at all :(

[siwilson]

Mike,

Agreed, there are a lot of things that should be left to other girder plugins and now 3.1 is so powerful with the manipulation of variables and payloads I think things will become a lot easier.

On the input side the only thing I can think of right now is the ability to parse information like the Winamp title that comes in from MediaSpy. It would be nice to split it onto different lines or just use part of it. Maybe that is best done somewhere else.

My interest is mainly in the actual formatting and output to the LCD display. The marquee one you mention is a good example. Maybe have scrolling as a check box, so that if information is too long for the location (position, length) that you set, you have the option the scroll or not.

The other things I am interested in are the ability to output control characters to the display. This would open up the LCD plugin to be able to display anything the display can, such as switching on the general purpose outputs. The ability to generate and then display custom characters would be nice as wood the ability to control the intensity of the display. You could have one level of brightness for for some actions and have another for others. The ability to fade after a timeout would also be nice.

No question, a great plugin.

Thanks

[MMcM]

This pretty much does what I want. I am not at all adverse to adding new features. But in terms of a plan for them, there isn’t one right now.

Requests for new data display, à la Smartie or the various Winamp LCD plugins, is best handled by other Girder plugins, in my opinion. The date/time display is a small concession.

As for formatting, there may be some limitations due to LCDriver. I think that it’s important that it go through some standard library. Otherwise it would be very hard to keep it working on a variety of display hardware. That said, there are display features in LCDriver that the Girder plugin does not make use of, such as marquee text.

What did you have in mind that you wanted added?

[Wykat]

The only (?) thing I'm missing atm with the LCD plug in is a convenient way to use it to select media to play or using a menu.

Therefor I disable the plugin temporarily for Winamp where I'm using a winamp plugin.

Ideally I would like to be able to see directory names on the LCD and scroll through them. hereafter I can select the media in that directory with whatever application needed.

I've seen that in the AVSFORUM there are some developments into this direction for starting stored/ripped DVD from hard disk.

Wykat

[Flintstone]

A plugin that works together with LCDC would be my favourite... I'm testing a few tings and will try to find some solution of some sort to this... Check the forums at www.matrixorbital.com for more info.

[dmets]

Remember that old commercial "you've got OSDmenu in my LCDplugin . . . No, you've got LCDplugin in my OSDmenu!"

The ultimate interface would be to combine or allow these two plugins to work together so that the menu from OSD could be displayed on the LCD. THen you could configure your Girder to do anything you want with a remote and never have to have a TV or monitor on! That would make Girder the best program out there bar none (like it isn't already, but play with me here).

Imagine the possiblities of using these two plugins together.....

Cool, eh!

Dustin

[Baffobear]

A feature reqest that would be helpful would be to control the lcd brightness while the display is on, like can be achieved in LCDC..Is this possible??

[Promixis]

DVD Spy has a registry setting for brightness.

For those of you still wanting menu control - look for lcd master in the misc area of the downloads..

[Marsupial]

how do we go for brightness control over a HD44780 LCD?

I would be real happy about getting a backlight control for it :)

[MMcM]

Please confirm my understanding of what is requested.

I think you have the LCD backlight wired to some parallel signal, perhaps through a pot. What signal is that? Is there some standard wiring convention for this, as there is with the E, R/W and RS signals? Perhaps SELE (pin 17) is used. That is E2 if you have two displays ganged together to get 4 lines, but available with a single display.

You want this signal held high when the display is open. Since the voltage cannot be varied, I suppose it is on if the brightness is non-zero.