Create "Scene" Screen in Studio?

[gatorwes]

I have been contemplating working to create a morning "scene" (snapshot? dashboard?) for SageTV. A mock-up is attached.

My first attempt was to see how many of these feature I could implement using the dynamic menus built into SageMC. I made little progress.

As a disclaimer, I have no studio experience. My questions to the experts in this forum is can this be done? If so, can you hazard a guess as to the level of difficulty involved?

Some features I would like to include:
- TV feed automatically starts when entering screen (set at last channel or default channel?)
- buttons along top would tune different channel (the video preview window doesn't seem to respond to numerical channel number changes directly. And even if it did, the buttons seem easier, particularly first thing in the AM )
- would like weather map to cycle through maps already programmed in SageMC maps section, automatically every X seconds. Or, could use left/right arrow buttons on screen (not shown) to cycle?

My gut tells me I'm in way over my head, but...

Thanks in advance for your response.

[GKusnick]

Yes, all of that is possible. No particular piece of it would be too terribly challenging for someone with a fair amount of Studio experience, but I'm guessing there's maybe a couple dozen hours of work involved in bringing it all together and fine-tuning it -- again, for someone who knows what they're doing with Studio.

For someone who's never used Studio before (and maybe never done any programming before) it's going to take a lot longer, just in terms of mastering the tools, grokking the programming model, and learning the capabilities of all the primitive Widget components and how they interact. This is a pretty challenging first project for a Studio newbie, and while you might be able to cobble something together that approximates what you want, you're unlikely to hit on the best way of doing things first time out. So you might be better off starting with something smaller and simpler that you can achieve in a few hours (and are less likely to screw up out of ignorance). Once you get comfortable with the tools, you'll have a clearer idea of what's within your reach and how to get there.

[gatorwes]

Greg, thanks for your advice. After reading the manual and working through the tutorials, I am trudging ahead and making progress in spurts. Actually, I have a mostly-working .xml file at this point (see attachment). I have some fine tuning to do to ensure it's robust enough for everyday use and was hoping some of the experts in this forum could provide some advice.

The biggest issues I have are:

1) I would like to work with/store logical channel numbers for the channel buttons. Using ChannelSet() in conjunction to tune works fine. The issue I have is that there does not seem to be a way to retrieve the channel logo for that logical channel number. GetChannelLogo() requires the channel object, not merely the logical channel number. I am currently working around this by using the stationID as well, but this is not ideal as I have to maintain two variables for each button, and retrieving the stationid for a channel number is difficult. I'm currently using GetChannelLogo(GetChannelForStationID(stationID)). There must be an easier, more direct way to grab the station logo using only the logical channel number?

2) I'm using the video widget for video. When first entering the screen, playback begins automagically. However, if I stop the video playback, I cannot seem to restart it appropriately. I've tried the keystroke for play, sending another ChannelSet(), and SageCommand("Play") in the code. SageCommand("Live TV") works, but the resulting video takes up the entire sage window. Is there an api call to restart the TV video feed, ideally at a specific channel number?

Any input is appreciated. Thanks in advance for bearing with a noob.

[gatorwes]

Sorry to reply to my own post, but I was able to address issue 1) above with the code attached (the variable ChanReq is the logical channel number) which I include in the hope that it will help another noob somewhere down the road. While this is better, I'm still not sure it is the most direct way?

No progress on 2) above. I guess I could trap the stop command, or simply leave the screen and return to restart the video feed, but I would prefer to be able to restart the video.

Any advice would be most appreciated.

[mikejaner]

This looks like a great app to have as a SageTV "Home Screen" I would love to use it when you are done making it!!

[gatorwes]

Mike, I am more than happy to upload when I having something working.

The status is that I still have not been abled to get stopped tv video to restart, so I have just trapped the stop command for now.

However, a bigger problem is that I cannot seem to create a valid STVi file. Per the manual, I'm using STV UID File Difference to compare my xml file to the original SageMC169 xml file (to be clear, with my xml file loaded, Tools->STV UID File Difference, then select SageMC169, then use Create STVi button, name file, OK button). When trying to load my first STVi attempt, Sage showed the spinning "wait" circle for a long time and ultimately did nothing (the currently loaded STV was not modified). At this point I thought I had done something stupid in all of my coding so I started with a fresh copy of SageMC169 and copied in all of my code. Importing the resulting STVi from this file eventually, after a LONG delay, loaded. I then try to add a new menu item, an internal screen. But my menu is not listed as an available internal screen. Moreoever, all of the original internal screens are listed twice. I'm clearly doing something wrong.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by gatorwes

Mike, I am more than happy to upload when I having something working.

The status is that I still have not been abled to get stopped tv video to restart, so I have just trapped the stop command for now.

However, a bigger problem is that I cannot seem to create a valid STVi file. Per the manual, I'm using STV UID File Difference to compare my xml file to the original SageMC169 xml file (to be clear, with my xml file loaded, Tools->STV UID File Difference, then select SageMC169, then use Create STVi button, name file, OK button). When trying to load my first STVi attempt, Sage showed the spinning "wait" circle for a long time and ultimately did nothing (the currently loaded STV was not modified). At this point I thought I had done something stupid in all of my coding so I started with a fresh copy of SageMC169 and copied in all of my code. Importing the resulting STVi from this file eventually, after a LONG delay, loaded. I then try to add a new menu item, an internal screen. But my menu is not listed as an available internal screen. Moreoever, all of the original internal screens are listed twice. I'm clearly doing something wrong.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

I'm no expert but have you tried using GKusnick tools to export the file, load a clean copy of SageMC, reimport the file with the tools and then do the UID File Difference.

[gatorwes]

No, I haven't. I scanned that thread and while I'm sure Greg's tools are awesome, the discussion was so far over my head I thought it best to stick with the Studio, as is. Quite possible that was a mistake.

At this point I think there is some inherent issue with SageMC 6.3.7.a (what I was using as a basis) and Studio as presented in Sage 6.5.9. If I load SageMC_169 and do a STV UID File Difference compare against the same file (ie, itself), the resulting screen is loaded with differences between the two files, for whatever reason . Doing the same test with SageMC_169 version 6.3.9 results in no differences (a blank list, which is what I would have expected).

I'll copy my code over to SageMC 6.3.9 and see where it goes from there...

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by gatorwes

No, I haven't. I scanned that thread and while I'm sure Greg's tools are awesome, the discussion was so far over my head I thought it best to stick with the Studio, as is. Quite possible that was a mistake.

I thought exactly the same thing when I saw it, however I guarantee you, if you sit down for 10 mins and read it you will see how easy it actually is. I was very surprised. All you need to do is extract the zip to your Sage directory and add one line of code to the client.properties file. Then when you start Studio you will see an extra menu which lets you enable options and one of those options is export/import. Once you have Gregs tools installed, highlight the menu widget you want to export and hit the export button. Go back to the default UI and re-import SageMC 16x9 or what ever version you were working on. Now open Studio and import your menu with Gregs tool, after its imported ok you can use the UID File Difference.

Hopefully I havent just made an arse of myself and find out that I've been doing it wrong

[GKusnick]

I'm not a SageMC dev but I'm guessing the older versions of the STV don't contain any UIDs, so you get unpredictable results using UID File Difference. You have to start from a base STV with stable UIDs already assigned before you add in your code in order to get meaningful results from UID File Difference.

If you do that, then there isn't much advantage to using my STVI generator unless you're adding hooks to existing widgets. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're probably not doing it.)

There are, however, other reasons beside the STVI generator for using my tools, mainly the enhanced searching and pasting features.

[jaminben]

Originally Posted by GKusnick

I'm not a SageMC dev but I'm guessing the older versions of the STV don't contain any UIDs, so you get unpredictable results using UID File Difference. You have to start from a base STV with stable UIDs already assigned before you add in your code in order to get meaningful results from UID File Difference.

If you do that, then there isn't much advantage to using my STVI generator unless you're adding hooks to existing widgets. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, you're probably not doing it.)

There are, however, other reasons beside the STVI generator for using my tools, mainly the enhanced searching and pasting features.

I mainly use it to make sure I haven't changed something in SageMC by mistake. Exporting whilst keeping the references in my menu's alive is a life saver for me and all those that use my imports.

Very cool tool

[reidfo]

Awesome job gatorwes. I found your post because I'm looking to implement something like this too. In fact your screenshot was almost exactly what I had in mind. I'm brand new to Studio and just starting to get the hang of it. Do you have anything you can share yet? I'd love to collaborate on this with you if you're interested.

[gatorwes]

Thanks for the encouragement. I almost have something to share; I have a working Client version but it seems to have some issues on my HD100 extenders. Reformatting some things now. Would like to partner up if you are interested. Let me get the screen where I am happy with it as a basic functional thing and I'll be happy to then share. I'll PM you, hopefully within a few days.

[gatorwes]

Here's where I am. A slight bug with the temp reading in some cases (captured in the attached) that will be easily fixed. Anyone care to beta test, subject to all of the normal warnings: backup first, I take no responsibility for messed up systems, etc..? Would be particularly interested if it is any more responsive on a HD200. If so, PM me please.

I have this is working on a Sage Client 6.5.9 w/ SageMC 6.3.9 and a HD100 extender (WHS server 6.5.9 on SageMC 6.3.8a). The HD100 performance is not optimal; I would guess the HD100 is a little underpowered for all that is displayed, but have some ideas that might help some for a possible future version. The biggest issues with the HD100 are that it feels sluggish and when moving the cursor the video window "blinks" (I believe it is being redrawn in its normal size for a split second and then resized). Having said all that, it works on the 100 well enough for me anyway. These issues are not present in the Client version, again presumably because there is more horsepower involved.

[PLUCKYHD]

Originally Posted by jaminben

I mainly use it to make sure I haven't changed something in SageMC by mistake. Exporting whilst keeping the references in my menu's alive is a life saver for me and all those that use my imports.

Very cool tool

Whole crap I have not been using his tools is this why I get random loss's of my hook's to other menu items son of a