Display a message box on the screen?

[Moskus]

Is this possible somehow?

Here's what I want to do:
I have connected my doorbell to a device so that HomeSeer can detect if it is pressed. When it is pressed, HomeSeer speaks "There's someone at the door" and displays a message box on various computers around the house.

I'd like to show a message box on the HD200 with the same information. Is there anything I can do to achieve that?

[Moskus]

Hmmm! I'm guessing it is!
http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/down...do=file&id=285

[nick_l]

Works great with Yacseer.

Nick

[sic0048]

Another use for the popup is to display weather alerts. Since we typically watch recorded TV, we loose the ability to see weather alerts when they are issued unless we happen to be watching live TV.

I have it set up so that certain specific and immediate severe weather alerts (like Tornado Warnings) will popup on the screen. It doesn't popup every little weather alert, although it could if I wanted it too. But I could care less about most "watches" and other non-immediate type alerts. I certainly don't need to be warned about a possible winter weather alert 2 days before the storm is scheduled to hit. So those types of alerts are not displayed.

I use CQC, but I'm sure you can do something similar with Homeseer.

[nick_l]

Originally Posted by sic0048

Another use for the popup is to display weather alerts.

What a good idea!

[wrems]

Originally Posted by nick_l

What a good idea!

+1

That would be a great integrated feature! Recorded TV does have its disadvantages I guess...

[Moskus]

I'd like to give ShiftBlue a big thanks for this plugin.

Adding a picture of the front porch was extremely easy and WAF is rising

[matt91]

There has been discussion of weather alerts before for exactly this situation. I once used the RSS feed functionality of SageMC to (try to) accomplish this, but it never worked very well.

If I don't have any sort of home automation setup now, where should I start with getting weather popups to display?

[sic0048]

Honestly, without a automation system to glue it all together, I'm not sure how you would make it all work, but......

CQC has a weather alert driver that monitors the NWS NOAA RSS Weather Feeds. Those feeds have some sort of code that represents the exact type of alert (tornado watch, or severe weather warning, etc). It will list every type of alert, but I have it also trigger on the more severe warnings that I am most concerned about.

When those more severe warning come in and trigger an event, CQC then writes a custom message to the SageInfoPopup STV with the type of warning and expiration time.

"There is a XXXXXXX weather alert which expires at XX:XX"

So any solution you might find would have to do similar things:
1) Monitor your NWS NOAA weather alerts. You can monitor your specific county's alerts. Obviously the easiest thing to do is write any alert that comes in. If you wanted to be more advance, then you could trigger on only certain types of alerts.

2) When an alert is found, write the applicable information you want as a custom message to the SageInfoPopup STV. This will cause the pop up to appear with your custom message and icon.

So in reality, for a programmer, this probably isn't too much to do. But I'm glad all the work was done for me

[sic0048]

Just thinking about this stuff made me come up with a new wrinkle that I want to incorporate....

When the TV is turned on and changed to the Sage HD Extender, IF there is a severe Weather Alert currently active, THEN write the normal alert message to the SageInfoPopUp STV. That way I will be alerted of a severe weather alert even if I turn on the system after the alert is issued.

They way I currently have it set up, the alert is only submitted once when the alert is first issued.

This is a simple thing to add to my system and I think it will make it much more effective.