Wish List

[mcockerell]

Good news about the internal unit.

Appreciate it's probably still early days, but do you have any thoughts on a target form factor? - e.g. perhaps single or double pattress size?

Thanks,
Martin

[pdwarriner]

Martin,

The aim is to design around a single pattress but this is not guaranted.

The speaker is the key, so should we need a larger pattress to maintain good performance, we will work around that backbox.

Regards,
Peter.

[chris_j_hunter]

How about an attractive summary screen that displays an array of user-selected data in an easily absorbed format ... that can be fed through (from the 24/7 PC that's hosting Cortex) to any & all computers (PC Mac & Linux) & PDAs / iPhones in the house & then used by them as a screen-saver / home screen / whatever ?

data - eg: heart-beat, energy graph(s), what's on at the moment summary, house plan, presence by room, CCTV image, weather-map, whatever ...

format - eg: boxes / sub-windows that can be filled by drag & drop & arranged / sized / scaled as desired ...

[chris_j_hunter]

How about a simple low-cost digit display module - the sort of thing used industrially to highlight, locally & remotely, important parameters ...

eg: a four-digit display module, with no buttons, just four 7-segment LEDs (they don't cost much & are quite effective), that can be placed conveniently - remotely and/or locally, as required - to show whatever's being measured that's of interest - eg: time of day / timer-time / time to go until laundry-wash finishes / outside-temperature / larder-temperature / room-temperature / bath-temperature / whatever ...

in US homes, such things are used for remote laundry monitoring - eg:

http://reviews.pricegrabber.com/wash...es/m/18006904/

only that's special-to-purpose & more complicated (not just a display), and making them wireless must make them relatively expensive ...

whereas a simple addressable latching 4-segment module on Idranet would be both more verastile & more affordable ...

this is, again, something we're actually looking to do, in several places, ... and the obvious route of trying to do it via ODO modules & '4511 BCD chips & segmented LEDs (*) looks a bit more complicated than we would like !


* eg: http://www.rapidonline.com/Electroni...s/LED-Displays

[Gumby]

Might be easier to get a bunch of the original SliMP3s from eBay and then send messages to them from Cortex ...

[chris_j_hunter]

ah ... nearest I got to discovering what a SliMP3 might be, after a fair bit of Googling, was the statement :

Slim Devices, Inc - Makers of the SliMP3 device, used to stream music over ethernet from a PC

trying to get further always resulted only in information about the current Logitech range, with not a whisper about what a SliMP3 might be !

I'll try again in the morning ... big download going on at the moment ...

[chris_j_hunter]

OK, got it :

http://www.macuser.co.uk/reviews/417...s-slimp3.html#

characters look a bit small, but there are two lines, so maybe they can be made larger (?) ... perspex cover looks easily removable, which might be good for integration ...


presumably could also use newer kit - if were going that way for audio - their Transporter looks good, and their remote with screen, too, 'though costs are high, of course ...

http://www.slimdevices.com/

and we're looking to reduce remotes rather than acquire more !

and working iTunes & the hi-fi together already provides a lot of what Squeezebox would offer ...


but got me wondering - would using the base model & iPeng be a better way :

http://penguinlovesmusic.de/2008/11/...-on-app-store/

from the blurb, it's not clear, but maybe this could be a way of getting messages from Cortex to iPhone (ie: iPhone & Ipod touch), especially when iPhone 3.0 comes along, very soon now, and (with luck) opens-up the possibilities for app' interaction ??

[Paul_B]

Chris,

Don't under estimate the VFD on the Squeezebox devices. Static pictures don't do it justice. You are correct in that it normally has two lines and you can change font size to take up the entire two lines. However, you can also change brightness (could be used for flashing), you can scroll text, the font is completely changeable or you can pretty much code the display as you see fit. For example the wonderful Weather screensaver,



If you start going down this path I wouldn't bother with the Slimdevices in Cortex. I'd use the Cortex xAP link and then use Ed Pearson's excellent plugin to link between xAP and Slimdevices.

Squeezecentre also has a CLI so you can send commands to update the display via this method.

You've discovered iPeng which is just amazing and very fast for controlling Squeezecentre and Squeezeboxes.

Paul

[chris_j_hunter]

Paul -

interesting, thanks ...

is the CLI do-able from Cortex, via xAP, I wonder ?

good to hear iPeng is as good as it seems - have you tried / succeeded in sending messages from Cortex for it to display on your iPod touch ?

Chris

[Paul_B]

Chris,

CLI is clear-text entry on port 9090 of Squeezecentre. So you can Telnet from anywhere and away you go with the fully documented interface. Another excellent plugin is srvPowerControl and the author has written a executable that allows you to pass commands via input on a normal command-console (srvPowerControl allows for hibernation, suspend, restart, shutdown of the server running Squeezecenter and to redirect the Squeezeboxes or shut them down, so if I hold the Sleep button on my remote the server shutdowns and sends devices to Squeezenetwork)

Anything that can be done via Squeezecenter web interface can be done via xAP or the CLI. It is also bi-directional in you can send commands as well as query for status.

iPeng currently is more of a remote for controlling Squeezecenter and associated devices and then shows cover-art and the playlist.

For interfacing with Cortex on the iPod Touch / iPhone I would use xAP and Command Fusion that Kevin has described in one of the other threads

HTH

Paul