Thread: XM / Sirius Worklog

Originally Posted by Nola111

Oh, and presets would be awesome too!

I've been in a couple of cars that have factory XM (e.g., Chevy's own system) and those support presets. It got me thinking about having them in CF.

What I came to feel is that unless you're looking to categorize stuff by something other than genre (i.e., "in town", "long trips", etc) then using the Favorites feature works out pretty well. The downside is that you're forced into a sort by channel (versus grouping by genre or alpha sort or...)

Hmm, maybe Favorites gets replaced with Presets? The question then becomes how to organize them, and how deep should the UI go? i.e., should it support user-named folders for grouping? Multiple sorts within a group? Custom named entries in a group?

For me, I jump between a couple news channels and music channels that are all in different categories, and pretty far away from each other number-wise. The Favorites function is ok, but you have to have the list in numerical order by channel. My preset list for XM would definitely out of numerical order, since #1 would be a news channel, #2 would be a channel of rock, #3 would be one of the decades channels, etc. etc. That's all I would need would be presets 1 - 9... I'd be happy with that.

And while we're on the subject of features, another I requested awhile back that RR, SD, and XtremePCR all have is the Favorite Artist Alarm. You create a list of your 10 or so favorite artists, and anytime any channel on XM starts to play a song by your favorite artist, it will alert you to the artist and what channel they are playing on. Definitely a great feature.

Originally Posted by Nola111

For me, I jump between a couple news channels and music channels that are all in different categories, and pretty far away from each other number-wise. The Favorites function is ok, but you have to have the list in numerical order by channel. My preset list for XM would definitely out of numerical order, since #1 would be a news channel, #2 would be a channel of rock, #3 would be one of the decades channels, etc. etc. That's all I would need would be presets 1 - 9... I'd be happy with that.

And while we're on the subject of features, another I requested awhile back that RR, SD, and XtremePCR all have is the Favorite Artist Alarm. You create a list of your 10 or so favorite artists, and anytime any channel on XM starts to play a song by your favorite artist, it will alert you to the artist and what channel they are playing on. Definitely a great feature.

^ Agree with that. Pre-sets would be good in addition to favorites, you have to scroll through favorites and read the channels while you drive to get to a high from a low.
Could display less lines in the station list portion and put one row of however many presets (labled with just channel # (or icon) as would fit on bottom row. Also if not enough room for nine number keypad in current screen, at least a button to bring up an oskpad for direct channel access would be nice.

Thanks for the exp on the buffered thing Nola

. . .now over to the phone post (sure glad I paid for XE . . .BlueSol see's and hooks up with my phone, CF wont) . . .it never ends

Originally Posted by midiwall

I know the dialog's getting crowded, but it'd be awesome to have a button that saves the current artist/track/time/date to a file for later recall. MANY times I hear a track that I like, and I have no way to write the name down short of trying to write on my palm while driving.

I've been thinking about this a bit more... What about using the title at the top as a hot spot? Right now, touching the title when you're not in the music source that's serving it takes you to that source (e.g., if XM's playing it takes you to XM, if an MP3 is playing it takes you there...). So what about if you touch it when you're IN the host module you write the track info to a file?

I guess then you need a simple UI to show the saved info... Hmmm...

Originally Posted by Habious

It updates down in the channel list but, not the main title across the top.

Doesn't seem to matter what screen I'm on.

Issue found and fixed. Will be included in the next release of CF, which although past due, is coming very very soon. Suprised others have not noticed this issue. Only seemed to happen once every 5-6 song chages for me, but that should have been happening to everyone?

WooHoo...I'm not crazy...smeesseman says so!

It definitely varies. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. Always seems to update when you change channels. It's when you sit on a channel through several songs; that's when it gets iffy.

I've also noticed that it seems to act a little strange if the Sirius module is up and running before the receiver can see satellites.

For example, if I'm sitting outside and boot it up...the Sirius module starts and picks up the signals from the satellites. All is well with the world.

Example 2: my car is parked in a parking garage. I start the car and head out. Centrafuse is usually up and running before I the car is outside and in view of the satellites. That's when things act a little odd. I'll bring up the satellite radio module and it won't show any song names for any channel in my favorites list (about 15 channels). It might or might not update the channel I'm on when the channel goes to the next song (and broadcasts the "Hey, I'm playing THIS song now" signal). I'll change channels and Centrafuse will get the song information for the new channel (but not others). When I change AGAIN, then there's a slight pause, and whoosh, the whole list populates with all the song info. It's not just that it's catching up; if I wait 5 minutes or more before changing channels, there won't be song info listed for any of the other channels until I change channels...then change again...that's when it suddenly populates the whole list at once.

As I said, it only seems to do this if Centrafuse gets up and running before I'm in view of satellites.

I park in an underground garage both at home and at work so, more often than not, Centrafuse it up and running before I get out of the garage.

This is no a major deal...and most folks probably won't experience it but, I wanted to at least mention it to you.

Awesome product by the way! Love having Sirius on the Carputer! I had Sirius before the Carputer so, that was the selling point for me on Centrafuse. Many front-ends don't support satellite radio yet. A few only seem to support XM. Centrafuse seemed like it had a solid, working Sirius module. And you do!

Please keep making a great product better.

Originally Posted by Habious

Example 2: my car is parked in a parking garage. I start the car and head out. Centrafuse is usually up and running before I the car is outside and in view of the satellites. That's when things act a little odd. I'll bring up the satellite radio module and it won't show any song names for any channel in my favorites list (about 15 channels). It might or might not update the channel I'm on when the channel goes to the next song (and broadcasts the "Hey, I'm playing THIS song now" signal). I'll change channels and Centrafuse will get the song information for the new channel (but not others). When I change AGAIN, then there's a slight pause, and whoosh, the whole list populates with all the song info. It's not just that it's catching up; if I wait 5 minutes or more before changing channels, there won't be song info listed for any of the other channels until I change channels...then change again...that's when it suddenly populates the whole list at once.
As I said, it only seems to do this if Centrafuse gets up and running before I'm in view of satellites.
Please keep making a great product better.

Will look into this

Originally Posted by midiwall

Oops...

• No audio from XM after resume from hibernate
  Noted:
  • XM is current page at hibernate
  • "Loading" does NOT appear after resume
  To fix:
  
  • Exit XM screen with <- arrow
  • Touch XM again
  • Note "Loading" message appears
  • XM resumes after screen repaint

Can someone post me the log.txt file in the DocsAndSettings/LocalSettings/AppData/Centrafuse/Plugins/SatRadio folder? The item of interest in the log when this happens is the text "
PowerMode Change:", if this text is not in the log file, then CF is not properly emitting the resume event. If it's in there, it's a problem with the satradio dll. We can also see whats happening in the log after the event is received.

Just a side note the SatRadio software in the next release is a very stable, much improved release, better response times for everything like changing channels, etc, lower CPU usage, in some cases CPU usage has been reduced by 15%, very satisfied with the latest build..

Originally Posted by Nola111

The nine number entry keypad is something I requested a loooong time ago, but I don't think there were enough requests for it to get implemented.

So Scott, what do you say to that request??

Oh, and presets would be awesome too!

Added to the list of requested features.