Toy For Christmas (PowerMate)

chuckster · 12-26-2005, 12:42 PM

I got a Griffen Powermate for Christmas and I've been working on making it as useful as pushing a button on the Xenarc.

I've got the main menu working perfect as well as my music player and browser. The challenge is GPS where the focus needs to change back and fourth.

Got my Powermate configured as follows:
- Turn Left - Send Key Left
- Turn Right - Send Key Right
- Click - Open File name alt-tab.exe "will explain in a second"
- Long Click - Send Key Escape
- Click Left Turn - Vol Down
- Click Right Turn - Vol Up

I created an autoscript that checks for RR focus when I click the powermate and if it does not have focus then bring focus and execute a send key return if it already has focus.

In GPS I use iGuidance and my Autoscript for this returns focus to RR right after it loads up (works good also). The challenge has been executing the send keys from the skin -> passing it to iG -> getting focus back to RR so I can rotate through the skin buttons using the powermate.

I have tried the following skin commands in many different configurations and I have inconsistent results (works sometimes and once in a while messes up). This is the up and down commands: I can click UP and iG zooms in and then returns focus to RR, I click down and it will zoom out and then return focus to RR. The problem now is when I try to click up again; it won't work. For some reason once I click the down I can no longer click up even though the focus is on RR. It appears that it does not ACTIVATE iG again to send an UP unless I click with in iG with my mouse to bring it back into focus.

B24,720,60,80,60,"ACTIVATE;iGuidance||SENDKEY;{DOW N}||GETFOCUS","Zoom Out/Down"
B25,720,0,80,59,"ACTIVATE;iGuidance||SENDKEY;{UP}| |GETFOCUS","Zoom In/Up"

I have a bunch of other issues with getting the menu's working correctly. All I'm trying to do is keep the focus on RR so I can scroll through the buttons with a turn of my powermate but of course I still need it to execute the commands as if I was pushing the buttons with my finger.

I have not idea what I'm doing wrong, I think I'm close and I've spent hours trying to figure out what else to like creating autoit scripts for the buttons but this was worse.

Any ideas? Sorry if this is winded

Thanks
Chuck

Blue ZX3 · 12-27-2005, 10:10 AM

when I was using my powermate I just used girder and the powemate plugin to send the commands to RR. As I'm sure more ppl on here will tell you to use too. It is confusing!! but worth getting figured out.

I just had mine change the disired effect upon changing screens, ie menu,audio,app...ect just behaved like a vol control/pause, and in the browser screen it changes to a scroll up/dn,select, and upon selecting the selection changes back to the vol control...

If you want to use girder, search for the 3.29 free version and then just go their website and create a login and you can dl the powermate plugin an/or anyother ones as well....

Just to give a start....

chuckster · 12-28-2005, 09:25 AM

Blue ZX3

Thanks for the tip. I will go grab that and give it shot. I've tried girder before and the learning curve was crazy just to do a small thing.

Do you have girder script you can send me as an example to get me going on how you were able to make it do different things on different screens etc.. This should give me the boost I need to get going in the right direction.

Thanks A Lot,
Chuck

kuo · 02-08-2006, 11:32 PM

hey blue, i just sent you a pm. would you mind sending your girder file to me as well? i just got a powermate for my carputer and i've got girder 3.29 along with autoit. just can't figure out how to get girder to know which screen rr is on. thanks in advance.

chuckster · 02-09-2006, 11:33 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by kuo

just can't figure out how to get girder to know which screen rr is on.

And you won't. Girder will know because the script will work in succession starting with Main.

For example from Main if you click GPS code you can have the button code setup to enable the Girder GPS part of the script and vice versa for the other buttons. I too wish when a screen was active girder would know which screen but it all works from creative scripting.

My script is so long right now and I'm still debugging it, as it gets hairy after a while. Blue ZX3 really gave me a boost with what he had but I just plain went overboard

Chuck

kuo · 02-09-2006, 12:06 PM

i just instant messaged with blue and he emailed me his example files. he showed me that you can get roadrunner to tell girder which screen it's on by calling event.exe from the rr skin or the exectbl.ini. for example if you go from the main screen to the audio screen and the following line is in your exectbl.ini

"AUDIO","RUN;C:\Program Files\girder32\event.exe" AUDIO -SILENT||LOAD;audio_player.skin;Audio Player"

then "AUDIO" is sent to girder. i'm going to have to rework my skin so that every button that changes screens in rr also sends a girder event.

is this what you were describing?

b8bboi · 02-09-2006, 01:27 PM

kuo, that would work, but it's not very clean. What you want to do is this.

Define commands in ExecTBL.ini that are skin-specific. The idea is it only gets executed when that skin is active. For example,

"VOL_DOWN", "Vol-", audio_player.skin
"SCROLL_DOWN", "DOWN", audio_browser.skin

Then in Girder, define two separate commands that send "VOL_DOWN" and "SCROLL_DOWN" to Road Runner. Then map your powermate button to BOTH of those commands.

Here's how it works. You rotate the Power Mate knob. Girder sends BOTH commands to Road Runner. Then depending on which skin is currently active, only one gets carried out (or none at all if you're on another skin).

The posibilities are endless. You can have one button do 20 different actions on 20 different skins. That's exactly how I programmed my remote control.

One suggestion I mentioned to Guino was the ability to embed the skin-specific portion to a remote command (from Girder). For example, if RR sees "DOWN;audio_browser.skin" it would only do "DOWN" if audio_browser.skin is active. This way, we wouldn't even need to define those skin-specific commands in ExecTBL.ini.

Anyway, this is a very convenient and underrated feature of Road Runner. No other frontend has it. I think we should sticky a tutorial for it.

kuo · 02-09-2006, 07:11 PM

great idea b8bboi. thanks for the tip.

Blue ZX3 · 02-09-2006, 11:29 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by b8bboi

kuo, that would work, but it's not very clean. What you want to do is this.

Define commands in ExecTBL.ini that are skin-specific. The idea is it only gets executed when that skin is active. For example,

"VOL_DOWN", "Vol-", audio_player.skin
"SCROLL_DOWN", "DOWN", audio_browser.skin

Then in Girder, define two separate commands that send "VOL_DOWN" and "SCROLL_DOWN" to Road Runner. Then map your powermate button to BOTH of those commands.

Here's how it works. You rotate the Power Mate knob. Girder sends BOTH commands to Road Runner. Then depending on which skin is currently active, only one gets carried out (or none at all if you're on another skin).

The posibilities are endless. You can have one button do 20 different actions on 20 different skins. That's exactly how I programmed my remote control.

One suggestion I mentioned to Guino was the ability to embed the skin-specific portion to a remote command (from Girder). For example, if RR sees "DOWN;audio_browser.skin" it would only do "DOWN" if audio_browser.skin is active. This way, we wouldn't even need to define those skin-specific commands in ExecTBL.ini.

Anyway, this is a very convenient and underrated feature of Road Runner. No other frontend has it. I think we should sticky a tutorial for it.

Good thinking.....never said I was a "girder GOD" but what I was using it for it worked, and helps noobs to girder get a good start on how to implement it.

kuo · 02-10-2006, 07:24 AM

hey blue, with your girder file for powermate i'm creating 2 different command sets that i can switch back and forth from with a long click of the powermate. before the commands i had to work with were

right
left
down right
down left
click

with your file i now have more than twice the commands to work with. to begin with i could only program 5 actions on each screen. now i can do 12 per screen. with the use of the timer i guess i could keep making additional command sets but that would be a little ridiculous.

right
left
down right
down left
click
click & hold (~2 seconds)
click & hold (~1 second to switch command sets)

thanks to everyone for your input.