Blue Devil Skin RELEASED - Page 43

miwise · 11-25-2006, 12:35 PM

How about the EQ section? When I click on an slider, it doesn't light up. Is it set so it won't light up? It would be helpful if it did so I could use the arrows. Is there a way to make them light up when clicked?

JohnWPB · 11-25-2006, 01:36 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by jmciver

Great skin. Definately one of the most 'complete' skins I have seen. I have a software integration request: Software One. The software is located here.

In a nut shell, the software allows CarPC integration of the Valentine One radar detector. It is skinable and I have seen it integrated in another skin (iDrive by Enforcer).

Also, does your skin incorporate the ability to auto dim/switch to night skin based on sunrise/sunset data from GPS position? Ideally, I would like the monitor to be tapped into the vehical to automatically dim when the lights are turned on (I found a few threads on this topic but since they involved hacking into the circuit board of the monitor I backed away), but I don't think that is feasible for me now.

I searched your thread in particular but didn't find a difinitive answer on the auto dimming aspect.

I just checked out the Valentine One, and it looks pretty neat, but I do not see myself buying a $400 radar detector in the near future. I also grabbed the iDrive skin to see how Enforcer has it integrated into the skin, and can find no reference to the Valentine One in his skin. As I do not have the radar detector, the only I could support it is to see how a skin has it integrated.

As for dimming the screen, this can be done in RR automatically based on the time of day. The other hardware option would take a bit more work. The easiest way being to use one of the game pad plugins or other way to get info into the computer. With the game pad plugin, you cold hook a small relay that closes when the lights are turned on, and hook one of wires from the game pad to that relay. WHen the relay is closed it would then send a definable command from the plugin to RR. The nice part about this is the game pad wiring can be plugged into a standard USB port, and no other hardware, other than the relay would be needed.

Quote: Originally Posted by miwise

How about the EQ section? When I click on an slider, it doesn't light up. Is it set so it won't light up? It would be helpful if it did so I could use the arrows. Is there a way to make them light up when clicked?

I will look into that, and see if I can come up with something. If so, I will definitely re-do the EQ screen, as this would be a nice feature for sure.

JohnWPB · 11-25-2006, 02:14 PM

Ok the mixer was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be

I like it when that happens. The mixer was one of the first skins that I had created, and I have learned quite a bit more then back when I put it together so I added a bit more functionality as well.

Below the inputs, there is now a clickable area to mute, and indicate the status, muted or not. The same goes for the preamp, by clicking that area, you can turn it on and off, and see the status.

Here is a screen cap:

kbreeden · 11-25-2006, 04:13 PM

I don't know what I changed, but IG Autoswitch is now working perfectly on my machine.

JohnWPB · 11-25-2006, 04:55 PM

Glad to hear it! Is is a really nice feature!

jmciver · 11-25-2006, 05:45 PM

The Valentine One integration is under one of the sub menu's in the iDrive skin. I forget whiich one it is (my CarPC is being installed by an audio shop and I don't have RR installed on my desktop right now). It is nothing too elaborate but makes launching the program easier than having to go to the Applications menu in RR. Enforcer doesn't have a V1 either, he just incorporated it into his skin since the Software One program is very easy to work with. He even made it part of his setup program for his skin.

As far as the USB/Autodim interface, is there any more info on exactly how to build what you are talking about (I saw another thread that briefly talked about using the game pad method you spoke of), including the necessary software plugin? I am having my installer tap into the lights on the car so that I will already have a 12V signal (from the parking lights, close to the PC) available to make such a system work.

ajamils · 11-25-2006, 06:07 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by JohnWPB

Glad to hear it! Is is a really nice feature!

Mine never worked

. It neither pauses the music nor switches screen.

JohnWPB · 11-25-2006, 06:07 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by jmciver

The Valentine One integration is under one of the sub menu's in the iDrive skin. I forget whiich one it is (my CarPC is being installed by an audio shop and I don't have RR installed on my desktop right now). It is nothing too elaborate but makes launching the program easier than having to go to the Applications menu in RR. Enforcer doesn't have a V1 either, he just incorporated it into his skin since the Software One program is very easy to work with. He even made it part of his setup program for his skin.

I opened the iDrive skin in the RR skin editor, and just can't find a reference to it anywhere. Maybe the version on rrdownloads.net is an older version?

Quote: Originally Posted by jmciver

As far as the USB/Autodim interface, is there any more info on exactly how to build what you are talking about (I saw another thread that briefly talked about using the game pad method you spoke of), including the necessary software plugin? I am having my installer tap into the lights on the car so that I will already have a 12V signal (from the parking lights, close to the PC) available to make such a system work.

I am no electrical engineer, but can certainly give you an idea of what to do. If you already have the 12v lead there when the lights are on thats a good start. You need to get a 12v relay at Radio shack or other supplier. Then follow the diagram for the relay on how to set it up. You will put your 12v and a ground on the 2 input pins. Then when power is supplied to that relay, it will close 2 contacts on the other side of the relay. Then it's just a matter of hooking 2 wires from one of the game pad's buttons and hooking them to the relay. So basically when the relay closes when it gets power, it will close the contact and "Push the button". The next is just to set up the game port plugin, so that when that button is "pressed" it will send a command to RR to dim the screen/switch the skin or whatever other RR command that you want to send.

This same exact thing can be hooked up to the reverse lights on your car, then when they come on, RR could switch to a back up camera skin for example.

JohnWPB · 11-25-2006, 06:49 PM

Well I have been pretty busy today, first the New EQ, and now a new configuration screen for GPS based volume.

Guino just released a beta that supports changing these values at runtime, without having to restart Road Runner. This allows the volume of the audio to be based on the speed you are driving. My head unit has this built in, and I got spoiled using it. When driving on the highway, and then come off and stop at a light, ever notice you find yourself turning the volume down? Well this will do that for you automatically. Just put the volume you want the audio at for low speeds, and set the volume at high speeds, usually 100%. Then tell it what speed to start increasing the volume based on the noise level in the cabin of your car. In a Jeep or convertible I would recommend setting it to say.... 30 Mph

It is pretty neat to see the volume level on the screens adjust itself as you drive along!

Here's a screen capture. I hope to have all this put together and posted tomorrow in an update.

.

RPM_VR4 · 11-25-2006, 06:56 PM

Great work John! If you need something else to improve on (LOL), I'd love it if you wanted to make an improve RREarth + GooPs skin. See my post here. I'll PM you my e-mail and if you want to check out what I have for RREarth + GooPs Freedom skin I'll send you a beta. This for BlueDevil would rock!

JohnWPB · 11-25-2006, 07:13 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by RPM_VR4

Great work John! If you need something else to improve on (LOL), I'd love it if you wanted to make an improve RREarth + GooPs skin. See my post here. I'll PM you my e-mail and if you want to check out what I have for RREarth + GooPs Freedom skin I'll send you a beta. This for BlueDevil would rock!

Wow, this would be a project alright! Not sure if I want to get in to that one just yet

Why Goops -vs- the native RR integration?

RPM_VR4 · 11-25-2006, 07:29 PM

1) GooPs allows a picture of your car or cool 3D arrows rather than RREarths placemark icon.

2) GooPs keeps a track of where you have been and the color of the track indicates your speed. You can save the tracks and view them later on a home PC.

3) GooPs allows tracking of multiple vehicles (you can see all your friends on the Google Earth map).

4) GooPs has a very good system of auto-zoom/tilt/icon settings according to speed. If you set Zoom=200ft at 10MPH and Zoom=1000ft at 60MPH, it will auto-calculate appropriate zoom at any MPH between 10-60. You can set more points on the graph as well.

5) GooPs has rotation-stabilization for low speeds to avoid the "helicopter" effect.

6) GooPs does some prediction of GPS location 1/2 a seconds in to the future and sends that to Google Earth so that it does not appear to lag behind your current location.

I could not do the 3 view modes (Chase / Street / Freeway) without GooPs.
I could not do the fly-to/osk stuff without RREarth.

Therefore I am using RREarth with the "center-on-GPS" dissabled, then I just run GooPs in the background and control it using auto-it GooPsScripts (same as your iGScripts). I already have all the functionality done, all I'm having trouble with is using the RREarth buttons in a popup. You don't even have to use a popup for the Blue Devil version if you don't want to, I just want my Chase-View / Street-Vew / Freeway-View / View-Traffic, a speed history track, and my car as the icon (in addition to the existing RREarth functionality).

You could add even more functionality by adding a script to save the GooPs .kml and upload it to a server. Then it would be a GPS-Secure solution as well.

SangreDeThor · 11-25-2006, 07:46 PM

very cool speed sound limiter.

turbocad6 · 11-25-2006, 08:30 PM

that sound adjuster is really really really cool.... I mean really

jmciver · 11-25-2006, 09:50 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by JohnWPB

I am no electrical engineer, but can certainly give you an idea of what to do. If you already have the 12v lead there when the lights are on thats a good start. You need to get a 12v relay at Radio shack or other supplier. Then follow the diagram for the relay on how to set it up. You will put your 12v and a ground on the 2 input pins. Then when power is supplied to that relay, it will close 2 contacts on the other side of the relay. Then it's just a matter of hooking 2 wires from one of the game pad's buttons and hooking them to the relay. So basically when the relay closes when it gets power, it will close the contact and "Push the button". The next is just to set up the game port plugin, so that when that button is "pressed" it will send a command to RR to dim the screen/switch the skin or whatever other RR command that you want to send.

The relay side of the house I understand, it was the software integration with RR I was a bit fuzzy on. As far as game pad plug in is concerned, are you referring to the one that CDrskul made? I read a thread about it here. It seems like this is easier than I thought. I think I will have my installer install the relay since he will already be there. Now I need to find a cheap USB game pad.......

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