FreeICE Frontend New Version out..

CdRsKuLL · 01-10-2008, 02:20 PM

[UPDATED]

Current version 1.5
GRAB HERE

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Well since the forums decided to date my last post as 2001 and mess the order of them up I have now reposted the thread and want to inform you of a new release :-)

Well I have taken the plunge and started coding my own frontend.. It so far does music / video / gps / silabs radio / calc ... its coming along quite fast.

All the development work is being done over on www.digital-car.co.uk which are UK carpc forums... I will however switch it to my FreeDrive forums once its into beta stages.

It is a windows media player based frontend written in VB6 with a flash front.

I am trying to make it out of the box as much as possible.

Here are a couple of screenshots

grab it from... 0.8 Version (10th Jan 08)
HERE

HOW TO INSTALL

READ THE MANUAL

I have been doing daily updates over on digitalcar..

hope you like it so far..

Skully :-)

Changelog

[Updated in 0.8] 10 Jan 08

Improved flash speed
Improved playlist loadtimes (again)
Added Slider to the media player
Added Shuffle button to the media player
Fixed exit button on radio

[Updated in 0.7] 08 Jan 08

Improved the hibernation (speeded things up)
Improved playlist loadtimes (maybe by upto x 17)
Fixed full screen embedding placement bug

[Updated in 0.6] 08 Jan 08

Added Hibernation awareness, now resumes from media and radio
Added SDK (untested) should recieve similar commands to RR
Fixed Prev / tune down button

[Updated in 0.5] 07 Jan 08

Added SiLabs Radio Compatability
Added second way of Embedding ( add ,0 or ,1 to the end.. see fi.ini for example)
Fixed Track info on first start bug
+ more bits I cant remember

[Updated in 0.4] 03 Jan 08

Added ability to show full screen vis/movies by tapping the vis box. (doesnt work on some vis types)
Added ability to restart track by pressing on it.
Added ability to be able to set music/video paths from within the app by holding the tabs
Added confirm screen when pressing exit
Added ability to embed apps (just gps for now, configured in fi.ini
Added auto close of apps that FreeICE starts
Fixed screensaver bug when on bigvis screen

[Updated in 0.3] 02 Jan 08

Added minimise button
Added screensaver on/off button
Added new playlist save function
Added press and hold load all music in folder including sub folders
Added a surround round the bottom buttons (as requested) still needs perfecting
Added a back button rather than a X (exit) button to non menu screen (as requested)
Added drive button on browser so you can surf your whole pc (inc usb drives / cd drives etc)
Added directory back memory so it goes back to the same place if up up dir.. ( as requested )
Added Music / Video Paths
Fixed a couple of bugs mentioned and some I found..
+ more bits I cant remember

toymachine · 01-10-2008, 03:28 PM

Mate, its coming along great. I am using it every day and loving it. Just a thought which may be biast... are you going to add a small button that hides the vis and cd cover on the playlist page (only for music, not video). This will allow for bigger fonts...no? Just thinking of those with smaller screens running 640x480.

if not i really dont care, just a thought.

I've finally decided on my FE - FreeICE! woohoo

toymachine · 01-10-2008, 06:01 PM

Another thought "always on top' feature. So if other things open they don't open on top of freeice...possible?

MadDash · 01-10-2008, 09:26 PM

been following FreeICE both on here and digital-car.co.uk and i've got to say you've done some impressive work CDR. cant wait to start creating skins for this

volke · 01-11-2008, 02:12 AM

love it...good work

it run so fine on my laptop ..........

l1nk · 01-11-2008, 02:42 PM

Really slow (not usable!) on my mini itx with esther 1.2 Ghz cpu :-((

CdRsKuLL · 01-11-2008, 03:32 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by l1nk

Really slow (not usable!) on my mini itx with esther 1.2 Ghz cpu :-((

have you got the latest flash installed ? reports were that it ran ok on a 1.2 epia..

(from Digitalcar)

Quote:
Originally Posted by tn6478 View Post
MII12000 the video works great. its a bit cpu hog. Fi take up 45% cpu resoure but very usuable.
Excellent news - thanks!

just check..

Will be releasing 0.9 later tonight with the ablilty to build playlists / eject cd.. etc

VorTechs · 01-12-2008, 11:39 PM

Not sure if you'll be interested, but I've been working for the last 9 months on an audio management application with built in media player - made up of separate components.

The GUI (static), Media Player base (non-GUI) and Media Library (non-GUI) based on my two years worth of experience of the PhatBox (dedicated in-car audio hardware).

Of particular interest may be the audio player which allows you to send an enitre library of playlists to it and the media player will play back through ALL the playlists one after the other. It uses a native library and therefore NOT dependent on WinAMP / Media Player and supports CDA, WMA, MP3, WAV, MP4, AAC, M4A, FLAC, OGG and AAC.

Also available is a native Visualization library with WinAMP and Sonique visualization support. I need to update it for WMP Vizualization support which I think is now possible.

Head over to www.phathackmm.com to see how I've used these libraries together for my application PhatHack Media Manager (a WIP)

I figured I'd get in touch, as I'm looking for a FE that has truly integrated solutions and this looks like the start of something I'd like to be a part of!

FYI:

The components are written in VB.NET 2005, can't remember if I added COM extensibility but obviously this is easy to do. I also have 11 years commercial VB6 experience. So anything I can help with, let me know!

l1nk · 01-13-2008, 06:35 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by CdRsKuLL

have you got the latest flash installed ? reports were that it ran ok on a 1.2 epia..

(from Digitalcar)

Quote:
Originally Posted by tn6478 View Post
MII12000 the video works great. its a bit cpu hog. Fi take up 45% cpu resoure but very usuable.
Excellent news - thanks!

just check..

Will be releasing 0.9 later tonight with the ablilty to build playlists / eject cd.. etc

I tried various updates on flash but no good result. I also have the same problem with FU that I really like a lot on my desktop but is unusable on carpc! Do you have some suggestion/link to try to solve this issue?

CdRsKuLL · 01-13-2008, 08:54 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by l1nk

I tried various updates on flash but no good result. I also have the same problem with FU that I really like a lot on my desktop but is unusable on carpc! Do you have some suggestion/link to try to solve this issue?

Get a decent board is really the only answer.. stay away from the unichrome graphics chip as there crap at 2d.(jetway boards etc). you could also try reducing your hardware acceleration by one block (in your screen / settings bit) might help, has done in a few cases.

Steve

l1nk · 01-13-2008, 09:29 AM

Quote: Originally Posted by CdRsKuLL

Get a decent board is really the only answer.. stay away from the unichrome graphics chip as there crap at 2d.(jetway boards etc). you could also try reducing your hardware acceleration by one block (in your screen / settings bit) might help, has done in a few cases.

Steve

Mine is just a Jetway Hybrid J7F2WE1G2E Mini-ITX Motherboard! I'll try to reduce hardware acceleration... in the next 30 minutes! Thanks 4 suggestion Steve

tn6478 · 01-13-2008, 10:19 AM

i use a mII12000 and it works on it. I mean after the first load FI just fly. Only problem I see is if u go into a music or video folder that is large and i try to cache that and it takes a bit of time. But beside that its very usable on my system. Only thing about it is that the gps embed of Ig4. it still has the title menu.

CDR if only we were able to set the size of the gps screen that would be great. gps on the small screen with IG4 is just hard to see.

Great software keep up the good work m8

greatwhite · 01-13-2008, 11:53 AM

Good lord!

So simple, so clean.

How...........................refreshing!

Still messing around with configurations and changes, but looks nice so far.

I might just leave rr if this developes like it seems............

A few notes for NA use:

IG 4 support required
HD radio support required
I'll see what else I can come up with (only been using it for 10 mins now!)

Seems I'll have to check out digitalcar.uk..........................haven't been there in a while but you guys have been busy!

***EDIT*****

Arghh. Fell on my own sword! IG4 embeds fine when defined correctly. More real estate on the page would be better though, and a full screen button!

l1nk · 01-13-2008, 01:33 PM

Quote: Originally Posted by CdRsKuLL

Get a decent board is really the only answer.. stay away from the unichrome graphics chip as there crap at 2d.(jetway boards etc). you could also try reducing your hardware acceleration by one block (in your screen / settings bit) might help, has done in a few cases.

Steve

I tried reducing hardware acceleration but nothing new. I think you're right with unichrome graphics limits.
Soon I'll change my MB but I'm still confused on how to choose the new hardware. I sometimes spend hours parked watching movies or just listening to music so I need a extremely low consumption system.
I'm looking at the INTEL D201GLY2 mini ITX Mainboard which I can easily buy in germany but not sure about performances. Suggestions are welcome!

SuperJ · 01-13-2008, 04:24 PM

Nice. What are your future plans for features? Sat radio, HD radio, EQ?

I loaded this up last week and was very impressed. Like all of your work it's very functional, visually appealing, professional, and most importantly it works well. My only question is....how do you get a full album to play? So far I can only get one song to play at a time. Finally, as a suggestion, CaveLive has a very nice main screen with a spectrum EQ visualization, I'd love to see something like that as a main screen....having a main screen like that just looks nice while the system is unattended and music is playing.