MAME Plugin Progress Thread

[aaron.b]

I posted a reply in the rant forum...  http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=3489.0   If there's a flaw here I welcome having someone point it out.  But I've read the rant and I can't see the flaw Thom is referring to....

[darrenmason]

Thom,

Try entries in the DeviceTemplate_MediaType table (pluto_main).

From what I can tell the Media_plugin (base class) is responsible for giving back devices in an entertainment area, which are able to play a particular media type. When selected from a datagrid a piece of media will find devices for the entertainment area it was started in and issue a playMedia to the best match. If no devices are found then you get the message you are getting.

HTH
Darren

[tschak909]

yeah, i've already messed with this table quite a bit, which is why i am still confused..and what prompted me to actually start digging into the media base classes, and ultimately what caused me to totally lose it.

-Thom

[aaron.b]

Thom.  Do you have Skype?  Or can we have a quick call on the phone?  You can send me a private email to aaron.b [at] plutohome[dot]com.  I think all this talk about the ContainsVideo is kind of getting lost in the weeds and a diversion since it's so trivial and something you'll never need to touch to do a games plugin.  You shouldn't need to touch that table either unless you want to create a custom remote control screen for your plugin.  We were able to add new plugins for VDR and VLC and never touched anything in the database or the base classes.  So I think the real issue is somewhere else and this ContainsVideo is just a red herring.  The big problem is the lack of documentation.  Because there's no clear overview, I understand it must be frustrating to try to reverse-engineer everything and figure out the architecture based on the code.  This has been a major issue with all the coders on the project (myself included) in that nobody likes to write documentation no matter how important we all know it is, and the Pluto code isn't well documented and only a couple people know how all the pieces fit together. 

[tschak909]

I will need to do a custom remote at some point.

I won't be able to talk until after 5pm EST, and I wanted this discussion to be done with the community so that documentation could be written, rather than just transferred from one single programmer to another single programmer.

-Thom

[darrenmason]

aaron,

It would be good to see the responses on the forum, as people are now regularly extracting stuff from here and putting them into wiki entries.

I am also quite interested in how the to associate new devices with particular media types (in particular areas) as this impacts what I am working on at the moment as well.

regards
Darren

[ddamron]

I third that.... 

Documentation, in whatever form beit a forum message, wiki entry, etc..., is helpful..

Dan

[tschak909]

Update, had a long talk with aaron.b, and I think I know what's going on with the media subsystem now. I will be pasting the little scribbles of notes that I have later, but it seems that I need to make sure the constructor properly calls the register event of the media plugin so that it knows that it can deal with it.

I'll try again when i get home, wasn't able to last night because I was in the emergency room because of hypertension and heart palpitations.

-Thom

[Matthew]

I'll try again when i get home, wasn't able to last night because I was in the emergency room because of hypertension and heart palpitations.

Are you joking? If you are, please add instructions to the wiki for setting up a dev env before you take the knowledge with you when you die .

If you're not joking, maybe you should leave this stuff alone for a little while. Perhaps the 0710 release will relax you. Or just some holiday cheer.

[tschak909]

i wish i was. on the plus side, the call with Aaron.b (that happened before I went...no that didn't cause it) was fantastic. he answered my questions very straightforward, although he was adamant on my selection of code in the first of the rant thread...other than that..great guy...talked about the future of pluto..of linuxmce (they love us now, we have done more in our 1 year, than pluto has been able to do up to this point)

-Thom

[darrenmason]

Good stuff, will look forward to your wiki posts.

Take it easy.

Darren

[ddamron]

Thom,
Heartfelt feelings out to you.  I know what that's like, I am on medical leave right now due to, among other things, stress.
Before you know it, it eats you up, and there's NOTHING you can do.

For me, working on linuxmce is enjoyment.  I'm keeping it that way.  Once it feels like stress, I HAVE to bow out.
That said, I'm having WAY too much fun learning Ruby and coding insteon..
When I started, I didn't even know ruby.. I'm still learning it...

Hope you feel better soon!
Dan

[tschak909]

Ruby is a beautiful language. If you don't have it, pick up the PickAxe book.

You'll find that Ruby is _very_ close to Smalltalk...only a few very small differences, and just as powerful. I write a lot of my research software in smalltalk and ruby because they allow me to test ideas very quickly, and flexibly

I will continue to work on LinuxMCE too, it's my one enjoyment right now... my fiancee is 4000 miles away, I'm alone in this city with no friends, and I work in the bowels of a health insurance corporation, the ultimate corporate hell....tack onto that that i am desperately trying to go through school so that maybe...just maybe MIT will grant me entrance for graduate level work, because I want to work towards a Ph.D in computer science to do blue sky systems research (I hate the state of computing today, I want to help change it, even if it is only for myself.).... LinuxMCE is just one aspect of my research.

tack onto that, I've gone into my manic depressive cycle, and basically, I'm amazed i'm still alive....

thanks, and I hope i feel better soon.

-Thom

[ddamron]

Thanks Thom, and I'm finding Ruby to be quite powerful..
Apparently, the next version is supposed to support PROPER threading..
(we can hope.. hehe)
My main problem now is not the ruby language, it's how to communicate with Linuxmce... All the stuff in the wiki is fine.. no problem..
It's more advanced stuff, like reading scenarios in ruby, storing data with my device, etc..
I haven't quite figured it all out yet.. but I'm sure it'll come..
I'll look for that book..

Dan

[Matthew]

My main problem now is not the ruby language, it's how to communicate with Linuxmce... All the stuff in the wiki is fine.. no problem..
It's more advanced stuff, like reading scenarios in ruby, storing data with my device, etc..
I haven't quite figured it all out yet.. but I'm sure it'll come..

I'm trying to figure out where in the LMCE src is the interface between GSD Ruby and the LMCE API. It looks like it might be the RubyDeviceWrapper and RubyCommandWrapper , which proxy for LMCE devices and commands, but I'm not sure (I don't know how to use Ruby to talk back to LMCE in GSD). I want to use the same LMCE API for Perl, embedding a Perl interpreter in GSD the way Ruby is embedded. If you figure it out, would you update the "GSD Ruby Interface" wiki article?