Announce: SuperDateTime - Current Date/Temperature and/or Baseball Screensaver

[GoCubs]

*** THE LATEST VERSION OF THIS PLUGIN CAN BE FOUND AT www.gregbrown.net/squeeze ***
The latest version of the plugin has graphical weather icons and optionally shows game score and time information for MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL, and college football and basketball as well as stock/market information from Yahoo finance.
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Attached to this message is a new version of SuperDateTime screensaver plugin which is now fully configurable. The plugin has been tested for v6.x of SlimServer. See below for installation instructions.

This is a screen saver based on the datetime screensaver. It shows the current date/time along with the current temperature and "feels like" temperature for a given city.

The screen saver also optionally checks to see if a particular baseball team has a game scheduled. If there is one, the game time or score and inning information are displayed instead of the date/time every x seconds.

The city, team, and all related settings are user-configurable via the SlimServer server plugin settings web interface.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

ALSO - Could someone at SlimDevices please add this screensaver to the SlimDevices plugin page? Thanks!

TO INSTALL:
# 1. Unzip superdatetime.pm file into SlimServer\server\Plugins\SuperDateTime folder.
# 2. Restart slimserver.
# 3. Ensure plugin is enabled from Server Settings / Plugins web page.
# 4. Configure custom plugin settings (City, Team, etc.) from Server Setttings / Plugins web page.
# 5. Enable screensaver for when a player is turned off from Player Settings web page.

[davep]

GoCubs

Nice idea for a screensaver - I like to be able to see the temperature at a glance.

Couple of comments:
1. Is is possible to set the default to metric (i.e. centigrade) somewhere?

2. For some reason the maximum +ve offset from EST in the web interface is +9. There are places (like mine) where this can be +12 (or even +13 in winter). Having said that it doesn't seem to make any difference to the actual time displayed, which appears to be correct whatever offset is selected.

3. I think that music playback on the SB2 is being interrupted for a couple of seconds during the time that the plugin goes to goes to fetch the upadtes. This seems pretty consistent in my quick test.

Running Mandrake 10.2

davep

[GoCubs]

1. Is is possible to set the default to metric (i.e. centigrade) somewhere?

Good idea. I'll add another setting for that.

2. For some reason the maximum +ve offset from EST in the web interface is +9. There are places (like mine) where this can be +12 (or even +13 in winter). Having said that it doesn't seem to make any difference to the actual time displayed, which appears to be correct whatever offset is selected.

The time offset is only used when displaying baseball game times. If you're not using this functionality the setting wont be used at all. I didn't think anyone that cared about American baseball would be in such a large offset. I'll go ahead and add more offsets.

3. I think that music playback on the SB2 is being interrupted for a couple of seconds during the time that the plugin goes to goes to fetch the upadtes. This seems pretty consistent in my quick test.

Hmmmm. Are there multiple SB's in your configuration, some turned on and some off when this happens? Or are you using the screensaver while the music is playing? The plugin is designed to only fetch updates when it is actually displaying information. Even if it were though, I wouldnt think the script would generate that much server load to blow through the HUGE audio cache on the SB2.

Please let me know.

[davep]

The time offset is only used when displaying baseball game times. If you're not using this functionality the setting wont be used at all. I didn't think anyone that cared about American baseball would be in such a large offset. I'll go ahead and add more offsets.

That explains why the time was correct for me - I wasn't using the baseball scores feature. I wouldn't assume that people this far east have no interest, there are a lot of American expats around.

Hmmmm. Are there multiple SB's in your configuration, some turned on and some off when this happens? Or are you using the screensaver while the music is playing? The plugin is designed to only fetch updates when it is actually displaying information. Even if it were though, I wouldnt think the script would generate that much server load to blow through the HUGE audio cache on the SB2.

Actually I miswrote - the SB I was testing on last night was one of my SB1's not my SB2, so no huge buffer. I did have only 1 out of 3 SB's on at the time and was using the screensaver while the music was playing.

Were you thinking that this would primarily be used as the "power off" screensaver? Actually that's probably how I'll use it anyway as I much prefer to see the Now Playing info whilst listening to music.

davep

[GoCubs]

Actually I miswrote - the SB I was testing on last night was one of my SB1's not my SB2, so no huge buffer. I did have only 1 out of 3 SB's on at the time and was using the screensaver while the music was playing.

Were you thinking that this would primarily be used as the "power off" screensaver? Actually that's probably how I'll use it anyway as I much prefer to see the Now Playing info whilst listening to music.

davep

Yeah. I figured most people would use it as an off saver. I'll see if I can reproduce any audio problems when data refreshes occur. If I can, I'll see if I can figure out a way to fix it.

Thanks again for the feedback.

[GoCubs]

Attached in an updated version, now with Celsius support and additional time zone offsets.

[pski]

Hi!

Is this GPL?

P

[Tobias]

I try to use the plugin on a SB1 with a display fo 2x40 characters.
I configured the SB to display great characters.

Ok, it can't display the degree-sign, so it shows a D, that's ok, but.. At the first two characters the plugin blanks the top part, so the zero looks like a small u...

Any idea?

greetings from Hamburg/Germany
Tobias

[GoCubs]

I try to use the plugin on a SB1 with a display fo 2x40 characters.
I configured the SB to display great characters.

Ok, it can't display the degree-sign, so it shows a D, that's ok, but.. At the first two characters the plugin blanks the top part, so the zero looks like a small u...

Any idea?

Hi Tobias-
What do you mean by "great characters"? Also, which first two characters are you refering to? Please give me an example of what your display is showing.

Thanks
Greg

[GoCubs]

#3.4.2
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As always you'll probably need to use FireFox or some non-IE browser to download the zip file in binary format from the forums here.
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*** SlimServer 6.2 or later is most likely required. ***
Fixed NFL parsing to handle regular season data format.

Line one will now display the sport league pertaining to the game information in line two.

Added status indicator in top right hand corner of display line one.
- '*' is displayed while data is being refreshed.
- If a data update fails the sport abbreviation, or 'W' for weather will be displayed until a successful update occurs. Stale data from the last successful update will continue to be displayed.
- An alarm bell indicator is displayed during the clock display if an alarm clock is set and no other status is being shown.

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CMcKinnon-
Thanks for the windspeed modification.
I'll try to post an updated version that supports your windspeed modification natively.