Announce: Slimmer

[tbali]

1. Runs Slimmer only with 4x20 Display?
2. Or is it possible to run it on 2x20 or 2x16?
3. And is it possible to change the displayed lines?

Hi!

1. Currently yes. I designed Slimmer to support arbitrary screen sizes, so it would be easy to handle those displays too. But unfortunately I don't have time now to implement and test this.
2. Without some C++ coding it is not possible yet.
3. This requires also coding, the screen layout is fixed. What would you change?

Regards
Balázs

[tbali]

For the record: Marcus is working on connecting LIRC with Slimmer, so the player will be controllable with a remote. LIRC is able to inject keyboard events trough uinput as pikeyd does. So this requires no modification in slimmer as it reads a keyboard device file. I hope Marcus will write some info on this topic to include it in the Slimmer Wiki

[droidbox]

Hi!

1. Currently yes. I designed Slimmer to support arbitrary screen sizes, so it would be easy to handle those displays too. But unfortunately I don't have time now to implement and test this.
2. Without some C++ coding it is not possible yet.
3. This requires also coding, the screen layout is fixed. What would you change?

Regards
Balázs

1. and 2. - You code it, I test it. ;-)

3. Currently I use a 4 lines display on my test Raspi. In play mode show the display.
First Line: Time
Second Line: Artist
Third Line: Album
Fourth Line: Titel

In my RetroPi was not so much place to install a 4 Line LCD, so I will insert a 2 Line
VfD Display. So it would be great, for example the display show:
First Line: Time
Second Line: Title / Artist / Album (with scrolling)

Or with a configfile keep the lines variable in the display

Regards Markus

[droidbox]

For the record: Marcus is working on connecting LIRC with Slimmer, so the player will be controllable with a remote. LIRC is able to inject keyboard events trough uinput as pikeyd does. So this requires no modification in slimmer as it reads a keyboard device file. I hope Marcus will write some info on this topic to include it in the Slimmer Wiki

Yes and it runs fine.

I start SLIMMER with:

pi@raspi:~/slimmer/slimmer-build $ ./slimmer -v -s homeserver -l localhost -P 13666 -i /dev/input/event3 --

/dev/input/event3 is the LIRC device

pi@raspi:~/slimmer/slimmer-build $ evtest
No device specified, trying to scan all of /dev/input/event*
Not running as root, no devices may be available.
Available devices:
/dev/input/event0:    Motorola Mobility Motorola HD Dock
/dev/input/event1:    BTC USB Cordless Mouse
/dev/input/event2:    BTC USB Cordless Mouse
/dev/input/event3:    lircd

The device name /dev/input/event3 is not stable and typically varies after a reboot.
But the lirc distribution contains a udev rule which if installed creates a device link named
/dev/lircd-uinput which always can be used.

But I have not come to this rule yet.


Regards Markus

[droidbox]

[droidbox]

Okay, the udev rules rockt. With this rules I get a fix device input for integrate to SLIMMER

sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/99-myremote.rules
### 2017.03.15 Mapping /dev/lirc0 to /dev/input/myremote
KERNEL=="event*",SUBSYSTEM=="input",ATTRS{name}=="lircd",SYMLINK="input/myremote"

After reboot:

$ ls -la /dev/input/
insgesamt 0
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root     180 Mär 15 12:16 .
drwxr-xr-x 15 root root    3360 Mär 15 12:16 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root      80 Mär 15 12:16 by-id
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root      80 Mär 15 12:16 by-path
crw-rw----  1 root input 13, 64 Mär 15 12:16 event0
crw-rw----  1 root input 13, 65 Mär 15 12:16 event1
crw-rw----  1 root input 13, 66 Mär 15 12:16 event2
crw-rw----  1 root input 13, 63 Mär 15 12:16 mice
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root       6 Mär 15 12:16 myremote -> event2

And when I deinstall the USB Keyboard the device changed.

$ ls -la /dev/input/
insgesamt 0
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     100 Mär 15 12:25 .
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root    3300 Mär 15 12:25 ..
crw-rw----  1 root input 13, 64 Mär 15 12:25 event0
crw-rw----  1 root input 13, 63 Mär 15 12:25 mice
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root       6 Mär 15 12:25 myremote -> event0

$ cat /proc/bus/input/devices
I: Bus=0000 Vendor=0000 Product=0000 Version=0000
N: Name="lircd"
P: Phys=
S: Sysfs=/devices/virtual/input/input0
U: Uniq=
H: Handlers=sysrq kbd rfkill event0 
B: PROP=0
B: EV=100003
B: KEY=1ffff ffffffff ffffffff ffffffff ffffffff ffffffff ffffffff fffffffe

Markus

[tbali]

1. and 2. - You code it, I test it. ;-)

Ok, deal. I will do it in a week or two.

[droidbox]

Really now?

Your are the best. I'm curious about what's happening.

Markus

[tbali]

Here you go Was not a big deal, packaging will be much more time.

16x2:
20x2:
20x4:

Now its your turn! Please test it throughout, I have no time now to compile it on the Pi and attach an another screen. Just tested a bit on my development machine. You can find the source on the github page in a new branch named smallscreen.

The new layout for 2 line screens is: First line is the same, but if there is not enough room, the duration is omitted. The second line is Artist: Album - Title and Artist: Title [Remote title/Radio name] for remote streams (radio). Volume and error screens are also adapting to the screen size. The menu was already ok.

Regards
Balázs

[droidbox]

Hi Balázs.

Sorry for the late replay. I can't get a notification from the forum.

This evening i setup 2 pis with a two and four line LCD and test your branch

Markus