HouseBot

Hi Dave

Just a quick question regarding your use of viewpads. Have you manged to get the round (enter) button to work with buttons on software remotes using your viewpads?

I seem to be able to get the up /down/right/left ok but not the enter button.
Also one other question what method/ path did you use for battery monitoring

Regards Paul

Paul: I haven't been using my ViewPads for a whille, but I remember that when I was, I was not able to get the Enter button to work. As for the battery path, here is what I did. Put this in the path:

\Windows\ctlpnl.exe

Put this in the parameters section:

\Windows\cplmain.cpl,6

Scott: I did a bunch of testing and had no luck with the hard buttons. Then I tried running a remote on my regular PC and using the arrow keys and that didn't work either. That got me wondering - is it possible that the hard button processing code is conditionally run only for CE devices? If so that would be the answer because the UMPC devices run regular Windows XP Tablet PC Edition (I'm using the X86 version of the remote).

-- Dave

dlmorgan999 wrote:Scott: I did a bunch of testing and had no luck with the hard buttons. Then I tried running a remote on my regular PC and using the arrow keys and that didn't work either. That got me wondering - is it possible that the hard button processing code is conditionally run only for CE devices? If so that would be the answer because the UMPC devices run regular Windows XP Tablet PC Edition (I'm using the X86 version of the remote).-- Dave

The cursor keys should work on a PC too (just tried it and it seemed to work ok for me). The 'Cursor Enter' is a special one that doesn't map to the 'Enter' key on a PC keyboard.

I finally figured out what's going on - unfortunately I don't think there is anything I can do about it. I have all of my themes designed using a common "overlay" popup panel that contains all the global functions like volume and source selection.

In the enter list for each of my device panels I have a task that opens the common popup panel. This makes it *much* easier to maintain the panels.

Unfortunately it appears that the popup panel is the one that has "focus". This will prevent me from being able to define device-specific hard button functions. I can't think of any way to design around this but if you have any ideas please let me know.

-- Dave

dlmorgan999 wrote:I can't think of any way to design around this but if you have any ideas please let me know.-- Dave

I don't have any workaround ideas, but I may be able to add a 'passthrough' mode for keys on popups that will send the keys to the primary panel for keyboard processing.

That sounds like it would be a very workable solution. I'm happy to live with it the way it is for now. Thanks Scott!

-- Dave

I decided to post a quick update on this issue. With the release of HouseBot 3.0 the UMPC has become a *very* nice (albeit expensive) remote. Specifically the support for mapping of the standard PC Enter key and the ability to set keyboard shortcuts to any button on a panel helped immensely.

I'm currently using my Samsung Q1 and I have full cursor control and five additional hard buttons to use for whatever I like. If anyone has questions about how this works feel free to ask.

-- Dave