Logitech G15 LCD Display Component, Direct communication with Logitech's LCD framework Options

[Ethangar]

I got Foobar on Friday and got my playlist all set up and beautiful, but then found it lacking the ability to control the LCD panel on my keyboard. There are a few workarounds, like using Winamp_Spam to emulate Winamp, but that takes a ton of needless CPU usage if you just want to talk to the LCD.

So, I went ahead and spent Sunday writing my own. Here are some features.

- Displays Track Name, Artist Name, Track Length, and Track Position (time)
- Communicates directly with the LCD Framework as opposed to going through a COM object (for speed).
- Independent of other codecs.
- Compiled in Win32 C++ (Non-MFC).
- Statically Linked with the LCD API.

It shouldn't crash computers without the LCD screen, but it will be a waste of CPU time, so I don't suggest installing it.

Picture of LCD Opening Screen:


When playing a song:


Preferences Dialog:


Keep sending me feature suggestions and bug reports!

Huge thanks to Foosion for all his posts on his thread. Not only did I use his tutorials to start myself on this little project, but I must have had 10 or 15 issuese that I was about to post questions on and then found a post by Foosion already answering it.

Update 07-31-2006 (Version 0.3a)
- Added Option To Countdown Track Length
- Added Option To Customize Tracking Timing Displays
- Added Option To Bring foo_g15lcd To Top LCD Priority For A Specified Amount Of Time (between 1 and 30 seconds)
- Added Dynamic Track Information Updating (especially useful for showing updated tags on Streaming songs and VBR MP3s).
- Corrected Minor Progress Bar Glitch When Switching Tracks

Update 07-15-2006 (Version 0.2a)
- Added Scrolling Text for Long Titles
- Decreased Font Size and Added Third Line
- Added Preferences Dialog to Customize Line Formats
- Added Use of Softkeys To Choose 1 of 4 Comments
- Added New Opening Screen

Features I'm Looking At Implementing For Next Release:
- Softkeys to Control More Things (Like Randomization Options or switching to SpecAn)
- Spectrum Analyzer Support
- Song length countdown option (currently just goes up)
- Making display priority higher than others during song change


Download:
Component Version 0.3c (DL) (Same as 0.3a, but updated for the newer Foobar SDK)

Previous Versions:
Component Version 0.3a
Source for Version 0.3a
Component Version 0.2a
Source for Version 0.2a
Component Version 0.1a

This post has been edited by Ethangar: Jan 28 2010, 19:12

[JzE]

Ah, Finally. Thanks man. This is just the thing what I've been waiting for You're the man

~JzE

[4nt1]

woohooo awesome work... great to see someone had a go
thanks again

ok so for some ideas can we make the displayed test customisable with tags and matbe font size... Cause I would like to include album info and track number etc, maybe even rating...

perhaps the buttons could switch between view modes, ie maybe a visualisation mode... that could be cool...

perhaps you could make the buttoms customisable

[Beavis04]

I was thinkning of getting a G15, I have a G5 mouse so why not?

Excellent plugin so thanks dude.

[foosion]

You are violating the foobar2000 SDK license by redistributing it without the license. We would prefer that people get the foobar2000 SDK from the official homepage, so that they always get the latest version including bug fixes and documentation updates.

I do not know to which degree you violate the Logitech G15 SDK license because you are distributing that without the license agreement as well, but it is reasonable to assume that you have to at least include the license agreement, if you are allowed to redistribute the SDK at all.

Feel free to post an updated source package once you have cleaned up these issues.

This post has been edited by foosion: Jul 11 2006, 12:09

[karmakillernz]

Excellent! I've been wanting such a plugin ever since I got my G15 (actually, it was what I had in mind for the LCD when I bought it ), but I have no ability to write on myself. Thank you!

The only thing I'd like to see would be the abilty to display the album too. e.g.,

CODE

             Money
     Dark Side of the Moon
           Pink Floyd
0:13                       6:23
[---||-------------------------]

[SirReal]

(Edited out of existence since I made a new topic)

This post has been edited by SirReal: Jul 11 2006, 14:10

[Ethangar]

The only thing I'd like to see would be the abilty to display the album too. e.g.,

I'll decrease the font size and add a third line and see how it works out.

ok so for some ideas can we make the displayed test customisable with tags and matbe font size... Cause I would like to include album info and track number etc, maybe even rating...

perhaps the buttons could switch between view modes, ie maybe a visualisation mode... that could be cool...

perhaps you could make the buttoms customisable

I don't know about visualization, but having some different presets for display that are customizable is a good idea. I can just feed in user-defined Title Formats. So if they wanted to display "%artist% - %title%" on the first line, they could. A softkey could switch through 3 or 4 of those kinds of styles.

You are violating the foobar2000 SDK license by redistributing it without the license. We would prefer that people get the foobar2000 SDK from the official homepage, so that they always get the latest version including bug fixes and documentation updates.

I do not know to which degree you violate the Logitech G15 SDK license because you are distributing that without the license agreement as well, but it is reasonable to assume that you have to at least include the license agreement, if you are allowed to redistribute the SDK at all.

Feel free to post an updated source package once you have cleaned up these issues.

I apologize for that. The Foobar2000 SDK accidentally got pruned because of the directory structure I used. Forgot to check those before I released the source. I'll have to avoid uploading the source for now because the Logitech SDK is a little odd. It says:

"Logitech grants You a limited, non-exclusive, nontransferable license to install and use an unlimited number of copies of the LCD SDK on computers . All other rights are reserved to Logitech."

I'm not sure how to interpret that. Any advice?

Edit: I should note that it IS distributed through a numuber of sites (like g15mods.com and g15forums.com) and Logitech seems to have no problems with it.

This post has been edited by Ethangar: Jul 11 2006, 16:59

[foosion]

"Logitech grants You a limited, non-exclusive, nontransferable license to install and use an unlimited number of copies of the LCD SDK on computers . All other rights are reserved to Logitech."

I'm not sure how to interpret that. Any advice?

Edit: I should note that it IS distributed through a numuber of sites (like g15mods.com and g15forums.com) and Logitech seems to have no problems with it.

I am not a lawyer, but they don't seem to explicitly give you the right to redistribute the SDK.

Whether they have taken steps against other sites hosting the SDK is irrelevant. The real question is, if you even need to redistribute the SDK since from what I have read it comes with the driver CD and can also be downloaded from Logitech.

[JzE]

One thing which should be added is text scrolling. The whole track name doesn't show on the LCD if the name is too long. So it'd be good if this feature was added.

And reducing the font size a bit wouldn't be bad either IMO.

~JzE

[Narthalion]

Do you mind sharing the Source code, or, if you are yousing Visual Studio, the whole project?

An idea for the buttons... toggle the "songlength" display on the right to (songlength - played), so that it counts down... or make this confugurable in an edit dialouge.

Second: Can you add an option to put the Component to front when the song changed for x seconds (perhaps configurable, too, via dialogue)? I don't like the cycling option, so I have one component in front, but a song change is important enough for me to go in front

Thanks for your work!

This post has been edited by Narthalion: Jul 14 2006, 08:48

[Garfen]

A nice thing would be like having it like the Track info panel in foobar. So each user can easily made a own design with Formating strings.

Things that I would like to have in the lcd:

Spectrum analyser

Artist & song title

Songlength (like now)

Lyrics if enable

Track info like codec, bitrate, Album and so on.

Thanks fore a nice plugin

[matthijs]

Fantastic, this means I won't have to write one!

Nice work, it looks great .. Looking forwards to seeing the how you did it

(yeah, the COM component solution was bad. this is much better!)

This post has been edited by matthijs: Jul 14 2006, 18:06

[ZephiriS]

Awesome! I was looking so badly for a foo_plugin thanks.

[Ethangar]

I'll have an update sometime this weekend I imagine, with the source again (but cleaned up). Things I am adding right now and are pretty much working:

- Decreased Font Size, and Added a third row of text.
- All rows are customizable from the Preferences Dialog (just stick in the Title format you want to see on each line). You want "%artist% - %track%" on the third line? No problem!
- Should allow you to have 4 different presets of customization by using the softkeys.
- Scrolling Text


I'm also looking at adding the spectrum analyzer and randomization options still. Probably won't make it in this weekend though.

[Ethangar]

I updated the original post with the new version:

Update 07-15-2006 (Version 0.2a)
- Added Scrolling Text for Long Titles
- Decreased Font Size and Added Third Line
- Added Preferences Dialog to Customize Line Formats
- Added Use of Softkeys To Choose 1 of 4 Comments
- Added New Opening Screen

[seVen]

I love it, thank you!

A small request if possible... continuous update of artist and title which is useful when listening to online radio as Digitally Imported for example. Foobar display the updated tag info when a song change but not on the G15. Thanks in advance and good work!

EDIT: Added request.

This post has been edited by seVen: Jul 16 2006, 11:01

[ZephiriS]

The bitrate doesnt update when its a vbr, maybe you could add an updaterate. This would also solve seVens problem.

[Garfen]

Thanks alot!!!

[Garfen]

Take e look at this: http://www.g15forums.com/forum/viewtopic.p...=foobar&start=0

Its G15 plugin fore ver 0,8. This plugin has a spectrum analyser, maybe you can find some usefull?

[4nt1]

awesome work on the component, it just keeps getting better and better

[Ethangar]

The bitrate doesnt update when its a vbr, maybe you could add an updaterate. This would also solve seVens problem.

A small request if possible... continuous update of artist and title which is useful when listening to online radio as Digitally Imported for example. Foobar display the updated tag info when a song change but not on the G15. Thanks in advance and good work!

Yeah, these are related. I'm not responding to the dynamic_info events right now. I'll add that to the list of things to add.

And the SpecAn mode is still on the list, hopefully I'll have it with the next release.

[4nt1]

wooohooo that sounds awesome. so glad to hear your thinking about spectrum analyser

once again thankyou for taking the time to give us g15 foobar users exactly what we want.

The more configuration options the better but either way I am just happy you have got this much done already.

[Garfen]

A tip fore all G15 users: Do NOT spill any coca cola in it, it toke me 3 hour to clean it dry and it almost kill it and me.

This post has been edited by Garfen: Jul 18 2006, 18:27

[ZephiriS]

A tip fore all G15 users: Do NOT spill any coca cola in it, it toke me 3 hour to clean it dry and it almost kill it and me.

Thanks for the tip ... tough I didnt really intend to spill any liquids on my keyboard anyway because I already wasted 2 other Keyboards with Coke and Ice Tea .