IVB's "art meets HTPC" UI.

IVB

Senior Member
As of: 10/27

Just re-revved my stuff given the new features that CQC has, plus my improved understanding of the various bits of equipment I got.

Here's the latest set. The big focus areas for me from hereonout are going to be
1) To enhance my Elk integration with the rest of the system, and expose control to that through the GUI. There's too much stuff to even mention, but that's where the WAF is going to come from.
2) Properly integrate the new SageTV and TheaterTek TCP drivers, which will be what truly allow me to do multi-stream video.
3) Finishing up the Recipe Integration driver, so me/anyone else can pull up recipes inside CQC. I'm no coder, so this may take a while.
4) Silly functions like traffic (i walk to the train, why do I need this?), horoscopes, etc. Rarely used, but I've noticed the wife shows off the most bizarre stuff when her friends come.

But, taking precedence over all that will be actually mounting & installing some more Elk stuff, and leaving control to the keypads until I have a chance to do #1 above.

Ok, here goes the dump. It's all pretty self-explanatory, so I won't go into great detail. You'll see:

- Whole House Audio/Video (CD, DVD)
- Weather
- CCTV
- HVAC
- Irrigation
- Elk
- Misc a/v equipment (Denon, Xantech)

menu_av.jpg


Pressing the CD or DVD button will bring up this page:

popup_roomchoice.jpg


If you picked something not available in that zone (really, video is the only filter there):
popup_zone_error.jpg


If you got it right...
overlay_cd1.jpg


Press the genre button.

popup_choosegenre_jrmc.jpg


Press the song button.

popup_songs.jpg


Now DVDs. Not going to bother showing the genre or roomchoice popup, as it's the same as CDs.
overlay_dvd_ripped.jpg


Now XM. Again, not going to bother showing the roomchoice popup.
overlay_xm.jpg


overlay_fm.jpg


popup_weather.jpg


7 day if you want, with all the radar stuff.

popup_weather_7day.jpg


Now on to the security.
menu_elk.jpg


overlay_elk_sensor.jpg


overlay_elk_speakers.jpg


overlay_elk_doors.jpg


overlay_elk_motion.jpg


And the Misc menu.
menu_misc.jpg


overlay_irrigation.jpg


The token cool thing about the denon page is that the buttons emulate radio buttons, so when you choose one, it turns green and the others are black.

overlay_denon.jpg


overlay_hvac.jpg


overlay_xantech.jpg


boring camera shot. This needs to be redone during daytime.
overlay_camera.jpg
 
Wow - those screens are beautiful. I wish I had 1/2 as much artisitic talent! I am horrible at putting screens together...
 
Me to. Maybe we should start a For Sale/Trade talent forum?

Where someone offers services and list their talents?
I'm sure there are others that would be willing to pay for someone to do custom work for them.
 
bfisher said:
Wow - those screens are beautiful. I wish I had 1/2 as much artisitic talent! I am horrible at putting screens together...
I am the king of packaging others work!

All that stuff is actually artwork from www.vladstudio.com. A 3 month window to download his pieces costs $9, lifetime is $30.

I think it makes quite a difference, don't you?
 
I purchased www.myhometheaterpc.com a while back, and have finally put up the following content about my setup. It should hopefully provide a more holistic view about what I'm trying to achieve, and how inexpensively I think I can get it done.

- Vision & Target Outcomes
- Technical Path
- Screen Shots
- System Configuration + shopping list
- What's next [aka release calendar]
 
Funny story: I was putting my 2yr old to sleep. (Ok, i was hanging out on the forum on the laptop cuz she likes to fall asleep with me sitting in the chair). Wife turns on TV, forgot she set Zone3 to same source and we hear Project:Runway blasting just outside my daughter's room. I Realized I didn't have a screen with a complete set of Denon Controls so I couldn't turn it off via laptop. After rushing out to turn that off, I immediately created a screen for that.

i'm skinning this in the 1-ish week timeframe, so anyone who has CQC can also have this interface. It's pretty easy to swap the Denon controls with your receiver [presuming it's supported by CQC]; I can walk you through it, but that wouldn't take more than 30mins-1hr. Only reason it'll take that long is the sheer # of widgets that are on this page.

You'll have to download the art directly from www.vladstudio.com as I don't want to muck with distributing the artist's property. I'll give you links to all the correct pieces, though.
 
just updated showcase with my new irrigation screen as I just got the RAIN8 mounted & linked into CQC.

Also added a screenshot that shows how CQC responds to a "Doorbell Ring Detected" event.
 
This is probably the wrong forum to ask me that on - people here are GOOD.

i'm still futzing with multimeters to understand words like resistance, voltage, alarm mode, etc. As a matter of fact, I was doing that last night until 12:30am. Some day I'll stop making dumb mistakes...
 
IVB said:
Some day I'll stop making dumb mistakes...
Nah, if we stopped learning or making dumb mistakes we'd be dead. All of us make dumb mistakes from time to time (just some more than others - me especially!)
 
Nice job.

Out of curiosity, I noticed you blanked out the zone numbers. Does that provide 'sensitive information'? I respect privacy, but I was curious if zone numbers could be used for something.
 
Well, that's more cuz i dunno about it than anything else. Wife is already tripping out about me posting all these screenshots, every little bit helps her which helps me.
 
Back
Top