New to Home Automation & Vista MCE Integration

[MikeB]

Jonathan hasn't bailed on Vista, has he?

No, just had to focus on getting the INSTEON PLM driver out the door for the 2.2 release and I've limited resources to spread around!

As jkmonroe and the other few testers can attest, my CQC Vista MCE driver is stable. There are a number of feature requests which will come in the future but the major holdup was needing to rewrite some functionality so it would work correctly under Vista without having to disable UAC. Once that is done I'll have a public beta release out (could be in the next few weeks)

Jonathan -

What does the Vista MCE driver for CQC allow you to control, exacly?

Thanks!

 

[bradsjm]

What does the Vista MCE driver for CQC allow you to control, exacly?
Thanks!

The solution hooks into Vista Media Center as both an event handler and a background module (it does require Vista).

This means that it can monitor everything that would have been sent to a front-panel display (this includes what menu you are on, what mode MCE is in, what is playing or recording right now etc.). I then have code that takes this information and enhances it, for example, if MCE reports a channel change to 214, the driver then looks up in the MCE guide what channel that is and what is currently playing (title, description, rating etc.) or if MCE reports that you are playing a recorded TV show, the driver goes and grabs the meta data from the file and reports it back etc.

The driver also provides control over much of the user interface, you can send remote command buttons, force it to a specific screen, change to a specific channel, play a specific audio or video file or even a DVD (from the DVD drive or from the hard drive if it is a ripped movie) etc. and for a DVD, you do get both DVD title and chapter title information surfaced.

The driver also provides a list of what shows are recording and what shows have been recorded along with a channel lineup guide to allow remote selection of channels from a CQC list. Here is a screenshot of one of my touchscreens using the driver to control Vista MCE:

Hope that helps!

 

[MikeB]

What does the Vista MCE driver for CQC allow you to control, exacly?
Thanks!

The solution hooks into Vista Media Center as both an event handler and a background module (it does require Vista).

This means that it can monitor everything that would have been sent to a front-panel display (this includes what menu you are on, what mode MCE is in, what is playing or recording right now etc.). I then have code that takes this information and enhances it, for example, if MCE reports a channel change to 214, the driver then looks up in the MCE guide what channel that is and what is currently playing (title, description, rating etc.) or if MCE reports that you are playing a recorded TV show, the driver goes and grabs the meta data from the file and reports it back etc.

The driver also provides control over much of the user interface, you can send remote command buttons, force it to a specific screen, change to a specific channel, play a specific audio or video file or even a DVD (from the DVD drive or from the hard drive if it is a ripped movie) etc. and for a DVD, you do get both DVD title and chapter title information surfaced.

The driver also provides a list of what shows are recording and what shows have been recorded along with a channel lineup guide to allow remote selection of channels from a CQC list. Here is a screenshot of one of my touchscreens using the driver to control Vista MCE:

Hope that helps!

That's awesome, thanks Jonathan.

Can't wait to jump into that! Maybe next year at this rate!!