1) one of the cool things on promixis's offerings is that users share their skins on the website. Does the graffix library licensing prevent this for ML? I've seen a few screenshots i would really love to take advantage of over the defualt "19" scense.
You can share your scenes (.mls files) with others, but you cannot share the graphical libraries. If you develop a scene using an optional library, and someone else wants to reuse your scene, they would have to purchase the graphical library and do a quick install (30 seconds) and relaunch MainLobby client and be able to use your scene.
2) elk arming button send a default code of 3456 - where is this set? The MlServer command is simply Security.Away rather than the full text as detailed in the elk plugin wiki details. Obviously i can replace that, just curious.. I also tried the command removing the last argument for passcoce (i.e. just ~1~1 for away as i do not require a passcode to armmy system). But ML didn't seem to like that... (didn't like ending with just a "~" either)
You can create a password scene. Brand new with the very soon to be released Mainlobby3 server is the ability to create invisible variables. This might come into hand with doing what you are asking. This was the reason why this new ability has been added.
3) more importantly, i don't want a burglar able to go to this screen and click disarm... I really want to prompt for the passcode. What's best way to design for that (at a high level)? thinking i could do something like the search popup for music lobby, limiting to a numeric keypad layout...
yes, this is why we added the inviso variable. Originally it was added for locking / unlocking of DVD movies from access and viewing. In that example, the password keypad slides in. You type your passcode on the touchscreen and click Submit. The verification is done, and if True, you are good to go to look at your locked movies on that PC, for the time that scene is onscreen. Once navigating away from that scene, the collection is relocked again for that client. Note that the collection remains locked for all other clients during this time. One example. This will be out shortly and can be used as a tutorial for security systems, callerid scenes, whatever.
4) i have two A/C units in my house. I've copied the thermostat page and set the commands/variables to TSTAT2 (similar to elk default aarming, i had to fully qualify the MLserver commands to get this to work as temp.coolsetpointinc no longer was recognized for some reason - just fyi)... But what's best way to switch context here. I'd rather not add a new button to navigation menu, but instead have context switcher/LOV on the first temp scene page itself where i can choose between the two thermostats scenes (both ways). Assuming i can put a button to lauch the other scene (or up/down, left/right buttons next to the field), but would rather have drop down if possible - not sure if that's possible.
you would do this via a MLCycleStates entry. You would set a variable state with each press of a button (Thermostat1 / Thermostat2 / Thermostat3, etc) and then your buttons would be constructed to use this variable value as the means to view data for that thermo and send commands to that thermo. I have an example of this as it relates to selection of which PC to play a movie (HTPC1 / HTPC2 / HTPC3, etc.). I will hunt for a link in the wiki docs (probalby MLtheatertek plugin description).
5) for the floorplans, i've looked at the cinemar forums and after i get the jpeg/swf ready, i'm curious how in the default lighting scene, you got the rectangular bottons to take on the odd shapes for shading? I don't see jpages, etc linked to them directly, but am fascinated...
You are looking at custom generated flash graphics that can have unique shapes. Part of the nice thing about flash. Cinemar provides building these custom floorplans as a pro service. You can do that yourself, but it takes a little to get the photoshop stuff right. There is a fee app to convert graphics to flash files avaiable from Cinemar.
Glad to hear you are getting things rolling!