Dean Roddey
09-22-2010, 03:57 PM
Here is some preview of a new demo system. This actually is a system I'm doing for someone. But, once it's completed, I'm going to change some things and move it over to work in terms of simulator drivers and make it available as a demo system. It's not a simple system, so it's not intended for newbies to pick up and learn the basics from. It's more for advanced users to be able to adapt to their own needs. Since it's a real system, it couldn't be a simple one. It had to meet the needs of the person it is being developed for.
Also, since it is a system for someone, there are a few screens I'm not showing here since they will need to be changed so as not to expose any details of the person's home.
The biggest to do about this one is that it supports a pretty fancy media source reservation system, and in some ways it pushes the flexibility of CQC pretty hard in order to implement this system. There's lots of indirection through variables (though not a huge number of them or anything) in order to keep it all pretty flexible. There's a driver that is used to support the reservation system and it reads in a file that defines audio and video sources and their attributes and all of the available zones and their attributes. Each touch screen sets an environment variable that indicates which zone number it is running in, and the main template uses that to pull down information about the local zone.
I'm working on a document that describes how it all works, in order to help people adapt it to their needs, so I'm not going to try to replicate that here again. So here's the basics of it visually. It's not super-duper fancy looking, but not bad either. Note thatyou might see the buttons on the bottom of the main screen move around a bit since I changed the positioning and didn't re-capture all of the images.
Main Screen/Home Overlay
It has buttons for the major areas of functionality provided. Along the bottom there's basic weather info, time/date info, the local zone name (read down from the driver), a home button to always get back to the main home overlay above, and if the local zone supports lighting (as per the setup file read in by the driver), there's a button to toggle the lights on and off else it's not present. If the local zone supports audio as per the setup file, there's a volume slider to adjust the local zone audio, else it's not present. If the security system is armed, there will also be a Disarm button down there, else it's not shown.
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/HomeOverlay.jpg
Weather Info
The weather stuff is pretty standard:
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/WeatherOverlay.jpg
Lighthing Control
The lighting control stuff is laid over a floor plan layout. You can press each one to toggle it off or on. There's a slider that controls the local lighting zone (using info again from the setup file read by the driver.) If you press the levels button you get a popup that allows for setting levels of other lights besides the local zone.
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/LightingOverlay.jpg
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/LightingLevels.jpg
Media Reservation
If you select Music or Movies, then you will be asked to either reserve a source, or to join someone else's source. Initially we have no local audio reservation, so if I select Music, I'll see a list of all of the audio sources I defined in my configuration file that the driver loads.
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/ReserveMedia1.jpg
I can select a source from the left hand list and reserve, and I'll get the reservation confirmation poup like this:
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/ReserveMedia2.jpg
I can adjust the time to reserve the source in half hour increments using the up/down buttons. If I hit reserve, then I move on to either the browse or now playing screens, depending which one was last accessed and whether there's anything currently playing on this device or not.
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/BrowseMusic.jpg
You can toggle over to the now playing screen, do a search, select a sort order, or toggle the playlist mode. If you do a search you get this popup. You can toggle the search attributes by clicking the Match, Find, or Type buttons. They just toggle you through the options.
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/MediaSearchPopup.jpg
If you load up some stuff and go to the Now Playing screen, it looks like this:
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/AudioNowPlaying.jpg
Now, if we go back to the home screen, we'll see this. We see under the Music button the name of the source we've reserved, and the time left on the reservation.
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/ReserveMedia3.jpg
If we press music again, we'll see something like this. Here we that our reserved source is not in the list anymore, and we also see that someone else has reserved another source as well. And down in the button right we see our current reserved source. We can keep this and just move on to the Now Playing/Browse area again, or we can cancel our reservation. Or we could click on a reserved source and join it (which would implicitly cancel our reservation as well.)
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/ReserveMedia4.jpg
If we joined someone's audio source, it will then take us to the Now Playing, and we can only go to that, we can't browse anymore since it's not our source. And we see this. The transport buttons are dimmed (and won't work), and the Browse and Clear buttons are gone. It's assumed that volume is done on a per-zone basis so there's still an audio volume slider.
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/AudioNowPlayingJoined.jpg
And just for good measure, here are the movie browsing and now playing and the music and movie preview popups. The reservation stuff works the same for movies. For the movie preview, to save space, you can use the arrows at the bottom to move between description and cast displays. The browse movies has the same search and sort by selections.
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/MusicPreview.jpg
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/BrowseMovies.jpg
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/MoviePreview.jpg
If you are in the music browser and select the Play Mode button, you get a play list mode selection popup like this. It remembers the currently displayed category and offers that as the random play from category option.
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/SelPLMode.jpg
So, anyhoo, there it is. There's no security info or irrigation info in this one. Once I get it fully made into a real demo system, I'll get those modified so that they are generic as well.
Also, since it is a system for someone, there are a few screens I'm not showing here since they will need to be changed so as not to expose any details of the person's home.
The biggest to do about this one is that it supports a pretty fancy media source reservation system, and in some ways it pushes the flexibility of CQC pretty hard in order to implement this system. There's lots of indirection through variables (though not a huge number of them or anything) in order to keep it all pretty flexible. There's a driver that is used to support the reservation system and it reads in a file that defines audio and video sources and their attributes and all of the available zones and their attributes. Each touch screen sets an environment variable that indicates which zone number it is running in, and the main template uses that to pull down information about the local zone.
I'm working on a document that describes how it all works, in order to help people adapt it to their needs, so I'm not going to try to replicate that here again. So here's the basics of it visually. It's not super-duper fancy looking, but not bad either. Note thatyou might see the buttons on the bottom of the main screen move around a bit since I changed the positioning and didn't re-capture all of the images.
Main Screen/Home Overlay
It has buttons for the major areas of functionality provided. Along the bottom there's basic weather info, time/date info, the local zone name (read down from the driver), a home button to always get back to the main home overlay above, and if the local zone supports lighting (as per the setup file read in by the driver), there's a button to toggle the lights on and off else it's not present. If the local zone supports audio as per the setup file, there's a volume slider to adjust the local zone audio, else it's not present. If the security system is armed, there will also be a Disarm button down there, else it's not shown.
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/HomeOverlay.jpg
Weather Info
The weather stuff is pretty standard:
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/WeatherOverlay.jpg
Lighthing Control
The lighting control stuff is laid over a floor plan layout. You can press each one to toggle it off or on. There's a slider that controls the local lighting zone (using info again from the setup file read by the driver.) If you press the levels button you get a popup that allows for setting levels of other lights besides the local zone.
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/LightingOverlay.jpg
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/LightingLevels.jpg
Media Reservation
If you select Music or Movies, then you will be asked to either reserve a source, or to join someone else's source. Initially we have no local audio reservation, so if I select Music, I'll see a list of all of the audio sources I defined in my configuration file that the driver loads.
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/ReserveMedia1.jpg
I can select a source from the left hand list and reserve, and I'll get the reservation confirmation poup like this:
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/ReserveMedia2.jpg
I can adjust the time to reserve the source in half hour increments using the up/down buttons. If I hit reserve, then I move on to either the browse or now playing screens, depending which one was last accessed and whether there's anything currently playing on this device or not.
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/BrowseMusic.jpg
You can toggle over to the now playing screen, do a search, select a sort order, or toggle the playlist mode. If you do a search you get this popup. You can toggle the search attributes by clicking the Match, Find, or Type buttons. They just toggle you through the options.
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/MediaSearchPopup.jpg
If you load up some stuff and go to the Now Playing screen, it looks like this:
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/AudioNowPlaying.jpg
Now, if we go back to the home screen, we'll see this. We see under the Music button the name of the source we've reserved, and the time left on the reservation.
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/ReserveMedia3.jpg
If we press music again, we'll see something like this. Here we that our reserved source is not in the list anymore, and we also see that someone else has reserved another source as well. And down in the button right we see our current reserved source. We can keep this and just move on to the Now Playing/Browse area again, or we can cancel our reservation. Or we could click on a reserved source and join it (which would implicitly cancel our reservation as well.)
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/ReserveMedia4.jpg
If we joined someone's audio source, it will then take us to the Now Playing, and we can only go to that, we can't browse anymore since it's not our source. And we see this. The transport buttons are dimmed (and won't work), and the Browse and Clear buttons are gone. It's assumed that volume is done on a per-zone basis so there's still an audio volume slider.
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/AudioNowPlayingJoined.jpg
And just for good measure, here are the movie browsing and now playing and the music and movie preview popups. The reservation stuff works the same for movies. For the movie preview, to save space, you can use the arrows at the bottom to move between description and cast displays. The browse movies has the same search and sort by selections.
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/MusicPreview.jpg
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/BrowseMovies.jpg
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/MoviePreview.jpg
If you are in the music browser and select the Play Mode button, you get a play list mode selection popup like this. It remembers the currently displayed category and offers that as the random play from category option.
http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/PostImages/Demo2010/SelPLMode.jpg
So, anyhoo, there it is. There's no security info or irrigation info in this one. Once I get it fully made into a real demo system, I'll get those modified so that they are generic as well.