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<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 9/29/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">Paul Onley</b> <<a href="mailto:onley@worldnet.att.net">onley@worldnet.att.net</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"><br>>>> Have the channel change script write some status information to a file<br>>> > and use it to determine which capture card is watching what?>
<br>>> Basically, the point is that the external channel change command knows><br>>> which capture card/input is being used, so, don't throw that information<br>>> > away. Put it somewhere you can find it... Specific implementation>
<br>>> instructions would require knowledge of exactly what your plan is for><br>>> figure out (once you start going down the right path ;).> MikeI'm not<br>>> following you. If the channel change script was to write to astatus
<br>>> file it would reside on the backend. How would the frontendgo about<br>>> reading this file? Further more since all OnDemand programingis on<br>>> Channel 1 if two frontends were to watch OnDemand at the sametime the
<br>>> status file would show 2 STBs watching channel 1.The exact plan is to<br>>> be able to send left, right, up, down and selectto the correct STB.<br>>> Since I am already controlling 4 STBs in exactlythe way you suggest I
<br>>> don't see where I am not on the right path.I have 1 master backend<br>>> server which has 5 tuners and 4 STBs. In theconfiguration of each tuner<br>>> that is connected to a STB there is aplace to enter a command to
<br>>> control an external tuner. I have addedcode to the DCT2000<br>>> channel_change executable to accept a commandline argument for the port<br>>> to send the information to and in eachtuner configuration I have
<br>>> entered "/usr/local/channel_change x"where x is the serial port that<br>>> the STB is connected to. This isEXACTLY how this is supposed to be done<br>>> as well as how you recom>mendI do it, so up to this point we should be
<br>>> in FULL agreement. Now,I have 5 remote frontends, one in the living<br>>> room, one in the kidsplayroom, one in my bedroom, one in the boys<br>>> bedroom and one in thegirls bedroom. If the kids are watching OnDemand
<br>>> in the playroomhow should I go about sending the left, right, up, down,<br>>> and selectinteractive codes to the STB that they are watching?I can<br>>> only see 2 scenarios that would work.1) Modify Myth so that you can
<br>>> send things other than channelnumbers out through the external tuner<br>>> command.2) Somehow have the frontend that you are watching interogate<br>>> the backend to see what STB it is connected to.As
I undersand I can<br>>> query the database to get thisinformation. I do not yet know how to do<br>>> this butit appears I will have to learn.Somehow send the codes to the<br>>> STB which is connected to
thebackend.At this point the frontend knows<br>>> which STB it needsto send the codes to but I am not sure how to goabout<br>>> calling a program on the backend. I wouldimagine that a daemon would<br>>> have to be createdto listen for requests from the frontends andforward
<br>>> the codes to the STBsIf you think I am on the wrong path then please<br>>> tell me where I'mgoing wrong.<br>>> _______________________________________________mythtv-users mailing list<br>>> mythtv-users[at]mythtv.org
<br>>> <a href="http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users">http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users</a><br>><br>><br>> If you only have one frontend doing VOD, I can see how it might be
<br>> possible, by grepping index.html for "Live" or "VOD" which you get with<br>> "wget backend:6544". ( I assume an encoder recording channel 1 would<br>> display channel info as VOD)
<br>> Once you figure out which encoder is doing live TV VOD , then you know<br>> whichSTB is connected to your frontend. You can then use ssh to remote<br>> execute acommand.<br>><br>> I dont know how else you can figure out which frontend is connected to
<br>> whichSTB if you have more than one STB doing VOD.<br><br>> Alternatively, if you just need one VOD active at any time, then perhaps<br>> youcan eliminate this channel from the three STB's so that when you
<br>> selectchannel 1 on any frontend, you are immediately connected to a<br>> known STB.<br>> Another thing you might do is to have a slightly different lineup for<br>> eachtuners. For example, tuner 1 only has channel 99, tuner 2 only has
<br>> channel100. That way you can select a specific tuner (hence a specific<br>> STB) bychanging to the unique channel, then channel change to 1 after<br>> that.<br>> I'm really just rambling these ideas. I dont know if they will work.
<br>> Hope it helps<br><br>I had thought about only having channel 1 in 1 lineup but with 3 kids that<br>like the OnDemand programing that would lead to fights over who gets to<br>watch. The idea of using a dummy channel so that each frontend knew which
<br>STB it was using is interesting, I hadn't thought of that. The only issue<br>there is that if that tuner is in use that frontend will not be able to<br>watch OnDemand. What I am really hoping is that this will generate some
<br>interest and maybe the programers can create a hook to send these other<br>codes through the existing mechanisms. I have seen several threads on<br>sending interactive codes to OnDemand programing and with the proliferation
<br>of ingteractive digital content I can only see the need for this feature<br>growing. What would be really great is if there was a script that could<br>run on the frontend machine to send a code through the external tuner
<br>command. Then all the user would have to do is call the script with the<br>code from the lircrc config file, this would allow the user to very<br>easily map any key on the remote to the STB with one simple line in a<br>
config file.<br><br>I think what I'm going to end up doing for now is reading the database<br>and finding out which STB is being used and sending the code from outside<br>Myth. My brother is very good with MySQL and we can write a daemon that
<br>will run on the backend and listen for requests from the frontends to send<br>codes to the STBs. The frontend will have to identify itself by host name<br>and specify the key it wants sent. I have found a table in mythconverge
<br>that lists which frontend is connected to which tuner and the daemon can<br>take that information and send the code to the correct STB. This will work<br>for me but since everyone has different hostnames for their machines and
<br>different names for their tuners it will be a very unique solution that<br>will require modification for each implementation.<br><br>Thanks for the input Chris, the dummy channel is a good idea, I may use<br>that until we can workout the details on the database/daemon path.
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<div>Reading the database is not really the right approach - querying the backend via the protocol would be.</div>
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<div>Even that is not necessary for this piece of information -- it is available via the status port on 6544. In this case, you can get quite a bit of info from the XML status on <a href="http://my.myth.ip:6544/xml">http://my.myth.ip:6544/xml
</a> You get a list of encoders, and if one is recording, you will see what program, callsign, and channel it is tuned to.</div>
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