Tweaking PCZapper

Bypassing the software

Eeyore — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 01:28:00 GMT

Say, your're not happy with the way PCZapper performs. Maybe you want to change the startup program into something different, or you could be unhappy with the way the scripting and containering works. Or you could be fed up with the way the PCzapper community is non-existent, the forum filled with Britney Spears and Facials instead of cool scripts and containers... Or you like to use the hardware under Linux...
If you'd want to bypass the software from PCzapper (the orange icon in the taskbar), or reuse the hardware for whatever reason: it's possible!

First, there's WinLirc (or for Linux: lirc). The remote-reciever I'm using from PCzapper is connected to the serial port. Winlirc captures remote signals that go through there. There's even a mention of the palmbutler IR remote in the Lirc listings of supported remotes that works under both WinLirc and Lirc... Cool!
WinLirc captures the keypresses on the remote, but now we have to do something with those keypresses. You'd want to use IREx. IREx can do virtually anything with these keypresses! Generate keyboard-presses (like the scripts from PCzapper do), start software, reboot your computer etc.
So the process is simple:
1- Install WinLirc and setup your remote
2- Download and install IREx
3- Config your remote config (as exampled in the IREx help and config files) 4- Maybe make these programs autostart when windows starts.
Maybe in the near future a more extensive list with examples and all, but for now:
This would be great with GBPVR (also see my post on using GBPVR together with PCzapper), WinAmp... GBPVR even has a PCZapper alternative aboard, called UbuStream.
Not as neatly actualised as PCZapper is, you have to do it yourself there, but if you want streaming video, it's there!

Update container creator

Eeyore — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 01:45:00 GMT

I updated the container creator for PCzapper to function following some stricter rules.
Added the Type=VideoStream and converted NAME tag to Name tag. Apparently capitals only is no longer valid.
It should be working fine again now.

Zapper in a resizable screen

Eeyore — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 04:11:00 GMT

I do a lot of trial and error on the zapper. In itself ,that's not bad. What IS bad, though, is that my tv set is in the living room and my PC is in my study. So if I want to troubleshoot a plugin or a container, I have to go two flights up and down from TV to PC and vice versa.
So I searched for a solution to view a mirror of the TVscreen output on my computer PC. Together with the virtual remote I could then troubleshoot without all the walking.
Well, guess what? I found one. It's called UltraMon.
On my screen, it looks like this:

The bonus of this is that I now can use the zapper on my PC without going through the screen settings of the zapper everytime I want to use it in my study (with the hazard of not putting them back when I'm done and ending up running 2 stairs up and down to reset the settings after all).
Nothing short of amazing. Just so you'd know.

PCzapper plugin for Opera 9

Eeyore — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 21:44:00 GMT

Hi all, For everybody that is experimenting with the opera oportunities: here is the slightly edited plugin for opera 9. The one that's also there and is called opera is for opera 7.
Arrows up and down are for link selection, arrows left and right are for scrolling up (left) and down (right), Selecting the links through [play] or [ok].

To install: First install Opera from here. Now download the plugin file. Open the pczapper media manager. On the right side, click plugins, click add, browse for the opera9 plugin file. Click Ok.
Now under associations, search for .htm and .html, click on them and change from web browser to opera and click Change.
Ok again and Opera is the default browser for PCzapper.

Opera - the nice PC Zapper frontend

Eeyore — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 21:04:00 GMT

Last post I used the Opera browser to create clickable pages for use with the PC Zapper. I stated it actually ment using Opera web browser as a front end for the PC zapper (just as I created the script for the GBPVR to use PCZapper as a VCR earlier).
Now let's explore this a little further.

There's quite some sites that use RSS feeds for links to news items or direct video access or whatever. No way to watch them on your tv-screen. Not yet. But with Opera, new possibilities emerge.
On rss2html.com you can easily convert an RSS link into a web-page. (Try, it's realy self-explanatory) And with Opera, you can click your way through the links in these pages. The link that's created is easily imported into (a container for) pc zapper. Now, since you associated the htm and html extentions to opera plugin (see previous post), you easily browse through your rss feeds the way you want it: from your couch, on your TV-set!
You can even take this one step further: in another post I talked about RSS, VCR and torrents. Imagine, on your zapper, you click through an RSS feed from a torrent-tracker, this autodownloads the torrent you clicked and when it's finished downloading, you access it from your couch... Isn't life a wonder?
Happy Zapping!

google video workaround

Eeyore — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 16:25:00 GMT

Well, I found a workaround, but it's not an easy one.
This appears as if we use Opera as a front-end. And actually, we do.
We need to create a web-page that looks good on tv (so BIG LETTERS), in which we cun-n-paste our video links, and then navigate that page with the remote control from the zapper.

My setup at home is that I use the zapper on my TV set, and not on the computer. So I need Opera to appear on the TV only. I use firefox for browsing on my computer, so that's not a big issue for me.
I have an NVideo videocard, which has a function to open applications on the screen you want.
The settings screen looks like this: (in dutch)

Main thing is on the right side: I add an app, I tell Nvidea that it opens on screen 2 (TV)

We need Opera plus it's plugin (you can find it here). Add the plugin to pczapper config in media manager.
Now you manually create the webpage containing the links (find a html-template here).
Add this webpage to your meda manager and open it with the zapper. Hopefully this worked and you have video's.

Now tweak opera to not have any toolbars, searchbars, statbars and stuff, make it fullscreen and maybe more to be as functional as it gets on your TV set.
Quite a workaround for a simple thing the zapper isn't recognising: URL's that send back data to a server!!
Hopefully they get a fix on that soon...

tweaking PCzapper frontpage

Eeyore — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 01:06:00 GMT

Inspecting the layout files of the pczapper in search of the white vertical line in the frontpage (I changed it to a twig as you may have noticed in the screenshot below, but needed to adjust the position) I found another way to tweak the frontpage.
The basic limitation to the PCZapper, we all been told in the forum, is that you cannot change the frontpage and especially not the right side of it, the web-based part.
Well, I got news for you: you can do it!
It comes down to editing pbOEM.xml in the pczapper/program directory.
In the file pbOEM.xml are two things; the layout and the links.

Here's a tad of pbOEM.xml source-code:
<Button>
<TabIndex>0</TabIndex>
<Link>pbd://100003</Link>
<ImageUnfocused>
<File>mijnfotos_back.png</File>
<XPosition>3</XPosition>
<YPosition>100</YPosition>
</ImageUnfocused>
<ImageFocused>
<File>mijnfotos_hover.png</File>
<XPosition>3</XPosition>
<YPosition>100</YPosition>
</ImageFocused>
<ButtonUp>8</ButtonUp>
<ButtonDown>2</ButtonDown>
<Shortcut>1</Shortcut>
</Button>

If I do a search in pbConfig.xml, I find the number 100003 (highlighted in link tag) being the folderItemID of my pictures! PbConfig being the file that contains all content, also the content I added myself, I can reroute the button command to another container, even one I created myself.
Second, being able to create my own layout, it must be possible to put more items in the frontpage than there are now. Several things to be noted, however:
-Xposition and Yposition of both the unfocused and the focused image
-a unique tab-index
-the buttonup, down, left and right assignments (these will make you jump between items)
So, you could add a third row, or just cram everything together and add tens of icons, or even, for the wizards among us, create a scrolling frontpage.
Just remember to backup your pbOEM.xml file first, in case you screw up.

the new look

Eeyore — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 23:05:00 GMT

I've been fiddling with the looks of the zapper, with this as result:

Kinda nice, if you like purple.
It's as I suggested in the last post: just overwrite the images with the new ones (perhaps backup the old ones) and voila.
For those with a desire for purple, here's the rarfile that contains the images. Extract in pczapper/program.
It includes the .psd files with the buttons, so you can change the text of the buttons.
If you use photoshop, you can use a marquee (selection), then crop each button and save it as png. Then undo the cropping and move the marquee to the next button.

Happy hacking!

Layout changes in PCZapper

Eeyore — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 21:31:00 GMT

One of the things I hope PCZapper will fix in the future is the fact that there appears to be no way of changing titles in the main menu. Well, there are other annoyances, such as "how do I reset the colourbutton-shortcuts" or that every now and then the text from the menu items in the onscreen display disappears.
But the title thing is easy to adjust, and since I've made GBPVR a part of my pczapper setup (see previous posts) I'd like to enter that from the main menu. My video's ain't good enough, it has to read my videorecorder. Next, I'd like to browse to "my computer" as a backup-measure (forgot to import a file? Just browse through the harddrive and find it still). To go short, I like them changed to something like this:

Well, not a problem.
There are 2 files in which layout is arranged, 1 for the TV view and 1 for the menu-view, so changing both is a two-file thing. (Changing both will be comfortable, because it's always nice if the menu you put an item in in the PC zapper-media-manager has the same name as the item that displays it on the screen.) These files are called pbconfig.xml and pboem.xml and they are located in the pczapper program directory.
The first, pbconfig.xml, is responsable for tv layout, the last for the menu layout in the manager. Pbconfig is quite a file, because all of the menu-items you imported are in there as well. In this directory is also the file pbUserDef.xml, which is responsable for the, you guessed right, the user adjustments made in the context menu's in the Zapper, for those who want to get into that
As easy as 1,2,3: Open both files pboem and pbconfig in text editor (notepad will do just fine, make a backup if you are not sure), replace the titles (or the icons for that matter), save and reload. Voila. Now the categories are the ones you want them to be and not something somebody else found handy.
Happy zapping!

alternative for torrentVCR

Eeyore — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 18:20:00 GMT

Just a short one:
an alternative for torrentVCR (see previous post): TVTAD