Backlight Problem

[valenti]

I have the following problem. Each 1,34 min the backlight toggles of. I don't know what is wrong. No action is set, no plugin is to blame, i don't know what to do. Any ideea?

[valenti]

HD44780.dll
LPT1

Ican control the backlight, but i still have to switch it on every 1,34 min.

[limbo]

Check the actions of your configuration

[mattcro]

Do you use the LPT circuit with a transistor to control the backlight? Do you get any corruption of the text on the LCD when the backlight switches off? If you leave the backlight off, does it switch on again by itself? Try leaving it for a while to see if it changes.

Some people have had problems with parallel (LPT) connected LCDs where the text gets corrupted after some time. There was no apparent hardware problem (wiring ok).

I wonder if it is Windows probing the ports to find a printer or something. I have a PIC microcontroller programmer on the parallel port, and the software for it sometimes reports that Windows is trying to control the port pins, which can corrupt the programming operations. It could be the same in Smartie.

[limbo]

Check the actions of your configuration

oops I'm taking back my post you said no actions set? strange.... real strange

[valenti]

Reinstalled port95nt.exe. I've tried to use another copy of lcdsmartie-> did not work because in config.ini -> [General Settings] -> Size is set to 12 then resulted in strange problem -> Backlight blinking all the time (What is the connection between lcdsmartie preview screeen and the actual display?)
I used the first version (and the new one with size=11) and all seems to be ok. Probably windows did something with LPT port all this time.

Thanks.
(Still working on girder support- i can switch from the remote the backlight on and of <no, it wasn't this the problem >, next screeen, next theme- when changing the volume from the remote -> action set to see a screeen with bignum of system&winamp volume - still not able to change back from this screeen to the one i switched from, i am not able to go to a certain screeen or theme directly without hotkey plugin - not nice because the monitor switches on if i use this method)

[mattcro]

Is the backlight working properly now? Strange.

The blinking with screen size=12 is because 4x40 LCDs (size 12 in config.ini) use 2 controller chips, each doing half the display, and your backlight is wired to the pin that is used for the 2nd controller's Enable pin. Smartie has to switch between the 2 controller chips for each half of the LCD, which is causing the backlight to blink. There's no proper backlight control if you use a big LCD, since all the LPT pins are used for LCD control.

You might be able to do the volume screen by having an action to switch to a screen which is NOT sticky and has a "time to show" of perhaps 2 seconds. Have it in the same theme as the media screen. If you have only 2 screens in the theme, Smartie should switch back to the previous (media) screen.

[valenti]

Ok. So that's the connection. I use the non sticky method for volume display on a theme with spectrum for winamp (set sticky). And if i use this method on every theme then again it's not elegant and there is the 20 screen limit.