BIGNUM Plugin Issues

[epsol]

I decided to upgrade the mobo/cpu in my media center, I had smartie setup before with the BIGNUM plugin to display the time on my 2x20 LCD screen. However, I am having issues getting it to work on the new motherboard. All other smartie screens display just fine, but the bignum plugin is just distorted (please see the pic to see what I mean). Only thing I can think of is its some incompatibility between the plugin and the H6x usb chipset, as I can install a PCI VIA USB controller and it works just fine. It is one of the LIS LCDs that use a virtual com port. Any suggestions on how I can get it to work properly?

[mattcro]

Have you got any other screens that use lots of custom characters, like Winamp spectrum analyser? Any problem with those screens?

It could be that the LIS controller cannot cope with lots of commands if you have the baud rate set too high... just a guess. Try lowering the baud rate in Smartie if you currently have it set high.

It sounds more like an incompatibility between the LIS USB interface and the motherboard chipset though, since you say the LCD works fine (presumably using the same settings) with a PCI USB card.

[epsol]

I don't currently use the winamp plugin, but i tried it and it works just fine, I have also tried the BIGTEXT plugin and it works fine with the exception that I only see the top 2 lines instead of the 4. The baud is currently set to 9600 for the LCD. I have also tried 19200 and 38400 but both do the same exact thing when on the onboard USB ports. I also tried it on a motherboard using the intel h61 chipset and it gave the same results. (Tried both the h61 and h67 chipsets). It appears to work fine still with the via controller at either 9600 or 38400 baud, but the via pci controller kills my machine's ability to sleep. Everything was working great on my old gigabyte board that used the p35 chipset. I don't know much about how the plugins are coded, but thats why Im thinking its a compatibility issue with the plugin itself.

[mattcro]

Very strange. The plugins and even Smartie (except for display drivers) do not deal directly with the hardware so it seems unlikely that a particular plugin causes problems with certain hardware.

The plugins are supposed to be open source like the Smartie core, but usually 3rd party developers only provide the compiled DLL and very little extra info, so support becomes difficult...

[epsol]

Yeah, well I ended up installing the m.play software that came with it, and it screws up displaying any characters other then a-z and 0-9 on the onboard USB, but works perfectly on the PCI USB controller. Also the mplay software won't work at all unless the port is set to 38400. So I'm taking it as this LCD is just incompatible with the chipset on this new motherboard. I'm hoping I can find a new one that will work as a direct replacement in my nMediaPC 6000B Case, that doesn't rely on the FTDI USB to Serial Controller.... If you have any ideas on what might work, it would be appreciated..

[epsol]

I tried one more thing, the board i have also as an ASmedia USB 3 controller on it. So I patched together a cable to use one of the ports in the back and its doing the same artifact thing as the Intel Series 3 USB ports. However, now it appears it wont display anything other then the standard keyboard keys on it, the screen that has the blocks on it showing how many emails there are dont display correctly now (plus it will only display if the baud is set to 38400). I tried it on another PC to make sure I didnt mess the USB cable up and it works flawlessly (using the same smarty install, just copied it via USB drive from 1 pc to another) I started looking around at new LCD displays and found an Orbital Matrix one that will fit the mount holes in my case; however, I'm wondering if I will have the same issues since it uses the FTDI USB->Serial Controller...(not sure if I mentioned this before but the screen in question is one of the nMedia Pro-LCD aka VfSystems L.I.S using the LISVFD display plugin and all the machines tested on run Win7 Home Premium x64). I also tried the display on my Acer Laptop with an intel series 5/3400 USB and it did the same artifacts, so its an obvious Intel -> something with the LCD incompatibility, whether its the FTDI controller or actual screen itself..

[mattcro]

It sounds like you've had no end of issues with these new motherboards - searching for FTDI USB3 issues gave me this... http://forums.tweaktown.com/asrock/4436 ... ssues.html

Is it possible to set the USB3 ports to only use USB2 mode in the BIOS? Something like that might be worth a try. I guess you've tried updating to latest USB/chipset drivers? There may even be a BIOS update.

[epsol]

I checked in the bios and only real USB options are enable legacy support (one option for USB2 and one for USB3) but that didnt seem to make a difference. I have already tried updating drivers and bios. As for the link, yeah, that was with an ASRock motherboard, actually 2 of them, first wouldn't work with pretty much any USB devices, second one was super flakey, so I finally exchanged it for an Asus P8H67 Pro, which everything works great except for the nMedia LCD, and nMedia wasn't very helpful at all about it.

[barnabas1969]

Hello. Thanks for your effort on the software. I'm trying to use the BigNum plugin to display the clock. It works fine. However, I would like to display a blank space between each digit of the time. From a distance, even the bold, 2-line display of the clock is difficult to read because the digits are so close together.

Is there any way to display the time (e.g. "12:52 PM") with spaces between the digits?

I prefer to use a 12-hour clock. The AM/PM indicator is not necessary, but OK if it does display. My main desire is to have a blank space between each digit.

Thank you in advance.

Brian Reynolds - Melbourne, Florida, USA

EDIT: I found the sandr (search and replace) plugin on Limbo's website. I set it up to replace each numeric digit with the same digit, followed by a space. It works great now! So, my next challenge is to get it displaying Media Center info. I think I'll try the mce_dll.dll... unless someone here can recommend a better one?

For the curious, here are my lines from the screen tab in LCD Smartie:

Code: Select all

$dll(bignum,2,1#2,$dll(sandr,1,$Time(h: nnam/pm),))
$dll(bignum,2,2#2,$dll(sandr,1,$Time(h: nnam/pm),))

I had to put the omit.ini file in the root of the C: drive, because the last parameter of the sandr dll did not allow me to specify the path for some reason.

Here's the contents of my omit.ini file:

Code: Select all

[Search1]
1="0"
2="1"
3="2"
4="3"
5="4"
6="5"
7="6"
8="7"
9="8"
10="9"

[Replace1]
1="0 " 
2="1 "
3="2 "
4="3 " 
5="4 "
6="5 "
7="6 "
8="7 "
9="8 "
10="9 "

[Search2]
1=

[Replace2]
1= 

[barnabas1969]

This is interesting... I got my big clock (I love that phrase!) to work fine on my MSI 880GM-E41 (AMD based) motherboard. I am also using an nMedia Pro-LCD (VL System) LIS MCE display... just like the OP in this thread. It has an FTDI chip.

However, when I copied the exact same LCD Smartie setup from my MSI/AMD-based PC to my ASUS P7P55D-E LX (Intel based) motherboard, I am having the same issues as the OP in this thread.

Alpha-numeric characters display just fine. Custom characters either don't display at all... or they are distorted. My first thought is that the FTDI driver is having a conflict with my other USB->Serial device (Prolific USB-to-serial COMM port). However, I've tried to disable that device and it made no difference.

I have a spare PCI-USB card. I'll give that a shot... after making sure that the driver on my MSI and ASUS boards are the same version.

I'll let you know.

[barnabas1969]

I connected my PCI-USB card. It works with my display correctly. It displays custom characters as it should. It is based on an ALi (ULi) M5273 chip.

My PC goes to sleep when I press the OFF button on my remote control, but I don't know if it will still sleep automatically. I'll find out more about that as time goes by.

However, there is definitely a problem with custom characters being displayed after the computer wakes from standby when it is connected to the PCI card. I can live with this... I can kill the smartie program before standby, and then start it after resume.

However, this is definitely a problem with the LISVFD driver, the M.Play software supplied with the display, and/or a problem with certain USB controller drivers.

[fuze]

I'm using the NMEDIAPC ProLCD on an Intel Z68 based motherboard and BigNum is completely jacked up. Wish I could find a way to fix it. :\

Running W7 64bit too.

[limbo]

I'm using the NMEDIAPC ProLCD on an Intel Z68 based motherboard and BigNum is completely jacked up. Wish I could find a way to fix it. :\

Running W7 64bit too.

Can you display any custom character? (http://forums.lcdsmartie.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=243)

[barnabas1969]

I really think this has something to do with the nMedia display and certain USB controllers. I had the same problem when my nMedia display was plugged into my ASUS motherboard, but it worked fine on an MSI motherboard. It also works when I install a PCI card USB controller on the ASUS motherboard and plug the display into the USB ports on that PCI card.

[JonO]

I hate to resurrect an ancient thread, but has anyone been able to find a solution to this yet?

I am currently using a IB ASUS Z77 motherboard that is creating the exact same problems with LCD Smartie plugins (namely custom characters) on an nMediaPC LCD-Pro 2x20 display; All drivers are current as of today. Unfortunately this particular motherboard won't allow me enough space to add a PCI USB controller of any sort, so I am forced to use the USB headers on the motherboard.

If anybody has a little insight, I would greatly appreciate the help!

[EvylRat]

I have had this recently. I've only just recently plugged my LCD back in, for some eye candy. I noticed my BIGNUM text is showing garbage. Or more specifically, it's showing custom characters left over from the boot up screen of my CrystalFontz 631. I have 3 screen; emule, BIG NUM time, and a CPU meter when the PC is busy. I made two changes last night; reduced baud rate from 115200 to 57600, and I added some custom chars to my emule screen, and this morning I noticed that big num is working. So could be be that redefining some custom chars has cleared something, or has slowing it down worked? Dunno!