Problems with actions

[Petzku]

Hello

I'm having problems with trying to setup actions to swtich screens. I have two screens associated to this one application (DVBViewer) one for showing media/tv information and the second for showing menu/OSD information.

Currently I have an action that uses the process lister plugin to check if DVBViewer.exe is running. If it is LCDSM will change to the first Dvbviewer related screen. LCDSM will change to the second OSD screen if a certain variable gets a value different from null. All is ok so far, but the problem is that LCDSM will not change back to the normal media information screen even if i get out of the menu and the variable which triggered the action to go to that screen returns to null. Why doesn't LCDSM change back to the normal screen since the condition to go to that screen is still valid (dvbviewer.exe is running)?

Any ideas? Is there something that I have not understood about how the actions work?

[mattcro]

The actions seem to be triggered only on a change of condition. When DVBViewer is started the first action gets triggered, but doesn't get triggered any more until DVBViewer starts up again.

You need to add an action that checks if the variable you mention returns to null, and switches to the media info screen. So, an action to switch to the DVBViewer screen (or even theme) if DVBViewer starts up, an action to change to the menu screen, and an action to change to the media info screen. Maybe also an action to check if DVBViewer is closed and make Smartie change back to something like a system info screen.

Unfortunately, we don't yet have more than 1 condition per action. If we did, you could have actions like IF DVBViewer is running AND variable=1 then show menu screen.

[Petzku]

Thanks for your reply mattcro,

The problem with checking null values is that the dvbviewer plugin returns null values also when dvbviewer is not running. So I can't have them as conditions for actions if I want to be able to use LCDSM for other purposes too than just to show dvbviewer information.

How do the themes work? Would it be possible to somehow have the osd screen switch to the 2nd screen in theme2 after timeout instead of screen1 of theme 1 like it does per default. I have assigned both of the dvbviewer related screens to theme 2.

[mattcro]

The problem with checking null values is that the dvbviewer plugin returns null values also when dvbviewer is not running. So I can't have them as conditions for actions if I want to be able to use LCDSM for other purposes too than just to show dvbviewer information.

That's why it would be great to have two (or more) conditions per action - you can have the action trigger only if something AND another thing are true.

The themes allow you to set up groups of related screens. You should be able to have a DVBViewer theme (say theme 2) and a general system info theme (theme 1). Have an action that changes to theme 2 when DVBViewer starts, and another action to change back to theme 1 when it exits.

This is where it gets awkward: I don't think there's any reliable way to get the menu and media screens switching ONLY while in the DVBViewer theme.

In theme 2 you could have "now playing" and "menu" screens. Have the "now playing" screen sticky and the menu screen non-sticky with a timeout of a few seconds. Then add an action to change to "next screen" if the menu is triggered. It should change back to the media info after the timeout, but that means you might lose the menu/osd before you've finished reading it...

You can also try having an action to switch back to the media info screen when the menu is exited (dll returns 0) but you might find this gets triggered even when DVBViewer isn't running (which I think is what you've already discovered...)