I like the idea of the Screen Blanker (I'm assuming it's a good idea to save the life of the VFD). Anyway if I'm on the Info: Track screen and the album name is scrolling back and forth while on pause, HiJack doesn't blank out the screen.

I've played with the Sensitivity of the screen blanker and it works but it also blanks the screen when playing music! Is there anyway to change the sensitivity option? Or maybe blank out the screen in the time allotted when the unit is paused?

Still wishing for the home dock detection

I am open to proposals regarding the screen blanker.

For example, right now I am considering nuking the "sensitivity" thing completely, and just having the blanker ONLY ever trigger in MP3 mode when the player is "paused" (defined as "not playing music"). In Radio/Aux mode it would just always be 100% sensitivity.

So.. questions:

(1) Do you object to ignoring the "sensitivity" value when in MP3 mode?

(2) Do you think we should keep the "sensitivity" value for the Tuner/Aux modes?

I don't want to hear what you think others might want; but rather what you want on your player.

Thanks!

I have never used the screen blancker feature. Also, I like it theoretically :), meaning that if I ever decide to use it I do want to be able to set the sensitivity value. BUT, I would definitely ADD an option to have the screen saver start only when in pause, because that can be useful too, and actually I may consider using it with that.
Lets' put it this way:
If I used to leave my empeg with a static screen on for a long time, I would want a screen saver, and I would like to have the sensitivity adjustment function there. But I never leave the empeg with a static screen on, so I don't use. It is also true that when I pause the empeg I don't care about the info displayed, so in that case the screen saver could be useful. I don't leave the player in pause for long periods of time, but I would enable the feature, "in case i do sometimes".

>I have never used the screen blancker feature.

Okay, I'll look forward to reading your comments once you have actually gained some relevant experience with it.

Cheers

Well I don't have a tuner installed. But I would think the screen should be blanked when the unit is either muted or paused. No matter what input?

I don't think the sensitivity option is needed :)

I'll let you know whether using the screenblanker changes anything in what I have just said. In the last 15 mins it didn't. . Anyway, I'm using it now, it doesn't cost me any euro

1. I would like the screen to go blank in track info mode even when music is playing, so getting rid of the sensitivity would not be a good idea.

2. Keep the sensitivity value for tuner and aux modes. The signal strength bar moving up and down seems to be enough to keep the screen from blanking, which is fine with me. I never leave the tuner on long enough to burn the screen in anyway.

Whatever happened to the concept that you can selectively fade out static pixels? How about that? Then pixels that are changing (e.g. visuals) are not affected, but static items that *will* burn in will slowly reduce in brightness over a period of time, until gone.

Calvin

>Whatever happened to the concept that
>you can selectively fade out static pixels?

Very nice concept, I like it a lot. But I am unwilling to consume the CPU and memory I believe it would require.

Cheers

Is a screen snapshot 4k? Let's say you took a snapshot of the screen, and then waited 1 minute. Then you compared your previous snapshot with what is currently displayed. Commit necessary "masking" (maybe even use the snapshot as a pixel fader alpha mask). Then you make another snapshot, wait 1 minute, repeat. Maybe you'll need another 4k as a separate alpha mask template, and 4k as a "previous record" of what the screen looked like.

You'll save memory and since you do a comparison every minute (or whatever threshold) you're not consuming CPU doing this. Also the more prior snapshots kept and frequency of snapshots alter the accuracy, obviously, but you can scale the accuracy of this against memory and cpu.

Calvin

Okay, I have played with the blanker some more, and here is the new blanker behaviour:

(1) If player is not playing (paused, or end of playlist), or if Tuner/Aux are muted, then the timeout countdown begins immediately, regardless of screen activity ("sensitivity == 0%").

(2) So long as the player is playing, or Tuner/Aux are not muted, then the usual timeout and sensitivity settings apply as before.

This will go out in v97 shortly, along with improvements to the /proc/empeg_notify feature (now collects/shows more info than before).

Cheers

Oh yeah, forgot to note: the "paused/muted" consideration can only work when you have [output]notify=1 in the config.ini file; otherwise the blanker logic ignores it, since reliable information is not available (I suppose we could read it from the mixer settings..).

Cheers

-ml

>I suppose we could read it from the mixer settings

Well, I suppose NOT. I just tried it, and the mixer setting does not always align with the observed (notify=1) value.

-ml

Umm there's always empeg_state which contains the pause/mute status...

>there's always empeg_state which contains the pause/mute status.

I don't think it does. Sure, the "pause/play" status is there, but I cannot find the "Mute" for Tuner/Aux.

Can you?

Thanks

-ml

By "mute" you mean Hush, right?

No, mute is mute. Hush is (IIRC) the same as attenuate. One is silent, the other is just quieter.

Doh! What the heck is the remote code for Mute?

Oh crap I know what you mean now. When you hit "play/pause" on radio or aux and you get that goofy little icon in the corner instead of the play icon...

Thinking... thinking...

Okay Mute is officially not stored in the flash save area. In fact it doesn't even preserve its setting when you switch between the sources. So it's probably just a variable in the player's memory space somewhere.

Bummer.

Wow quite a few replies since i last read this thread a couple of hours ago!

I can see others wanted features added the Screen Blanker :)

HiJack rocks! Thanks Mark... Installing v97 now!

Ok I just updated to v97. If I reboot the empeg by unplugging it, after a sync, via hijack. Then the screen goes blank after 15 seconds (just testing… hehe) the Screen Blanker Sensitivity is at 100%. A song is playing on the Info: Track screen.

After the first blank out or 2nd blank out after power up, then the timeout works when paused or with nothing happening.

Good one.

Looks like a bug in the player's "notify=1" mechanism.
It outputs "S0" indicating "muted" on boot, even though it isn't.

I'll fix Hijack to work around that bug.

-ml

Okay, since "notify=1" cannot be relied upon to determine mute status, I'm taking it out of Hijack again. So the Tuner/Aux functions will rely entirely on the blanker timeout/sensitivity values for blanking.

The mp3 player will still work with "paused" starting an immediate blanker countdown, and "playing" will use timer/sensitivity as before.

Okay? v98

Yep just loaded it, works like a charm!

Thinking of new HiJack ideas

Hi there.

I'm not using the screen blanker at the moment, but I personally would like it even when playing MP3s, IF it completely turned the display off (this might mean the LED turns on) rather than just blanking. This would probably mean that the unit would run a lot cooler as well, as it would only be heating the VFD when there was something interesting to display.

Richard.

I'm not sure that the on/off cycling wouldn't be bad for the display hardware.. lots of thermal cycles with on/off one or thrice every .mp3 track.. gotta be bad for something, I think.

But I would like the blanker to place the display (or heck, the whole machine) into standby mode after a secondary timeout, say 30mins (override in config.ini) after the blanker first fires.

Comments?

-ml

But I would like the blanker to place the display (or heck, the whole machine) into standby mode after a secondary timeout, say 30mins (override in config.ini) after the blanker first fires.

I like it. It'd be like my display at home... After 10 minutes it goes blank, after 30 it powers down. Very cool

Done. v107.

http://empeg-hijack.sourceforge.net/

Wow, i was under the impression othat the VFD is somehow linked with the amp-on/off line.

Calvin

It is linked.

Mmm.. I suppose this could be a problem for automotive users who want to listen on the other head unit.. but maybe not, since the auto-standby feature in Hijack works only when the mp3 player is the active mixer input.

??