How about adding previous/next track control inside emplode as well as the play pause buttons?
Even better would be to also show current playing track info.

I can't see the display of my empeg from my computers ;-(

Any thoughts

Phil

You can work around this yourself if you've got a serial connection to the Empeg. Sending it certain ASCII characters over the serial port will control it just like the remote does.

(I agree that it would be cool to have more transport controls on the Emplode panel, but in the meantime...)

I was thinking of writing a quick little "Empeg transport control" program. Because of the simplicity of the commands, the program would be ridiculously easy to write.

In fact, you can do it at a DOS prompt. "N" and "P" sent to the COM port do next and previous, like so:

echo N>com2:

Well, OK, I just tried it on my home system and it gave me an error message. But it works on my NT4 system at work, anyway. Or you could connect to it with a terminal program if you wanted and type the commands directly into the terminal window.

Here are the commands you can send via the serial connection. Enjoy!




-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

>In fact, you can do it at a DOS prompt. "N" and "P" sent to the COM port do next and previous, like so:
>
>echo N>com2:
>
>Well, OK, I just tried it on my home system and it gave me an error message. But it works on my NT4 system at work, >anyway. Or you could connect to it with a >terminal program if you wanted and type the commands directly into the terminal window.

Thanks for that Tony, but I couldn't get it to work.

I'll try again in a few days when I'm back with my empeg.

Maybe I should point out that I only bought this Win98 box to control my empeg so I could be doing something really stupid. I only ever see Macs in the industry I work in. I'm learning but not that quick!

Phil

Maybe I should point out that I only bought this Win98 box to control my empeg so I could be doing something really stupid. I only ever see Macs in the industry I work in. I'm learning but not that quick!

Aha. I assumed I was speaking to someone who knew DOS/Windows.

Okay, try this.

1) Plug the Empeg in via the serial cable. Make sure you know whether it's plugged into COM1 or COM2.

1a) Optional: It might be a good idea to make sure the serial connection is working first by using Emplode to do a small synch via the serial cable: Go into the Emplode options menu and select COM1 or COM2 (whichever the Empeg is plugged into), then exit and restart Emplode. If it downloads the playlists at that point, then the serial cable is working.

2) Exit the Emplode software.

3) Run the Hyperterminal program (HYPERTRM.EXE) that came with Windows. It should be under start/programs/accessories/communications or something like that. If it's not there, it might not have been installed when Windows was set up. Go to start/settings/control panel/add-remove programs/windows setup/communications/details, and get Hyperterminal installed. You'll need the original Windows 98 CD when it prompts you for it.

4) Once you run HYPERTRM.EXE, it'll prompt you for a name for this new connection. Call it "Empeg" or something.

5) The next box asks you for the dialing information. The bottom box says "Connect using:". Switch it to "Direct to COM1" or "Direct to COM2", as appropriate.

6) The next box will ask you for your port settings. Select 115200 bits per second, 8 data bits, Parity: None, Stop bits 1, Flow control: None, then press OK.

7) You should be able to type those commands into the terminal window now. For example N(return) and P(return) should get you Next and Previous.

8) If you use the Developer version of the Empeg firmware, I'm pretty sure it responds back with extra information through the serial connection (although I haven't tried that yet).



-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.

Mike will kill me for saying this, but I'd love to have the empeg display mirrored into a window on the PC, with "soft" buttons to click. It can be done (almost) already - the protocol allows grabbing of screen images at any time (added so we could grab the images for the manual easily!), and over USB this could be done at the frame rate of the empeg...

No promises though, we're pretty busy at the moment!

Hugo

Whilst we are on the subject, would it be possible to run a remote screen in the car from the serial port (at 230K)

Actually just the track info on a 2 line display would be good, (switching to the menu line when a menu is showing)

My empeg is mounted quite close to the floor, and locating a track can be a dangerous task.. =)

Jazz
(List 112, S/N 00030, 4 gig blue)

If the protocol allows for a remote copy of the screen running somewhere, complete with buttons... it doesn't require a big leap of the imagination to create a remote-faceplate screen, mount the empeg in the trunk and use the remote faceplate instead. It's probably much more secure and if somebody runs off with the faceplate, your music is safe.