Re Pause/Playing sync, does this always happen, or just sometimes? Do you use that empeg with anything other than EMSC (this shouldn't matter, but knowing it may help find the problem)?

It would be cool to see a picture of your install with EMSC running full-screen.

I'l check out when the conditon occurs. I believe it only occurs when the program is loaded during computer boot up. I'll be better able to confirm this when I finish the setup (get the steering wheel remotes working) which should be early this week.

I'm not using any other programs at the moment. I plan on using IRAssistant to control windows commands (inactivates itself when EMSC loads) but it isn't loaded yet.

I'll try to get pictures up soon if I can coax my my crappy digital camera to download photos to my computer.

The problem does not occur all the time but I cannot link it to any event.

One other thing I noticed (thought I was crazy for awhile): When starting EMSC, it starts playing the same song everytime. I think this is because I shut down the car without quitting EMSC. In turn the power supply shuts down windows then the computer. Is it possible to have EMSC save the new song position during a windows shutdown sequence (If this is indeed the problem).

By the way, so far I'm very impressed

OK, I just verified that this happens. I have set mine to go into hibernation rather than shutdown so I never observed this behaviour. I'll look into it and tell you when I post an updated version. Of course when you exit EMSC and then bring it back up it should start off exactly where it left off, right?

Exactly, if I exit program first it starts up where it left off, no problems there.

The version of EMS&C now at http://strobos.cee.vt.edu/EMSC will preserve state when the system shuts down (even if you don't quit the application before). This version will also put the Empeg in standby when it exits.

Thanks Jules, I'll try it out ASAP.

rtundo:

Following your observations regarding use of EMSC in the car, and the issues with restarting at the same song and the mismatch between the play/pause indicator and what was really happening, I decided to create the same environment and test. I observed the same things, which allowed me to fix those problems. They were due to the Empeg being put on standby automatically by its power management when the car is turned off. EMSC would shutdown 20 seconds after that (assuming you have an Opus PS), and so the state of the Empeg was in mismatch with the state of EMSC. Creating havoc. I had previously suggested you hibernate instead of shutdown and restart, and that would have actually increased the problem.

The EMSC you can now download should work well in the car. It should work if you set your computer to hibernate (35 seconds) or standby (12 seconds), in addition to shutdown restart (70 seconds).

It should be happier testing for you with this new version than with the previous one I offered 2 or 3 days ago

Jules, thanks for the upgrade, I'll try to download it tonight. Other then the problems I described already I've had no other problems with the program. Me like . The only annoying thing (remote or winlirc related) is that the steering wheel buttons respond slowly or sometimes not at all. Do you know of any settings that can be tweaked that would allow the remote buttons to be more sensitive to a quick touch?

Also, do you know how to setup the computer to hibernate automatically when the ignition power is turned off? It would be nice to use hibernate instead of shutdown.

5) Maybe: supoort for mouse operation for compatibility with touch-screen displays. (I don't have a touchscreen so motivation is low.....)

Instead of touch screen support maybe button codes display of raw untranslated data coming from the serial/usb ports might be another option. For example: someone hooks up touch screen to serial port, touches certain area of screen, reads untranslated value and maps it to some translated button such as "select playlist" etc. In otherwords, something simlar to hijacks mapping functions. This way any control device using serial/USB could be set up relatively easily.
I know you have a large to-do list and only offer this as something to think about.

Might be your remote. I have somewhat slow response time from my Pioneer SR-90 (780 milliseconds for complete reliability), However that remote is notorious for being extra difficult to decode. I set it to 380 and have about 85% reliability (sometimes a long press gets interpreted as two short ones). With the Rio Remote from my Empeg I set it to 250 and get 100% reliability. 250 millisecs is pretty fast, not quite as a keyboard, but theorectically you could press and get proper response for 4 presses per second. These timings are the ones that you set up in the RemoteMappings.ini file. I would try to set up the Rio Remote in Wirlirc and then map it to EMSC and see if the response is acceptable to you. If it is, then you know that that the problem lies with the remote.

To make the computer hibernate, or standby, instead of shutdown:
1) right click on empty space on the screen
2) select properties
3) screen saver tab
4) select the "power" button
5) select the "advanced" tab
6) where it says "when i press the power button in my computer", select hibernate or standby.

I think standby is OK unless youre not going to use the car for several days. My computer is playing music within 12 seconds (including the 5 second delay that the opus PS adds) of turning the ignition.

Jules,
I've put EMSC thru its paces and it performs great. The only 2 issues I have are:

1. Occasionally still starts with pause sign but song is playing.

2. Slow button response from steering wheel controls (probably the settings in Winlirc and not EMSC).

No other problems to report

What exactly is the difference between hibernate and a normal shutdown? Just curious.

Hibernate dumps the content of RAM to the hard disk and then turns the computer off. When you start up again it will load it into memory and you will continue from where you left off. Very generalised description but that's basically it.

When you restart your computer after a normal shutdown you only load the operating system and the programs in your startup folder are started fresh.

When you restart from hibernation, all the programs you had running are still running exactly as you left them. So, for example, if you are writing a document in word and you are typing on paragraph 3 of page 28, then you hibernate; when you restart word will be open with the cursor on paragraph 3 of page 28, even if you didn't save the document.

Jules,

I attempted to run ESMC this evening without luck. It's seems to be crashing at about the 2500 track mark when building the initial database. I am running v2.0 final and hijack v389. I added the config file changes and the EmpegLink file using the CMD file that you supplied. I attempted the load 4 times with similar results. The player has 2 drives (60 & 80gb) with about 1.5 GB free. Is it possible that its crashing on a bad track? If so is there a way to tell which track or the last track read before the crash.

Thanks.

Sorry to hear this is happening. I thought I had taken care of most problems. Are you using the developer version of 2.0 final? If so, can you please connect your terminal to the empeg before running EMSC, and then provide me with the terminal output? Hopefully it will provide hints of what the problem might be.

I am still running on Hijack 380 and never tested with a subsequent version. I doubt that it has anything to do with the problem, but checking with 380 may also make a difference.

Thanks.

Here's the output...

empegLink: waiting for a connection

empegLink: connection has been accepted

Playlist FID 100 has more than 133 direct entries, only the first 133 will be us
ed



Policy and Priority were 0 and 0



Policy and Priority changed to 2 and 50

Hmm. This ouput takes place at the start of the process, before the counter of tunes starts to go up. Correct? Nothing else is produced once the countup is going?

As you saw from the output, EMSC can only deal with Playlists that have less than 133 direct entries, the 134th and on are ignored. At first hand I don't see how this can foul up things other than those entries not being accesible from EMSC (need to check the code when I get home). Certainly shouldn't make the thing crash. But one thing to try, just for testing purposes, would be to break up that top level playlist into parts, such that you dont have any playlist with more than 133 items (which is probably a good idea anyway for the sake of manageability of the music)..

This output happens first:

empegLink: waiting for a connection

empegLink: connection has been accepted

Playlist FID 100 has more than 133 direct entries, only the first 133 will be us
ed

Then the application locks up and the ouput is this:


Policy and Priority were 0 and 0

Policy and Priority changed to 2 and 50

If I understand the playlist issue properly, the output is saying that there are more than 133 playlists in the root playlist? The playlists that I have are organized by Artist/Albums. The only exception is a various artists playlist of nested albums for soundtracks and compilations. Any idea how I can find the offending playlists?

FID 100 is the root playlist. Apparently, it contains more than 133 entries ( a mix of playlists and tunes). You can check by connecting to your empeg using FTP and looking at the file /drive0/fids/101 or /drive1/fids/101. The length field in that text file tells you how many entries it has. Do you have more than 133 different artists? Given the size of your drives that is a possibility. I have more than 133 artists, but I have them subdivided by genre... you can also verify that with Emplode.

You didnt verify to me that the countup of tunes in EMSC is still at zero when you see the terminal output you posted, and then starts going to circa 2500.

Sorry, the first output block in hyperterminal happens before count up. Count up begins and the application crashes around 2500 tunes and the second output block happens after the app crashes.

Yes, I have quite a few more that 133. The 101 file shows

length=2424
title=All Music
type=playlist

Thanks for the help on this. If the answer is to re-organize, I'll do so and get back to you before I test again.

To be able to use EMSC you will need to reorganize, which will probably be a good idea. Looking for stuff among 2424 entries at the top level should be difficult. However, I am not sure that that is the reason for the crash. After "Policy and Priority changed to 2 and 50", isn't there a blank line and then a line with the left square braket "[" ?

Also, when you say the app crashes, what are the symptoms? Does the EMSC title bar change to read "controlling Empeg xxx.yyy.zzz.ttt? Can you grab the window by the title bar and move the window around? Does the name of a playlist appear in the middle of the window? As the number of tunes is counted up, do you see a flying list of your playlists in the middle of the window? It might be that EMSC is not really crashed, what happens if you press the "Down" cursor key in your keyboard?

My apologies. It didn't understand that it was finished. When I closed the application using the close button it apparently was still busy. XP asked to close it anyway and it looked like it crashed. I'll reorganize my playlists and let you know how it goes.

I'm not sure why my player is reporting 2424 entries under the playlists top level. In emplode, it only shows 605 in the next level under the "Playlists" folder.

Thanks for the help.

Well, the 2424 is the size of the playlist data, and each entry is 4 bytes long, so it really means 2424/4=606 entries and not 2424 (sorry), which matches Emplode (606 and not 605?).

Still, do you get a menu when it is finished and you press the down key? This should work, although you will only be able to see the first 133 items.

Yes, I get a menu when I get a menu when I press the down arrow key.

I've been playing with ESMC and I like it alot. Nicely done!

(606 and not 605?)

There'll be a hidden one (FID 110, Unattached Items) in there that emplode isn't displaying, most likely.

Great! Thanks for hanging on and giving it a shot. I guess at some point I'll need to remove the 133 item per playlist limitation.

rtundo,

I have implemented the interaction with WinLirc in a different manner which provides much quicker response than the prior. You should donwnload the latest EMSC and see if that makes your remote more responsive.

I guess a little explanation on what the parameter for "maximum reliable repeat rate (MRRR)" does in the current implementation, will help you tune that value to provide the best response.

IR Remotes send signals only when the buttons are pressed. There is no signal that tells you when the button has been released. The remotes, however, continue to send repeat signals (which can be recognized as such) at a certain rate. Due to the layers imposed by WinLirc, and the complexity of some remotes, these signals reach the application at somewhat irregular intervals. For example, my Pioneer SR-90 is particulary difficult to decode, and WinLirc will not decode a repeat signal every now and then, sometimes several in a row. So, while the interval between repeat signals for this control should be around 180 millisecs, the delay is sometimes 360, 540, or exceptionally even 720 millisecs.

The fact that we want to distinguish between short, long, and sustained presses complicates things when we have this irregularity. (180 is very responsive, buty 540 is sluggish).

Here is what the new implementation in EMSC does:

Receives the first signal from the remote and does nothing. We dont know if it is a short or long press yet. If a repeat signal is not received within MRRR seconds, then EMSC knows it was a short press and takes action. So MRRR determines the lag in time before EMSC can be sure that a button was pressed "short".

If the repeat signal arrives before MRRR msecs have passed, then EMSC knows that it is not a short press right there and then, and takes appropriate action immediately. So even if I you set MRRR to 740, if the repeat comes after 180 millisecs, the action associated with a long press will take place right then without having to wait for MRRR millisecs. If the button is one of those associated with a sustained action, like scrolling a menu, changing volume, or fastforwarding; then every repeat will take the appropriate action as the signals are received.

When more than MRRR millisecs have elapsed after the last repeat, then EMSC assumes that working with that button has ended. However, sometimes a delay larger than MRRR msecs will take place between repeats. EMSC just ignores the repeats that follow because it doesnt want to take a short or long action that wasnt intended. What you will see when this happens, if you are scrolling a menu list for example, is that scrolling stops after a few scrolls no matter how long you keep the button pressed.

So the value of MRRR you choose has impacts in how long you have to wait before a short press can be determined as such. You want the smallest value possible. However, when the actual repeat generated by the remote and decoded by WinLirc is longer than MRRR, then the sustained action you want to carry will stop. In this case, you want MRRR to be larger than the maximum possible repeat rate.

You should set an MRRR that gives you reasonable response time when you want to execute short press actions, but that at the same time doesn't stop sustained actions too frequently (e.g., press down to scroll a menu, actually go down 3 or 4 items, and then no more scrolling until you release the button and hold it down again can be very annoying.)

If the remote is easy to decode and consistent, like the Rio Car remote, then the repeats are pretty regular and shortly spaced. This allows you to use a rather low value of MRRR, obtaining quick response and no interruptions in sustained presses. Check with your Rio Car remote to see this, then compare with the thing you really want to use.

Im pretty sure the new EMSC with the behavior described above and a properly tuned value of MRRR will get you a better experience than what you have been experiencing.

Let me know how it goes.

-Jules