Re: Homeseer and Winamp

["Paul Gordon" <paul_gordon@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Pedro,

Homeseerhelper was my work I'm afraid!

I *DID* have it working perfectly here, but then I rebuilt a couple of my
PC's and actually stopped using it.

I know other people have had problems with it, which seem to be related to
the COM database registrations and the GUID's for them... - basically, the
VB program needs to be compiled for the specific version of HS that is
installed, and if you upgrade the homeseer .EXE to a newer version,
homeseerhelper breaks, as it can no longer connect to the HS object via
COM... I never did find a way round this... - I used to recompile the
project every time I did an upgrade to the homeseer exe file...

I have subsequently decided that I'm going to keep seperate PC's for HA
&
jukebox anyway, so I won't be using Homeseer & Winamp on the same
machine
anymore. (The integration between the HA system and the whole-house audio
system was pretty much the only reason I decided to run both functions on
the one PC...)

I wanted to be able to do things like:

* Have Homeseer know IF the jukebox was playing some music
* Have homeseer know WHAT was playing on the jukebox
* Have Homeseer be able to control the jukebox status

All of which I was able to do with homeseer and winamp running on the same
PC, with my homeseerhelper applet providing the communication between
them...

Now that they're going to be on seperate PC's it will be a bit harder, - I
could attempt to use DCOM instead of COM for the Homeseerhelper, or I think
that ACE might be able to facilitate the same functionlity, which I am
going
to investigate...

I'm also thinking seriously about trying to write a general plugin for
winamp to provide a hook specifically for homeseer to communicate with.
I've
had a look at some of the winamp API's, - however learning C++ or Delphi is
really not on the cards at the moment, - too many other things to do
first!.
I've experimented with a wrapper that enables VB to be used, and I have had
limited success with that... (Got as far as making a plugin that loads into
winamp without any problems, but doesn't actually *do* anything other than
popup a message whenever winamp is stopped/started). When I get more time,
I
do plan to work on this a bit more...

Paul G.




>From: Pedro de Oliveira <p.oliveira@xxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
>To: "HA (ukha_d@xxxxxxx)" <ukha_d@xxxxxxx>
>Subject: [ukha_d] Homeseer and Winamp
>Date: Sat, 26 Jan 2002 20:38:55 -0000
>
>Hi all
>Some time ago - I got sent some scripts and Vb program that should work
>with
>Winamp (sorry but I can't remember who sent it).  I have been trying to
get
>this thing working after having upgraded to build 24 of Homeseer and
Winamp
>2.78c.
>
>The problem I was getting before I upgraded was that the file
Project1.exe
>couldn't run.  It runs fine now but when I run homeseerhelper.exe it
tells
>me that Homeseer is already running and after a while I get and error
"429"
>"ActiveX component can't create object"
>
>I don't even know if the script/program came from this list or not but
>since
>some of you run Homeseer I thought some of you might have been able to
do
>what I want in Homeseer: get the currently playing tune into Homeseer
and
>maybe even have Homeseer determine if Winamp is playing or not.
>
>So: I think the question is:
>If Homeseerhelper = listmembers'
>Then listmember = helpPedro ' Please ;)
>Else listmembers = comeupwithsuggestions 'also please ;)
>
>Cheers
>Pedro
>
>




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