vfd_updater

This program is a single, integrated application/driver for the VFD display and knob on the front panel of the Antec Fusion (v1) case. for use with MythTV on Linux. Note that newer revisions of that case now use completely different LCD displays, incompatible with this app.

It does not use imon_vfd, LCDd, nor even mythlcdserver.
It is completely standalone, which makes it very simple to get working.

This represents a couple of evenings of hacking around to discover how the hardware works, and then writing a libusb app to control it all without need for any specific kernel drivers.

Download the Source Code, unpack it, and type make to build it. You must already have the libusb-dev package installed for this to work.

Once built, run it on your Myth box: ./vfd_updater

The time, date, and CPU temperature should appear immediately on the second line of the display.

If mythbackend is running and recording something, then scrolling text will appear showing what's happening.

The knob can be used to manually pause or reposition within the scrolling text.

If mythbackend is running, but not recording anything, then information on the next upcoming recording will be shown periodically on the display.

If mythbackend is not running, then a similar scrolling message will alert you to that condition as well.

The program will also endeavor to indicate if any other important programs are running, which might be preventing mythbackend from shutting down the machine (to save power between uses). It does this by calling out to an external command /usr/local/bin/set_wakeup_alarm.sh test which should print a single short line of text to stdout (or nothing). You can do anything you want from this script. On my system, the same script is used as the call-out for mythbackend's shutdown logic. But that's just me.

This program is written entirely in C, and does not use any of the Myth or mySQL libraries. Thus it can serve as an example of how to talk to both mythbackend and mysql from ordinary C code. This could be a useful template for writing other small apps.