2012-07-12, 21:16
I have a HTPC Case I bought as part of a group buy from AVS forum about 10 years ago and at that time I bought a Matrix Orbital 20x4 VFD Display (Serial Com). Until the other day, I had never tried to get it working. Getting it to work required aggregating a lot of little pieces of info, so I thought I would put those together here to save someone else some trouble.
The following is a short cut step-by-step tutorial to use a serial VFD or LCD display with XBMC.
Go to System..settings..network in XBMC and under the services tab make sure that
allow control of XBMC via HTTP is checked
port : 80
Username : xbmc
password : blank
You should have the display plugged into the com port and powered on.
Download LCDSmartie from LCD Smartie
I could not find any installation files or directions, so I extracted it and copied it to my program files. C:\Program Files\lcd_smartie_v5.4 (if I missed them, someone please speak up)
To make things simple I am including my config.ini file and the XBMC.dll file here.
Rename the config.ini file in the lcd_smartie_v5.4 directory (the one that came with LCD Smartie) to config-old in case you ever want it.
Copy my config.ini downloaded above into the lcd_smartie_v5.4 directory
Copy xbmc.dll from above into the C:\Program Files\lcd_smartie_v5.4\plugins directory
Now run LCDSmartie.exe from the C:\Program Files\lcd_smartie_v5.4 directory.
Make sure that autostart hidden under startup/shutdown is checked.
You will want to change the display unless you happen to have a Matrix Orbital 4x20 VFD. In the upper right of the screens tab there are options for different displays or go to their website for more info.
That should be all you need to do to get it working. I have a pretty simple setup, but you can visit Forums Here to learn more about what all you can do with LCD Smartie
The confusing part (for me at least) is that there is no actual plugin for XBMC. The plugin is for LCDSmartie. Good Luck
Ted
The following is a short cut step-by-step tutorial to use a serial VFD or LCD display with XBMC.
Go to System..settings..network in XBMC and under the services tab make sure that
allow control of XBMC via HTTP is checked
port : 80
Username : xbmc
password : blank
You should have the display plugged into the com port and powered on.
Download LCDSmartie from LCD Smartie
I could not find any installation files or directions, so I extracted it and copied it to my program files. C:\Program Files\lcd_smartie_v5.4 (if I missed them, someone please speak up)
To make things simple I am including my config.ini file and the XBMC.dll file here.
Rename the config.ini file in the lcd_smartie_v5.4 directory (the one that came with LCD Smartie) to config-old in case you ever want it.
Copy my config.ini downloaded above into the lcd_smartie_v5.4 directory
Copy xbmc.dll from above into the C:\Program Files\lcd_smartie_v5.4\plugins directory
Now run LCDSmartie.exe from the C:\Program Files\lcd_smartie_v5.4 directory.
Make sure that autostart hidden under startup/shutdown is checked.
You will want to change the display unless you happen to have a Matrix Orbital 4x20 VFD. In the upper right of the screens tab there are options for different displays or go to their website for more info.
That should be all you need to do to get it working. I have a pretty simple setup, but you can visit Forums Here to learn more about what all you can do with LCD Smartie
The confusing part (for me at least) is that there is no actual plugin for XBMC. The plugin is for LCDSmartie. Good Luck
Ted
