[bilakos]

Hi Folks,

I have just developed a screensaver for Windows Desktops, which might be interesting to have also as screensaver in XBMC. The screensaver is a Dashboard displaying News with Pictures from an RSS feed, Quotes from stocks, Time, Date, weather forecasts, etc.

I am looking to port this to a XBMC screensaver and am searching for a simple sample of a Screensaver "Ideally displaying only Helloworld". Anyone who can provide such a sample so I can give it a go ?

Would be also interested in any other resources available. So far did not find a lot on this Topic where to start,....

[bilakos]

Wow... How can it be that nobody has a simple sample....

[sphere]

I created a simple sample screensaver: https://github.com/dersphere/script.screensaver.test

There are also two "real" screensavers in my github account, just have a look.

[bilakos]

Thanks, sphere. This helped a lot. I modified your example and built a kind of Dashboard (showing weather conditions, RSS News and some stock quotes... Good stuff I think... will post soon a release of it...

I am struggling now with threads started from within the init method of my class. There is an issue when I want to exit the xbmc screensaver (pressing any button), screen just freezes and dims and you cannot do anything..

Similar to this issue described here: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=146241

How can I Close everything down if use the sleep timer... ?

Here is the method causing the problem:

Code:

def PostRssNews(self,NewsXML):
    
    try:
        for x in range(0,11):
            itemid = 9 + x
            # Extract Image URL
            regex = re.compile("img src=\"(.*?)\"")
            r = regex.search(NewsXML[0][itemid][6].text)
            img = r.group(1)
            self.getControl(100).setImage(img)
            self.getControl(101).setLabel(NewsXML[0][itemid][0].text)
            self.getControl(102).setText(NewsXML[0][itemid][1].text)
            if self.abort_requested:
                self.exit()
                return
            time.sleep(60)    
        t = threading.Timer(0, self.getRssNews)
        t.start() # after 300 seconds = 5 min, update Newsreturn NewsId    
    except Exception:
        self.exit
        return

[sphere]

You should use "xbmc.sleep()" instead "time.sleep()" (Keep in mind that xbmc.sleep() takes msecs, not secs).
It is even better to loop 60 times over a sleep time of 1 sec and checking abort_requested each time.

Also you should cancel your timer thread with "t.cancel()" before exiting!

[bilakos]

Hi Sphere,

thanks for your swift reply. Works a bit better now. I can cancel it via the cancel button and Screen disappears. However, my onScreensaverDeactivated not firing up when I press the button. It fires only with the second time... I removed the timer method and called now drictly my method... Here is my full code:

Code:

import sys
import xbmcaddon
import xbmcgui
import xbmc
import time
import httplib
import re
import time, threading


Addon = xbmcaddon.Addon('script.screensaver.test')

__scriptname__ = Addon.getAddonInfo('name')
__path__ = Addon.getAddonInfo('path')



class Screensaver(xbmcgui.WindowXMLDialog):

    NewsXML = ''
    class ExitMonitor(xbmc.Monitor):

        def __init__(self, exit_callback):
            self.exit_callback = exit_callback

        def onScreensaverDeactivated(self):
            print '3 ExitMonitor: sending exit_callback'
            self.exit_callback()
        
    def onInit(self):
        self.abort_requested = False
        print '2 Screensaver: onInit'
    # try:
    self.getStocks()
    Status = self.getRssNews()
    print Status
    # except Exception:
    #    pass    
    self.monitor = self.ExitMonitor(self.exit)

    def exit(self):
        print '4 Screensaver: Exit requested'
        self.abort_requested = True
        self.close()

    def getStocks(self):
    print 'Get Yahoo! Quotes'
    conn = httplib.HTTPConnection("query.yahooapis.com")
    conn.request("GET", "/v1/public/yql?q=select%20*%20from%20yahoo.finance.quotes%20where%20symbol%20in%20(%22AB100A.DE%22)&env=store://datatables.org/alltableswithkeys")
    r1 = conn.getresponse()    
    data1 = r1.read()
    conn.close()
    import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
    root = ET.fromstring(str(data1))
    LastTradePriceOnly = root[0][0][40].text # LastTradePriceOnly
    ChangeinPercent = root[0][0][56].text # ChangeinPercent
    ChangeinPercentColor = '0xFF00FF00'
    if '-' in ChangeinPercent:
        ChangeinPercentColor = '0xFFFF0000'
    self.CtrlLastTradePriceOnly=xbmcgui.ControlLabel(80, 380, 100, 100, LastTradePriceOnly,'font28_title')
    self.addControl(self.CtrlLastTradePriceOnly)
    self.CtrlChangeinPercent=xbmcgui.ControlLabel(85, 420, 100, 100, ChangeinPercent,'font14',ChangeinPercentColor)
    self.addControl(self.CtrlChangeinPercent)
    
    def getRssNews(self):
    print 'Get RSS News'
    conn = httplib.HTTPConnection("www.n-tv.de")
    conn.request("GET", "/rss")
    r1 = conn.getresponse()    
    data1 = r1.read()
    import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
    NewsXML = ET.fromstring(str(data1))
    self.PostRssNews(NewsXML)
    return 'Screensaver news successfully loaded'

    def PostRssNews(self,NewsXML):
    for x in range(0,11):
        itemid = 9 + x
        # Extract Image URL
        regex = re.compile("img src=\"(.*?)\"")
        r = regex.search(NewsXML[0][itemid][6].text)
        img = r.group(1)
        self.getControl(100).setImage(img)
        self.getControl(101).setLabel(NewsXML[0][itemid][0].text)
        self.getControl(102).setText(NewsXML[0][itemid][1].text)
        if self.abort_requested:
            self.exit()
            return
        xbmc.sleep(2000)    
    self.getRssNews()
    # global t.start() # after 300 seconds = 5 min, update Newsreturn NewsId    
    # for x in range(0, 6):    

if __name__ == '__main__':
    print '1 Python Screensaver Started'
    screensaver_gui = Screensaver(
            'script-%s-main.xml' % __scriptname__,
            __path__,
            'default',
        )
    screensaver_gui.doModal()
    # screensaver_gui.getRssNews(screensaver_gui)
    print '******5 Python Screensaver Exited*****'
    del screensaver_gui
    sys.modules.clear()

[bilakos]

Hi Sphere,

any other suggestion you might think of .... ?

[bilakos]

Still struggling with this one. Googled now for hours and do not get to a proper solution. Even with the xbmc.timer function. My issue currently is that if I press a key to deactivate the screensaver my Event "onScreensaverDeactivated" is not firing up... Everything works fine if i do not use in this combination the xbmc.timer method.

Any way to get around this ?