Miranda IM LCD Plugin

About

The Miranda IM LCD Plugin is a plugin for the open source instant messenger Miranda IM that displays incoming messages on an LCD like the Crystalfontz 634 series.

News

2005-02-08: Moved the website to its new home. Yes, this means there is something going on. :-) The semester is coming to an end and I'm planning on taking up development again in the next weeks! In the meantime, wish me luck for my exams. ;-)

2004-05-25: Released version 0.0.0.2. This fixes two crash situations in version 0.0.0.1. Owners of a Crystalfontz 632/634 series display who have had problems with the beta versions (0.0.9.x) should try this. It's really just a bugfix of the first version, so it has neither new features nor does it add support for new displays.

2004-05-07: There is a new FAQ page available. I'm trying to answer questions there that I have been asked via e-mail or discuss problems and suggestions that have come up in the Miranda file listing forum.

2004-05-03: Frankly I was a little surprised with the great interest people have shown in the first few hours after adding it to the list. :-) A few people have reported crashes of Miranda on startup with the plugin installed. So I've decided to post a beta version of the upcoming completely rewritten version that I'm currently working on. This should fix the crash, but introduces a few other functionality bugs that I'm aware of. I will nevertheless try to fix the crash in 0.0.0.1 and post an updated version soon.

Features

Automatic scrolling through all waiting messages
Variable text speed
Contrast and backlight brightness control
Turn off or fade out backlight when no messages are waiting
Disable displaying of messages depending on the status
Automatic activation when the screen saver starts
Hotkey to clear message queue

Have a look at a screenshot of the option page or a picture of the LCD Plugin at work.

Supported hardware

So far the following LCD panels are supported:

Crystalfontz 634 and 632 Intelligent Serial Display

The plugin communicates via the serial port, so USB LCD panels whose drivers include a serial port emulation work as well.

I'm currently writing the next version of the plugin which can be very easily extended to support other displays. If you want to do that or feel like I should implement a certain display type, please contact me (nalova at gmx.net).

FAQ

When will you release the next version?

Currently there are two branches of the LCD plugin.

There is the 0.0.0.2 version which is based on my first draft and runs pretty stable on my computer. It supersedes 0.0.0.1 which could cause crashes on Miranda start and exit.

In the meantime, development of the "next generation" goes on, currently indicated by versions like 0.0.9.x. It has been rewritten in C++ from scratch and uses a more modular design that should make it easy to support different displays (drivers). As soon as 0.1.0.0 is out, I will concentrate on supporting more displays and including new features.

Does the plugin work with parallel displays like the HD44780 ones?

Unfortunately not at the moment. However, I definitely plan to support more types of LCDs in the future. Since I don't have such a display myself, I'm going to need help, especially for testing and debugging. So if you have the hardware and the time to help, please drop me a message (nalova at gmx.net).

How about serial displays other than the Crystalfontz 63x series?

See above :-)

Will there be support for Asian languages?

The displays I know have a built-in character set that only contains ASCII characters plus some special characters from European languages or symbols. The Crystalfontz 63x series for example offers the possibility to define eight custom symbols. This is not enough for the character sets of Asian languages.

If there are displays out there that don't have these limitations, it would certainly be possible to write drivers for them, but this is again something I cannot do on my own.

My display has buttons on the front panel. Can I use them?

The current versions do not support these buttons. It should be possible to add support for them though. If you have specifications of such an LCD and would like to help me with development and testing, don't hesitate to contact me. It would indeed be cool to have features like quick answer or message scrolling using these buttons.

Upcoming ...

The next version will introduce a new object model that makes it very easy to write support for other display types. It will also include bugfixes.

Release history

0.0.9.1: Beta release of the completely rewritten version

0.0.0.2: Bugfix release for 0.0.0.1. Fixes two crash situations on Miranda start and exit.