What is wrong with CQC?

[Dean Roddey]

Just some friendly observations:
Honestly, I can't be bothered to give the video you provided above a chance because I can't just click and move on. There's that ease of use thing again.

 
Wow...
 

 - Try understanding what folks want instead of defending what you offer. Doing say may make for less to defend.

 
I defend it where it's appropriate. Just become someone wants something doesn't mean it's appropriate for our product.

 

[bbrendon]

I'll 2nd the video thing.

Regarding the defending. Dean, you just proved his point. Notice you're defending that you don't defend?

 

[rickerdo]

I have a feeling this is heading somewhere that I did not intend for it to head. I would love to see CQC succeed and grow beyond where it is today. Dean is an excellent developer with a product that has a loyal following. Like they say, "You can't make everyone happy all the time", nor should anyone try to.
 
Dean, I wish you luck and admire you for asking for input from a public forum. That takes guts, but it's also useless unless you are willing to understand why people are not using your product. The key there is to truly "understand" why, not just ask why.

 

[Dean Roddey]

I'll 2nd the video thing. Regarding the defending. Dean, you just proved his point. Notice you're defending that you don't defend?

 
Basically all of the tutorial videos are on Youtube already. That just happened to be one that isn't, because it wasn't really intended as a tutorial as much as just a quick and dirty demonstration, so it's not been put up there yet. I hope to do a better one before I do.

 

[Dean Roddey]

Dean, I wish you luck and admire you for asking for input from a public forum. That takes guts, but it's also useless unless you are willing to understand why people are not using your product. The key there is to truly "understand" why, not just ask why.

 
Like, which things are you referring to? I do agree with a lot of things said here, and I just said a few posts back above that I'm going to throw away years of work and effectively rewrite the UI in order to deal with some of the biggest issues raised here. But there's a difference between me not understanding what you want, and not being able to do it or not agreeing that it's appropriate for the product. or just having to accept that it's a comparatively trivial thing compared to vastly more important things that need to get done first and that will eat up every moment of my life.

 

[fcwilt]

I was thinking about the short comings of one-way drivers.
 
I think the approach used by my HA system for user defined IR and Serial drivers works well for A/V gear for one big reason.
 
In my home I use UPB for lightening control (1 driver), ELK M1 for security (1 driver), RCS thermostats for HVAC (1 driver), Hunter for irrigation (1 driver), Axis cameras for security (1 driver).
 
Now all of these items are pretty much unchanged since they were first installed. 
 
But if you consider A/V gear that is different. That would require 12/13 drivers alone - more then the rest of the drivers combined.
 
Also much of that A/V gear is no longer available. It does seem the A/V gear change frequently.
 
The maker of the HA system had drivers for only 2 pieces of my A/V gear. The rest I had to do myself. But they weren't full fledged two-way drivers as the HA maker does not provide the capability to write such things.
 
What they do provide involves filling in values for IR and Serial one-way "driver templates" and that was rather easy.
 
As good as two-way? No, clearly not.
 
But it does allow the HA system to at least control a large range of A/V gear with a minimum of effort that can be done by most anyone as they are not writing code, just supplying some values. If the values are wrong the worst that happens is that the A/V gear is not controlled correctly - nothing bad can happen inside CQC.
 
So does CQC have anything like this that would allow quick-and-dirty control of A/V without actually writing a driver?
 
Perhaps it could be something that could be added to CQC allowing control of a wide range of A/V gear without the effort required to write and maintain full blown drivers. Drivers can then be written as time and need allows.
 
Just a thought.

 

[Dean Roddey]

Well, IR stuff is easily done. Just learn in the codes. For IP or serial, I posted an example, which is not very difficult at all. It's actually more so than most would be, since most are just simple ASCII protocols.
 
Here is another very simple, one way PDL driver:
 

[CQCProto Version="2.0" Encoding="ISO-8859-1"]

// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Protocol for the Ampro 3300 CRT video projector
// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Overall protocol information
// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
ProtocolInfo=
TextEncoding="ASCII";
ProtocolType="OneWay";
EndProtocolInfo;


// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Driver Fields
// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fields=

// Power the projector on or off
Field=Power
Type=Boolean;
Access=Write;
EndField;

// Put the project into and out of standby
Field=Standby
Type=Boolean;
Access=Write;
EndField;

// Toggle the power state
Field=TogglePower
Type=Boolean;
Access=Write;
Flags=WriteAlways;
EndField;

EndFields;



// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Write Commands
// ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
WriteCmds=

// The write command for the power state
WriteCmd=Power
Send=
BoolSel(&WriteVal, 0x5D, 0x5D);
EndSend;
EndWriteCmd;

WriteCmd=Standby
Send=
BoolSel(&WriteVal, 0x28, 0x29);
EndSend;
EndWriteCmd;

WriteCmd=TogglePower
Send=
ToCard1(0x4F);
EndSend;
EndWriteCmd;

EndWriteCmds;



 
It just defines fields for Power, Standby, and toggling the power. It indicates at the bottom what to write when those fields are written to.
 
So for instance, Standby is a Boolean field (meaning it can have values False and True). In the WriteCmd=Standby block, it indicates what to send, which for this projector is a single byte, either 0x28, or 0x29, to power on or off. It uses a simple expression BoolSel() to select one of those values depending on whether what was written to the field (&WriteVal) is true or false. Whichever is selected is sent to the projector.
 
That's pretty simple, but a lot more flexible than just hard coded commands to send. So you can create much more useful drivers without much more complexity. There's a little debugger that lets you test the PDL drivers and see what is being sent (and what is being gotten if it's two way, and various other states of the driver if it's more full featured) so you can debug it a lot better than just a simple terminal type tool.

 

[fcwilt]

So CQC already has a fairly easy way to implement such one-way control.
 
Perhaps this capability is not as well known as it needs to be.
 
Thanks for the information.
 
I need to install the latest version and see what is new.
 
I certainly hope I am around to see version 5.x.

 

[Deane Johnson]

I'm using IR with a GC-100 with CQC to run my Marantz processor, a Cambridge Audio Blu-Ray player and a Wolf Cinema Greywolf 4K projector and the control has been flawless.  It's never missed a command.
 
The Marantz processor has an IR in, so the GC-100 plugs in direct with no emitter involved.  The other devices are with an emitter.
 
Since there is no way any software can keep up with sophisticated drivers for everything that comes out, the GC-100 for IR works very well.  The USB-UIRT not so good.

 

[RichardU]

Looks like this thread slowed down a couple of months ago, but here are my thoughts. I've used CQC for at least 8 years. I don't have a single screen that displays anything from CQC. Everything I do is either automated or I use two ways to interact with the program: voice control, and a simple web page. For me, all of the media stuff in CQC is unnecessary. I watch Netflix and Amazon Prime, on a web page, controlled with Unified Remote. I use My Media Center app to control my Ceton-based DVR. I use the EMBY app to control my movie collection. All of those things are being constantly developed and there is no way Dean or I could ever keep up. Why try? So you can use the same app to turn on your lights that you use to change the channel on your TV? Maybe that matters to some people, but I'd say not enough, particularly now that so much media is being streamed.
 
Dean has always been a stand-up guy in all my interactions with him, and I am thrilled that he is working on the UI, of which I have been a steady critic. Going forward, my vote would be to focus on voice and web-based interaction. Thanks, Dean.

 

[Dean Roddey]

I almost forgot about this thread. I guess someone voted and that brings it forward even if there's no post. Anyhoo, since it was resurrected, I figured I'd just mention that the UI rewrite effort is well underway. I've replaced my old custom window controls with the standard ones, and worked out a lot of standardized stuff for attribute editing and such. I'm currently redoing some of the back end related to accessing configuration slash customization info, so that it can support a generic tree type browser. The standard file open dialog is used for local files, but it's not very good for client/server file access, so I'm going to use a fairly standard sort of tree style browser for that, which will be typically a left hand side type tab as is the case in many programs. But it can also just browse specific file types, so it can be used for more specific selection as well. I'm making various other consolidation slash consistency improvements back there in the process.

 

[RichardU]

Thanks for the update. And I believe it was not a vote, but my post 39 minutes before yours that resurrected the thread.

 

[Dean Roddey]

Really? I could have sworn I read that post many weeks ago, so I didn't even look at that date. I guess I'm coming unstuck in time again.

 

[pete_c]

@Dean I know you know that time is relative.

 

[ano]

I almost forgot about this thread. I guess someone voted and that brings it forward even if there's no post. Anyhoo, since it was resurrected, I figured I'd just mention that the UI rewrite effort is well underway. I've replaced my old custom window controls with the standard ones, and worked out a lot of standardized stuff for attribute editing and such. I'm currently redoing some of the back end related to accessing configuration slash customization info, so that it can support a generic tree type browser. The standard file open dialog is used for local files, but it's not very good for client/server file access, so I'm going to use a fairly standard sort of tree style browser for that, which will be typically a left hand side type tab as is the case in many programs. But it can also just browse specific file types, so it can be used for more specific selection as well. I'm making various other consolidation slash consistency improvements back there in the process.

I'm very much looking forward to seeing it when its complete. Always remember that the most successful programs look very simple and approachable on the outside, but only show their true depth when you dig deeper.