My new thin mini-ITX build!

[RyC]

Looking good! What are you using the LEDs/LEDsdriver to indicate?

[Mike88]

Very nice. Thanks for sharing.

[barnabas1969]

The red LED is set to indicate recording in progress. On my old HTPC, I set it to blink the number of times to indicate how many recordings were going simultaneously. However, this wasn't useful... so I set the new one to just turn ON, no matter how many recordings are in progress.

The yellow LED indicates extender connected (constant ON), AWAY mode (slow blink), and remote desktop connection (fast blink), in ascending order of priority.

The green LED indicates Media Center running (pulse 1x), Media Center playing video (solid), Media Center paused (slow blink), and Media Center error (fast blink), in ascending priority.

I used the play/pause LED (green) to indicate when Netflix was playing on the old HTPC (using my custom program to send USEREVENT to LEDsDriver), but I think I'm going to remove Netflix from the new HTPC and use the Roku exclusively from now-on... Netflix on Media Center is just too flaky and unreliable. It works great on Roku. See my other posts about the new EG plugin that I wrote to control the Roku from the HTPC's network interface. It will allow me to emulate HDMI-CEC, so that the TV thinks that the Roku box has CEC capabilities.

#MadScientist

[holidayboy]

Bit OT (nice job BTW):

I really want to play with CEC - get ready for some Q's Brian

[barnabas1969]

Bit OT (nice job BTW):

I really want to play with CEC - get ready for some Q's Brian

No problem. Ask away!

There are wide variances as to what you can do with CEC, based almost entirely on how CEC is implemented in the TV. CEC considers the TV to be the "master" device.

For example, the cheap Emerson TV's in my bedrooms can only send power on/off and input selection commands via CEC. They are not capable of sending any transport controls (Play/Pause/FFWD/RWD) or anything else that I've discovered.

The Samsung plasma in the living room (aka "lounge" for you Brits) has much more functionality. And, oddly enough, it limits the commands that it sends if the currently-selected device reports that it is manufactured by a company other than Samsung! So, I just setup my EventGhost macros so that the Pulse-Eight CEC device "lies" to the TV and tells it that it is a Samsung!

EDIT: Forgot to add that the Pulse-Eight hardware is rock solid, and so is the EG plugin to control it. It has been 100% reliable for the past week.

[barnabas1969]

Oh, and another weird thing... the TV will automatically turn off the AVR when I turn off the TV... but it doesn't turn on the AVR when I turn on the TV (and there is no option for this in the menus). I thought this was stupid, so I set up my EG macros so that when the TV turns on, the P8 CEC device tells the AVR to turn on too.

My AVR has a setting so that it will ignore the "turn off" command from the TV, if the AVR is currently playing audio from a source other than the TV. This is a nice feature, in case I start listening to music before I turn off the TV.

The P8 device and the EG plugin have totally eliminated the problems I was having with the RCAware device. In fact, my RCAware device will be going for sale on e-bay soon.

[holidayboy]

I have a fairly old samsung lcd TV in the "lounge" AKA "front room" for us really common folk! so it sounds like it may well be an adventure!

[barnabas1969]

I'm not sure if the age of the device matters much. The newer versions of CEC have implemented some new stuff, but most of what you will probably want to do (power, input, transport control, etc) was implemented in the first version of CEC. The problem is that each manufacturer implements it to varying degrees, and they also have manufacturer-specific commands that the can define so that devices made by the same manufacturer can do things that are not in the CEC specification. I think they probably also implement more of the CEC stuff in higher-end TV sets.

Oddly, the RECORD button could not be sent from the TV to the CEC device unless I fooled the TV into thinking that the CEC device is a Samsung DVR. And even then, it still won't send the "CC" button (Closed Captions) to turn on captions/subtitles.

[ruff_hi]

I'm starting this thread to detail a thin mini-ITX build in a case that's about the size of a Bluray player.

I saw this thread and thought about this case ... X-Fit-200 ... which makes the one you are using look like a giant.

I hope it all comes together for you.