New Windows Gadget

[dmolton]

Spent some free time working on a new Windows Gadget and wanted to share with the community.

It is designed to work over wifi and can be installed on any number of computers you want. Everybody's environment is a little bit different, but the idea is you enter the url and port for your wifi adapter in the settings screen. Every 15 seconds the gadget will poll your controller for the latest data.

Requirements:
- ReefAngel WiFi adapter
- Curt's dev libraries 0.8.5.14 or later
- #define wifi inside Features.h file.
- Windows Vista or 7

To Install:
Download the ReefAngelGadget.zip file to your desktop and extract the .gadget file. Double click it and allow the unsigned gadget to install and you should be good to go.

Make sure the url you are attempting to use in the settings screen is a valid url and successfully communicates with your controller from inside an internet browser. By that I mean, first type the full url into your browser of choice and make sure the response looks like:

"ReefAngel Controller Web Server".. Or something similar. If you append "/r99" on the end of it you should see a response similar to:





In my case, at home I use the following url in the settings screen:

"http://192.168.1.110:2000"

Away at work, I need to use my dyndns hostname and some port forwarding, but it looks similar.

"http://MyTestDynDNs.org:2000" (Looks similar to this)


Screenshots:







^^^^Older screenshot - before the addition of the Actinic/Daylight PWM %^^^^^^


With "#define RelayExp" enabled, the gadget will show you one additional relay box statuses:


Settings screen:


Windows Installed Gadgets screen. The ReefAngel one uses the same icon as the ClientSuite:



It's only a read-only gadget for now and has only been tested on two different Win7 x64 machines. Not sure how it will behave on other setups, but let me know.

[rimai]

Nice!!
Downloading

[dmolton]

Nice!!
Downloading

Cool, interested to see how well it works out for you. It might take a few seconds after saving from the settings screen for the ui to update. It's on a 15 second timer and doesn't update immediately like it probably should..

Also, I should mention what inspired me to finally put it together is I saw a post from Curt a little while ago where he linked the javascript you use to update the /wifi web page. I saw your Ajax code and thought I could probably use it in the gadget. I ended up using pretty much the whole thing . So, thank you for that!!

[rimai]

Yeah
Nice job!!!
I'm reading parameters from my little nano at home, here at the office

[dmolton]

Groovy!

Wondering if I should slow the timer down a bit. For some reason 15 seconds sounds excessive to me, but not sure.

[chrome]

Sweet nice, works like a charm.

I have the RelayExp enabled but it still only returns 8 ports back from an /r99

How do you get all 16 ports if you have an expansion relay to show in the xml? And yes, I have the dev libraries.

Code: Select all

#define RelayExp
#define InstalledRelayExpansionModules	1

[dmolton]

Sweet nice, works like a charm.

I have the RelayExp enabled but it still only returns 8 ports back from an /r99

How do you get all 16 ports if you have an expansion relay to show in the xml? And yes, I have the dev libraries.

Code: Select all

#define RelayExp
#define InstalledRelayExpansionModules	1

I think all you need is #define RelayExp to get everything back, thats all that I have in my Features file, although the #define InstalledRelayExpansionModules doesn't look familiar to me. I've never used that before so not sure if it effects what comes back.

In the returned xml, <R>,<RON> and <ROFF> represent the first relay box statuses. <R0>,<RON0> and <ROFF0> represent the second relay box worth of data. What are you seeing coming back in the xml?

[chrome]

I think all you need is #define RelayExp to get everything back, thats all that I have in my Features file, although the #define InstalledRelayExpansionModules doesn't look familiar to me. I've never used that before so not sure if it effects what comes back.

In the returned xml, <R>,<RON> and <ROFF> represent the first relay box statuses. <R0>,<RON0> and <ROFF0> represent the second relay box worth of data. What are you seeing coming back in the xml?

Ok, I see. So is there documentation on what a 254 bitflag is? Or is it up to us to figure out?

[dmolton]

Ok, I see. So is there documentation on what a 254 bitflag is? Or is it up to us to figure out?

I'm not sure if there is any documentation out there, though it was brought up awhile ago on the google group and it is up to us to convert it.. 254 is the byte representation of the binary octet string indicating the statuses and masks applied to a relay box..

When converted to binary form, the byte 255 looks like "11111111". If this were the status of the <R> element, it would mean each of the 8 relays are on. The binary string 11101110 shows the 4th and 8th relays are off and the rest on, but I'm not sure off hand what that would look like represented as a byte. Similarly, you need to do some bitwise operations against both masks and the R value to find out which relays are truly on and off.

[chrome]

Ahh Ok I follow you. Thanks so much.

[rimai]

I think what you are looking for can be answered in here:
http://groups.google.com/group/reefange ... e23835652e

[astralmind]

Very nice will add it at home. Too bad we are on XP at work (yup, scary I know... and using IE 6.0 ... )

Making an android Widget similar to this would be incredibly awesome !

[binder]

Sweet nice, works like a charm.

I have the RelayExp enabled but it still only returns 8 ports back from an /r99

How do you get all 16 ports if you have an expansion relay to show in the xml? And yes, I have the dev libraries.

Code: Select all

#define RelayExp
#define InstalledRelayExpansionModules	1

I think all you need is #define RelayExp to get everything back, thats all that I have in my Features file, although the #define InstalledRelayExpansionModules doesn't look familiar to me. I've never used that before so not sure if it effects what comes back.

In the returned xml, <R>,<RON> and <ROFF> represent the first relay box statuses. <R0>,<RON0> and <ROFF0> represent the second relay box worth of data. What are you seeing coming back in the xml?

The #define InstalledRelayExpansionModules 1 line is in there for good measures. It's primarily useful when you have more than one relay expansion installed. If it's not defined, I do additional checks and set it to be 1 by default if you have RelayExp enabled. Having it there is the proper way.

C'mon Dave, you've been reading all my OTHER comments and changelogs yet you missed that one. haha

[binder]

PS. You get to make all the "cool" apps and I'm stuck just coding on the controller. hahaha

[dmolton]

The #define InstalledRelayExpansionModules 1 line is in there for good measures. It's primarily useful when you have more than one relay expansion installed. If it's not defined, I do additional checks and set it to be 1 by default if you have RelayExp enabled. Having it there is the proper way.

C'mon Dave, you've been reading all my OTHER comments and changelogs yet you missed that one. haha

Whoops, um must have missed that one.. Guess I got too preoccupied putting together all kinds of cool apps

[alexwbush]

dave, what about a gadget that gets its info from the client? I don't have mine hooked up to wifi right now and would rather not since it's been working so well plugged in directly since switching.

[lukeluke]

great work.

i was trying by my work (with proxy) but don't appears nothing... what can i do ?

[dmolton]

great work.

i was trying by my work (with proxy) but don't appears nothing... what can i do ?

Not sure exactly. Like I said, you need to be sure you can access the controller through a web browser first. You also might need to do some port forwarding on your router at home. Once you can browse the controllers web server page, copy/paste the url you used into the settings screen.

The URL you want to use will show a web page with just the bold text:
Reef Angel Controller Web Server
The gadget will add the extra bits to the end of the url in order to get the temps.

[acabano]

nice work! i just installed it and wow! some.. i would also like to setup my router for port forwarding, just in case if someone would shade some light. i have a uverse router.. anyone?

[chase]

This would be cool to post under the Downloads section. Just upgraded my computer and was restoring all my apps and figured I'd throw the suggestion out there since it wasn't listed!

[rimai]

Thanks
Added that one too.

[lukeluke]

Can you improve the proxy support ?

Thanks

[dedvalson]

Hi,

On my system there appears to be a problem calculating how big to make the widget.

Here is a screen shot.

Widget.jpg (13.78 KiB) Viewed 12715 times

As you can see the arrow to show the relays and the bottom line of display is not visible.

This is on Windows 7. I have my text size set to Medium (125%). I think you might need to take that into account when you calculate how big to make the widget. Another option would be to specify the font size more specifically.


Don

PS: If you want me to I can probably fix this if the source code is available somewhere.

[Junior Dabul]

hi,

i am having a problem with my windows gadget. it was working then it closed and showed no IP address. now when i put the address doesnt conect anymore.

any ideas why? my client Suit is working fine apart from the relay expansion with is incompatible with the lib. 0.9.3 .

if guys can give a help would be great.

thanks Junior

[dedvalson]

PS: If you want me to I can probably fix this if the source code is available somewhere.

Is the source for this available? I would like to fix the display issue

Don

[dmolton]

PS: If you want me to I can probably fix this if the source code is available somewhere.

Is the source for this available? I would like to fix the display issue

Don

All the source code is embedded within the .gadget. It works similar to JAR files.

Rename the .gadget extension to .zip

Inside the zip you should see all the source files. It's mostly all javascript, css and html. The Win framework provides a System.Gadget namespace you can use in the Javascript. Here's some resources you can refer to on msdn:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 85%29.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library ... 85%29.aspx

[Sebyte]

i am having a problem with my windows gadget. it was working then it closed and showed no IP address. now when i put the address doesnt conect anymore.

I have recently had this as well. I fixed it by doing this:

Goto controle pannel and open up add remove program's.

In the lefthand side pane there is an option to add or remove Windows features.

(please excuse me if I have the wording wrong but I am not at home and doing this from memory on my iPad)

Then look for Windows gadgets, and unclick the box. Save and reboot.

When PC is back repeat the above and put a tick in the box. Sorry but a reboot is needed.

Then right click on desktop and select add gadgets.

This worked for me. I could not find any other way of restarting the services that relate to gadgets. There may be a better way, if so I would like to know, and please let me know if this worked for you.

Good luck.

[dmolton]

The host process for the gadgets is called "sidebar.exe". You should be able to just kill the process in task manager. When you add a new gadget to the desktop it will automatically restart the sidebar.exe host process for you. Quicker than restarting

[dedvalson]

Hi,

There seems to be something wrong with the XML coming from my ReefAngel. I have the latest dev libraries installed and I have one expansion box. I looked at the Gadgets Javascript, and it is looking for an <R0> tag for the expansion port. But my box doesn't provide an R0. The first expansion box is shown as <R1> as shown below. So I'm trying to figure out who is wrong, the gadget or my box.

Should there be an R0? If so, why would my RA produce R1 instead of R0? Or should the gadget look for R1 instead?

Don

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0"?>
-<RA>
<T1>809</T1>
<T2>923</T2>
<T3>802</T3>
<PH>801</PH>
<R>140</R>
<RON>0</RON>
<ROFF>255</ROFF>
<R1>143</R1>
<RON1>0</RON1>
<ROFF1>255</ROFF1>
<R2>0</R2>
<RON2>0</RON2>
<ROFF2>255</ROFF2>
<R3>0</R3>
<RON3>0</RON3>
<ROFF3>255</ROFF3>
<R4>0</R4>
<RON4>0</RON4>
<ROFF4>255</ROFF4>
<R5>0</R5>
<RON5>0</RON5>
<ROFF5>255</ROFF5>
<R6>0</R6>
<RON6>0</RON6>
<ROFF6>255</ROFF6>
<R7>0</R7>
<RON7>0</RON7>
<ROFF7>255</ROFF7>
<R8>0</R8>
<RON8>0</RON8>
<ROFF8>255</ROFF8>
<ATOLOW>1</ATOLOW>
<ATOHIGH>1</ATOHIGH>
<EM>0</EM>
<REM>1</REM>
<PWMA>100</PWMA>
<PWMD>60</PWMD>
</RA>

[binder]

It's supposed to be R1 for first expansion box. This way it will make more sense with the displaying and it will match with the retrieval of the labels. It also makes it compatible with the Portal as well.
It was originally R0 in the 0.8.5.x code, but it was switched to R1 in the 0.9.X code. I just looked it up.