Weecommand Prototype 3 !

Prologue

Thanks a lot for those of you helping me to develop a stable and functional Weecommand.app.bin.

Be patient for this English text. I’m Italian and my English it’s not really good. If some text needs a best explanation feel free to add a comment to this page. I’ll appreciate it much.

Thanks to friends of forum.ubuntu-it.org who helped me a lot with bash coding phase, and friend of  WDTV-Forum who helped with developing of bin structure, with cron, init.d and a lot of stuff.

What does Weecomand do?

Weecomand is an application for the WDTV, Western Digital TV High Definition Media Player. If you have modified your WDTV’s firmware, you can add custom application at it. One of this is Weecommand.With Weecommand, your WDTV will be able to browse available file served fron you preferred IRC server bots, and, simply  pressing Enter on your remote, WDTV will request the download of the file.

Weecommand use IRC servers and bot to download files. We use Weechat to download and not eMule/aMule because, if there is no queue on a bot , weechat will start immediately to download it, and yo can navigate to your weechat download dir and, if it’s a media file, start immediately to watch/listen it ! weechat downloads file at the max transfer rate available on your connection.

In 3 words: Browse, Choose, Watch ! Really, this is the TV-on-demand I ever looked for !!!

Weecommand.app.bin – Prototype 2 – Ready for public test

Prologue

Thanks a lot for those of you  helping me to develop a stable and functional Weecommand.app.bin.

Be patient for this English test. I’m Italian and my English it’s not really good. If some text needs a best explanation feel free to add a comment to this page. I’ll appreciate it much.

Also thanks to friends of forum.ubuntu-it.org who helped me a lot with bash coding phase

Summary

In this article, full of images and, I hope, full of answers to your questions,  you will learn

• What does it form me?
• How to use
• How to verify weechat is really working?
• Tip: Launch weechat into a screened session
• Prerequisites and Weecommand download
• Important actual limitations of Weecommand Prototype 2
• The complete changelog
• Where to ask for help

So, good reading !

I’m working on Prototype 2 of Weecommand.app.bin

Working on ..

Actually I’m resolving one un-replicable bug for one only user who’s not able to see it’s Weecommand dir into the WDT V browser

I’m trying to realize a script who updates automatically the file list, doing this in background and with low memory and net usage. It’s a long thing i think…

Changelog

#   Release date unknown  : Prototype 2
# —————
# Fixed: removed an useless log file from the .bin
# Fixed: when fiso is located on classical path the command to weechat is not perfect
# Added: custom message box to error or success on adding download
# Code: some cleanup, remove useless code,

# june 07, 2009: Prototype 1.01
# —————
# Fixed: file list created was same into any dirs. (A my typo in the code, sorry)
#

# june 06, 2009: Prototype 1
# —————
# Working
#

Prototype 1 of weecommand.app.bin released !

Prologue

Sorry for my bad English, I’m Italian. I’m writing in English to help more people understanding how to use this application. I’m working to a better translation too

Introduction

I love my WDTV. And I love to download film and so on using weechat, my preferred IRC client. And i really really love to use weechat into my WDTV !

My dream is (was…)  to use my WDTV remote to browse a list of online titles, and with a single ‘click’ it will be added to weechat for downloading. Simple, not?

Ok, Now I’m here to proudly offer to WDTV online communities a first working prototype of my weecommand.app.bin

What can you do whit weecommand ?

• Accessing a specially name directory (‘Weecommand‘, obviously) WDTV will download from a pre-setted URL the full content of an Irc channel full of ‘bot’ (serving files)
• Every bot will be presented at screen like a dir.
• You can enter into the ‘dir’ of a bot and browse the entire list of available files, alphabetically ordered
• Every filename is showed like a dir. So, indifferently from their file extension, it will shows itself on WDTV. (Yes, weecommand can run from Music, Photo and Video indifferently and browse/download every kind of file, indifferently)
• Last, but not least, entering in a ‘filename’ directory, WDTV will ask to your already running weechat to enqueue the file you selected
• You now can navigate to the weechat download folder and start immediately to watch your film, or  to listen your music, if it’s not compressed and if it’s extension is present and right.
• Only 512 kByte
• What else do you need?

Requirements and how-to

• You need a WDTV
• You need to modify your firmware using ext3-boot from Zorander. Thank Zorander for you excellent work! You extended our life!
• This application is built using event-osd.app.bin framework. And I’ll never thanks sufficiently the author of this work. So you must download event-osd.app.bin from here and copy the bin file to the root of your boot pen
• You must have weechat installed and running.
• Weechat must be configured to use ‘darksin’ for naming server and ‘#L3Gg3Ndar1′ for the channel. (It’s a fixed and mandatory setting, I know, but it’s only a temporary thing, see belove)
• You MUST create an empty dir /Weecommand/ in at least one place in one of your attached media. You can create into the usb diskroot, but even into a subdir of a subdir of a subdir, the script will recognize it without problem everywhere (I hope…).
• Reboot and enjoy !

Download

Now you can download my app from my MediaFire account. It’s composed of two files. Both must be copied into the root of the boot disk (often a usb pen).

• weecommand.app.bin
• weecommand.app.event

Prototype 1′s Limit

This is really a prototype. This initial release has been created mainly for a friend wo love weechat even more than me. I and my friend are Italian, and both use a good irc server in this days, irc.darksin.net, and a precise channel, #L3gg3ndar1 (you can see the full list of available files on their bot here, in the official web site of the channel. You’ll see with your eyes a lot of interesting content available here. This channel is ITALIAN, mainly the content is ITALIAN.

So the first ACTUAL limit of this prototype is that it uses only this channel, on only this server.Actually is NOT configurable, but it’s only a prototype, remember !

So you must have weechat running and configured to use one of darksin addresses, but you MUST name it ‘darksin‘ IN THE WEECHAT.RC config file. And weechat must be running and already joined on #L3gg3ndar1 channel before first adding a link. Don’t forget it ! And don’t forget: it’s only a prototype, in the final release is planned to be fully configurable.

Troubleshooting

This version is debug-enable. Everything it’s doing is logged to /apps/weecommand/logfile.

TIP: To disable logging you can edit the wc.sh file and turn debug=1 to debug=0

FAQ:

1. Does this script causes conflicts with others .app.bin? This script doesn’t modify no one of all your xml file (from the OSD directory into WDTV firmware), so if you have some trouble with other application, is certainly not a conflict
2. Does this script stay resident in memory? NO! This script is based on event-osd. When you change your dir, event-osd check if you’re entering one of the dir registered into one of the .app.event file into your usb boot drive. If you’re into one of them, for example you’re entering into / dir  / subidir  / subdir / Weecommand /, event-osd execute my script. It’s do its work then the php-cli running on WDTV unload it form memory.
   
3. I created the Weecommand dir but it’s not visible into OSD browser but I can see it via FTP. Your script is buggy !!! You must remember that the Weecommand directory MUST BE CREATED SOMEWHERE INTO A USB MEDIA. This is not a limit of my script, is because WDTV only browse into attached media, not into itself. So, e.g., you cannot create Weecommand dir into ‘/’ (the main root of WDTV). You could instead create it into, e.g., /tmp/media/usb-big-disk/, the root of your usb disk. In some words: if you created Weecommand into an usb-something it’s visible to WDTV and to my script. You must create a directory and not an empty file.

Screenshots

When entering the Weecommand dir, WDTV will work for 5-10 seconds, then shows the full list of available bot on the configured channel. Here the list of bot on list 1 of #L3gg3ndar1, on irc.darksin.net

When you enter a bot directory, WDTV retrieve the list of available files on this bot on this channel on this server.

When you enter a filename-directory WDTV will ask weechat to download this file from the selected bot. Then reply to you creating an empty and fake .avi file named OK or ERROR to show you the exit.

Planned

• Make it configurable for server, naming and channel
• A better Ok /  Error  OSD without creating fake file
• Caching system for list
• Ability to use more than a single URL for lists.
• Searching into avaiable file list from OSD.