Category Archives: Software - Page 3

LCDHost Alpha 16

Posted by on May 7, 2011 No comments

For anyone new to LCDHost, LCDHost is a compositing plugin manager for LCD’s. It’s primarily targeted towards the Logitech G19, but it will work with the G13 and G15 too.

What’s new in LCDHost alpha 16:

  • LCDHost now has self-update capability, both for plugins and the main program.
  • Use Tools -> Updates to check the update settings.
  • What’s New display is now on the Welcome screen, not on the device.
  • Updated to Qt 4.7.3 for all platforms
  • OS/X now uses direct-to-hardware since Logitech does not provide 64-bit drivers.
  • HID and USB level drives provided for all platforms.
  • The G19 USB driver requires uninstallation of existing drivers before use.
  • With little in-house testing time, I fully expect this to be an extra-buggy alpha.
  • Report all bugs on the LCDHost issue tracker.
  • I would have liked to replace the g19-default layout, but unfortunately there wasn’t time. Pick your own favorite.
  • Includes a new g15-default layout for 160×43 devices by Ender91.
  • …and lots of other fixes and changes as well.

Download it on the home page.

Important information for OS/X users: LCDHost A16 for OS/X is now 64-bit. If you’re not running Snow Leopard, please consider updating. The Logitech drivers, however, are 32-bit only. This means that LCDHost can no longer use the Logitech drivers to access G13/G15/G19 devices. Sorry about that – but until Logitech releases 64-bit drivers, not much I can do except ask you to try the direct-to-hardware plugins LH_Lg320x240 and LH_Lg160x43. You lose out on the keymapping and backlighting features though. Unfortunately I can’t build a 32-bit version of LCDHost for OS/X, so you’re forced to choose between LCDHost and regular drivers at this point. Hopefully Logitech will release new drivers, and I’ll certainly add macroing and backlight support in the future.

 

LCDSirReal 2.8.4 released

Posted by on April 7, 2011 4 comments

As a side effect of researching how to access the G13/G15 (Z10/G510) hardware on Linux and OS/X, I’ve implemented direct hardware access to those devices in LCDSirReal 2.8.4. If the Logitech software isn’t installed or running (or if it crashes), LCDSirReal will access the LCD directly. In addition, the G-keys will be translated into different special key codes not in common use, so you may be able to map them into games (unlikely unless it’s a quite clever game designer) or to macros using software like AutoHotKey. Yes, now you no longer need to run the 100MB+ Logitech software just to run LCDSirReal. Woot!

Download LCDSirReal 2.8.4 on it’s homepage.

LCDHost Alpha 15

Posted by on March 9, 2011 4 comments

For anyone new to LCDHost, LCDHost is a compositing plugin manager for LCD’s. It’s primarily targeted towards the Logitech G19, but it will work with the G13 and G15 too. The screenshot on the right is from Ender91’s new layout.

What’s new in LCDHost alpha 15:

  • LCDHost is now available for OS/X.
  • Change: Log files are now stored in the data directory on OS/X.
  • Fix: RSS class now handles query parameters correctly.
  • Dev: Added button and listbox setup items.
  • Added: Menu item under tools to remove obsolete setup items from a layout.
  • Fix: Network bandwidth suffix was shown even when percentage display was selected.
  • Change: LH_FLAG_READONLY setup items now loads stored values, LH_FLAG_NOSAVE replaces old functionality.
  • Dev: lh_cb_load_layout now copies parameter data and expects it to be UTF-8 encoded.
  • LH_Lua: Now embeds the ‘cairo’ graphics library, no need to ‘require “lcairo”‘.
  • LH_Lua: Font handling abstracted to remove platform dependencies.
  • Fix: Change events for setup items now only fire on actual data change.
  • Fix: File selection setup items now show all paths as relative to layout.
  • Fix: Changing min/max for supported setup items now clamp the current value.
  • Fix: Downloading public keys are now done in parallell and only once per key.
  • Fix: Spurious characters could be seen with some fonts with LH_Text suffixes.
  • Added: “Show units” as an option for numeric text items such as network usage.
  • New application icon by Ender91.

Download it on the home page.

LCDHost Alpha 14

Posted by on January 26, 2011 No comments

For anyone new to LCDHost, LCDHost is a compositing plugin manager for LCD’s. It’s primarily targeted towards the Logitech G19, but it will work with the G13 and G15 too.

The screenshot on the right is one of many user created layouts – this one is for the game X3: Terran Conflict and is designed by Triscopic. You can download that layout in the forum.

What’s new in LCDHost alpha 14:

  • Dev: LH_QtPlugin.(cpp|h) split up into LH_QtPlugin and LH_QtInstance, project file modification needed.
  • Dev: Setup item help added, recompile needed.
  • Dev: SignLibrary argument ordering changes; use ‘SignLibrary -?’ for usage.
  • Dev: Instance name gets passed to plugin – contructors need looking over.
  • Fix: Detect Logitech Gaming Software version 7.
  • Fix: Plugin verification via HTTP now uses the system proxy.
  • Fix: LH_Image now accepts UTF-8 paths that can be 8-bit encoded.
  • Fix: Setup item parameters changed during plugin loading would not be accepted.
  • Fix: Automatic layout class registration had a race condition.
  • Fix: When reparenting an item it’s width/height would get reset.
  • Fix: The instance preview no longer counts as “instance [1]” for automatic naming purposes.
  • LH_Lua: Lua console output is now shown in a fixed-width font in the log.
  • LH_Lua: Changed how the callback token and ‘self’ table are handled.
  • LH_Lua: Added setup items support.
  • LH_Lua: Added Win32 font creation support for Lua Cairo.
  • LH_Lua: Added __pairs metamethod calling.
  • LH_Lua: One may now iterate over lcdhost.state and other LCDHost pseudo-tables.
  • LH_Lua: Added print_r.lua which provides the useful print_r() function.
  • LH_Lua: Added Lua binding libraries for some Qt DLL’s.
  • …and lots of other small fixes as usual.

Download link on the LCDHost homepage.

Dials galore

Posted by on January 1, 2011 No comments

Introducing dials (or “speedometers” if you prefer) for LCDHost.

After a lot of time and effort, not to mention several massive trigonometry-based headaches and a large pile of paper covered in badly drawn circles and squares and liberal amounts of trig mnemonics,  I am pleased to announce LH_Dial, a plugin that renders data in the form of dials. For best effect I suggest you fire up a copy of your favourite graphics editing package and create your own custom dial backgrounds and/or needles, but the plugin can generate it’s own basic backgrounds & needles if required. I’ve also included a few I knocked up using Gimp for Windows.

To get the latest version of this plugin head over to the forum

Happy New Year!

(P.S. Thank you to Ender91 for the excellent dial-based layout shown above)

LCDHost Alpha 13

Posted by on December 19, 2010 No comments

For anyone new to LCDHost, LCDHost is a compositing plugin manager for LCD’s. It’s primarily targeted towards the Logitech G19, but it will work with the G13 and G15 too.

And as a birthday gift to me, Triscopic, SirReal has allowed me to announce the release of this new version.

Here is a list of some of the things that are new:

What’s new in LCDHost alpha 13:

  • Fix: Now base64 encodes binary data in the XML layout file.
  • Fix: Build device identifiers from USB HID/VID data rather than device file names.
  • Fix: Input subsystem has gotten a much-needed overhaul
  • Fix: Prevent RSS items from sending Open URL requests too fast.
  • Fix: Still showed garbage characters at end of program name in LCD Manager.
  • Fix: Sometimes when loading a layout, stored values would get mixed up between instances.
  • Fix: The System tab’s inbound and outbound network wasn’t in MBit.
  • Fix: Text now renders at 96 dpi no matter what the system default is.
  • Fix: Several minor fixes.
  • Some tweaks to how zooming and panning works in the Layout tab.
  • The textual network data rate now includes the unit (for example B/s or bit/s)
  • Bars can now use images instead of just gradient fills.
  • Bars can now use sliding alpha transparency to create tapered ends.
  • Ability for plugins to change the loaded layout (plugins to do this coming soon)
  • The obsolete plugins LH_QScript, LH_CPU and LH_Network have been removed.
  • The SignLibrary tool is now included in the distribution.
  • You can finally map the LCD keys as you would any others.
  • Triscopic’s Eos layout is now included.
  • Several of Triscopic’s excellent* plugins have been bundled.

(*Note that was written by SirReal, I’m not that immodest)

Download link on the LCDHost homepage.

New Admin

Posted by on December 17, 2010 No comments

SirReal in his infinite wisdom has now added me, Triscopic as an administrator. Expect sporadic plugin update news on your favourite G19 application to now feature on the Link Data homepage.

LCDSirReal 2.8.3

Posted by on December 16, 2010 2 comments

LCDSirReal, or SirReal’s multipurpose G15 plugin, is a plugin for the Logitech G13/G15 gaming keyboards. It will also work on the G19, in black and white. It provides more features than all of the Logitech bundled plugins together, while using much less CPU and memory. Written entirely in C++, it’s very stable and efficient. Among the more notable features are support for applications (WinAMP, iTunes, SpeedFan, FRAPS, TeamSpeak…) and system real time monitoring of networking, CPU and memory usage and more. And of course it shows the basic stuff as time, date and waiting mail as well.

Changes in 2.8.3:

  • Adds support for the GPU-Z application
  • You can now prevent the test window from appearing even if the keyboard is unresponsive, see lcdsirreal.txt for more info

LCDHost Alpha 12

Posted by on December 16, 2010 No comments

LCDHost is a compositing plugin manager for LCD’s. It’s primarily targeted towards the Logitech G19, but it will work with the G13 and G15 too. Here is a list of some of the things that are new:

What’s new in LCDHost alpha 9 to 12:

  • Fix: Now looks for the imageformats folder under plugins.
  • LH_Text can now autoformat numbers into a convenient 4-character format.
  • Added network load (text) classes.
  • Added memory information classes.
  • Bars can now grow in any of the four cardinal directions.
  • Lua scripting has been added. Not fully complete, but usable. See the LH_Lua plugin.
  • CPU and network bars have moved from their old plugins into LH_Text and LH_Bar. You’ll need to update your existing layouts. I suggest selecting the instance and then using the ‘Class’ dropdown box to select the correct class.
  • Includes source for LH_Lua.
  • Fix: No longer reports a garbage name to Logitech 3.06 drivers.
  • WebKitServer stabilized for the new WebKit in Qt 4.7.0.
  • Added a CoreTemp textual class to LH_Text.
  • Fix: No longer crashes with recursive positional dependencies

Once Triscopic has finished his SpeedFan and FRAPS plugins, they’ll be available in the forum.