making growl display notifications on a hardware interface?

Joseph Papier · Post by **Joseph Papier** » Sun Nov 06, 2005 6:07 pm

Hey there!

I have bought a serial LCD display and a USB to RS-232 adapter chip. I'm able to display up to 80 characters on it with a very simple C program i've made. I also managed to send iTunes info with a modified version of ByteController, whose developper sent me the source code.

Now that ByteController uses Growl, i'm wondering if I could use the existing Growl app to feed my LCD...
I'm quite new to Growl, can anybody give me some advice about the way I could try?

Thanks in advance,
joPap

StarManta · Post by **StarManta** » Tue Nov 08, 2005 2:04 am

http://www.growl.info/downloads_developers.php

Joseph Papier · Post by **Joseph Papier** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 12:14 pm

i've found that someone is making such a plugin. i've contacted him, we both have a working solution for ourselves, and we are working on a general solution. we'll let you know ;-)

here is a demo movie (2.4 MB) of my version.

biglittledragoon · Post by **biglittledragoon** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 1:28 pm

Joseph Papier wrote:i've found that someone is making such a plugin. i've contacted him, we both have a working solution for ourselves, and we are working on a general solution. we'll let you know ;-)

here is a demo movie (2.4 MB) of my version.

Fun!

Post by **evands** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 1:42 pm

Takes me back.. I used to have a display much like that mounted in my car, except it was connected via serial port to a PC in the trunk running WinAmp.

Neat project.

Joseph Papier · Post by **Joseph Papier** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 2:16 pm

yep, there are many things like that on PCs, but i think none of them is as powerful as it can be with growl

things like LCDproc are great for a geek use, others will display winamp's current song, but with the power of growl, we can do nearly everything... with very little work!

[update] by the way, hardware cost:
$15 for the VFD display (eBay rulez, search "vfd display")
$25 for the USB-serial adapter (FTDI based for best compatibility - also works with Texas Instruments TUSB3410 chip and even Microchip USB PICs)

i still need to make a clean enclosure for that... i'll pack it all in a box with my server (screenless ibook), using Growl's network notification feature.

Post by **The_Tick** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 8:53 pm

Heh, a bit different than the lcd I have.

John Don · Post by **John Don** » Sun Feb 05, 2006 10:40 pm

Joseph Papier wrote:here is a demo movie (2.4 MB) of my version.

That's pretty cool!

Post by **The_Tick** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 6:17 am

Joseph Papier wrote:i still need to make a clean enclosure for that... i'll pack it all in a box with my server (screenless ibook), using Growl's network notification feature.

The guy making the GrowlLCD plugin has something about a neat enclosure. I'm not sure it's what you want, but something similar might be nice