Kiosk - Alpha

[Stony]

I've written a private message to Sranshaft and got following statement

It's at a working state at the moment. Everything is hardcoded though so I'd need to switch that over before I can start beta testing. I've been busy with movieClerk so haven't had much time to work on Kiosk. It's one of those things I'd love to finish but can never find the time. As soon as I do, I'll update the thread.

Thankyou for your enthusiam and I hope to have a beta out as soon as possible.

So we have to wait..

[Sranshaft]

It's been awhile now but I have some good news. I've found time to work on Kiosk and should have a beta ready for release in the next couple of days! At the moment here's the list of pamphlets available:

• Date
  
• Time
  
• Drive Space
  
• Email
  
• Recycle Bin
  
• Music - Working for Winamp or anything that can emulate Winamp ie: Foobar with the winamp_spam.dll plugin. I'm working on adding Windows Media Player for the beta release.
  
• CPU Usage
  
• RAM Usage
  
• Weather - Info provided by Weather.com
  
• RSS Feed
  
• Folder Watcher
  

Things to come soon:

• uTorrent watch
  
• Network Usage
  
• User suggestions...
  

Kiosk now supports multiple monitors! Currently using a 16 inch ASUS monitor as a secondary 'info screen' and it's great!

Pamphlets at the moment are still built-in. No plugin system as of yet. I think I'll keep Kiosk like this but for those of you that know C# I'll be creating a SDK of sorts to help in the creation of 3rd party pamphlets that can be included in updates. That part will be a little clearer after the beta is released.

Themes are easy to create as well! I'll be including a .psd file that has the default theme in it as a reference for others to develop more.

More to come in the following days! Stay tuned...

[alaskale]

Ah! I'm very excited for the release!

On a note - I was wondering how you got 'Applications, Places, System' in your taskbar. I've seen this in a few screenshots around the web, and am interested in doing it myself.

It would be much appreciated if you could help. ^^

[Sranshaft]

That's True Launch Bar found here.

Also an update for Kiosk!

I've been able to add uTorrent, Network Monitoring and File Watching pamphlets! I'm having a little trouble with the Network Monitor though. After a few hours the RAM usage climbs astronomically. Must be a memory leak somewhere. Also, uTorrent uses the WebUI feature to hook into and get details.

I've also added a few things. Now some pamphlets are interactive. For example, with the uTorrent pamphlet, clicking on the pamphlet will pause / resume the current torrent. Or with the music pamphlet, left-clicking goes to the previous track, right-clicking skips to the next track and middle-clicking pauses / resumes. There's also extended info on mouse hover for select pamphlets.

All of these events are available to anyone wanting to create 3rd party pamphlets. The following is an example pamphlet's coding to get the programmers started:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using System.Diagnostics;
using WinampFrontEndLib;
using System.Drawing;

namespace Kiosk.Pamphlets
{
	class Music
	{
		public static event EventHandler UpdatePamphlet;
		public static string Status = string.Empty;

		private static int displayInfo = 0;
		private static Timer checkUsage_Timer = new Timer();

		private static Popup popup;

		private static void checkUsage_Timer_Tick(object sender, EventArgs e)
		{
			try
			{
				Status = GetDisplayText();
			}
			catch
			{
				Status = "Foobar not playing!";
			}

			UpdatePamphlet(null, null);
		}

		public static void StartPamphlet()
		{
			checkUsage_Timer.Enabled = true;
			checkUsage_Timer.Interval = 10000;
			checkUsage_Timer.Tick += new EventHandler(checkUsage_Timer_Tick);
			Status = GetDisplayText();
		}

		public static void MouseClick(MouseButtons mouseButton)
		{
			try
			{
				if (WinampLib.GetPlaybackStatus() == 1)
				{
					switch (mouseButton)
					{
						case MouseButtons.Left:
							{
								WinampLib.PrevTrack();
								break;
							}
						case MouseButtons.Middle:
							{
								WinampLib.Play();
								break;
							}
						case MouseButtons.Right:
							{
								WinampLib.NextTrack();
								break;
							}
					}
				}
			}
			catch { }
		}

		public static void MouseHover()
		{
			try
			{
				if (WinampLib.GetPlaybackStatus() == 1)
				{
					popup = new Popup();
					popup.popupDisplayText = WinampLib.GetCurrentSongTitle();
					popup.pamphletType = Pamphlet.PampletType.Music;
					popup.Size = new Size(400, 200);
					popup.StartPosition = FormStartPosition.CenterScreen;
					popup.Show();
				}
			}
			catch { }
		}

		public static void MouseLeave()
		{
			if (popup != null)
			{
				popup.Close();
				popup.Dispose();
			}
		}

		private static string GetDisplayText()
		{
			string displayText;

			if (WinampLib.GetPlaybackStatus() == 1)
			{
				displayText = WinampLib.GetCurrentSongTitle();
				string[] infos = displayText.Split('|');

				displayText = infos[displayInfo];

				if (displayInfo == 2)
					displayInfo = 0;
				else
					displayInfo++;
			}
			else
				displayText = "No track playing...";

			return displayText;
		}
	}
}

The info you want to pass back to Kiosk should be placed as the static Status string. StartPamphlet() must also be included as this is how Kiosk tells the pamphlet to start doing its thing. I'll also be including a StopPamphlet() method as well. MouseOver(), MouseClick() are the standard mouse interactive methods. UpdatePamphlet() is used to tell Kiosk the pamphlet needs to be updated. I hope this gets some programmers interested. I'm sure there'll be demand for an iTunes pamphlets but without it being installed here, I don't think I'll be able to get to that one myself.

More to come soon!

[janux]

Kiosk is for linux?

this image is ubuntu linux + tango icons + gnome-panel modified start-here.png

[Sranshaft]

Kiosk is for linux?

this image is ubuntu linux + tango icons + gnome-panel modified start-here.png

No, Kiosk is for Windows. I'm just a big fan of Gnome.

Update!

I've been able to include pamphlets for Windows Media Player and iTunes. I haven't installed iTunes so testing can't be completed just yet but the coding is sound and should work without any errors. I'll need someone to test it thoroughly though. If anyone would like to give it a shot drop us a PM.

Public beta testing should begin next week. I've been working some long hours and haven't had much time getting things set up on the details customization front. Things are still hard-coded but that should be remedied before then.