LCDInfo.com

Hi all, i've been working on an MSN plugin for the past few days, and I think it's ready to release as an early alpha version

What it does is show your own contact information (status, nick, passport), and of contacts who are signed in.

Variables are as follows:
MSN.Nick: Your own nickname
MSN.Passport: Your passport account
MSN.Status: Your status (in at most 3 characters: 'On', 'Off', 'Awy', 'BRB', etc)
MSN.StatusLong: Your status (in words: 'Online', 'Offline', 'Away', 'Be right back', etc)
MSN.StatusIcon: An icon (by default: 8x8, but can be edited) that represents your status

MSN.NickX: Nickname for contact #X
MSN.PassportX: Passport account for contact #X
MSN.StatusX: Status in 3 characters for contact #X
MSN.StatusLongX: Status in words for contact #X
MSN.StatusIconX: Status icon for contact #X

By default the maximum of X is 20, but by editing NUMSHOWNCONTACTS in the msn.cpp source and recompiling, you can modify this number.

Well, a picture says more than a thousand words i guess, so here it is:

(this picture might suggest that people who are 'online' get to the top of the list, but it's really just coincidence)

And another one after some remodeling:


Version 0.2:
Plugin and necessary files
Source (you'll need the sdk)

Version 0.1:
Plugin and necessary files
Source (you'll need the sdk)

And a sample .xml screen is available here (for 128x64 lcd, but should work on any)

That being said, there are a couple of remarks:
First of all, you need the 'msn' folder included in msn_plugin.rar, and you need to put it in the lcdinfo folder. If you just extract the entire .rar in the lcdinfo folder everything should work fine.
Second of all, you need to have Windows Messenger (yes, that's right, the one included with winXP). You don't need to use or even run it, it just needs to be installed.
Third (not *really* necessary, but highly recommended), put the contacts you want to have on your LCD in the sortorder file in the msn folder. The plugin will make sure that if your 'important' contacts are signed in, they will be at the top of the contact list, so that they're visible when there are more contacts signed in than the number of contacts that fit on the LCD.

Remember that it's still in early alpha and it might not be bug free (actually i'm pretty sure of that), but it seems to work fine.
Let me know what you think

-edit 18 nov-
modified the plugin so that it only requests the full contact list when the user signs in

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If it ain't broken, fix it 'till it is!

I wish I could find a way to spend less time at work, and still have somebody hand me a cheque every two weeks!

I will have to wait for the weekend to give this one a shot. Looks good for an early alpha release.

Thanks.

That's some great stuff you did Remboooo, keep up the good work!
Ziet er goed uit kerel

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My Plexeon-Insane LCD!-Or this one!-LCDinfo-LCDStudio

Nice work! You mixed up the download links though... Plugin link leads to source and vice-versa

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- Rexxie

Lol, indeed... what's up with me and those darn links Well, fixed that.
There seem to be some bugs left, but I can't really pin them down. Sometimes when you get logged out and log in again, it fails to show your contacts, and I've even seen a crash, but most of the time everything works fine... weird :/

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If it ain't broken, fix it 'till it is!

Yay, another update. I think I found the source of the crashes, I forgot to use SUCCEEDED() on every single msn query and only continuing if it returned true.. so basically it was just luck that I signed out most of the time in between checks, in stead of in the middle of one
Well, in version 0.2 this is fixed, so I hope this one is stable. I tried signing in and out multiple times, and it seems to work just fine

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If it ain't broken, fix it 'till it is!