gizmod on the Sharp Zaurus
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I sent this message tim.burrell@gmail.com back in January but didn't get any response. I'm reposting here now in the hopes that it will be read.
BTW, great to hear that gizmod is alive, I had started to fear that it was no longer being maintained.
I just discovered gizmod and am loving it on my Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000.
I have an inline audio remote for it and am using gizmod to listen for
the keys and control my audio player of choice, mpd. I have a couple
of questions/comments.
First of all, the python script support is very nice. I've added some
code to it that uses py-libmpdclient to control mpd and it's very
fast. All of my previous efforts to use key-press catchers forced me
to use a shell script or other binary to control mpd (I used mpc).
Having a native library helps a lot for latency.
Is there a way that I could create and package a python library as a
plugin for gizmod? I could send you a diff of what I've done, but
seeing as it basically required the mpdclient package it wouldn't be
very good for those that don't need it.
I've also noticed a problem with the default python script (and
possibly a bug in gizmod). The ALSA module loading correctly doesn't
find the Master channel (as there isn't one in alsamixer) and
correctly finds the PCM channel. However, volume changes do nothing.
If I comment out the attempt to load the plugin for the Master channel
it works fine. It seems if the alsa plugin fails to load once, further
loads don't work.
Lastly, is there a plugin for listening for switch events for gizmod
yet? Currently some of the hardware devices on my Zaurus send switch
events through the input system and another program listens for them
and runs shell scripts to handle them. This is ok, but if I could
write some python and have gizmod run it it could lower the latency of
handling these switched quite a bit. If there isn't a current module
I'll try to look at creating one.
Hey Justin,
So sorry I didn't get back to you. I went through a really busy period there and had to let gizmod slip by the wayside for a bit.
As for the py-libmpdclient stuff... I'm pretty sure with G3 all you should need to do is make sure py-libmpdclient is installed and ready to be used like any other python extension. Then in the config script(s) just import py-libmpdclient or whatever you need to do to make use of it. I'm not really sure what this mpd stuff is all about so if you can supply some more details on it, I'm sure we can come up with a solution.
The great thing about G3 is since the scripts are all modularized now it should be really easy to create a separate mpd script that does everything you want. There might even be others interested in such a thing you never know!
I've completely rewritten the way gizmod handles Alsa in G3, and I'm pretty confident that it'll correctly find the right mixers now.
About the switches -- again I think I need more info... when you run gizmod in debug mode, does it print out any info on these switches?
At any rate, try upgrading to the latest gizmod and let me know the new version fares. And
... it helps if I finish my sentences. And let me know as much as you can about the switches, and the mpd stuff.