User

23.07.2007 21:36:03

I installed the kernel extension on a mac mini and have been having some strange behavior, which may be related, hence the question.

I use it as a media server with viedo_ts fioles on an external disk, controlled by RB and DVDpedia. I have a behavior programmed, that when I hold down play for an extended period in DVDpedia it launches a media file through DVD Player.

This behavior worked fairly well for a while, then of course I started to get the Front Row conflict, when invoking RB. I installed the kernel extension, everything seemed OK for a while, but now occasionally when I hold down play for an extended period of time, DVD Player launches and the screen starts flashing, when I force quite or quit DVD Player it relaunches and keeps looping, till I physically shut the machine down by holding the power button.

Any thoughts on what might be wrong?

Gaurav 

User

23.07.2007 23:12:02

Hello Gaurav,

thanks for your feedback.

I can assure you that this is not related to the kernel extension. As 
a helper for drivers in kernel space, it's not executing, launching 
or controling applications.

Executing, launching and controlling of applications is handled 
entirely by the Remote Buddy application, which resides entirely in 
user space.

Seeing that Play is mapped to "Toggle full screen mode" in DVDpedia 
by default, and toggling fullscreen in pretty much any application 
can give you the impression of a flashing screen, this sounds more 
like a problem with DVDpedia.

Can you give me a step by step description on how to reproduce the 
issue?

Also, under which circumstances you have experienced it (i.e. which 
apps are running - and which state/mode are they in)?

Thanks in advance!

Best regards, 
Felix 

User

24.07.2007 21:06:51

Hi Felix, I hear what you're saying, but I just ran 
through it again with a clean boot.

Running Mac OS X 10.4.10 and at boot time, I load 
remote buddy 1.1, dvd pedia 3.6, yahoo widgets 4.0.3 
x178.

With the Kernel extension installed (ver 1.4.5) and 
when I'm in DVD Pedia full screen mode (play toggles 
me in and out of this mode) when I hold play (custom 
action), I get the issue where it launches DVD Player 
but the screen keeps flashing and no matter how many 
times I quit or force quit dvd player keeps 
relaunching and the movie does not play, I also get an 
error message beep.

With the kernel extension uninstalled, the behavior 
seems to be fine, in that when in full screen mode in 
dvd pedia and I hold down play for a few seconds, it 
launches dvd player and plays the movie, no flashing 
or other issues and when I quit dvd player it all 
behaves normally. Of course I get occasional conflicts 
with front row.

Any help would be appreciated since I need both remote 
buddy and dvd pedia to operate my mac mini as a media 
server for movie watching!

Gaurav 

User

24.07.2007 21:50:02

Hi Gaurav,

rest assured, that the kernel extension is not to blame. But, yes, of 
course there is a difference when you use the kernel extension:

With the kernel extension, Remote Buddy accurately can measure the 
beginning and end of a press of the Play button, so that if you press 
the button for five secs, the associated press and release events 
inside Remote Buddy will also be five seconds from one another, with 
frequent repeat events filling the time inbetween.

Apple's driver, on the other end, does not support any of this. It 
generates a press event *immediately* followed by a release event, so 
no matter how long you press the play button, the application will 
always be told you did it for zero seconds.

The same press of the Play (or Menu) button for 5 seconds will 
generate this (with timestamps):

Kernel extension: 
Press (0.5 s) ... Repeat (0.52s) .. Repeat (0.54s) .. Repeat 
(0.56s) .. .. Release (5.0 s)

Apple driver: 
Press (0.5 s) .. Release (0.5 s) .. completely ignores the remaining 
4.5 seconds of your button press

So, if you chose the wrong settings for your action, it will be 
executed repeatedly for the true duration of the button press with 
the kernel extension - and executed only once with Apple's driver, 
irrespective of how long you press that button.

If you only want your custom action to be executed *once* regardless 
of the length of your button press, be sure to choose the right 
settings in its actors:

- for keyboard actors, set "Operation" to "Single key press on button 
press".

- for AppleScript actors, set "Execute on" to "button press".

If you chose a built-in action and it misbehaves, please let me know.

Hope that helps.

Best regards, 
Felix 

User

24.07.2007 23:23:36

Thanks Felix, is there a way to map a combination of two buttons to a custom behavior so I can avoid this problem all together? Instead of relying on holding down play, could simultaneously pressing play and menu or play and + (whatever, some combination of 2 keys) be mapped to a custom behavior? I couldn't figure out how to do that, let me know if you can suggest this or another work around. Thanks.

Gaurav 

User

25.07.2007 21:01:01

Hello Gaurav,

thanks for asking. Sadly the Apple Remote does not support arbitrary 
button combinations other than those that change their internal ID or 
are related to pairing the remote control. This is a limitation of 
the hardware, not Remote Buddy, so I'm afraid, nothing can be done 
about it.

Best regards, 
Felix