LCDC: Screen Builder

Screen builder setup.

   Okay! Now we're ready to get working on setting up the display to show stuff. Everything is done in the screen builder section, and you'll be spending most of your time with LCDC here. You setup "screens" here that each represents (in the case of the MX2) 2 lines of data, or up to 2x20 characters on this display.

   For example, one screen could show the date on the top, and the time on the bottom. Basically, you setup a screen to display the information that LCDC has from its plugins, such as Motherboard Monitor 5 temperature/voltage/fan values, or any other data available. You can create just about as many screens as you want, and the display can be configured to show each of these in any order you want.

   Additionally, a transition can selected for each screen; that is, how you want each screen to appear on the LCD - you can make a screen scroll on from the left or right, or fade in, or just simple replace the previous screen without any hoopla. Here, you can also select the FPS rate for that specific screen, either to default to the value you selected in configuration, or to something different. This is useful, as you may want an animated screen, such as winamp's visualization, to have a high FPS, but may not need that high FPS for a static screen like one that just displays MBM5's temperatures.

  The duration of each screen can be set; that is, how long the data is displayed before LCDC moves forward to the next screen. You may also want to exclude the screen from the cycle, in case you only want to access the data on it during a specific event; the group feature allows you to lump together different screens that are related; for example you'll probably need more than one screen to display all the MBM5 data. Both of these features have uses, in relation to Events, which we'll look at a bit later.

   Custom characters relate to the character set you want LCDC to use. Because the MX2 is a character LCD, it cannot display graphics. Therefore, if you want to display something like a winamp visualization, you need a specific character set that has vertical bars. The LCD has a built-in character set but supports up to 8 more user-defined characters, and these sets can be selected here. As an example, you'll need to select the "VerticalBars" custom characters to properly use the Winamp plugin. Matrix Orbital has a nice selection of custom characters (some user created) available for download and use here.

Each line on a screen can be setup individually.

Variable selection is easy in LCDC.

  Additionally, each line on the screen can be aligned left, right or center, and you can set each line to scroll independant of each other, either left or right. You'll need to scroll a line if the data on it exceeds 20 characters in order to see all of it. The "Text" field is where you select what data you want displayed, and this is where it gets interesting.

   All data is accessed by way of variables whose values are supplied by the given plugin or LCDC. For example, to display the date, you would enter the name of the variable that holds the date value into the text field. Since there are a lot of variables available, and since variable names can get long and cryptic, clicking on the diamond button at the end of the text field pops up a window with an easy to use menu interface that you can use to access all the variables available to LCDC.

   Therefore, selecting what data you want to display is *very* easy this way, as you just need to double-click the variable you want to use, and it'll be inserted into the text field. The green field below shows the actual value of the variable. If any of you have done even basic programming or scripting, you'll understand exactly how useful and easy using variables is when you're making screens of data for LCDC. Depending on how many plugins you're using, you'll have quite a few groups of variables to use; each top-level group is usually the group of variables that a specific plugin provides. For example, the MBM5 plugin not only provides temperature, voltage, fan RPM values etc., but also the names that you've assigned to each value in MBM5.

  So, for example, if you wanted one line of a screen to display your case temp and CPU temps (sensors 1 and 2 in MBM5, in this example), the data in the text field would be something like this:

[#$MM5TemNam001]:[#$MM5TemVal001]C [#$MM5TemNam002]:[#$MM5TemVal002]C

Case:26C CPU:40C

   Making screens is pretty much as easy as this. While making a complete set of screens for all the data you want can take a while, you'll take pride in knowing that you've customized the entire display's output to exactly what you want. You can set the order of what screens to display before others in the cycle, and how to display each screen.

Winamp plugin configuration in LCDC.

The Winamp plugin.

  To get into some stuff a bit more interesting, you'll most likely have to configure each plugin in LCDC. Clicking on the gear icon in LCDC's Screen Builder page will bring up a menu of active plugins that can be configured.

   For now, we'll take a look at the winamp plugin. The last two options are of interest to us here; you'll want to make sure that "bar size" is set to 20 for the MX2 LCD as the character width of the LCD is 20; additionally, I've set the plugin status to active only when Winamp is actually playing or on a track. If Winamp's stopped there's not much in the way of visualization to be displayed.

   The last thing you'll have to do for setup is install the Winamp visualization plugin, not the LCDC one, but rather the one that Winamp 2 itself will use. In the "Additional" folder of the directory that you installed LCDC to, there should be a Winamp folder that contains the "LCDC_WA2_Visuals.dll" file; this is the winamp plugin. Copy it to your \Winamp\plugins folder and then select it in Winamp's options and make sure it's active. The winamp visualization plugin sends its data to the LCDC winamp plugin, which then "figures out" which characters need to be displayed for the visualization, and this is the process by which the visualization is displayed, in a nutshell.

   With that done, we can make the screen using the Winamp plugin in very much the same way we made a screen utilizing the MBM5 plugin. The name and group can be anything, but I'd recommend assigning the screen to a group also called Winamp or something similar. To get a good visualization effect, you should set the FPS to 20 or higher. I set the FPS to 25, the maximum, and didn't notice a huge burden on the CPU, and this was on a 1.2GHz T-bird. Not every screen will need a high FPS rate, especially if there's no scrolling or animation/movement, but the nice feature of LCDC is the ability to set the FPS on a per-screen basis, as we're doing here.

   Next, you'll probably not want this screen to be displayed if Winamp isn't active, and to do this, set the "Screen Skip" to "If plugin application is not active", and then select the Winamp plugin in the drop-down menu below. Lastly, you'll need to use custom characters in order for the visualization effects to properly be displayed. Basically, this is needed so that the proper custom characters (in this case, different sized vertical bars) will be available for display.

Setting up a Winamp screen.

Scrolling the title of the track.

Selecting the visualization variable.

  Once that's done, you can select what you want to put on the screen. For me, I wanted the top line to have the title scrolling, while the bottom line displayed a visualization. Finding the proper variable for the winamp title track is pretty with the variable menu, but selecting the scrolling speed can be a little tricky. You don't it to be too fast or too slow, and finding the right rate depends on what you set the FPS rate of the screen to in the above step.

   I found that with a rate of 25fps, a scroll speed of about 1/6th that works great. If you set the FPS to 20, you'll have to adjust the scroll speed to maybe 1/5th or 1/4th. On line two, I selected one of the single line displays. As you can see, if you wanted to, you could use the entire screen, both rows, with one of the two-line visualization options. There, you're done! Now as long as Winamp and its plugin is active, this screen will be displayed in the LCDC cycle for the duration you specified.

Winamp LCDC screen.	Locking LCDC to Winamp's screens.
Picking the right event.	Unlocking LCDC from Winamp's screens when Winamp stops playing.

  One other thing you can do with most of the visualization variables is specify a length. Most of the visualization variables default to 20 characters in length, but you can change the length just by adding a number onto the end of the variable's name, within the square brackets.

   For example, "[#$WA2SpeL11]" is the variable that specifies the left channel single-line spectrum analyzer (rising & falling bars), and it is normally 20 chars long. You can change its length to 10 simply by changing the name from "[#$WA2SpeL11]" to "[#$WA2SpeL1110]". This can be useful if you want to put something else on the same line as the visualization bars.

LCDC: Events

   One thing that a lot of you may want is for LCDC to stay on the Winamp screen(s) while Winamp is playing and skip them while it isn't. We've already seen how skipping the screens can be accomplished by configuring the Winamp plugin to be only active while Winamp is playing, and then configuring the Winamp screen to skip when the plugin isn't active - but how can we make only the Winamp screen be displayed and all others excluded while Winamp is playing? This is easy with the use of the next section in LCDC - Events.

   For this example, create a new event, and name it whatever you want, (something like "Winamp Start"), and for the Event, click the diamond box at the end of field, and then you can use the Event Selector to select the "On Winamp Play" event from the Winamp group. The Event Selector is very much like the variable selector used to insert variables into screen lines, as it cleanly shows every event available for use from LCDC and its plugins. For the "Action" field, again click the diamond on the end to see a menu/list of available actions - in this use the "Dsp > Lock to Group(s)" event, then in the parameters field, enter the name of the group that you assigned your Winamp screen(s) to, something like "Winamp". Basically what this does, is when LCDC detects Winamp is playing a song, it'll only cycle through the screens that have the group name specified in the parameters field.

   We also have to create another event to tell LCDC to return to normal after Winamp stops playing a track - this is also similarly simply. Pick the event "On Winamp Stop" and set the action to "Dsp > Unlock from Group(s)", and this will allow LCDC to go through the normal cycle of screens that you have setup.

   Events also have more basic uses. It used to be that LCDC users would have to create an event that ran upon the LCD/Display initialization, (Sys > On Start) that properly set options such as turning on the Backlight, LineWrap, clearing the screen and configuring other display parameters. However, with the latest versions of LCDC, this is no longer the case as by default LCDC will properly initialize the display by sending these commands without your need to specify them, making things a lot easier. However, this created a small difficulty for me, as I wanted the display to be automatically set to turn its backlight off after 1hr when the LCD was started.

   As there was an action for this ("Dsp>Process Commands" with "BacklightOnOffAfter1Hour" as the parameter), I thought this would be no problem. However, after creating the event and testing it with different lengths of time, I found that this command didn't seem to be executed. What I think was happening was that LCDC was perhaps overriding this command or perhaps just sending its own initialization commands after this event, commands that specified simply to turn the backlight on. While it would have been easy to use the keypad to just turn off the backlight, I am a lazy character. So, here is what I did for my ghetto workaround.

   First, I created an Event based on the "Sys>On Start" event with an action of "Dsp>Go to Selected Screen" and a parameter of "Start Screen". Then, I created a screen named "Start Screen", and just put some title words on there, like "-=Virtual-Hideout=-" or similar; this screen isn't really important, as it's just a way to link to the next event. However, it is important that you exclude this screen from the cycle by unchecking the box to the left of it. Then, I went back to events and created another one named "Start Events", with an event of "Sys>On After Screen", an event parameter of "Start Screen", and an action of "Dsp>Process Commands", with an action parameter of "BacklightOnOffAfter1Hour".

Tell LCDC to goto the "Start Screen"...	... which is excluded from the normal cycle...
... but when run once at the start, triggers "Start Events" to send the right commands.	Turning the Backlight off when LCDC stops.

  What this did was make LCDC immediately go to the "Start Screen" upon starting the LCD, and after the Start Screen cycled to the next screen, the event "Start Events" would detect this, and then process the command to set the backlight to turn off automatically after 1 hour. This is why it's important to exclude the "Start Screen" from the regular cycle - because it's only displayed once, the event to set the backlight to turn off in 1 hour is only executed once as well.

   If the screen were cycled normally, your backlight would never turn off on its own because the "BacklightOnOffAfter1Hour" command would be run each time the screen the displayed, "resetting" the time to 1 hour. As you can see, this is a ghetto workaround, but it works for me. There's probably an easier way, but I just haven't found one.

   One last basic, yet useful event to create is one that processes commands when the LCDC stops. You'll probably want the Backlight to turn off when you stop LCDC or close it, so just create an event using "Sys>On Finish", and set the action to "Dsp>Backlight Off". You can assign multiple event actions for a single event; just create another one with the same triggering event. So if you wanted the LCD to go to an end screen, something that said "Bye bye!" or whatever, *and* wanted the backlight to go off, just create two events, each with the same trigger of "Sys>On Finish", and have one make the LCD go to the end screen while having the other turn the backlight off. Simple enough, eh?

   Just remember not to create events for the same thing whose actions conflict, like turning the backlight on then off because then you may not get what you want. Also, events and actions can both have parameters, and when they do, you'll know because the parameter fields below each of them will not be greyed out when they require input. For example, the event "Sys>On Finish" doesn't need a parameter because it's understood as-is, but the event "Sys>On After Screen" does, because LCDC needs to know *what* screen, by name, you're referring to. Similarly, the "Dsp>Backlight Off" is understood, but "Dsp>Lock to Group(s)" requires input in the parameters field so LCDC will lock to the group you want it to.

LCDC: Overlays and Momentary Screens

   These two features are really subsets of the Events section, but because of their usefulness, they deserve special attention. Overlays can be particularly useful when you have a lot of data/text that needs to be scrolled, but have a title or something that needs to be kept on the same line. For example, in our Winamp screen, you might want to keep the track position or how long a track has been playing for, displayed on the same line as the track title, while the track title scrolls behind it. Doing this requires a little more work, but is not a hard process.

   Firstly, create a new screen, with a name like "Winamp Overlay". In this screen, you will put in the data that you want to stay in position (data that is "overlaid" on top of other data) while the other text and such scrolls behind it. In this case, I've used the track position variable, and have aligned it to the right side. (The extra square brackets just make the output look nice.) Make sure that you exclude this screen from the LCDC cycle by unchecking the box next to it.

   Next, create an Event that causes the overlay to come into use. You want the overlay to apply to the Winamp screen, so select the "Sys>On Before Screen" trigger, and select the name of your Winamp screen for the parameter. Then pick the "Dsp>Overlay Select" action and select the name of your Winamp Overlay screen as its parameter. The last thing you'll have to do is remove the overlay after your Winamp screen has gone by - after all, you don't want the overlay applying to every screen! All this requires is another event that removes the overlay after the Winamp screen.

The overlay screen - make sure it's excluded from the cycle. (Box unchecked)

Putting the Overlay screen in place.

Removing the overlay.

  This simple setup will make a line where the track title scrolls behind the track position, which stays in place at the right end of the line. I am sure that you'll be able to figure out many more useful situations where using Overlay Screens helps a lot.

   The next somewhat special Event is that of momentary screens. Momentary screens are triggered by a certain event, which causes LCDC to switch to a screen you've created, stay on that screen for the duration specified, and then return to the screen that your LCD was displaying before the event was triggered.

   A nice example in the included LCDC software is a volume display; When you change the volume on your system, LCDC will go to a screen that shows the volume status, and then return to the previous screen once you've stopped adjusting the volume, very much like the On-Screen Display of TVs and other devices.

   To accomplish this, you'll need to enable the Multimedia plugin from within LCDC's configuration, and once you've done that, go to the Screen Builder page. Make a screen that will display the volume levels; the levels of the left and right channel are separate values, but if you have them balanced, they'll be the same. You can either use a horizontal bar to depict volume levels, or use a bare percentage value. Then create an event based on the "Mul>On Volume Change" trigger available as part of the Multimedia plugin group, and select the action "Dsp>Momentary Screen" with its parameter set to the name of your volume status screen.

Creating the momentary volume status screen.

Selecting volume value variables. (Say that three times fast!)

Creating the Momentary screen event.

  This is one of the most useful functions of the momentary screen event, but there are others. You could, for example, use a momentary screen to notify you of newly received e-mail, and also create an event that played a *.WAV file at the same time, so this could be useful for an important mail account. (Obviously you would not want to use this on an account that received a lot of spam!)

   Another example would involve the HotKeys plugin; using this, you could assign a keyboard shortcut such as CTRL+ALT+N to display a momentary screen of your choosing; and after this, LCDC would return to the normal cycle on the screen it was previously at.

Volume status screen - from LCDC's virtual display.