AlienFX Pidgin + Winamp plugin

does the zone work for alienware M15x? im having a hard time config the thing to it

 

Sorry that I didn't post for all this time. I'm currently very busy with other stuff, and can not develop this plugin further at the moment. Maybe I find some freetime and can make it a little bit more stable. The only place where it is currently crashing for me, is when I shut down winamp. Unfortunately its very hard to find the problem, as the Debugger crashes too if I'm trying to debug the crash ...

If there is someone in this community that wants to continue on the developement of this plugin and can do c++ I might think about releasing the source code under some sort of opensource license.

Other then that, if you have great configs for the frequency setups, I can include built in presents for different music styles. So if you have a config that works great for a certain music style, just post it here. I read that there is a need to be more user friendly, but trust me there is no "make it user friendly"-button in programming. Also sound analysis is a rather hard task.

Other than that, how many of you guys would be willing to donate some money so I continue developing on this plugin? Because I do this in my spare time and I don't get really anything out of it.

Kind Regards
Ingrater

 

I just fixed the plugin. It does no longer crash winamp upon closing it, or closing winamp. Also it automatically detects now which laptop is used, so you don't need to hand edit the vis_alienfx_config.xml any more.

Grab the new version! 3d.benjamin-thaut.de/?p=14

 

installed today this latest version, but it doesn't work. Crashes everytime I choose it from the preference... I'm a M11 R1 user.

 

In theory it should work, but I can not test it on all laptops because I only have a area-51 m15x. So I need a m11x user to help me find out whats going wrong.

 

No crashes whatsoever when exiting now, but it still doesn't light up while the music is playing..when I'm fiddling with the AlienFX controller by disabling AlienFX Events, clicking Go Dark etc. it blinks for a few seconds then it just stops lighting completely. I have a M11x R2 btw.

 

Do you have setup the frequencies and zones? There is a example config in the readme file.

 

Ingrater, thanks for this Plugin it is awesome!! So now that you have fixed it I guess your time is free to do the CPU/GPU Temp AlienFX color change!! Jking!

 

Well as long as it still crashes for some people it is not fixed ;-)
Does it work for you?

 

Sorry guys, still having problems....Where exactly do you put the Model number within the "alienfx_vis_config" file?. Can you post or PM an example, Many thanks,

Dave.

 

Doesn't work on M11x R2.........
Tried different config and nothing happens

 

Can someone PM the link to this sweet little add on. My m17x gets here next week and I'd like this very much!

 

I'm taking a C++ course right now in University. Maybe you just forgot to add a Semicolon somewhere( ";" )?
...It happens to the best of us

 

The crashing upon close doesnt bother me that much so im just gonna leave this version for now. Mybe the only thing left improving is that you make an installer for it.

 

Where do I get this plugin?

 

In the newest plugin version you don't need to put a model versio any more, it auto detects your type of laptop.
See the first post of this topic for download info.
If any of the m11x users would be willing to help me fix the issue, please send me a pm.

@unhip_crayon
it can't be a missing ; because this would cause the sourcecode to not compile

 

Great.. It works for me for a little bit of time.. Just a few minutes, after that didn't works.. How to solve this problem bro?

 

Hi Ingrater!

I'm a crazy multi-language programmer. I'm trying to play with AlienFX from Javascript with JSCtypes project from Mozilla.

I've something barelly working on my M11X R1.
I worked with Alien FX Lite source code to get the protocol and your pidgin source too.
But I have some problem (as Alien FX Lite developper have) around ReadFile on windows. It always fails on windows.
Do you have any idea ?

And it would be totally awesome if you release your source code

 

I'm not going to release the source publicly yet because it is pretty messy, but if you contact me and send me your mail address I will send you the source. (Unfortunately I can not send you PMs here...)

Regards Ingrater

 

I don't see how to send a PM with this forum?!
But here is my mail:

Thanks for sharing

And about ReadFile failing, you didn't met this bug ?

 

+1 rep my friend!
Wow, I did more reading on this thread than any other, ever! LOL. Great project Inrater, I had a lot of problems getting the download to work, but finally it did, and it works great! And thanks Lord Zath for being the guinea pig for us. This is the coolest customization ever.

 

no problem. It was pretty cool having someone from Germany take over my computer!

 

Hey Everyone.

I had a great deal of trouble figuring out how to setup the winamp plugin for my alienware laptop. The light kit seems to be very sensitive to this kind of thing and through trial and error I got it to work. While the read me document in the fx plugin download was helpful. It still left me cursing and frustrated when things went wrong.

So I created a video tutorial as well and a supporting blog entry with some information not talked about in the Read me file. I hope some one can benefit from my hard work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3WW3NOLdV4

*see link in description for full info

 

@Ochameau
Could it be that you are trying to read 9 bytes from the device? All new Alienfx devices only answer with 8 bytes.

@Others:
Glad you like it!

 

No, I'm already reading 8 bytes
In fact, when I try to read more it blocks, but when I try to read 8 or less, the readfile function just fails immediatly.

Did you get my mail address ?
And don't worry if you code is not perfect, I'm used to read a lot of code

 

This hapends to me too. After a few minutes, the lights stops, and the only way to enable again is putting AlienFX in dark mode (switching between dark and normal config).
Model: Alienware M11XR2
Operating System: Windows 7 Home Premium
Winamp Version: 5.601
What you did that caused the crash: No crash occurred
How the crash effected the plugin (does it still work?): Shutdown or freeze the lights. Switching between dark and normal mode of AlienFX fix this (for a while).

 

having same issue as bigwavemx....would be cool if we could get this to stable
mx11r2 i5

 

Hello,

I've downloaded plugin, installed following instructions, but unfortunately, the plugin doesn't work, just nothing happens, my AlienFX shows the actual theme. The plugin is possible to activate and configure, but the AlienFX lights are not flashing. Winamp's version is 5,6 and my system's specs are in my sign.

I would be very grateful if you could help me to make it working.

Thank you in advance,

Cheers

 

I've just tried it with the other version of winamp, it is actually the same, 5.6, but the previous was the cracked one. May be because of that thing this plugin was inactive. Now everything is working perfectly.

Thanks for this stuff, and +1000rep

PEACE

 

m11xr2 user here all working fine however it cannot be used with sds audio soundbox
i even selected sds in the winamp as soundcard but no luck so if you have the sds software installed , you have to set your speakers as default playback dvice for the pluggin to work , wish blows cause sds sounds sooo goood!

 

m11x r1 user.. help pls.. I followed all the instructions on the "read me". Tried reinstalling winamp.. also tried to install different versions of it but to no avail.. I keep getting...

" Alien Device not found. Plugin not active!"

I got the latest version of the plugin.. when I click start nothing happen and winamp freeze when i click end

 

I unforunately don't have a m11r2 to test this. I would need a volenteer to help me testing.

 

It works on my m11xr1. I dunno about my r2, since the the project never appealed to me enough

 

can you please pm me your settings? i dont use sds soundbox and still working intermidatly

 

I really like this idea, but the only thing I would improve is transitions. We can have the AlienFX fade from one color to another, why not have it have different levels of that color instead of just a solid color. for instance no music playing - black...beat picks up mid way - smokey grey.... bass hits hard - white....and different variations of this (black -> dark blue -> aqua - etc). Also add a more interesting to look at UI for selecting colors. An example would be like that of
Color Picker .com

I'm a web developer....I can help out in some programming but when you start going into C++ you loose me. I'll help out where I can, like the project.

 

hi i was using Pidgin's alienfx for awhile ! and got some decent settings now ..
but i was wondering if i can use both winamp's milk visual and alienfx at the same time ?

And if possible can the author working on optimize the CPU's usage ?
whenever i start up the alienfx plugin it pumped my winamp usage from 1% to 20-25% immediately .. i think it wont take that much power to do it, isnt that right ?

Thanks

EDIT :
I found the solution ! lolz its pretty funny actually...
open up the config menu of alienfx winamp's plugin and press "show frequency analysis" !
then close the config menu and make sure you wont close this "AlienFX Beat detection"
now CPU's usage = 0% -> 1%
__________________
m17x QX9300@3,2Ghz,8GB@1333-777,SLI-GTX280m,1200p,1TB-momentus-7200.4

 

any nice ready configuration xml files to try?

i tried on R2. it seems to work. tested this very fast. however i see the cpu fan running fast when using winamp now on.

edit: it seems that only one zone works. if i add more zone only the first one works.. and touchpad, touchpanel and alienhead dont seem to work

 

I tried it on my m11x R2

It runs for 15-30 seconds then goes dark, as suggested above toggling "Go Dark" will fix it but again only for like 15-30 seconds.

I'm more then willing to let you use my R2 as test dummy, PM me you can remote in whenever.

EDIT: By the way, thanks for doing this, this is an amazing idea and you've clearly put a lot of work into it.

EDIT again: It seems making any change in the AlienFX Control Centre will have the same effect as toggling "Go Dark", giving it another half minute of workin

 

Awesome plugin Ingrater!

I downloaded it this week and started played around with the lights on all of my music..

I also tried what others had suggested and configured winamp to 'line-in' and ran it in the background while playing games.....very neat effects...

I do have some suggestions and found some bugs:

Bugs:
1: Issue with saving the zone settings xml file.
it appears that the 8th zone settings gets written into the 7th zone on save/shutdown. Requires reconfiguring of this zone on each startup.

2: A scroll bar on the zone list box would help select zones when you got a lot of zones (such as 8).

Suggestions:
1: Having some form of base colour to change back to instead of just turning the zone's LEDs on & off. (either by zone or some global setting)
This would help a lot when trying to type while the listening to music or playing a game in low light conditions.
Note: using 'black/off' as a colour would then be a valid option.

2: Being able to select the same LEDs in multiple zones and/or apply the same band(s) to multiple zone.

Note: the reason for this is to be able to assign multiple bands/colours to the same LEDS..
For example: if you want bands 1-4 assign to the speakers, however, you also want each band to have its own colour.
You would then create a zone for each band with a different colour then assign the L/R speaker LEDs to all of the zones....
You could then take this one step further and sum the RGB values used in each zone for a common LED.. so if the zones used Green and Red, the end result when they are all active would create 255/0/255 = yellow

Note 2: If you decide to go this route, then I would also suggest increasing the maximum number zones to something much greater than 8.

There's my two cents worth.

PS: are you planning on making your project open source?


JR

 

I got this to work OK, but after shutting down Winamp my systems goes dark and I have to go into Command Center and reapply my AlienFX theme every single time to get my lighting turned back on again. What a pain in the rump. Is this normal? (If so, then it's not really worth the effort to me.)

 

yeah so far that's what you need to do. I've gotten into the habit of hitting fn+f2 (I think it's F2 - Alienfx on/off button) twice after closing Winamp. That restarts the lights.

 

i just got my brand new alienware m15x. trying hard to get this to work. i put all the files in the correct places. when i start the plugin winamp freezes and i cant do anything but close it out. any suggestions?

 

On my R2 it's fn+f11. Thanks for the tip! I will give that a try. +1 rep.

EDIT: Yep, that works good, Lord Zath. Thanks again.

 

yeah it's F11 on my R1 as well. Couldn't remember from work!

 

anyone know why winamp is freezing when i try to start the plugin?

 

I remember reading somewhere that an outdated or corrupt flash player installation might cause Winamp to freeze using this plug-in. I cannot remember where I read it. Try downloading the latest version of flash here and see if that helps.

 

tried it. no luck :/

 

^^ make sure to Open the README file with notepad and read everything.
BTW nice work and thank you for the effort Ingrater and Lord_Zath. If any testing is needed i'm willing to help for now i only have the m17x R1.

 

deleted winamp and tried it all over from scratch. still freezing

 

trying to get this to work on my M11X R2, what zones should i set up? could some one show me their config if they have gotten it working?

I can get into the config and see the frequency analysis, i just have not set up any zones because i am not sure what they are..

Thanks