I was using the mx-3000 with a template rcc put together by the guys who did our home theater room. The coding was a mess, layouts were poorly organized and the visuals left something to be desired.... (see samples of our screens BEFORE).
My brother and I decided to come up with a new navigation method for the remote along with a theme - and then rewrote most of the macros. Once we got into the software suite we realized we could do some pretty cool stuff. Being that we're both big mac fans - we kept realizing that apple had solved simple navigation issues with their dock in OSX.
Originally the screens looked like Tiger, but we saw some pre-leopard screen shots and decided to adapt them. All of the artwork/menus were created mostly from scratch. While we borrowed lots of ideas visually - the only images that we used were the icons in the "dock" and video games screen. All the rest was drawn in illustrator. (oh and apple's osx wallpaper)
Key features of the programming:
- All buttons have an "after" button that gives visual feedback when being pressed
- The remote knows what device control screen you are on, and what activity you are doing - It shows this using a white arrow under the device that is active
- When a device is active, that icon in the dock becomes a direct jump to that devices controls while other icons perform an activity switch
- Our room has 2 tv's - 1 projector and 1 plasma (this had to work into it)
- We plan to add a battery meter in the top left and may alter the activity icons so t that the one in use attracts more attention
- Power Off button on every screen (hold for 3 seconds to shut off entire room) - tap is ignored
- Can change activity from every screen
- Sim2 projector and video game selector switch do not have discreet power commands, remote now handles this. It is now impossible to accidentally turn off the projector (which used to cause 5min cool down wait time)
Before
[Home (Step 1), Activity Choice (Step 2), Cable Remote]
(How can you professionally deliver this screen to a client? Blank buttons without function on the screen for no reason)
After
[Home, Step 2 doesn't exist]
(This is what the lights screen looks like if you are currently playing video games. Pressing mario will jump right to the video game selector, while pressing any other device will switch the room into that mode)
Last edited by bruck
on December 5, 2007 13:50.