Refresh my memory -Pronto

[SiliGoose]

What do I need to do to make a panel the "home" panel? That is, the panel that shows up when I pick up my Pronto?

I know the answer is super simple but I have totally forgotten. I guess I did it once when I first designed my .ccf and never looked back.

Thanks in advance,




-Sili

[SiliGoose]

Anyone?




-Sili

[Andrew Pratt]

Sorry missed this post. All you need to do to make a panel the home panel is to place it under the Home device. the first panel under this "device" will be the panel you see first when you goto the home screen. If you like send me your CCF and I'll fix it for you.

[SiliGoose]

Oh! Where's my brain?

I don't know why but I thought there was a setting that had to be toggled. That's much easier!

Thanks, Andrew.




-Sili

[SiliGoose]

Andrew,

Would you be willing to critique my .ccf if I sent it your way?? It's a bit disjointed and I'm not really happy with it.
I'd like some outside opinion, if you don't mind.

Actually, that might be a pretty cool thread idea. We could all "share" our .ccf's and talk about what we like and dislike. Too bad we can't upload them to HTG (Lex, is that possible?).




-Sili

[Andrew Pratt]

Sure send it my way. If anyone wants to share their CCF's just email it to me and I'll host if for you. Mines available on my website if anyone want's to view it. Also IMO the best thing about my CCF is the use of tabs and maing it task based...ie "watch TV" or "listen to CD" etc vs device based.

[SiliGoose]

Ok...I'm sending it off.

I took a look at you .ccf. I'm so unhappy with mine I might just copy yours.




-Sili

[Andrew Pratt]

I took a quick look though yours camp and its got promise but I can see why you're unhappy with it. For starters you're not using the marco side of the pronto at all. I'd move at least some of the "devices" over onto that side which would shorten the real device list. For example the power panel and sound should be under macro. Also I'd add tabs to all devices since its faster to access panels with tabs then the scroll arrows. And thirdly I'd try my tabs at the top vs those at the bottom..I prefer mine on top but different strokes as they say

[SiliGoose]

Yea, I really like your tabs at the top. I think I might "steal' those.

Explain the macro thing to me. I've seen panels placed there in other .ccf's before. I've also seen lots of panels with names in brackets, like: [sony] -what is that? -and what's the benefit of putting a panel in the macro area? I don't get it.




-Sili

[Andrew Pratt]

Camp there are basically three zones that you can place panels in the pronto's namely Home, Macro and Device. You can mix and match anyway you see fit and its really a personal choice where you put your panels but I've found that IMO the easiest layout is to place all your device panels under Device and leave all the extra's under macro. Things like power panels, Lighting, music etc should all be placed under macro rather then clutter up the device menu. One of the benefits for us pronto owners is that since we lack a true back jump placing the extra's in the macro side gives us a pseudo back function since pressing the device button from within the macro side will jump you back to the last panel you were on...so lets say you had remote lighting on the macro side you could theoretically be watching a DVD with the DVD players panel visible and simply press the marco tab to open that list and select lighting. Now when you are done its simply a matter of selecting device and you'll be taken back to the DVD panel you were just at. The other benefit is that it can shorten the number of devices you have to scroll though. This isn't a problem if you only have a few devices but if you have enough that the devices list has to be scrolled it can be a pain to scroll though the list to get to the desired device.

The [] brakets around panels means that its a hidden panel. There's a number of reasons why you'd want to hide panels with the two most common being to hide a dummy panel (IR codes, device template etc) and the second is if you're using tabs. If you hide all the panels under a device the up and down scroll arrows on the pronto will disappear which cleans up the interface. If you have tabs to jump to the various pages you don't need the scroll arrows anyway and there may be pages you don't want your users to see. Often people will have a single panel in under their devices that has a list of all the IR functions available to them. This panel is likely made up a lots of small buttons with long discriptive names so the result isn't pretty. All the other buttons under that device then simply alias to that IR panel. The advantage here is that if you swap out that device its a simple matter of inserting new codes onto one page vs many pages (esp if other devices use those same codes)


As for stealing my tabs the easiest way to do that is to download my replacement gallery file and over write the existing gallery.ccf file that should be under your pronto folder (if you are using pronto edit 4.0 make sure you replace the gallery file under the T1000 and T2000 but not the 6000 one (since that one is colour)

[SiliGoose]

Andrew,

Thanks a ton for the tips and info. I spend last weekend totally re-working my .ccf (based on your gallery). So far, it's looking great. MUCH more streamlined. I'm in trouble shooting mode right now.

Next, I'm going to tackle the Super Nudelist. I just hope my European RU890 has enough memory to store all my discs!

Do you have or have you used a color Pronto? What's your opinion of it? I'd really like to add one to my "collection" in the next year or so. Is the Marantz version better in any way?




-Sili

[Andrew Pratt]

I haven't used any of the colour models yet but I've started programming one now and its looking pretty cool. They're still pricey though so if I were to move on from my pronto it would likely be to a marantz 5200 to gain the cursor control. Be aware though that supernudelist isn't suppporting marantz 5200 or 9200 yet.

Your pronto has tons of memory for nudelist...I've got something like 280 CD's in mine and I've still got room to spare.

[SiliGoose]

Be aware though that supernudelist isn't suppporting marantz 5200 or 9200 yet.

Bummer. You could still do it manually though, I guess.




-Sili

[SiliGoose]

Ok...so I downloaded Super Nudelist and don't know what to do. Windows pop up without explaination. It would be fair to say this isn't a very intuitive application.

I'm getting errors without explaination as well. No help file, nothing. The "getting started" section on their website doesn't help either. Can you recommend a good starting point?




-Sili

[Andrew Pratt]

I had the same thoughts when I first downloaded supernudelist myself..ie banged head repeatedly against the wall Its not that bad to set up though once you have it figured out. Which CD changer are you using? Reason I ask is that in order to get Sony's to work properly you need to do some creative programming to make sure its in the proper mode prior to selecting a CD...ie if its in single disc mode selelcting 10 will jump to track 10...if you're in multi disc mode selecting 10 will jump you to disc 10 not track 10. I figured out away around this that you can copy from my CCF if you need it. Actually if you're using a Sony just copy over my whole CD device and use it to build the supernudelist from.

Anyway back to SNL basically what you need to do is map the buttons that it requires such as the number pad and enter etc. You will also need to create a list and then add artist names to it. Once you've added an artist you can add and CD from that artist to that artist name and assign it the CD number. You should also be able to adjust how these are all displayed. For example "The Beatles" maybe better under the letter "B" then under "T" this is controled under the sorting tab. You can also group CD's under one heading if its easier then remembering their names. For exmaple I have a generic artist named Dance that I have a few discs under, same goes for Jazz. The nice thing about SNL though is that nothing is set in stone so if you want to edit that list you can do so pretty quickly. The harddest part is getting the device set up so it knows where all the buttons are and in what order it needs to press them...this is where my CD device can come in handy since some of them are already defined for you and you can look at the macros that are assigned to each CD to see what's happening within SNL when it generates the output file. For now though I HIGHLY recomend you back up your original CCF and use a back up copy to test SNL with. I like to zip my CCF so that I know it won't get corrupted at some point and they are easy to unzip should I need it again...trust me its saved my bacon a few times already :roll: