Author Topic: Custom Plugin Design (Read 10587 times)

MrAJP · « **on:** October 23, 2012, 03:01:49 PM »

I've been very happy with the VoxCommando application and can see some potential applications. I have an IR transmitter that I would like to integrate into VC using a custom plugin, but can't find any documentation or reference on how to create a plugin. Can you direct me to where I can find this info?

jitterjames · « **Reply #1 on:** October 23, 2012, 10:07:15 PM »

Hi MRAJP. Welcome.

I will try to prepare something for you tomorrow. If you want to develop a plugin for VC you will need to use visual studio and c# ( at least that is how I have been doing it) but you can also communicate with VC quite easily by sending udp messages from another program. Please let me know what you prefer.

I have an ir transceiver and I use it in combination with eventghost and VC. It would be great though to have the option of accessing the remote directly in VC by means of a plugin.

MrAJP · « **Reply #2 on:** October 23, 2012, 10:45:14 PM »

Thanks jitterjames. I have a PhidgetIR sensor that I've used in the past with LabVIEW to control my cable box. At the time when I did the integration, EventGhost didn't have support with that module. I haven't checked if that has changed. I was going to write a program in VB.net to handle the sending of commands from your program. A plugin seems like the best place to start. A c# example would be great. I can convert it over to vb.net for my needs.

I've learned a hard lesson about the TV though. VC can't hear me when it's on!

Here is a link to the IR module:
http://www.phidgets.com/products.php?category=0&product_id=1055_0

Kalle · « **Reply #3 on:** October 24, 2012, 01:54:38 AM »

Quote

Here is a link to the IR module:
http://www.phidgets.com/products.php?category=0&product_id=1055_0

Wow, this device is expensive and has no external emitter output jack.
You can use a USB-UIRT http://www.usbuirt.com/overview.htm in conjunction with EventGhost and VC (for this device is a driver in eventghost available).

A other good solution to control IR and RF (315MHz US/433MHz EU) with VC is the HALi controller, you can found more info here: http://lifetek.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?tid=13&pid=15#pid15

MrAJP · « **Reply #4 on:** October 24, 2012, 09:33:30 AM »

Thanks Kalle. It's something to keep in mind if I need to get another controller. For now, I plan on utilizing my existing hardware as it's currently sitting in a box.

jitterjames · « **Reply #5 on:** October 24, 2012, 04:06:25 PM »

already have = free = cheaper than the usb uirt!

I also like the SDK they provide for this little puppy. It is too bad it is not a little bit cheaper though... it costs twice as much as a Raspberry Pi!

OK, anyway...

Here's a sample plugin to take a look at.

If you have any questions, I am happy to help. You can skype me if you want. My username is as you would expect!

MrAJP · « **Reply #6 on:** October 24, 2012, 09:45:17 PM »

Agreed! I too wish their modules were a bit cheaper.

Thanks for the SDK! I was able to convert it over to VB.net without issue, as I can never seem to get used to C# (I know, I'm in the minority).

Now to get to work! I'll post here once I've made some headway.

jitterjames · « **Reply #7 on:** October 24, 2012, 10:03:51 PM »

Great. If the VB version works, please post a copy here in case someone else wants to start from that point.

TIA

MrAJP · « **Reply #8 on:** October 24, 2012, 11:11:39 PM »

Attached is the project in VB.net.

I utilized the free SharpDevelop to make the change:
http://www.icsharpcode.net/opensource/sd/

jitterjames · « **Reply #9 on:** October 25, 2012, 12:21:24 PM »

Nice. Thanks.

paulbeauvais · « **Reply #10 on:** February 12, 2016, 01:05:09 PM »

Hello All,

I have a plug in question. I am using the sample plugin template you have provided above. For a first test, I just complied it and added it to the plugins directory (inside a sub directory called SamplePlugin). I added an icon from a different plugin just for testing.

VoxCommando can see the new plugin called SamplePluging, and let's me enable it (it is enabled by default), however when loading the plugin I get an error. "Error Loading Plugin:" {path to plugin}

From the Log:

2/12/2016 11:49:11 AM   131   found dll: C:\VoxCommndo\Plugins\SamplePlugin\PluginInterface.dll
2/12/2016 11:49:11 AM   133   Plugin not selected in options: PluginInterface
2/12/2016 11:49:11 AM   133   found dll: C:\VoxCommndo\Plugins\SamplePlugin\SamplePlugin.dll
2/12/2016 11:49:11 AM   135   Loading: SamplePlugin
2/12/2016 11:49:11 AM   141   Error loading plugin: C:\VoxCommndo\Plugins\SamplePlugin\SamplePlugin.dll
System.InvalidCastException: Unable to cast object of type 'vcPlugin.Plugin' to type 'PluginInterface.IPlugin'.
at VoxCommando.PluginServices.AddPlugin(String FileName)
2/12/2016 11:49:11 AM   141   [error] Error loading plugin: C:\VoxCommndo\Plugins\SamplePlugin\SamplePlugin.dll

This should be a fairly easy error to trace, but I cannot see where the cast is taking place. I tried this in framework 3.5 and 4.0

the other files in the plugins\SamplePlugin folder are:
icon.png
pluginInterface.dll
SamplePlugin.dll
SamplePlugin.pdb
test

Any ideas or help would be appreciated.

nime5ter · « **Reply #11 on:** February 12, 2016, 01:37:23 PM »

Quote from: paulbeauvais on February 12, 2016, 01:05:09 PM

This should be a fairly easy error to trace, but I cannot see where the cast is taking place. I tried this in framework 3.5 and 4.0

In his post the other day, among other things James wrote:

Quote

I also recommend you reference the new PluginInterface.dll (which you can find in the main VC folder after installing) and update your plugin project to use .Net 4.5.1 or later

Have you tried that advice yet?

paulbeauvais · « **Reply #12 on:** February 12, 2016, 02:05:34 PM »

I did, but for some reason it did not work...I redid it, but also and more importantly I removed the plugininterface.dll from the plugin directory. I am not sure why that was mucking it up, but once I removed it all is well.

thanks.

jitterjames · « **Reply #13 on:** February 12, 2016, 02:24:18 PM »

You generally want to avoid having multiple copies of the same .dll in your VC folders, especially if they are different versions of the same dll.

I don't know if this is what happened but if your plugin referenced the new version of the plugininterface.dll and built your plugin dll but had the old version of the plugininterface.dll in your plugin folder then it would fail because your plugin dll was expecting a newer version of the plugininterface dll.

paulbeauvais · « **Reply #14 on:** February 12, 2016, 04:07:47 PM »

OK. I was able to successfully modify the SamplePlugin (I even switch over to the vb.net version, that is easier for me).

Thank you for all the help. Now I just need to create a simple Plugin for a full test. Is there anything simple anyone needs. If not I will probably just do some date or text manipulations. Then I am back to full home automation stuff.

Thanks again everyone. You guys have been great answering questions. VoxCommando is probably the only application I have paid for in a few years (that means I really like it, so thanks for that too).

Paul

jitterjames · « **Reply #15 on:** February 12, 2016, 04:55:28 PM »

Thanks, that means a lot to me. I know most people don't feel they should pay for software. It's too bad but I understand it. It makes being a small software developer very nearly impossible if you want to earn money doing it.

As for the plugin we'll see if anyone else has any ideas. Probably you won't be asked for anything "simple" though.

You could make a generic serial port plugin. I have not done this since there is usually too much other customization required when using serial so it just makes more sense to use the python plugin but some might still find it useful, and you'd probably learn a lot doing it without it being too difficult or complex.

A plugin for a serial or network audio receiver might be good if you have one other than the Onkyo.

I know there will always be users looking for plugins for any home automation devices or software out there that we don't already have a plugin for (Vera, Hue, X10). But that probably won't be simple.

People are often interested in easier ways to send notifications to their phones etc.

Some people are looking for a plugin for Plex but that will be a lot of work.

Setting up daily timers maybe... That was on my to do list, although I find the GgCal plugin better for that anyway. Some people might want something that works without internet access.

Obviously you should do whatever interests you that isn't too difficult.

nime5ter · « **Reply #16 on:** February 12, 2016, 05:09:31 PM »

James's ideas echo a couple that came to mind for me. Things that users have asked about. (As he said, most folks are not asking for simple things.)

Specifically, with the scheduled timers idea -- apart from being able to specify days of the week for regularly scheduled events (or daily, weekly, whatever), requests for adaptive sunset/sunrise timers have come up before.

Since that's pretty useful for home automation, maybe that's of interest to you.

PegLegTV · « **Reply #17 on:** February 12, 2016, 06:44:48 PM »

I'm not sure how much work these ideas would be, probably not simple like jitterjames and nime5ter said but might be worth looking into

1.) AutoRemote (sending and receiving messages)

2.) pushbullet (sending and receiving Messages)

with both of these we can already send notifications/messages but can not receive them, I'm using a pushbullet plugin with Eventghost to Receiver notifications but would prefer VC to handle it since I already have VC sending notifications

Eventghost has a plugin for Autoremote to send/receive messages but it wasn't reliable for me when I tested it out, so I just use an android tablet to forward the autoremote messages to VC (more on this in a future post

)

paulbeauvais · « **Reply #18 on:** February 13, 2016, 05:20:54 PM »

Thanks for the feedback folks. These are good ideas and I will try to tackle some of them. This is a good way for me to get back into programming (I used to program and was a great vb 6 and vbscript programming in the day, but have been an infrastructure architect for 15 years).

I have one question as I finish my first plugin. Are there any nameing standards you would like me to use. Right now the plugin is called vcWordPress, and commands are VCWordpress.post.

Easy to change if you have a standard.

In the end I decided to mix up something else I am working with, I am creating a plugin that posts to Wordpress. I have it working fine, I am just finishing up the user interface. Right now it just takes a simple title and post, but I have some ideas of how to let it use templates.

Anyone have any interest in this.

jitterjames · « **Reply #19 on:** February 13, 2016, 06:17:54 PM »

Well the name of the plugin determines the prefix for the actions and shorter is always better. You certainly don't need VC at the beginning since that is a bit redundant and we actually have VC.* actions so please drop the VC.

WP would be best unless you think that it might be confused with some other plugin, in which case WordPress is fine. I generally use CamelCase with the first letter also capitalised unless you are using acronyms such as WOL. You can look at all the plugin names I'm already using to get an idea of what I think makes the most sense for a plugin name.

paulbeauvais · « **Reply #20 on:** February 15, 2016, 01:57:43 PM »

So.....

this is my first attempt. it is pretty basic and uploads text to wordpress as a post.

I am working to update it to accept a template file and variables (this will make it much more usable).

Text can just text or be standard html.

Any feedback will be appreciated (even to tell me it sucks :-) )

after this I will work on an FTP plugin so things like photos will be easy to add. (any thoughts on this?).

Paul

jitterjames · « **Reply #21 on:** February 15, 2016, 02:31:03 PM »

It does not want to load for me for some reason.

EDIT: Sorry I forgot to unblock the dlls !

jitterjames · « **Reply #22 on:** February 15, 2016, 02:38:07 PM »

I recommend (again) that you reference the latest version of PluginInterface (version 2.0.4.3) and not version 1.2.0.0

and also that you build your plugin using .Net 4.5.1

Then just upload what goes into the plugin folder, not the other files such as the plugininterface.dll

For some reason you uploaded a .zip which contained some files and another .zip which confused me a bit.

On a different subject which I should have mentioned eariler: Ideally you should not include the options.xml file. When options.xml is not found the plugin should use default values until the user saves options. That way they won't overwrite their settings any time they update the program or plugins.

jitterjames · « **Reply #23 on:** February 15, 2016, 02:38:40 PM »

By the way I'm not personally interested in the WP plugin but an FTP plugin sounds interesting.

jitterjames · « **Reply #24 on:** February 15, 2016, 03:14:40 PM »

The 2nd and 3rd parameter have the same name: "WordPressPost".

The third one accepts an integer but we don't know what integer means what. Maybe 0 is draft and 1 is Post?

# Params is showing as (1-3), and if that is correct then the 2nd and 3rd params themselves should be marked as optional.

If you start VC with the command line parameter -admin then you will be able to edit the actions in the Action Selection Tree.

jitterjames · « **Reply #25 on:** February 15, 2016, 03:20:18 PM »

IT WORKS THOUGH!!!

paulbeauvais · « **Reply #26 on:** February 15, 2016, 04:28:11 PM »

There is a readme.txt that explains the integer parameter. I will clean it up to true and false to publish or not. That was already in the plans.

Adding the PluginInterface.dll was a mistake. It is not needed in that folder. I am targeting the newer dll.

I checked and my target framework is 4.5.1. is that not what you are seeing?

I was not sure what the number of parameters tag was for. There are 3 non-optional parameters.

and last, honestly wordpress in not a particular interest of mine, and probably not to most people who would find this. But it was something I thought I could learn on fairly fast.

I will finish making some changes to this plugin (as listed in the readme.txt) and then move on to the FTP plugin.

I have also been looking at sunset and sunrise plugins. I have a working function that will calculate both based on IP address or a couple of different location methods, (gps co-ordinates, country, and so forth) so that is in the works.

Is there an easy way to make these available and discover-able by the community at large?

Paul

jitterjames · « **Reply #27 on:** February 15, 2016, 06:12:13 PM »

Quote from: paulbeauvais on February 15, 2016, 04:28:11 PM

Adding the PluginInterface.dll was a mistake. It is not needed in that folder. I am targeting the newer dll.

I checked and my target framework is 4.5.1. is that not what you are seeing?Paul

OK good.
No sorry, I can't actually tell, I was just troubleshooting when it did not work but that was because I forgot to "unblock" the dll files.

Quote from: paulbeauvais on February 15, 2016, 04:28:11 PM

I was not sure what the number of parameters tag was for. There are 3 non-optional parameters.

It should be set to 3 then so that users will know that they need to enter 3 params. 1-3 would imply that the first is required and the next two are optional, and it causes the boxes to appear in a different colour.

Quote from: paulbeauvais on February 15, 2016, 04:28:11 PM

Is there an easy way to make these available and discover-able by the community at large?

Not really at the moment other than posting on the forum. If a plugin gets to a state that seems good enough and it's something that more than one or two people might want then I can include it in the standard install.

I could also create a board on the forum just for user made plugins. It has never come up before because no one ever made any!

Thanks.

paulbeauvais · « **Reply #28 on:** February 20, 2016, 04:20:58 AM »

Here is a FTP plugin I am working on (almost production state I think).

it supports both FTP and FTPS

I added some local file manipulation to make it easier.

I am getting a couple of non-events in the history window when events run. I am having trouble tracking these down. If you get around to it I would like to know your thoughts.

This plugin allows the following FTP and FTPS functions:
upload
binary upload
download
binary download
create a directory (both local and remote)
delete a file or directory (both local and remote)
move a file or directory (local)
Rename a file or directory (both local and remote)

Please let me know what you think and suggestions would be great.

Paul

nime5ter · « **Reply #29 on:** February 20, 2016, 12:51:50 PM »

Very cool. I look forward to having time to test this out. Thanks for sharing.

mr.niki · « **Reply #30 on:** February 20, 2016, 03:05:56 PM »

Excellent work. Thank you

DexDeadly · « **Reply #31 on:** March 31, 2016, 02:02:42 AM »

Hello,

Is the attached 2012 Blank as well as the SharpDevelop still the way to go? Is there an updated version for VoxCommando2? I'm looking to try and create something for the Wunderlist API. I saw a thread before where it was discussed using there email and SMTP within voxcommando but I"m not sure if that was due to no API at the time. There is a full API now available here

https://developer.wunderlist.com/documentation

I'm looking to see if I can create something now using this api and the template. Please let me know if there is a newer template to use or not.

jitterjames · « **Reply #32 on:** March 31, 2016, 07:17:41 PM »

Yes you can use it. Just reference the latest plugininterface.dll and switch to .Net 4.5.1

The plugin template itself doesn't have much in it that would need to change.

If I can find time I'll upload a newer one but really there is no need.

jitterjames · « **Reply #33 on:** March 31, 2016, 07:19:38 PM »

Better if you can use c# and visual studio. I can't imagine why anyone would want to use anything else!

DexDeadly · « **Reply #34 on:** April 01, 2016, 12:09:37 AM »

Sounds good, I just need to brush up on those languages. I haven't touched them in years been mostly programming PHP/MySQL pages. I'll go ahead and make sure they poing to .NET 4.1. Hopefully i can get some real time aside to work on this

.

jitterjames · « **Reply #35 on:** April 01, 2016, 09:38:55 AM »

Sorry, I meant 4.5.1

I will correct my post above.

jitterjames · « **Reply #36 on:** April 01, 2016, 10:38:17 AM »

Here is something a bit more recent to start from

nime5ter · « **Reply #37 on:** April 02, 2016, 10:08:04 AM »

We'll try to get some proper documentation up when we have more time. For now, here are a few notes to get you started.
----

NOTE: References here to C:\VCROOT refer always to your VoxCommando folder (i.e., your VC installation).

1. Choose a name for your plugin.

Plugin name should be short. It will be used as the first prefix for all action strings, the plugin folder name, and the dll name.

It must be unique, so please verify that it will not conflict with existing VoxCommando plugin and dll file names.

2. Create an empty folder within your C:\VCROOT\Plugins folder with the same name as your assembly (i.e. your plugin name).

A plugin folder in VoxCommando should ordinarily contain just 3 files*:

actions.xml (see other plugins for examples)
icon.png (your icon should be 45x45 pixels)
yourpluginname.dll

The file options.xml should only be created when the user first clicks "Save Options" and any default values you want to use should normally be set in your code.

*Unless you need to reference additional dlls. First check whether the dll you need to reference is already being used in VC. If so, verify that you are using the same version of that dll, and make sure that "copy local" is set to false so that you are not creating a duplicate copy of that dll when you build.

3. In Visual Studio, name your plugin assembly. Project --> "Application" -->Assembly name is currently "Blank". Change it to name of your plugin.

4. Under Project Properties, set your target framework to .Net 4.5.1. (in the latest template just above, it should be set already to 4.5.1, but double-check.)

Under Post Build, event command line should read:

Code: [Select]

XCOPY "$(TargetDir)*.dll" "C:\VCROOT\plugins\$(TargetName)\" /Y /S

In other words, remove the "REM", which turns that line into a remark, and also edit the line to point to your existing VCROOT path.

5. In your C:\VCROOT folder, the PluginInterface.dll already exists. In Visual Studio, you should make a reference to this dll file. Then right-click that reference and make sure "Copy Local" is set to false. We do not want an extra copy of the same PluginInterface.dll ending up in your plugin folder when you build the project.

DexDeadly · « **Reply #38 on:** April 03, 2016, 01:28:54 PM »

Hello Nime5ter.

Thanks for the run down. Thats very helpful. I have download the 2016 Plugin blank which loads up in the SharpDevelop. I have already started naming things and working on figuring out how exactly I'll need to do this. It has been a very long time since I've touched C#

. However I'm sure I can pick it right up. I'm expecting this to be a challenge, but in a good way. Again I appreciate those notes.