3/15/2013 Plugin: Random Music Player 1.1

[sonic_blue]

[mad_ady]

[KAD]

[sonic_blue]

Thanks KAD for this great plugin!

Although, I'm still curious about whether it's possible to find the value in memory that points to the "next track" that is scheduled to play by WDTV. If we could find this , then it would be a simple case of randomising it in a loop that executes in the background. Then, we wouldn't need wdtvext, ext3-boot, and could retain the original menu functionality.

Do you know if there is a log file, or some way of outputting in real time which shows all parameters and variables that relate to the thread that is currently running when Audio playback is taking place?

I notice that every time you change the playback mode (eg. between loop, shuffle, etc.) it generates a new "next track", so that could be the hook into finding which value needs to be randomised.

[KAD]

the binary dmaosd handles all playback and the osd as well

we can't change this binary
it's closed source
and it's done in MIPS ASM

as for log data
wdlxtv allows enabling dmaosd.log
which will output log data at /tmp/dmaosd.log

so yes, you can see some output, but still can't change the playback behavior

[sonic_blue]

[KAD]

I'm sure that the randomized parameter is handled by dmaosd

as for meta data on screen
I'm sure that could actually be done with wdtvext
wdtvext can display extra data on screen

I'm not sure I'm up to doing it any time soon
but if I get bored, I'll keep it in the back of my mind

[sonic_blue]

[mad_ady]

@sonic_blue: The reason why you can't really poke around in a program's private memory space goes back to the days of DOS. Back then, the memory was unprotected and any program could read and write any memory segment. This was generally fine for single tasking, but as multitasking grew, you would get the precursor of blue screen - the General Protection Fault (Windows 3.1 users will remember them).
Running an OS that guarantees memory protection ensures your program that no other process can tamper with its private memory, so it's less likely to crash because of external causes. Linux being Linux, you can still get a dump of a process memory and read its contents if you want to (Markster's MovieSheets+ wdtvext plugin does this to extract some album art and extra information from DMAOSD), but as far as I know you can't easily overwrite a different process memory space.

To start learning wdtvext plugins you would need to start reading this: http://wiki.wdlxtv.com/DevelopWDTVExtPlugin
Also, you can look through the code of existing plugins here: https://svn.wdlxtv.com/listing.php?repname=wdtvext-plugins

@KAD: How about adding your plugins to svn? Do you have any advantage hosting them on MediaFire?

[KAD]