SkypeMCEAnswer.0.4.2

milli260876

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#21

Post by milli260876 » Fri Sep 09, 2011 9:45 am

had to remove v4.1 it kept erroring out in skype. said it cannot communicate? restart app... i had given it permission on first run btw....
Lee

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nxsfan

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#22

Post by nxsfan » Fri Sep 09, 2011 2:38 pm

milli260876 wrote:had to remove v4.1 it kept erroring out in skype. said it cannot communicate? restart app... i had given it permission on first run btw....
How did you see the error message, in the log file? I have had some issues with skype not playing ball in the past. Can you go into skype -> options -> advanced -> permissions and delete skypemceanswer if you see it and then try again.

milli260876

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#23

Post by milli260876 » Sat Sep 10, 2011 9:36 pm

nxsfan wrote:
milli260876 wrote:had to remove v4.1 it kept erroring out in skype. said it cannot communicate? restart app... i had given it permission on first run btw....
How did you see the error message, in the log file? I have had some issues with skype not playing ball in the past. Can you go into skype -> options -> advanced -> permissions and delete skypemceanswer if you see it and then try again.
i'll have another go one day next week bud... will let you know
!!
oh and the problem was in skype.. it just kept throwing a hissy fit hence the removal of mceanswer.. i've just cleared the previous entries. maybe it's because there were 2?? .3 & .4 ??
don't have my netbook atm to do a test call...
Lee

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#24

Post by milli260876 » Sun Sep 11, 2011 11:35 am

Hey Bud, the wife went out for an hour earlier so i had a crack at it...
Works great - but....
non of the remote functions worked for me they just typed in the message window at the bottom of skype.
tbh i can live with that...
Lee

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nxsfan

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#25

Post by nxsfan » Mon Sep 12, 2011 6:10 pm

Hey milli260876. Unless my little window is in the foreground and has focus it can't intercept the remote commands. I spent ages farting around sending win32* commands to give it focus so that it would receive input from the remote but it was to no avail because windows 7 doesn't like applications stealing focus without the user intervention (when you try and grab focus it flashes the window in the taskbar to let them know and they can finish what they are doing before they click on it).

What I ended up doing after a silly amount of time messing around, was simply generating the control window, moving the mouse to a region within that window and then simulating a left click to get focus. It's hacky but it worked great! So why didn't it work for you? Well maybe you clicked on the skype window to maximise the video and hence my window lost focus? Or maybe you have some crazy multimonitor setup and my control window is generated on a different screen to where skype and the mouse pointer is? Hopefully I'll find a cleaner solution down the line.

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#26

Post by milli260876 » Tue Sep 13, 2011 11:24 am

ok mate as long as you keep developing this I'll keep trying it!
Lee

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#27

Post by CojakSilverBack » Mon Jul 16, 2012 7:54 pm

Is this add in still in development? would love to have skype integrated into my media center. Going to try and test this out tonight.

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#28

Post by Rene » Fri Jan 11, 2013 11:03 am

Hi nxsfan,

great work - it's a fantastic addition to Media Center that I happened to stumble upon.

There are some minor issues that I found though, not sure if it's due to Windows 8 Pro that I'm running:

- When someone calls you with a 'special character' (eg é), the program crashes (I can tell from the error logs). Unicode would probably fix it, but latin-2 encoding of strings would be the easy way out :)
- When using Skype 6.x and Windows 8, auto-fullscreen mode doesn't work. Not sure if this is due to Win8 or Skype 6?
- When in a call, pressing any (1, 2 or 3) button on the remote returns to Media Center, but doesn't perform the action (eg on 3, the call isnt' stopped). If I use the keyboard, it works. Not sure if anyone else has had this issue and if it's caused by the remote.
- Finally, I find that toggling video (2) doesn't work properly. The video temporarily is disabled, and then immediately comes back?

Thanks, and let me know if you need help working on the Python code!

- Rene

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nxsfan

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#29

Post by nxsfan » Tue Jan 15, 2013 8:15 pm

Hello Rene,

I explained some of this over on the WindowsExperts forums. SkypeMCEAnswer works well for most people, but the due to the nature of Windows 7 it had to be quite hacky. In order to provide the functionality you see (or don't see in your case!) I had to simulate mouse clicks amongst other things to control window focus, which led to inevitable issues when the user occasionally had odd window stacking or multiple monitors etc.

Due to its success I embarked on a more ambitious project using the then newly released SkypeKit - to make a standalone Skype implementation embedded within media center. I still intended to use Python, serving dynamic MCML like a webserver. SkypeKit was very immature at the time, and poorly documented, but I made some progress. However, then details of Windows 8 came out, first suggesting that Media Center wouldn't be included. It also seemed clear to me that there would be a Metro style Skype application that would probably server our media center needs. So I abandoned SkypeMCEAnswer.

Here we are more than a year later and neither of my assumptions were correct. Media Center still exists and is exactly the same and the Skype Metro plugin is pretty useless if you use media center (or a remote).

When I was actively working on the SkypeKit plugin it seemed like a waste of time patching up my old plugin when the new one would be so good! I knew about the unicode issue and ignored it. I can't support unicode fully without updating MCEPopups, and I don't want to go through the Visual Studio steps to build a Media Center plugin again. However, I can make it so that it maps unicode characters to their closest ascii equivalent (pretty much as you suggested) so I've done that.

As for the numbers on your remote bringing up media center. I don't really understand that. It's fine that they might be generated different keycodes to the ones my overlay is listening for, but then they should be ignored. It seems like the remote control focus is still within media center, but I don't know if that's plausible. In order to help debug the problem I have made a small change to the addin. If you create a file in its root directory called "Output.log" it will be filled with all the stdout generated by the program, including any keycodes the overlay receives. From there maybe we can figure this out.

You can download the updated version here: http://nxsfan.co.uk/MCEPopups/SkypeMCEAnswer.0.4.2.zip

PS. For some reason my Skype is refusing to allow this version of the plugin to connect using its API. I'm pretty sure this is just my computer/skype being stupid but if you experience a similar issue let me know.

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#30

Post by wbroadley » Sun Mar 24, 2013 11:25 pm

What's the current position for Skype Answer and Windows 8?

The Metro App is rubbish as I can't hear it while Media Center is playing. The Skype Desktop app rings in the background but I haven't got integrated to Skype Answer with MCE pop ups yet. Is there a version that will work with Windows 8?

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#31

Post by cameron_bol » Mon Apr 08, 2013 2:47 pm

I'm trying to download via the links but they're not resolving, is the site still up?

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nxsfan

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#32

Post by nxsfan » Tue Apr 16, 2013 11:19 pm

I had let some DNS entries get out of date, but they are resolved now. Can anyone confirm that 0.4.2 is working for them on Windows 8?

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#33

Post by wbroadley » Wed Apr 24, 2013 5:42 pm

I can confirm it's now working for me in Windows 8!

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nxsfan

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#34

Post by nxsfan » Wed Apr 24, 2013 6:03 pm

Excellent! Did you use 0.4.1 or 0.4.2?

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#35

Post by wbroadley » Wed Apr 24, 2013 9:45 pm

0.4.2

yjeep93

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#36

Post by yjeep93 » Thu Aug 08, 2013 7:21 pm

nxsfan wrote:Hello Rene,

Due to its success I embarked on a more ambitious project using the then newly released SkypeKit - to make a standalone Skype implementation embedded within media center. I still intended to use Python, serving dynamic MCML like a webserver. SkypeKit was very immature at the time, and poorly documented, but I made some progress. However, then details of Windows 8 came out, first suggesting that Media Center wouldn't be included. It also seemed clear to me that there would be a Metro style Skype application that would probably server our media center needs. So I abandoned SkypeMCEAnswer.

Here we are more than a year later and neither of my assumptions were correct. Media Center still exists and is exactly the same and the Skype Metro plugin is pretty useless if you use media center (or a remote).
I have spent the last two weeks attempting to switch my HTPC to xbmc, yet at the end of the day, WMC has still shown iteself to be the better option for myself and my family (everything is so much more polished...what can I say). I would LOVE LOVE LOVE the "ambitious project" you're referring to above. Still in the works? Right now I have a shortcut created inside WMC (via media center studio) that launches skype, but i'd prefer a more integrated solution that doesn't involve me getting the keyboard out.

Given how stable WMC is....I can't believe there isn't more development for it. I look at the volumes and volumes of plugins for xbmc, yet WMC is quite limited. Regardless, nice work on what you have done thus far....I hope you keep going!

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#37

Post by costa » Sun Sep 01, 2013 6:57 pm

Hello,

I installed this wonderful plugin on my HTPC with windows 8 and the latest Skype for desktop. All is working smoothly, and the popups are working wonderfully. Yet, I cannot get them to display on top of WMC. I can hear Skype ringing, but no matter what, MCE does not seem to allow, as far as I know, popups to be displayed. If WMC is displayed in a window-with borders-then all is well. But I cannot have WMC be displayed in a window, as it is a full functioning HTPC and the family uses it to watch TV, DVR, etc.

I would appreciate if someone knows of a workaround to have the popups "pop" on top of a full screened WMC.

Thank you.

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#38

Post by foxwood » Sun Sep 01, 2013 9:26 pm

costa wrote:I would appreciate if someone knows of a workaround to have the popups "pop" on top of a full screened WMC.

Thank you.
There's a way to get WMC to generate a WMC popup - I can't remember the details, but I think you connect on a specific port. If I can find it, I'll post a link.

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#39

Post by costa » Mon Sep 02, 2013 12:09 am

I appreciate any help you could provide. Thank you.

foxwood

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#40

Post by foxwood » Mon Sep 02, 2013 3:48 am

costa wrote:I appreciate any help you could provide. Thank you.
Sorry, I misunderstood your question - I though you were looking for a way to get an application that you were writing to generate WMC popups. I don't know of a way that you can change the behavior of some 3rd party application.

Here's a link to a WMC plugin that can be used to generate popups ( http://www.pcmediacenter.com.au/forum/t ... ge-pop-up/ ) but you still need a way to trigger it.

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