HOWTO: Install basic G15Tools support for the Logitech G15

[Spartan.II.117]

when i try to compile g15daemon for gutsy it tells me that libg15 is missing. where do i find that?

also i the project dead? there have been no updates to most components since February..

[Aneurysm9]

You probably need libg15-dev if you're installing from packages. If not, the source is all at g15tools.sf.net. The project isn't dead, libg15 1.2.3 was released yesterday. The other components are fairly stable and haven't needed new releases. G15daemon 2.0 is still a work in progress but is fully functional if you wish to compile from SVN.

[Anaximander Thales]

I'll ask this here as there is no thread out there other than support questions for G15 -- but if the starters/maintainers of this thread would prefer me to split this off I will.

I'd like to set up the top row of the media keys (the round button, and four rectangles above the actual multimedia keys) as content sensitive buttons. By this I mean, when a certain screen is displayed, pressing one of these buttons will change what content is on there.

Currently, I have the amarok script (from this thread), a kaffeine script I wrote from the amarok script, and a script that's displaying system information. When the sys info is displayed, I'd like to be able to set these keys to flip through information. I know the MR button will change the screens on the LCD, but I'd prefer not to have 5 different screens running to display this information.

So, to sum the question up to its simplest form -- is there a command line method to see which screen is currently displaying. Can I query the pipe to see if it's being read, or is there a switch I can set in render that I could capture some piece of information?

Also, I could have sworn I saw some way to set the Round button (top left round button on the LCD panel set of keys) as the key to press to flip through screens instead of the MR button -- is this possible to do with the libG15* packages, or was I just dreaming this?

[hejki]

Okay everything was easy enough to install and works great. I have been looking everywhere for a way to get beep-media-player to display track information on my g15, but I havent been able to find anything. I was hoping that maybe someone could point me in the right direction here. Thanks in advance.

just tested it out today and found out that it actually works, partially . you just need to

sudo mkdir /usr/lib/bmp/Visualization; sudo cp /usr/lib/xmms/Visualization/libg15daemon_xmms_spectrum.* /usr/lib/bmp/Visualization/

shows the name of currently playing song + the spectrum, BUT you cannot configure it via bmp - it crashes
but it works as long as the default looks pleases you

[Aneurysm9]

Anaximander Thales:

Currently, g15composer does not relay keypress information to scripts. Pipes are a unidirectional communications channel except in some non-standard configurations that can't be expected to be available. If you wish to have your program react to keypresses you will need to use g15daemon and libg15render directly. You can look at the lcdproc driver or the xmms plugin for an example. You could also look into implementing your script as an lcdproc client which would have the added benefit of making it available to people who use other LCD screens supported by lcdproc.

[Nicram]

Hardy has packages for g15 in universe repo
it works in gutsy

[scuz]

Quick question, is there any way for plugins to snag on to "normal" keys? Namely I want to get at the media keys and volume wheel, but it looks to me like those are part of the "regular" keyboard and not handled with libg15.

Anybody know of a way to get at these keys via global shortcuts or something? If so any ideas on examples of global shortcuts in c code? Preferably something non gnome or kde specific :\

I'm working on an Amarok plugin right now(it's going slowly as I don't have my G15 yet so I can't actually test anything I've written :>) and I'd like to make it so that the plugin itself handles the keypresses for the media keys, so if I have another plugin up I can control other things, rather then just putting the global shortcuts in Amarok.

[Aneurysm9]

Scuz:

That depends on how you're writing your plugin. As you say, libg15/g15daemon doesn't handle the media keys so you'll need to find another way to do it. If you're writing your plugin in C you can look at the g15daemon_XMMS plugin to see how they're handled there. Otherwise, you're at the mercy of your scripting language.

[scuz]

Scuz:

That depends on how you're writing your plugin. As you say, libg15/g15daemon doesn't handle the media keys so you'll need to find another way to do it. If you're writing your plugin in C you can look at the g15daemon_XMMS plugin to see how they're handled there. Otherwise, you're at the mercy of your scripting language.

Awesome That's exactly what I want, thanks!

[scuz]

So I just got my G15 today, having a bit of a problem. Whenever I hit MR my computer hard locks and I have to reboot. Any ideas?

Edit: I'm running 1.9g15daemon 1.2.3libg15. It seems to randomly crash when I use the extra buttons in general, but the MR button does it every time. Should I grab 2.0 from svn? Or back down to the last version?