I would pay money for a USB red/green LED which lit red on failure and green on success for CD/DVD rips...
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My wife has been ripping her DVD collection, most of the time it works, but sometimes a DVD has problems, or MakeMKV needs a new version, and then it fails. *She has no idea how to check the SMB share or rip status webpage. *
Why don't you explain to your wife how to use the VB GUI? If she knows how to use a browser, it wouldn't be hard to learn.
That's thinking like you and me, I totally agree...
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In her world she'd down doing laundry and just pops a DVD in, next time she comes back the door is open and she swaps a new one in...
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Is a success/fail LED a pie-in-the-sky too hard of a thing to do? *Conceptually I could see it working... or even just being able to put an email address in for notification, then parse the log, and send either a success or fail email/text?
The simplest solution is to put a laptop next to your VB, with the VB GUI AutoRipper page in a browser, so your wife can check it when she pops in a DVD.
Your other ideas are not easy to implement, and I don't see Andrew ever providing them.
Bummer... there's a sendmail still in the OS right? *Maybe I'll look at a small script that gets called at the end of the ripper script which reads the end of the log and then emails out appropriately... it might take me awhile though as I'm just a hack...
If your wife can check her email, why can't she check the VB Auto Ripper page? *Much simpler. Remember the KISS acronym.
But if you want to hack the code, it could be a fun project.
Sendmail is available on VB as part of the postfix package.
Yeah, that's a good point... I was thinking more though that I'd have it send to our cell phone's text email address.... DVD done, text sent, success or failure...
I was wanting something like this too... having a laptop next to the machine felt like duplication (why not use a ripper on the latop drive in that case). Mailing sounds good. I have had half an eye on an LCD solution, e.g. http://www.crystalfontz.com/ , but I don't have any suitable method for mounting one and it would need some code to drive it... and they aren't particularly cheap.
I agree with Ron that using another PC to view the gui is simpler to implement but I would suggest that it isn't simpler in use than observing the colour of an LED when a DVD is ejected.
Audio feedback may be possible / suitable for some people: play a pass/fail sound on completion.
Steve.
Feel free to hack your VortexBox any way you want.
If a DVD rip fails, you'll have to look at the rip log to figure out what went wrong and see if you can fix it. Example: change the default "rip longest title" to "rip all tracks longer than xxx seconds" is sometime a way around a DVD rip problem.
You'll also have to examine the log to see if a rip fails due to a too-old version of MakeMKV.
So hack your VB, look at your red and green LEDs or read your email, but if if you have a DVD rip failure, be prepared to look at the rip log too.
Be aware that your hacks will be overwritten when you upgrade the VB if you modify any official VB software.
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