Re: Vb.net or C#.net Tutorial Project

Hi Don: This is going to be a raw beginners tutorial project. Getting into 
remote anything is light years beyond the scope of this project. When done with 
this project What you want to do might be fun but it sounds like it would 
require some external devices which I might not have access to. Heck, I have 
never even done anything with a mobile application. For me that sounds like fun 
but later.
Rick USA
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Donald Marang 
  To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 4:17 PM
  Subject: Re: Vb.net or C#.net Tutorial Project


  How about the application I have been failing to find time for?  I plan to 
create a simple, accessible  PC application to act as a media DLNA Remote 
Control.  DLNA stands for Digital Living  Network Alliance.  It is a little 
heard about standard that is in probably every networked device in your home!  
In my home, I currently have the following devices that seem to work with DLNA; 
All 3 Windows 7 computers, DirecTV R22 DVR, Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii, and I 
believe even my Epson network printer may be able to be told to print photos 
through DLNA.  I have not checked this out yet, but most smart mobile devices 
such as Android phones, IPhones and the iPad should be able to perform most of 
these functions, especially the Controller functions.  What a cool remote that 
would make!  There are several flavors of DLNA devices, including a Server to 
Host media, Renderer to display / play the media and a third class, a 
Controller to direct traffic.  There are also similar mobile device classes.  I 
am interested in the last class, since every controller is not accessible.  
Most of the time it is just bundled in the same software as the rendering 
engine and displayed on the TV screen.  I also have reasonably priced software 
that runs in the background of one of the computers in your house.  It acts as 
a DLNA Server device on your network and also transcodes a variety of formats 
so that is rarely thought about.  This functionality is primarily identical to 
what Windows Media Player 12, with Windows 7, provides.  The cool part is it 
reaches out across the Internet to grab and serve up music and video from 
countless and growing sources!  For instance, if you select the PlayOn DLNA 
server, the first or root level folder view will show all of it's current 
services.  Some of these include Hulu, YouTube, NetFlix (my favorite), Comedy 
Central, CBS, Revision 3live streaming video and video podcasts.  I have not 
been able to do exahstive searches, but they are talking about adding a variety 
of music sources as well.  

  The software needs to search the local network for server devices, and 
display them in a list box or combo box.  Once the server is chosen, then the 
desired  media is chosen in some sort of file / folder structure.  At last, 
another list view or combo box is needed to select where you want the selected 
media played and a PlayNow button.  

  There are a variety of DLNA Open Source libraries that should handle the 
complex network tasks.  I have not had much time to check them out yet.  They 
are available for several languages.  I was looking at Coherence Python 
library.  I was going to create the sinple interface in Python as well.  I do 
not know if the class libraries are as well behaved as .Net to allow mix and 
matching.  I am not sure such a large unknown is appropriate for a learninhg / 
teaching application.  But it is interesting!  

  Here is a link for some Open Source DLNA libraries:   
  http://elinux.org/DLNA_Open_Source_Projects

  This will be ideal to control available whole house audio systems, wireless 
speakers, home theater systems, send video to your X-Box / Playstation 3 and 
more.  My immediate plans are to make my DirecTV DVR useful by playing Netflix 
movies for the whole family and to finally find something interesting to play 
in the background, since my TV is on 24 hours a day.  

  By the way, for this and future projects, I want to learn both C Sharp and 
Python better.  

  Don Marang


  From: RicksPlace 
  Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 11:12 AM
  To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
  Subject: Re: Vb.net or C#.net Tutorial Project


  Sure, anything we can think of is doable. Do you have any data storage system 
like Sql Server Express or the Sql Compact Edition on your machine?
  If you installed the full Visual Studio you might have both available. If you 
installed an Express Edition you might have neither and that will be something 
to also look into. If there are several folks I would like to get everyone on 
the same page, or as close to it as possible with all our diferent machines, 
software and all that jazz before we start building a project. Also, do you 
have a project in mind or are you working on something? It is better to build 
something folks are actually interested in rather than just something to 
demonstrate technicals., you learn better and faster when things are relevant 
to you and you have an idea of where the project is going and what you want it 
to do.
  Rick USA
    ----- Original Message ----- 
    From: Bryan Schulz 
    To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
    Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 10:57 AM
    Subject: Re: Vb.net or C#.net Tutorial Project


    hi,

    i would prefer vb.net.
    could we include a tree list?
    i have part of this created and the main nodes are the letters of the 
alphabet in segments of three, then singles, then names starting with that 
letter.

    so the top node may be ABC, and expands to show A, B, C, vertically, then 
if you expand A, it shows your friends names like Alan Jackson, Andy Smith, 
etc. and selecting one refreshes a pane with their name, address, phone 
numbers, email, etc.
    I meant to continue this program but it got put on the shelf.

    Bryan Schulz

      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: RicksPlace 
      To: programmingblind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
      Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 9:03 AM
      Subject: Vb.net or C#.net Tutorial Project


      Hi: There have been a few folks who want to get started programming in 
either Vb.net or C#.net. If there is some interest in learning to work in one 
of these languages I will walk through designing a simple project and then work 
with any interested folks on building the project in either Vb.net, C#.net or 
both. If we do it on list the project will be in the archives and, or, anyone 
with an interest in the step by step tutorial can upload them to some online 
repository. If you are interested in this idea let me know and, if we get a 
couple of folks to walk through the lessons, I will start from scratch perhaps 
this weekend or Monday. I will have to download and install C# Express 2008 if 
you want to stick with that language but it can be done.
      If you have an idea for a project let me know. Otherwise I will just pick 
one like the PhoneBook Project I mentioned to get started. I will also post 
some links to articles, or post some of my own, related to the technicals we 
will be using so we can discuss them openly and answer questions. The idea will 
be to teach how to research technicals online, how to use the VS IDE with a 
screen reader and how to do a little vb or C# programming to process things 
like clicking a button or accessing a Data Storage File of some sort. Let me 
know what you think about this idea.
      Rick USA

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