Email or web API-based notification?

[Mute Rose]

Hi all,

I have a huge personal CD collection I'm ripping so I can reclaim some space. I got one of Brendan's Kodak robots (Brendan was a HUGE help in resolving issues with a faulty unit and went above and beyond with assistance) and eventually realized that using dBpoweramp and Batch Ripper together work 1000x better than letting iTunes do my ripping.

Anyhow, now that I have a fluid setup, I'm wondering if anyone knows if it's possible to have the app notify me of an issue. Now that it's running smoothly, I'd love to put all this in the garage or elsewhere, and be notified if a problem happens or the spindle is empty.

Anyone hooked something like this up or have any suggestions?


Cheers,
Arlo

[bhoar]

Re: Email or web API-based notification?

Hi all,

I have a huge personal CD collection I'm ripping so I can reclaim some space. I got one of Brendan's Kodak robots (Brendan was a HUGE help in resolving issues with a faulty unit and went above and beyond with assistance) and eventually realized that using dBpoweramp and Batch Ripper together work 1000x better than letting iTunes do my ripping.

Anyhow, now that I have a fluid setup, I'm wondering if anyone knows if it's possible to have the app notify me of an issue. Now that it's running smoothly, I'd love to put all this in the garage or elsewhere, and be notified if a problem happens or the spindle is empty.

Anyone hooked something like this up or have any suggestions?

Hi Arlo,

Hope the second unit keeps chugging along fine and you get curious enough to figure out if it's easy to field-repair the first unit. It's one of three (reported) problem units in the last 30 or so robots that went out. I'm now testing all of them before I ship them.

Onto the question: I think the current kodak driver beeps repeatedly if there's a dialog box, if it has a problem loading a disc or ran out of CDs. You could always add some loud speakers...

Also, the ulcli core I wrote for the kodak driver (among others) has a set of options for running external commands (--runexternal, --runwaitexternal, --runshell and --runwaitshell). If you can find, say, a command line email program for windows and set it up so that a single command line invocation could send an email, then you could insert a --runwaitexternal="application.exe [parameters]" or create a batch file and --runwaitshell="customfile.bat" at one or more positions in my robot scripts (DefaultCmdLine.txt, line 3) that sit in the directory with the pre-batch, unload, load, reject and post-batch commands, all five of which are the same ulcli executable.

Assuming you're feeling nerdy enough to pursue it and tease apart the flow of the script.

Brendan

[Mute Rose]

Re: Email or web API-based notification?

That's actually likely to be a perfect solution, though not as easy as adding a plugin and a line of code. :-) I'll hack on this later this evening.

I'm tempted to try and fix up the other unit. I think it was just the lifters not lifting high enough, but the lack of the switch to the letter E when it was below 5 discs makes me wonder if it was something else too. The unit you sent to replace it has been working like a charm. No problems at all.

I'd be tempted to run both if I fixed the other one, but I like being able to just auto-eject a disc with an error then go back and find it in the stack based on the rip number, and if I had two running that might become messy to navigate.

I did open up the good unit as I wanted to cut down on the USB hubs in use, so I popped it open and plugged the drive I use directly into it. The Surface Pro I'm using as the machine only had one USB port. :-/


Arlo

[bhoar]

Re: Email or web API-based notification?

Heh, there's room for a few more accessory connections inside too!

If the E isn't showing up, then it's not notifying about < 5 discs. It means a bad sensor in the hopper. That was there mostly to tell the photo shop or drug store would know ahead of time to reload the blank photo cds.

Anyway, that sensor being bad is OK, once it fails to load a CD, it'll stop after one failed load as if the driver had counted down anyway. Like the other one does. I think.

Brendan