Mediacenter Development

In my previous post I wrote something about trying to code something for Mediacenter on Vista, and I did that. I spent a couple of hours and downloaded c# Express and the MC SDK and followed the getting started guide that was included with the SDK. It worked :D

The markup language for MC (MCML) is a bit weird though, and it will take some time getting used to. If you're not going to write MCML every now and then, it will will probably be slow going and loads of trial and error for you. There are some tools (included in the SDK) to help you verify your markup, but it's not like coding (X)HTML or XAML... you've been warned :D

Anyway, I spent 30 minutes and tried to develop a "background" app for Mediacenter, which popped up a message with an image on the screen, and it was pretty easy - I just used the dialog() function with a timeout, which feels a bit like cheating, but it works.

Next step is to have my logitech quickcam ta a snapshot whenever someone rings the doorbell. Either that, or have the doorbell trigger something else which the MC background program can act on. I don't want to make a motion detector, but perhaps I can set up a microphone to detect the doorbell ringing? *weird solution* Should be possible with some minimal activex code I guess... I don't want to replace the doorbell if I really don't have to.