It should be fairly easy for someone with programming experience to create their own “Plugins” to extend the AirClick. It runs on the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, which means you can write plugins in any .NET capable language. Just add a reference to the actual AirClick.exe file, define that you are using the “AirClick” namespace, then create a derived class from the AirClick’s “Plugin” class. As you will see there will be several virtual methods you will have to define. These include accessor methods for the plugin’s name, author, description, executable name, and version. (NOTE: The only one of these attributes used at the present is the name, which appears in the AirClick menu. The others are to insure compatibility with potential future updates.)
To “tell” the AirClick software which button presses you are interested in knowing about, add a call to the “AddButton” method for each button press in your class’s constructor. Button presses are defined by an instance of the “Button” class. Here is a quick rundown of a Button’s constructor parameters:
ID – a unique integer ID given to the button. This ID is passed back also a paramter in the “Notify” method to tell a plugin which one of his buttons has been pressed.
Key – the button on the AirClick remote you want to know about. Values can be back, forward, play, voldown, or volup.
Modifier – a modifer key that must be held down along with the “Key”. Values can be back, forward, play, voldown, volup, or none.
Time – the number of milliseconds the “Key” must be held down in order to trigger this button press.
OnRelease – true if button is triggerd when it is released, false if it is triggered on push.
Name – short description of this button, such as “Play” or “Next Chapter”. (Presently not used, just there for potential future updates.)
ShowInMenu – whether or not this button’s name should appear in a list of this plugin’s functionality. (Presently not used, just there for potential future updates.)
Finally, the last thing you have to do is define the “Notify” method. This method is called by the AirClick software when a desired button press is found, and the ID of the found button pressed is passed to it.
There are a few more classes built in to more easily accomodate the making of Plugins. Their is the OSD class for using the AirClick’s on-screen display. It can display various combinatinations of strings, a progress bar, and generic player graphics. The player graphics are represented by the “DisplayGraphic” enumeration. The “Volume” class can get or set the system’s master volume, and the “WinMessages” class can send several different kinds of Windows messages to a windows with the given caption or class name. The messages it presently supports sending are “WM_APPCOMMAND”, “WM_APP”, “WM_COMMAND”, “WM_VSCROLL”, “WM_HSCROLL, “WM_SYSCOMMAND”, and “WM_USER”.
Once, you have built the plugin, just change the extension from .dll to .acp and place it in the AirClick’s “Plugins” folder. Restart the AirClick software, and it should appear in the AirClick’s menu.
