B-Spec Grinder 2.5.2: Automate Remote Races

  • Thread starter yonis
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The 1st time you choose 0, the widget shows a message explaining what may happen.
If you click on 'I know what I'm doing', it won't show up again.

Just embarrass me already, dude :)
Well, it just shows that I've never touched the 0 free option. Just nevermind my previous post :)
 
Guys, a question from me...

Why the grinder keeps randomly choosing the events instead of my preference La Sarthe?

I had followed the Widget Debug Mode tutorial from squadjot and chose La Sarthe country code 5569 (US).
I just checked and the code is still 5569. My guess is that either your Widget's settings were lost somehow (by naming the Widget differently or something) or you're logging into a different country. Try entering it again and see if it fixes it, and make sure the country is set to US (or get the code for the country you have it set to).

I could before all the ***** with the PSN,but now i can't.So that's the problem ?

If your browser can't get in, neither can I! :(

If I could, I would use the same APIs that the PS3 uses to log in to PSN and load from Polyphony's servers, which would be a lot more reliable. Unfortunately I can't install an HTTPS cert on the PS3, so that's not possible.
 
Why is it that the widget is not showing all my friends when I Manage Drivers, I want certain friends drivers to use every time but they are not on my list. Is this because they are new friends and it takes a while for them to come up on the widget?
 
Why is it that the widget is not showing all my friends when I Manage Drivers, I want certain friends drivers to use every time but they are not on my list. Is this because they are new friends and it takes a while for them to come up on the widget?


I'm having a little bit of a different problem. All the drivers show in Manage Drivers but when I use the widget it doesn't fill out the field. I know the Bobs are available for racing and none of them are being used.
 
Why is it that the widget is not showing all my friends when I Manage Drivers, I want certain friends drivers to use every time but they are not on my list. Is this because they are new friends and it takes a while for them to come up on the widget?

Yeah, it usually takes some time for new friends to show up in the widget. Just wait and see if they doesn't show up my themselves. Do some forced reauths if you have the widget running all the time, so that it updates the list.
 
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Yeah, it usually takes some time for new friends to show up in the widget. Just wait and see if they doesn't show up my themselves. Do some forces reauths if you have the widget running all the time, so that it updates the list.

Thanks, I Forced Authentication and my new friends appeared on the list. thanks again.
 
So, I downloaded the widget and ran it, it now says

Starting race ............... *Money*
1/1 drivers in use

Does this mean my B-spec driver is racing? Or searching? And what happens when it's in a race? Do I see that on my PS3 -> TV screen?
 
Question: in the widget, one of my friends (the first acct I signed up for in PSN) shows on the list with a "?", but has 3 free drivers. Does that have anything to do with being the "main" acct?

Great app Yonis, well done. By the way, did you narrate the video? It has a voice made for tv or radio. Very professionally done.
 
Okay so I've been using this widget for about 3 weeks now and just had a question.

To maximize how many of my drivers are being used would be to set it at leave at least 1 free?
 
yonis
If your browser can't get in, neither can I! :(

If I could, I would use the same APIs that the PS3 uses to log in to PSN and load from Polyphony's servers, which would be a lot more reliable. Unfortunately I can't install an HTTPS cert on the PS3, so that's not possible.

Ok.Thank you !
 
i can't seem to make this widget work.. .. i downloaded the stuff i had to, installed without any problems, shared drivers, 4 on my main user and 1 on my secondary user.. then i go into Server Standby mode and nothing seems to happen.. it just says Starting Race, followed by something i can't read before it's changed back to Starting Race again.. can someone help, or give me "the complete moron's guide to B-Spec Grinder"?, because that would be quite helpful..
 
i can't seem to make this widget work.. .. i downloaded the stuff i had to, installed without any problems, shared drivers, 4 on my main user and 1 on my secondary user.. then i go into Server Standby mode and nothing seems to happen.. it just says Starting Race, followed by something i can't read before it's changed back to Starting Race again.. can someone help, or give me "the complete moron's guide to B-Spec Grinder"?, because that would be quite helpful..

Please right-click on the Widget, select "Widget Preferences," go to "Advanced," and reduce the number of concurrent threads and/or increase the driver reservation delay.
 
How do you open debug mode on a mac using OSX snow leopard?

Control-shift-click the gear icon in the menu bar and the Debug Mode option will be at the bottom of the menu. Then close and open the Widget.
 
I'm currently weighing my options going forward with this project, and wanted to see how people felt about what I'm considering.

My main concern stems from the Yahoo! Widgets runtime. Overall, it's a very nice way of getting simple code to run on Mac OS X and Windows. However, there are some large obstacles that I've been facing.

  • The folks at Yahoo! appear to be much more concerned with making the product run on a TV than a computer. They've let the desktop version of the product wane, which means the following problems are magnified.
  • There are large problems with memory leaks in the runtime, which cause the Widget to grind to a halt (hah!) after running for a couple of days. For something that is meant to run for an extended period of time, this is unacceptable!
  • Yahoo! Widgets' JavaScript engine is woefully out of date, and doesn't benefit from many of the wonderful optimizations available to modern browsers.
  • As I've worked on this project, I've noticed a lot of odd bugs popping up, especially with regard to URL requests on Windows, which are very hard to overcome.
  • I have to do a ridiculous amount of work to create a beautiful user interface that performs well.

I'm also looking to stretch my engineering muscles in other areas outside of Yahoo! Widgets. I've taken an interest in iOS/Android programming, which has spread my interest to native apps for Mac OS X and Windows as well. Developing a mobile app is particularly enticing because it would really let me learn a lot of new skills.

However, my most favorable option so far is to rewrite B-Spec Grinder as a browser extension or Greasemonkey script, so I can piggyback on Polyphony's existing code for talking to their servers. This would exclude users of Internet Explorer, but I believe I can support Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera in this approach, which would mean support across Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Taking this route doesn't mean the user experience has to suffer. In fact, quite the contrary: Web browsers are under very active development, with new developer features being added all the time! I think I can create a better product within the browser than I could in Yahoo! Widgets.

What do you think? Should I make the leap? :)
 
I'm currently weighing my options going forward with this project, and wanted to see how people felt about what I'm considering.

My main concern stems from the Yahoo! Widgets runtime. Overall, it's a very nice way of getting simple code to run on Mac OS X and Windows. However, there are some large obstacles that I've been facing.

  • The folks at Yahoo! appear to be much more concerned with making the product run on a TV than a computer. They've let the desktop version of the product wane, which means the following problems are magnified.
  • There are large problems with memory leaks in the runtime, which cause the Widget to grind to a halt (hah!) after running for a couple of days. For something that is meant to run for an extended period of time, this is unacceptable!
  • Yahoo! Widgets' JavaScript engine is woefully out of date, and doesn't benefit from many of the wonderful optimizations available to modern browsers.
  • As I've worked on this project, I've noticed a lot of odd bugs popping up, especially with regard to URL requests on Windows, which are very hard to overcome.
  • I have to do a ridiculous amount of work to create a beautiful user interface that performs well.

I'm also looking to stretch my engineering muscles in other areas outside of Yahoo! Widgets. I've taken an interest in iOS/Android programming, which has spread my interest to native apps for Mac OS X and Windows as well. Developing a mobile app is particularly enticing because it would really let me learn a lot of new skills.

However, my most favorable option so far is to rewrite B-Spec Grinder as a browser extension or Greasemonkey script, so I can piggyback on Polyphony's existing code for talking to their servers. This would exclude users of Internet Explorer, but I believe I can support Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera in this approach, which would mean support across Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Taking this route doesn't mean the user experience has to suffer. In fact, quite the contrary: Web browsers are under very active development, with new developer features being added all the time! I think I can create a better product within the browser than I could in Yahoo! Widgets.

What do you think? Should I make the leap? :)

👍

Anything that just works 24/7! Pretty is not important. Only windows is important to me though..

Just to add, would be nice to have some sort of info/log that shows how many hours run, how many races started.. that kind of basic uptime info.

Thanks yonis for all your time & effort.
 
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Hi yonis :)

Great widget, been using the various versions for a while now and have had no major issues, each release fixed something or made it look sharper/etc and I was looking forward to where you're looking to take it.

However if you're going down the track of not supporting Internet Explorer while moving away from the widget then I'll be a little disappointed. I understand the reasons you mention for this possible change however basically I run with IE, always have and probably always will, any PC I jump on usually has IE...Im comfortable with it even if their are better/faster/sexier browser experiences out there.

Installing the yahoo widget was fine for me, installing another browser, not as keen on it. I know this will be a non-issue for others but it is for me.

Regardless, I love the grinder and cant thank you enough for the time you've put in to it to date. Regardless of the direction you take it thank you sir, you've made my GT5 experience that little bit richer (well a lot richer actually if you look at it from a credits gained point of view :D).

:cheers:
 
However if you're going down the track of not supporting Internet Explorer while moving away from the widget then I'll be a little disappointed. I understand the reasons you mention for this possible change however basically I run with IE, always have and probably always will, any PC I jump on usually has IE...Im comfortable with it even if their are better/faster/sexier browser experiences out there.
Thank you for being so supportive! 👍

I understand that there are some users who will always stick with IE and I totally respect that. The decision to not support IE is simply because there's no easy way for me to provide an extension for it. As soon as Microsoft allows browser extensions in IE written in JavaScript, I would seriously consider supporting it as well. The extension I'm considering writing would be largely agnostic of the browser it runs in.

I would continue to support the Widget if Polyphony updates things and it breaks, but for new features, you'd have to make the jump!
 
browser extentions would be a good way to keep the maintenance as low as possible without using yahoo widgets. if you are going for native apps you should keep it as a widget, since OSX and Windows support there own Widget Systems, for good old Tux i can't say what's possible.

a smartphone app would be nice, but with app similar to the yahoo widget it would be a battery killer. it must be rewriten, an idea would be to wipe the live updates from the gran-turismo.com website and let the app check every few minutes if the race is over, to start a new race. But even then it would not be the best for the battery. The easiest way to bring the grinder on Smartphones would be a remote app that connects to the local Computer, to maintenance the contact list, prefered race (or a simple Le Mans Button ;)), race lenght (if PD goes back to 5, 10 and 20min Races) and some other fancy features.

i don't know what's possible with Android/iOS Apps since i never tried to write an application for a Smartphone.

and if theres a way to check the activity of a friend in GT5 it would be a great to add a feature that exclude drivers from friends that have no activiy in the Log for lets say 2 Weeks. In the moment i have 26 Contacts with GT5 an my List an not even the half of them played GT5 in die last Weeks and if i doesn't check the list frequently, my efford for bspec grinding is worthless because most of the credits will never be used..
 
Go for Chrome/Firefox (I would prefer Chrome) extension as a start, so we all can get rid of Yahoo! Widgets from our computers.

This would automatically mean that Mac OS X/Windows/Linux would be supported without any special development. Good! :)

:)
 
I think it's a wise (and ambitious) move.
If you balance the number of people disappointed that it would not run on IE (bearing in mind this annoyance doesn't mean they're actually stuck) against the number of people happy that they could run it on Linux (edit: and mobiles), you'll find that you'll make a lot of people happy.

Extending your skills in this field will also prove to be beneficial for you (since most of your work is mainly beneficial to us).

I applaud and I'm ready to carry on promoting your great work.
 
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In my opinion, whether or not the widget will run on Internet Explorer is irrelevant. It seems that since Gran-Turismo.com doesn't run well with IE, and does run well with say, Firefox, just update the Grinder as you see fit. Customers, such as myself, can easily adapt if we choose.


Most of all, it's refreshing to see someone enjoying their work! :)

Thanks Yonis !!!
 
As far as a mobile app goes you could keep battery use down just by reducing features. All it really should do is handle populating and starting races as opposed to showing your place in the race, lap count etc. If that info is desired mobile it can be found by opening a browser.
 
As far as a mobile app goes you could keep battery use down just by reducing features. All it really should do is handle populating and starting races as opposed to showing your place in the race, lap count etc. If that info is desired mobile it can be found by opening a browser.

Android's browser will not log on to gran-turismo.com...

A mobile app could be used as a companion app or as a standalone grinder (with the right options).

I'd like the ability check status as well as initiate a quick remote race from the phone. Automatic restarts could be feasible with data/power warnings and check boxes for "only when USB powered" or "must have WiFi connection"...
 
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