Hello all.
First of all i would like to thank killervette for open sourcing his idea of displaying 2 days of weather on the start page link 2dayweather.

Killervette has given me permission to start a new thread. This version has changed a lot since 2dayweather's birth. This newer version isn't really 2dayweather anymore.

I would also like to thank Andrew Lisse for beta testing this for me.

This new program is called Vista4Cast. It allows you to display weather on Vista's start page. All the data is collect from weather.com

There you two programs
Vista4Cast.exe - This is the exe that will run by a scheduled task. This will retrieve the weather forecast for you every x hours.

• This used to be a console app. however this caused issues with the console box appearing on top of other windows. This has now been resolved.
  

Vista4CastConfig.exe - This program is the setup/configuration for Vista4Cast.
Features:

• It allow you to search for the city near you and gets the correct locale for weather.com.
• Choose your forecast from 1 to 7 days
• NEW, Image builder
  
• Choose the font for the text displayed including colour and effects
  
• Choose wheather to display the day name, high temperature, low temperature, slash
• Choose to toggle the slash
• You can customise the image by moving positioning the text anywhere on the image.
• a Preview to see what your image will look like
• You can change the background colour, this is for representation only so you can get an idea of what your image will look like.
• Changed the location where the programs look for the config.xml and where it saves the graphic.
• Allow the colour of the temperature to be customized. ie leave it as it is, choose the colour of temperature high and temperature low or allow the colour of the temperature to automatically change depening on the temperature

Both programs have been packed into a setup program. This will do everything for you,. The uninstall will remove all traces of the program and you should be back to how your system was.

You will need to create a scheduled task to run Vista4Cast.exe every 2 hours. This will hopefully be fixed in a newer release. This was slowing down the release of this version so unfortunatly this is a manual process at the moment

Download it from Vista4Cast

Vista4Cast

• Version 1.0
  
• Version 1.1
• Fixed the program when manually scheduling a task doesn't work
• Changed the installer to use the system disk instead of C:\ being hard coded. This should help people who have installed Vista4Cast onto a different disk.
• Version 1.2
  
• Added the ability to change the temperature colours depends on the temperature.
  
• Added icons to the programs.
• Version 1.3
• Changed the program to be a standalone vesion (remove your scheduled task if you have used the previous versions)
• You need to reboot after install and the have created your custom start page graphic
  

Extended4Cast

• Version 1.0
  
• Initial Release.
  

Future Plans

• Change Vista4Cast to be a service, this means less work needed by yourselves. ie you wont need to setup a scheduled task
• This has been delayed for the time being.
  
• Automatically create a scheduled task from the setup program, this might come before the service, depends how hard the service creating is.
• This is getting closer
  
• Extender support.
  
• Animated image, not sure if this is posible.
  

Any sugesstions are welcome

Below are some Screenshots





Let me know what you all think.

Pete

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TV: TH42PZ70B
Self Built HTPC:
C2D C4400 @ 3Ghz
2Gb Corsair Memory
Vista Home Premium
XBOX 360 Premium
Creative Labs 5.1

Cool. Questions, Is this setup like 2dayweather (a program to replace it) ? Do you have to setup an account for the XML data through weather.com like you had to before ? Is the scheduled task, just to update it ? (2dayweather does not update on mine, I didn't do a scheduled task for it)

Looks good so far, I do like the more than 2 days weather, so will my wife....

-Dave

OT: What is the name of that black theme you are using ? (very cool)

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-Dave

MCP, MCSA, MCSE 2003
Windows Vista Connected Exp:Home Theater for Technologists
Windows Vista Connected Exp:Home Theater for Sales professionals

Home theater specialist (10+ years)

DavidinCT:

Cool. Questions, Is this setup like 2dayweather (a program to replace it) ?

Yes it is an alternative to 2dayweather

DavidinCT:

Do you have to setup an account for the XML data through weather.com like you had to before ?

Nope

DavidinCT:

Is the scheduled task, just to update it ? (2dayweather does not update on mine, I didn't do a scheduled task for it)

Yes it is, i want to create a windows service so then you dont even have to tink about it

DavidinCT:

Looks good so far, I do like the more than 2 days weather, so will my wife....

Thank you, you can have upto 7 days but the image gets a bit small.

DavidinCT:

OT: What is the name of that black theme you are using ? (very cool)

its called "Back in Black" from www.xpmediacentre.com.au


Pete

---

TV: TH42PZ70B
Self Built HTPC:
C2D C4400 @ 3Ghz
2Gb Corsair Memory
Vista Home Premium
XBOX 360 Premium
Creative Labs 5.1

Does this work with extenders?

hi pete, this is really cool, glad your taking this on, i like the sound of your new features, one thing i was thinking about whilst driving to work (as you do hehe) is if the image could actually be an animated image, such as a gif?, if this is true then you could have 7 days worth of weather shown as a animated gif that changes showing maybe 2 days of weather at a time, is this possible or does the oem logo image only support a static image?, just a thought, it would look dead cool seeing it flick over, plus you wouldnt then have to have the eyesight of a hawk to see 7 days worth of weather hehe.

paul.

xswl:

Does this work with extenders?

It didn't work with 2dayweather, although i never tested that. I'll give it a go on my 360 over the weekend.

---

TV: TH42PZ70B
Self Built HTPC:
C2D C4400 @ 3Ghz
2Gb Corsair Memory
Vista Home Premium
XBOX 360 Premium
Creative Labs 5.1

paulaeccleston:

hi pete, this is really cool, glad your taking this on, i like the sound of your new features, one thing i was thinking about whilst driving to work (as you do hehe) is if the image could actually be an animated image, such as a gif?, if this is true then you could have 7 days worth of weather shown as a animated gif that changes showing maybe 2 days of weather at a time, is this possible or does the oem logo image only support a static image?, just a thought, it would look dead cool seeing it flick over, plus you wouldnt then have to have the eyesight of a hawk to see 7 days worth of weather hehe.

paul.

I am pleased you like it. It has really grabbed me and i am enjoying coding this. This is my first attempt VB and .NET coding. Been with Delphi for too long. 
Not sure if it could display an animated image. I'll investigate.

Pete

---

TV: TH42PZ70B
Self Built HTPC:
C2D C4400 @ 3Ghz
2Gb Corsair Memory
Vista Home Premium
XBOX 360 Premium
Creative Labs 5.1

PeteT:

paulaeccleston:

hi pete, this is really cool, glad your taking this on, i like the sound of your new features, one thing i was thinking about whilst driving to work (as you do hehe) is if the image could actually be an animated image, such as a gif?, if this is true then you could have 7 days worth of weather shown as a animated gif that changes showing maybe 2 days of weather at a time, is this possible or does the oem logo image only support a static image?, just a thought, it would look dead cool seeing it flick over, plus you wouldnt then have to have the eyesight of a hawk to see 7 days worth of weather hehe.

paul.

I am pleased you like it. It has really grabbed me and i am enjoying coding this. This is my first attempt VB and .NET coding. Been with Delphi for too long. 
Not sure if it could display an animated image. I'll investigate.

Pete

excellent news pete!, just thought if it is possible to create animated gifs then i guess the weather icons themselves could also be animated perhaps, i.e. like this thread icon :-), now that would be awesome!!.

hi pete, ive just installed ver 1 of vista4cast and it all seemed great, however on creating the scheduled task and then forcing it to run (right click run) the task had a status of running but it never seems to finish like 2dayweather did, is this a known bug or am i doing something wrong?. fyi i have set the task to run whether the user is logged in or not and given it highest permissions, i also have uac turned off so im pretty sure its not a permissions issue.

just tried running the vista4cast.exe manually as opposed to a scheduled task and it seems to run ok, and the process does end normally, just not when its run as a scheduled task. i see the app tries to create systray icon when you run it, could this be the issue, maybe a scheduled task wont allow you to creation of a systray icon?

paul.

I have noticed that myself this morning. I am planning on doing some coding on it tomorrow, so i'll have a look into it .

 I have got a windows serice to work, but it only works 4 times?? which is bizarre.

Does the automatic schedule run?

---

TV: TH42PZ70B
Self Built HTPC:
C2D C4400 @ 3Ghz
2Gb Corsair Memory
Vista Home Premium
XBOX 360 Premium
Creative Labs 5.1

Hey Pete, I love this because weather is just as important as time for me. howeverit would be great that in the future you could create a nice little VMC app thathas the whole forecast, day by day,ect. just like"MyWeather" which im sure you are familiar with. but that is way too slow for vista, jst has the VMC backroundimage. and the annoying "please donate EXIT msg. This would be such a great tool. Hopefully this can make the future list for the soft.

Hi Pete,

I've installed Vista4Cast, but nothing appears on the start page - do I need to run something like the file install.reg provided with 2 days of weather (if so, can you tell me where I can get this?)

Thanks
Tony

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AMD64X2 6000+ | 3Gb Ram | 750Gb Maxtor SATA | 200Gb Samsung Spinpoint for Vista | ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe | FloppyDTV + Dragon CAM | Pinnacle 7010ix | XFX 8600GT Silent Video Card | LG Blu-ray/HD DVD Drive | Xbox 360 | Arcsoft Total Theatre

Did you restart Media Center?  I found Vista4Cast installation will configure the path for the OEMLogoURI.  However to make it take effect, you will need to restart Media Center.

Hi,

yep, restarted MC, even rebooted, still nothing :-(

Tony

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AMD64X2 6000+ | 3Gb Ram | 750Gb Maxtor SATA | 200Gb Samsung Spinpoint for Vista | ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe | FloppyDTV + Dragon CAM | Pinnacle 7010ix | XFX 8600GT Silent Video Card | LG Blu-ray/HD DVD Drive | Xbox 360 | Arcsoft Total Theatre

Tony_Park:

Hi,

yep, restarted MC, even rebooted, still nothing :-(

Tony

Has the setup program changed the registry? HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Start Menu OEMLogoUri should be "file://C:\Users\Public\Vista4Cast\Vista4Cast.png"

Does that file exist?

Have you run the config program? and saved your settings?

Pete

---

TV: TH42PZ70B
Self Built HTPC:
C2D C4400 @ 3Ghz
2Gb Corsair Memory
Vista Home Premium
XBOX 360 Premium
Creative Labs 5.1