Help with Automation

Wednesday, January 18, 2006 by j dott | Discussion: Personal Computing

Well, I now have two repetitive tasks that I can't seem to find a way to automate. I played around with a few scripts to no avail. First, I would like a way to easily eject my ipod. Ideally, a link on my dock would work best, but some sort of widget would also be great. You would think that someone has already done this, but I couldn't find anything for Windows.

The second issue I have is that my scanners conflict with each other, so I have to disable my sheetfed scanner (all in one that I use most of the time) in order to use my flat bed. It's easy enough, but one step is better than 5.

Any ideas. The ipod script seemed easy, but I could never get it to work right. I have no idea where to start on the second one.
3 Reply 9 Referrals
Kevin_C
Reply #1 Thursday, January 19, 2006 9:06 AM
For both there has to be a public API available that can be interacted with via a scripting language. Typically these are COM objects that are registered with your system. I know there's an API to control the playback of music through iTunes because there's an iTunes player on here (I think) but I'm not sure if the ability to eject your iPod is exposed. Same with disabling the scanner. If there's no public API available you'd have to write an application in order to do something like that. Typically the things that seem like they are most obvious turn out to be the most difficult to actually accomplish..

** UPDATE: I've found a possible hit for ejecting an iPod through scripting.. I'll see if I can come up with something but seeing as I'm at work I won't be able to test it until I get home. Tune in later for another update.

j dott
Reply #2 Thursday, January 19, 2006 9:55 AM
On the ipod, a right-click and eject within explorer works--just like any other drive. For the scanner, I just disable it through the device manager.

BigDogBigFeet
Reply #3 Saturday, October 11, 2008 2:50 AM

Edited this post BDBF ...I cleaned up the spam.

Erk (Moderator)


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