[ardour-dev] Recording light control

[Christopher K. George]

What I did:

    I tore up an old PC power supply, installed necessary electronics to
control three constant current outputs turned on and off by inputs from a
paralell port.  Drilled 150 holes in three boards to spell out RECORDING, and
stuck LEDs in all the holes.  Put all this together and I had a recording
light controlable via the parallel port on a PC.  I wrote a small program that
set the parallel port output for three different modes: off, blink, and on.
    I hacked ardour to call this program to blink the lights when in the
record but not yet rolling state; to turn on the lights when recording and
rolling; and to turn the lights off otherwise.  My hack was in ardour_ui.c and
only responded to mouse clicks on the transport buttons.

What I want:

    I'd like to hack ardour properly so that the lights correctly follow the
recording status irregardless of how it was activated.  Ideally, I would be
able to enter options to ardour to tell it what command I wanted called for
each state, or whether I want it doing such a thing at all.

What I'm wondering:

    Where should this hack be?  What pitfalls should I watch out for?  Would
this hack be too user specific to be included in the general ardour codebase?

Thanks,

Christopher George