LogitechLCDTool 0.7b review

Logitech sells a very nice stereo USB speaker system called Z-10.

License: Freeware OS: Mac OS X File size: 745K Developer: Marc Liyanage Price: $0.00 Updated: 09 Jan 2007

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Logitech sells a very nice stereo USB speaker system called Z-10. It sounds great and looks very stylish. One of the speakers has a panel with some buttons and an LCD display.

This is where LogitechLCDTool comes in. It provides the missing Mac support for this panel. Logitech does not provide Mac software to enable the display or about half of the buttons.

Some buttons do work out of the box because Mac OS X understands their purpose, for example mute and volume up/down are mostly OK.
Without supporting software, the remaining buttons are dead and the display shows “Z-10” permanently, which gets old pretty quickly.

Logitech’s Windows software for the Z-10 supports interactive mini-applications which display more or less useful things like iTunes track information, computer system load or the number of new email messages. The software also makes the previous/next/play/pause buttons work with your media player of choice. There is a software development kit to write such mini applications.

After I bought the speakers, I spent some time reverse-engineering the USB communications between the Windows software and the speakers and reading open source code for a similar Logitech product, the G-15 gaming keyboard.

The program actually does much more than simply mediating between iTunes and the speakers. It certainly does that well and if that’s all you need, it only takes one click to get started.

Requirements:
Logitech Z-10 USB speaker system