LinuxMCE Forums

General => Users => Topic started by: totallymaxed on June 18, 2011, 06:03:21 pm

Title: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: totallymaxed on June 18, 2011, 06:03:21 pm
Here's is a short video of the work my colleague Uplink has been doing on re-engineering the Touch Orbiter to allow it to display dynamic UI elements - currently we support scrolling datagrids... with other dynamic UI elements to follow eg sliders and other dynamic controls. This video was shot in Apple's xCode Development systems device simulator. This is not a mockup I might add this is real code running in the xCode simulator - I will upload some video of this version running on an iPad next week. I will be posting some more video demo's of the new Touch Orbiter in the next few days;

Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMYhB_KNyt0

Once the new proxy_orbiter is installed and a Touch Orbiter 2.1 has been installed on your devices then any current Orbiter screen that uses standard datagrids will automatically get translated into a Dynamic datagrid on your device - this requires no changes to be made in HAD. It maybe though that some UI screens might benefit from a re-design around datagrids however ie the User or Room's screen so that large numbers of Users/Rooms could be accommodated by making the list scroll vertically.

We expect to have the source code for the new proxy_orbiter and a QT based Touch Orbiter 2.1 available for download in about two weeks or so (we were hoping to have this available earlier but we are in the build-up to the CEDIA London Home Technology Event in late June). An updated Dianemo iOS Orbiter 2.1 will be released in early July and will be a free download from Apple's iOS App Store.

Enjoy

Andrew
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: Marie.O on June 18, 2011, 06:28:37 pm
Will the new dianemo orbiter also have the unfortunatey requirement of iOS >= 3.2?

My 1st gen iPod Touch can't be upgraded beyond 3.1.3 :(
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: totallymaxed on June 18, 2011, 07:35:26 pm
Will the new dianemo orbiter also have the unfortunatey requirement of iOS >= 3.2?

My 1st gen iPod Touch can't be upgraded beyond 3.1.3 :(

Hmmm... good question. We are currently testing on iOS 3.2 & above as i don't think xCode supports 3.1.3 any longer. I will check that though as I may be incorrect about that limitation.

Cheers


Andrew
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: davegravy on June 18, 2011, 07:47:47 pm
WHOA SNAZZY!

The loading time of thumbnails and grid elements - is this expected to be typical for the final product, or is this delay introduced by the simulator?
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: Marie.O on June 18, 2011, 07:57:36 pm
totallymaxed,

according to wikipedia, XCode 3.xx supports iOS 2.x -> 3.x - XCode 4.xx supports iOS > 4.3

EDT: Just re-checked: Even XCode 4.xx can produce iOS pre 4.3 bins, you just have to get the SDK for it manually.
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: totallymaxed on June 18, 2011, 08:02:32 pm
WHOA SNAZZY!

The loading time of thumbnails and grid elements - is this expected to be typical for the final product, or is this delay introduced by the simulator?

The xCode simulator is definitely a performance bottleneck so you can expect a real device to perform considerably better. But the other even more important factor that I did not mention is that the Touch Orbiter in the demo video is connecting to a remote NerveCentre via our encrypted ssh based remote assistance platform as a test of using the new Orbiter features remote from your home. This obviously exacts some performance penalties... approx 15-20% slower depending on how the remote Touch Orbiter is connecting to the NC.

All the best


Andrew
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: RayBe on June 18, 2011, 09:54:25 pm
Hi Andrew and Uplink,

great work, looks amazing!
can't wait to be able to use it myself  :)
will it be implemented into lmce 810 and 1004?

br,
Raymond
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: totallymaxed on June 18, 2011, 10:23:29 pm
Hi Andrew and Uplink,

great work, looks amazing!
can't wait to be able to use it myself  :)
will it be implemented into lmce 810 and 1004?

br,
Raymond

I would hope so. It will be standard in Dianemo 10.10 and later releases though. We hope that Forum members will take the QT Touch Orbiter 2.1 and use it, as they did with Touch Orbiter, as an example of how to build versions for other devices & OS's.

All the best


Andrew
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: purps on June 19, 2011, 02:50:48 am
Clear your schedule, darrenmason! :D
Title: New: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (New video demo)
Post by: totallymaxed on June 24, 2011, 01:45:36 am
Here is another video of the latest Dianemo iOS Touch Orbiter but this time its running on a real iPad1 and has undergone another round of bug fixes and improvements since the last video. This video include an attempt at a voice-over by me...Hmmm... I hate hearing my own voice!...and 'attempt' is all you can call it really :-)

We hope to release the source code for the companion proxy_orbiter 2.1 together with the source for a QT based version of the new Touch Orbiter to use as a guide and working example as soon as possible. I hope this will be in the next 10 days or so.

You'll notice that at several points in the video the Orbiter does not do whats its told... ie there is a lack of response. This is something we're still trying to debug in the App. Also I should point out and important point about what your seeing in this video... the Skin in question is our standard UI skin that ships with every Dianemo 10.10 system currently. This Skin was not changed or adapted in anyway for this demo video. The new Touch Orbiter will work automatically with any standard UI1 skin and will automatically convert any static data-grid into a dynamic scrollable on screen object. No adaption of the Skin is necessary as the new Orbiter will overlay the new dynamic elements over the old static ones. This means that all your existing skins should work 'out of the box' with the new Orbiter;

http://youtu.be/y_vBXAZHqdY

Enjoy!

Andrew
Title: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI on iPod Touch 4G (video demo)
Post by: totallymaxed on July 03, 2011, 05:50:50 pm
Hi all,

Here is another short video of the new proxy_orbiter/Touch Orbiter combo. The Touch Orbiter 2.1 is this time running on an iPod Touch 4G and is connected to a Dianemo NC via WiFi;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZcURvJ8dt0

All the best


Andrew
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: rndinokc on July 04, 2011, 02:38:23 pm
Thanks Andrew.  The UI looks great and the functionality has gone up several notches.  I know this is a lot of hard work and I appreciate it.
Randy
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: totallymaxed on July 04, 2011, 03:14:38 pm
Thanks Andrew.  The UI looks great and the functionality has gone up several notches.  I know this is a lot of hard work and I appreciate it.
Randy

Thanks.

We're really excited to see what the community will build around the new proxy_orbiter... we hope we will see some exciting new implementations for small touch based devices!

Andrew
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: darrenmason on July 05, 2011, 01:05:44 am
Andrew,

Does that mean the code is ready and available?

Regards
Darren
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: totallymaxed on July 05, 2011, 01:27:12 am
Andrew,

Does that mean the code is ready and available?

Regards
Darren

No. But I think it will be by the end of this week hopefully.

Andrew
Title: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI - Tab Bar Camera access
Post by: totallymaxed on July 06, 2011, 11:05:55 am
Hi all,

Another pair of short videos showing some last minute features that made it into the iOS Orbiter 2.1 release;

- UI Buttons can open integrated WebKit browser
- Dedicated Cameras button in Tab Bar
- Access to IP cameras using secure encrypted remote access

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QtNoM83xQM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4pCuZHucs0
Title: New iOS Touch Orbiter Released to Apple for Approval (video demo)
Post by: totallymaxed on July 07, 2011, 10:50:55 am
The Dianemo iOS Orbiter v1.2 has been released for Approval to Apple today (7 July). Which means that typically in about 7 days from now it should be available in the iOS App Store. As with previous releases this version is FREE for download by any iOS device owner. Here is a short video showing some last minute cosmetic changes;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nXoRJ9RaN4

Enjoy!

All the best


Andrew
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: rages on July 07, 2011, 08:48:07 pm
Very nice !!!!
Great Job  :)
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: RayBe on July 08, 2011, 12:02:33 am
Looking good, great work!
The thing i am missing a bit are the left-hand alphabet-search-keys, are they going to be implemented in another way?

br,
Raymond
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: totallymaxed on July 08, 2011, 12:16:21 am
Looking good, great work!
The thing i am missing a bit are the left-hand alphabet-search-keys, are they going to be implemented in another way?

br,
Raymond

We plan to introduce the alpha search in a later update. The code for that under iOS was not finished enough to include and wanted to get the release out.

All the best


Andrew
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: RayBe on July 08, 2011, 10:06:41 am
Very cool! Thanks a lot.
Will you guys implement other iOs-UI elements in the future as well?
Is your goal to replace the whole (proxy) orbiter-UI with native-OS elements?

Br
Raymond
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: totallymaxed on July 08, 2011, 10:36:57 am
Very cool! Thanks a lot.
Will you guys implement other iOs-UI elements in the future as well?
Is your goal to replace the whole (proxy) orbiter-UI with native-OS elements?

Br
Raymond

Thanks for your comments :-)

I think you can assume that our ultimate goal is to re-invent the way UI's for LinuxMCE & Dianemo are designed/created/implemented making the whole process more accessible to UI designers. The iOS Touch Orbiter 1.2 and our QT Touch Orbiter is a step along that road and you will see some more enhancements to the Interactive Layer in the near future. However the Interactive Layer is probably just a 'stepping stone' technology - its a fast win in that we can deliver a good level of new capability and to a large extent it does not require any new effort in terms of UI development ie it enhances existing Skins for no additional effort etc. However 'under the hood' we still have all that nasty legacy code being executed and the new proxy_orbiter does an 'on the fly' conversion of some design objects into XML and hands that back to the Touch Orbiter. This approach probably cant be extended to the whole UI though without it becoming another big mess of 'goo' on top of the mess that is the current implementation of Orbiter!

So ultimately something cleaner more extensible and complete is needed and that is likely to be something more like golgoj4's QML based Orbiter approach as it will allow designers to build UI's in QML. However whether we implement this approach or another in future versions of Touch Orbiter is still not decided. What you can be sure of is that we will deliver something in this area and that the Touch Orbiter codebase will be updated - and the iOS App will be part of this too.

All the best


Andrew
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: bongowongo on July 08, 2011, 11:39:17 am
How does your orbiter project relate to golgoj4's experiments?
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: totallymaxed on July 08, 2011, 03:49:46 pm
How does your orbiter project relate to golgoj4's experiments?

It doesn't really. As i describe in the response above the Interactive Layer in Touch Orbiter 1.2 is probably not a long term solution but it does give us some real usable capability in terms of delivering some more dynamic UI right now.

Golgoj4's approach is a more funder mental re-engineering of the Orbiter and ultimately is probably pretty close to where we think we need to be but its not deliverable today and will need a lot more work before its something that could replace what we have today. So the two work along side one another really delivering new capability now on one hand while the other technology is worked up and completed.

All the best


Andrew
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: l3mce on July 08, 2011, 05:05:29 pm
It doesn't really. As i describe in the response above the Interactive Layer in Touch Orbiter 1.2 is probably not a long term solution but it does give us some real usable capability in terms of delivering some more dynamic UI right now.

Golgoj4's approach is a more funder mental re-engineering of the Orbiter and ultimately is probably pretty close to where we think we need to be but its not deliverable today and will need a lot more work before its something that could replace what we have today. So the two work along side one another really delivering new capability now on one hand while the other technology is worked up and completed.

All the best


Andrew

Hi Andrew... very impressive work. Looks very smooth. Images seem to be loading much quicker now.

I know golgoj4 would appreciate the help reaching the common goal of re-engineering the UI. He is deep in the bowels now, and it is pretty murky in there. I understand you have limited resources to attach to day to day operations/support/development. I know spare time is probably a laughable concept... but clearly the work is overwhelming, and it would be a terrible shame if he drowned when you have such impressive and rare life preservers.
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: totallymaxed on July 09, 2011, 11:23:11 am
Hi Andrew... very impressive work. Looks very smooth. Images seem to be loading much quicker now.

I know golgoj4 would appreciate the help reaching the common goal of re-engineering the UI. He is deep in the bowels now, and it is pretty murky in there. I understand you have limited resources to attach to day to day operations/support/development. I know spare time is probably a laughable concept... but clearly the work is overwhelming, and it would be a terrible shame if he drowned when you have such impressive and rare life preservers.

Hi,

Thanks. Yes the earlier versions I showed in my videos had a bug in the code that manages how the images are rendered and sometimes images hat had been downloaded were flagged as not available and this slowed things down a fair bit. That bug was squashed ;-).

We're still looking at the best way to deliver better UI technology and better UI design capability while making sure that we can move a future Orbiter to any device that seems appropriate with minimum effort. Golgoj4's work is impressive and we like it a whole lot but we have not come to a decision yet about our direction on this. Whatever we do in this area you can be sure it will be made available to the community under the GPL - that is a given.

Whichever way we go on this golgoj4 can always get some input from us if he needs to.

All the best


Andrew
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: totallymaxed on July 14, 2011, 12:41:09 am
Just to let everyone know that the Dianemo iOS Orbiter v1.2 has been approved by the Apple iOS App store this evening. So inside the next 24 hours you will see the new App become available on the App store.

All the best


Andrew
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: RayBe on July 14, 2011, 09:29:16 am
Just to let everybody know, now it IS available :)

br,
Raymond
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: totallymaxed on July 14, 2011, 09:43:23 am
Just to let everybody know, now it IS available :)

br,
Raymond

Yep your right it is now live :-)

Andrew
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: RayBe on July 14, 2011, 11:45:55 am
Andrew or Uplink, i got into a bit of trouble could one of you help?

i installed
http://deb.linuxmce.org/pluto-proxy-orbiter_2.0.0.44.11071224175_i386.deb
http://deb.linuxmce.org/pluto-website-admin_2.0.0.44.11071224175_i386.deb
and the new Dianemo iOS Orbiter v1.2.

also created a dir: sudo mkdir -p /usr/pluto/orbiter/bits

but the Dianemo iOS Orbiter v1.2 and the existing RoamingOrb are not working anymore

i did: /usr/pluto/bin/Proxy_Orbiter -d 40 -r localhost which gave me:
Code: [Select]
Proxy_Orbiter, v.2.0.0.44.11071224175
Visit www.plutohome.com for source code and license information


     =======================|  DirectFB 1.0.1  |=======================
          (c) 2001-2007  The DirectFB Organization (directfb.org)
          (c) 2000-2004  Convergence (integrated media) GmbH
        ------------------------------------------------------------

(*) DirectFB/Core: Single Application Core. (2008-09-12 19:59)
(!) Direct/Util: opening '/dev/fb0' and '/dev/fb/0' failed
    --> No such file or directory
(!) DirectFB/FBDev: Error opening framebuffer device!
(!) DirectFB/FBDev: Use 'fbdev' option or set FRAMEBUFFER environment variable.
(!) DirectFB/Core: Could not initialize 'system' core!
    --> Initialization error!
Failed initializing SDL: DirectFBCreate: Initialization error!
01 07/14/11 11:34:55.485 X is not running! Starting X and the window manager: /usr/pluto/bin/Start_X.sh <0xb4ee96f0>
1 07/14/11 11:34:58 SetupAudioVideo (server) Starting
1 07/14/11 11:34:58 SetupAudioVideo (server) '
1 07/14/11 11:34:58 SetupAudioVideo (server) DBSetting: S Reboot:  Script Path: /usr/pluto/bin/
1 07/14/11 11:34:58 /usr/pluto/bin/Start_X.sh (server) Starting X server (client: /usr/bin/xfwm4; parms: --compositor=off)
1 07/14/11 11:34:59 /usr/pluto/bin/Start_X.sh (server) X server: backround; AlphaBlending: 0

any help would be much appreciated,
br,
Raymond
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: DragonK on July 14, 2011, 11:53:36 am
Hi Raymond,

I dont know if you saw this thread http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=11582.30

Cfernandes and I had a bit of trouble at first, but was resolved with the help of Uplink.
Maybe its similar to your problem? If you try to open weborbiter from a webbrowser, does it open?

Karel
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: RayBe on July 14, 2011, 12:10:35 pm
Hi Karel,

thanks for the quick response, actually it did not create the /usr/pluto/orbiter/bits directory,
after creating that it sadly still did not work,

br,
Raymond
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: uplink on July 14, 2011, 01:09:09 pm
Andrew or Uplink, i got into a bit of trouble could one of you help?

i installed
http://deb.linuxmce.org/pluto-proxy-orbiter_2.0.0.44.11071224175_i386.deb
http://deb.linuxmce.org/pluto-website-admin_2.0.0.44.11071224175_i386.deb
and the new Dianemo iOS Orbiter v1.2.

also created a dir: sudo mkdir -p /usr/pluto/orbiter/bits

but the Dianemo iOS Orbiter v1.2 and the existing RoamingOrb are not working anymore

i did: /usr/pluto/bin/Proxy_Orbiter -d 40 -r localhost which gave me:
Code: [Select]
Proxy_Orbiter, v.2.0.0.44.11071224175
Visit www.plutohome.com for source code and license information


     =======================|  DirectFB 1.0.1  |=======================
          (c) 2001-2007  The DirectFB Organization (directfb.org)
          (c) 2000-2004  Convergence (integrated media) GmbH
        ------------------------------------------------------------

(*) DirectFB/Core: Single Application Core. (2008-09-12 19:59)
(!) Direct/Util: opening '/dev/fb0' and '/dev/fb/0' failed
    --> No such file or directory
(!) DirectFB/FBDev: Error opening framebuffer device!
(!) DirectFB/FBDev: Use 'fbdev' option or set FRAMEBUFFER environment variable.
(!) DirectFB/Core: Could not initialize 'system' core!
    --> Initialization error!
Failed initializing SDL: DirectFBCreate: Initialization error!
01 07/14/11 11:34:55.485 X is not running! Starting X and the window manager: /usr/pluto/bin/Start_X.sh <0xb4ee96f0>
1 07/14/11 11:34:58 SetupAudioVideo (server) Starting
1 07/14/11 11:34:58 SetupAudioVideo (server) '
1 07/14/11 11:34:58 SetupAudioVideo (server) DBSetting: S Reboot:  Script Path: /usr/pluto/bin/
1 07/14/11 11:34:58 /usr/pluto/bin/Start_X.sh (server) Starting X server (client: /usr/bin/xfwm4; parms: --compositor=off)
1 07/14/11 11:34:59 /usr/pluto/bin/Start_X.sh (server) X server: backround; AlphaBlending: 0

any help would be much appreciated,
br,
Raymond

It looks like you ran this without a valid DISPLAY variable in the terminal. I think DirectFB is attempted when you do that. No idea why. I think SDL decides to try it out.
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: uplink on July 14, 2011, 01:24:48 pm
You'll be "happy" to know that possy's debs don't create /usr/pluto/orbiter/bits :) That's why things still don't work out of the box. I'll chase him up for a fix.
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: Marie.O on July 14, 2011, 01:46:39 pm
Which is one of the reasons, why the deb has not found its way into the repo atm, but just uploaded so people can manually test stuff, without breaking everybodies proxy orbiters.
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: totallymaxed on July 14, 2011, 01:50:04 pm
Which is one of the reasons, why the deb has not found its way into the repo atm, but just uploaded so people can manually test stuff, without breaking everybodies proxy orbiters.

The new proxy_orbiter is stable... we've been using it for weeks now. Its your deb thats not ;-)

Seriously the new proxy_orbiter is completely backwardly compatible with the previous versions and we have not seen any issues.

All the best


Andrew
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: RayBe on July 14, 2011, 03:09:28 pm
all seems fine now, thanks to all who helped.
and i am more than happy to test :) and help this way.

br,
Raymond
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: Marie.O on July 14, 2011, 03:38:34 pm
The new proxy_orbiter is stable... we've been using it for weeks now. Its your deb thats not ;-)

Yeah, comes from putting out debs right after some people initially put stuff into our repo... ;)

A new deb will be available shortly, and should arrive with a regular apt-get update / upgrade cycle for 810 and 1004
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: totallymaxed on July 14, 2011, 03:47:32 pm
Yeah, comes from putting out debs right after some people initially put stuff into our repo... ;)

A new deb will be available shortly, and should arrive with a regular apt-get update / upgrade cycle for 810 and 1004

Cool thanks :-)

Andrew
Title: Re: Preview of new Touch Orbiter UI Capabilities (video demo)
Post by: l3mce on July 14, 2011, 08:30:12 pm
Hi,

Thanks. Yes the earlier versions I showed in my videos had a bug in the code that manages how the images are rendered and sometimes images hat had been downloaded were flagged as not available and this slowed things down a fair bit. That bug was squashed ;-).

We're still looking at the best way to deliver better UI technology and better UI design capability while making sure that we can move a future Orbiter to any device that seems appropriate with minimum effort. Golgoj4's work is impressive and we like it a whole lot but we have not come to a decision yet about our direction on this. Whatever we do in this area you can be sure it will be made available to the community under the GPL - that is a given.

Whichever way we go on this golgoj4 can always get some input from us if he needs to.

All the best


Andrew

Thank you very much for the reply, and that is a perfectly reasonable position. I misunderstood your earlier post on the subject. Great work guys... looks great.