LinuxMCE Forums

General => Feature requests & roadmap => Topic started by: vjury on December 01, 2007, 07:53:20 am

Title: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: vjury on December 01, 2007, 07:53:20 am
These would be great remote control devices
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: totallymaxed on December 01, 2007, 11:23:53 am
These would be great remote control devices

Well they would if Apple opened them up for 3rd party applications!
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: tschak909 on December 02, 2007, 08:12:10 am
use the web orbiter for now. it works.

-Thom
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: totallymaxed on December 02, 2007, 10:13:58 am
use the web orbiter for now. it works.

-Thom

Hmmm... and the iPod Touch too... now if the iPhone/Touch just had Flash enabled in Safari we could build a Flash UI ;-)
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: Matthew on December 06, 2007, 06:15:14 am
use the web orbiter for now. it works.

Hmmm... and the iPod Touch too... now if the iPhone/Touch just had Flash enabled in Safari we could build a Flash UI ;-)

Actually, since a Flash UI would unify the Orbiter and Adminsite code into one program, that would be excellent. But since the ease of HTML and the common skills of C/C++ would be lost, the Flash GUI would really demand an interface builder app, rather than the proprietary Adobe tools. There's OpenLaszlo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenLaszlo)...
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: tschak909 on December 06, 2007, 07:22:34 am
a system just as good could be built with ajaxy html, been there, done that.

-Thom
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: bulek on December 06, 2007, 12:28:19 pm
a system just as good could be built with ajaxy html, been there, done that.

-Thom

Got any examples ? I'm also curious how to make such gui and also to make it look nice.... I see a lot of examples, but mostly text based....

Thanks in advance,

regards,

Bulek.
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: bmk789 on December 07, 2007, 12:16:56 am
Wasn't there an SDK released for the iPhone and iPod touch?  Anyways, yesterday I created wiki pages for the Iphone (http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Iphone) and iPod touch (http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Apple_Ipod-Touch), feel free to expand these.
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: diamondcobra on December 13, 2007, 06:50:11 am
I installed tversity on my vista pc when they announced an interface for the iphone several months ago (before I even knew about LMCE).  You dont install anything but you go to http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:41952/iphone when you are connected to your wlan, and it isnt bad.  You have to wait forever for tversity to transcode your video before it plays, but it works nicely (fast) for pictures and music.  I port forward so i can get to all my music/pictures on the road too, using edge, since i dont like having everything on my phone.

I know you posted for using the iphone as an orbiter/remote but this would be a cool thing too.  I just wish I knew how to do the 'ajaxy' stuff and make the interface myself.
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: Matthew on December 13, 2007, 04:26:44 pm
How is it using the Web Orbiter (http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/Web_Orbiter) from an iPhone? Is there a way to use the iPhone / Web Orbiter with LMCE over Bluetooth?
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: tschak909 on December 13, 2007, 08:48:45 pm
as i said before, it works. you just make a Size definition for the iphone.

-Thom
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: Matthew on December 13, 2007, 09:06:08 pm
as i said before, it works. you just make a Size definition for the iphone.

Well, I was looking for a realworld review from someone evidently about to try it. I'm impressed by the Web Orbiter (that it mirrors the real Orbiter, its proxy architecture, that it's responsive), so I was looking to see how well it performs on an iPhone to meet their use case they started this thread about.
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: totallymaxed on December 16, 2007, 03:24:40 pm
as i said before, it works. you just make a Size definition for the iphone.

Well, I was looking for a realworld review from someone evidently about to try it. I'm impressed by the Web Orbiter (that it mirrors the real Orbiter, its proxy architecture, that it's responsive), so I was looking to see how well it performs on an iPhone to meet their use case they started this thread about.

The Web Orbiter is a bit of a hack that has been around since the early Pluto days. Basically the UI1 screen is rendered as a complete  clickable map and the whole screen is re-rendered every time you interact with the UI. It needs a fast and low latency connection. Having said that it does work on pretty much any web enabled device (I have not found anything it wont work on so far) so it is useful from that perspective.
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: Matthew on December 16, 2007, 05:25:50 pm
as i said before, it works. you just make a Size definition for the iphone.

Well, I was looking for a realworld review from someone evidently about to try it. I'm impressed by the Web Orbiter (that it mirrors the real Orbiter, its proxy architecture, that it's responsive), so I was looking to see how well it performs on an iPhone to meet their use case they started this thread about.

The Web Orbiter is a bit of a hack that has been around since the early Pluto days. Basically the UI1 screen is rendered as a complete  clickable map and the whole screen is re-rendered every time you interact with the UI. It needs a fast and low latency connection. Having said that it does work on pretty much any web enabled device (I have not found anything it wont work on so far) so it is useful from that perspective.

Is it literally regenerated from the UI1, so whenever developers change UI1 the Web Orbiter interface automatically "just works"? So there's no chance of diverging the Web Orbiter GUI from the UI1 GUI? If so, that's really excellent.

All I could think to improve it would be to turn it to AJAX, so only the GUI areas that actually change reload - not the whole page, with the HTTP Expires, If-Modified-Since and other caching headers skipping refreshes entirely on those section. If the Web GUI were split into widgets, instead of whole screen, with interactive widgets including all their visual states (eg. buttons offer both default and "pressed" looking images), and some javascript for immediate feedback for interaction (ie. click a button and it immediately appears depressed, while the browser sends the click to the server, then returns the message to the clicked button itself, whose Javascript decides whether to refresh just the button, or the whole page). But as "quick & dirty", the current functionality is perfectly adequate.

And for mobiles that support Bluetooth PAN (http://forums.se-nse.net/index.php?showtopic=13126), Web Orbiter puts an orbiter on any mobile.
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: kogen on February 05, 2008, 10:41:48 am
Hey guys ...

Check this out: http://www.thegreenergrass.org/2008/02/concept-current-state.html

I would really love to se this kind of interface for LinuxMCE on iPhone/iTouch.
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: Matthew on February 05, 2008, 04:42:35 pm
Check this out: http://www.thegreenergrass.org/2008/02/concept-current-state.html

I would really love to se this kind of interface for LinuxMCE on iPhone/iTouch.

Do you know a Flash, Java or other (SVG?) applet that can run in a webpage that allows simple drag & drop drawing of floorplans and objects in it?
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: skatingn330 on February 26, 2008, 03:56:03 am
Can this be of any use?

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/21/touchpad-turns-your-iphone-into-a-remote-trackpad/
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: Matthew on February 27, 2008, 05:54:14 am
Can this be of any use?

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/21/touchpad-turns-your-iphone-into-a-remote-trackpad/

That thing is cool, and probably a good UI device for LMCE. But not for the use for which I'm looking for a drag & drop floorplan. The touchpad would be a good controller for such a drag&drop app.
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: jtgamble on April 04, 2008, 03:43:54 am
I'm not a programmer, so I wouldn't even know where to begin, but it is probably possible for somebody to create a nice app for the iPhone using either a) the newly released official SDK or b) the SDK for jailbroken iPhones thats been around for a while. I had my iPhone running one of the jailbroken firmware's for a while and there were a lot of very useful apps. I'm sure it could be done, but it would require somebody with some know-how to take it on.
Title: Re: Iphone/iTouch as Orbiter or remote control
Post by: nite_man on April 07, 2008, 10:06:29 am
So, SDK for iPhone is released. But to develop the Orbiter for iPhone we need MacOS user and iPhone owner who knows how to develop Apple software :)