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General => Developers => Topic started by: colinjones on January 07, 2009, 06:47:32 am

Title: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: colinjones on January 07, 2009, 06:47:32 am
Thom - are you still actively working on the WebDT image? If so, can I give you some feedback on a couple of points?

1. The suspend function is great, but still takes too long to make it worth using when having a long session with the web pad. Given the limited battery life, esp with the second hand units, what options are there to reduce running power like timing out the LCD after 5 mins (say), perhaps slowing the CPU, or even some kind of suspend to RAM, each woken on a button/screen press?

2. The search function is excruciatingly slow, each letter typed can take 5 seconds to come up, and some presses seem to be missed. I'm assuming this is just a limitation of the performance of the pad, and nothing can be done about it?
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: jondecker76 on January 07, 2009, 06:57:53 am
While on the subject.... A few improvements I think would be very useful:

1) Photo_Screen_Saver inclusion (I may try this myself this weekend if I get time)
2) Orbiter embedded phone inclusion
3) I think it would ge nice to be able to use one of the bottom buttons to toggle on/off the backlight and LCD manually.
4) I noticed that on the 4-way button on the right of the WebDT, pushing to the left takes you to the home screen..  Maybe this could be moved to one of the bottom buttons, and use the 4-way Up/Down for channel up/down, and left/right for volume up/down?


Great work on this, its a great orbiter platform!
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: colinjones on January 07, 2009, 07:26:49 am
love point 4! Yes, fantastic work :)
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: tschak909 on January 07, 2009, 08:15:09 am
currently, suspend-to-ram is the only option, and what I am using. There is insufficient space on the flash to do even a tuxonice compressed predictable resume.

As for the search, just keep typing, the keystrokes are stacked, do not worry about the screen updating. It will update when the datagrid callback returns.

Orbiter needs to be modified somewhat to make sure that the hard-keys do not conflict. There are still some goofy hard-mappings laying around in the code that deal with the added stuff for UI2.. somebody wanna help me there?

As for SimplePhone and Photo_Screen_Saver... SimplePhone should be able to be run, with a few modifications.... Photo_Screen_Saver will not run as is, it is an OpenGL application... Instead, a simpler screen saver built from Update Object Image commands and a blank designobj should be used.

-Thom
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: jondecker76 on January 07, 2009, 07:25:19 pm
Would Photo_Screen_Saver run if the appropriate OpenGL libraries were installed and OrbiterGL is running?

As far as simplephone, is the audio working on the webDT at this point?
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: tschak909 on January 07, 2009, 07:30:13 pm
you'd kill the CPU. Again, a simpler solution is needed. Listen to what I said above.

As for audio.. The audio drivers are loaded, and you can get sound to output. work just needs to be done because simplephone makes some assumptions that it is on an MD.. designer work also needs to be done..a.s well as work in the telecom plugin to route virtual devices to the right places, we can no longer assume that "Take the call in here" just goes to the MD.

-Thom
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: jondecker76 on January 07, 2009, 11:33:44 pm
Thom,

I'm at work(last night for a few days! Finally!) looking at Photo_Screen_Saver source....  I do believe that it will run without OpenGL, and run on the WebDT!

Look at this snip from the cmd_On implementation:
Code: [Select]
string sUseAnimation = m_pEvent->GetDeviceDataFromDatabase(m_pData->m_dwPK_Device_ControlledVia, DEVICEDATA_Use_OpenGL_effects_CONST);
281                 bool bUseAnimation = sUseAnimation == "1";
282 
283                 if(DATA_Get_Type() == "animated")
284                         bUseAnimation = true;
285                 else if(DATA_Get_Type() == "static")
286                         bUseAnimation = false;
287                 //else default -- leave default
288 
289                 GallerySetup* SetupInfo = new GallerySetup(w, h, bUseAnimation, DATA_Get_ZoomTime(), DATA_Get_FadeTime(), m_sFileList, bNPOTTextures, this, nMaxSize);


Basically, if the parent of Photo_Screen_Saver (the Orbiter) does not have the "Use OpenGL Effects" option checked, then the Photo_Screen_Saver will not use the OpenGL animations. Furthering this, if you create an MD using UI1, the Photo_Screen_Saver does run, just with no animations.

I may give this a try this weekend
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: tschak909 on January 08, 2009, 01:07:30 am
Oh Ok! I stand corrected :D

-Thom
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: jimbodude on January 14, 2009, 05:24:10 pm
In response to getting simple phone on the DT:

I was working on getting it to run on the DT360 before I fell off the face of the earth for a month.  Progress detailed here: http://wiki.linuxmce.org/index.php/User:Jimbodude/Orbiter_Phone  I'm not sure I'll have time to go much further with it for about 2 months.

There is an image available here (http://jimbodude.net/tab/webpad-dt360-beta4-based-gamma1-simplephone.dd.tar.bz2) for anyone who wants to play with it.  Note that I only have web space for one version at a time, so if it's not there anymore, there's something newer.
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: jondecker76 on January 14, 2009, 10:36:09 pm
I've done a little work to get Photo_Screen_Saver running. So far, it is not as simple as adding the Photo_Screen_Saver binary and required files and .sh scripts, and adding a child PSS device to the orbiter. I'll be spending more time on it soon, still doesn't look too hard to get going
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: jondecker76 on January 15, 2009, 01:37:09 pm
jimbodude:

regarding simplephone on orbiters: another thing to consider is adding buttons to answer "on this orbiter" or "on media director A", "media director B", etc... or even "on Media Director in this room" for that screen. This should be a decent way to handle being able to take calls on both orbiters and media directors.
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: patmankn on January 16, 2009, 12:48:13 pm
Hey guys,

i finally got my Webpad Orbiter to work... and it wasn't as hard as i thought it would be. ;O)
Knoppix is just amazing concerning hardware detection.

As the internal wireless nic won't support WPA under any linux OS... are there some recommendations concerning an already supported one that could be grabbed for cheap on ebay?
I don't like the idea to have just one wifi-router online jus for the "remote".
So if anyone tried something that did work out... please let us know ... ;O)

Patrick

Btw. Awesome work, Thom! Works really pretty smooth!
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: tkmedia on January 16, 2009, 05:55:01 pm
Hey guys,

i finally got my Webpad Orbiter to work... and it wasn't as hard as i thought it would be. ;O)
Knoppix is just amazing concerning hardware detection.

As the internal wireless nic won't support WPA under any linux OS... are there some recommendations concerning an already supported one that could be grabbed for cheap on ebay?
I don't like the idea to have just one wifi-router online jus for the "remote".
So if anyone tried something that did work out... please let us know ... ;O)

Patrick

Btw. Awesome work, Thom! Works really pretty smooth!

What version of the web pad are you using ? and what did knoppix have to do with it?


Tim
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: tschak909 on January 16, 2009, 06:04:58 pm
There is a gamma1 release.

-Thom
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: jimbodude on January 16, 2009, 07:19:53 pm
jimbodude:

regarding simplephone on orbiters: another thing to consider is adding buttons to answer "on this orbiter" or "on media director A", "media director B", etc... or even "on Media Director in this room" for that screen. This should be a decent way to handle being able to take calls on both orbiters and media directors.

Correct. Not even close to that yet.  Need to get it to run first.
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: patmankn on January 16, 2009, 07:34:59 pm
Tim,

i used knoppix to dd thoms beta3 on the webdt366. I saw the gamma version, for no reason i just took the beta3 from thoms webspace ( i guess, i need to check my greek alphabet, don't i?).

So does the gamma release now support wpa? Or are you guys using any different wifi card?
Thx...
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: tschak909 on January 16, 2009, 07:36:16 pm
Hari did some work to allow the Aironet to do WPA.. it's a bit nasty, and requires a firmware flashing I think...but I will try to talk to him later about it.

-Thom
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: darrenmason on April 07, 2009, 04:20:51 am
Thom/Jimbodude or anyone that can help,

I would like to setup a development environment to maybe help with some of the tasks that were earlier on in this thread and/or continue the work on the embedded orbiter phone.

My understanding/assumption is that the image was developed as follows;
* Debian lenny was used as a basis for the OS and was manipulated to include the relevant drivers for the touchscreen etc.
* Oribiter was compiled for the new environment and the dependant libraries loaded.
* Some code was written to capture the physical button presses on the system.
* Splashy was used to pretty up the boot sequence somewhat.
* An installable image was made from the above and published as a USB disk image.

I believe Thom was responsible for the above and certainly has done a fantastic job.

My questions are how I go about replicating the above and what tools were used for doing the above.
Was something like scratchbox used? Was qemu used?

I have been experimenting myself but being new to this type of development I am hoping to speed the learning curve up somewhat.
I have taken a diskimage of an installed system (straight from the webdt) and I can manage to mount it via loopback and manipulate to some extent. I tried to setup scratchbox2(on Ubuntu 8.10 host) to use that as a root filesystem but it doesn't seem to like i486 as a target architecture. I have also tried to boot the image file that I took under qemu but it complains about not finding bootable device.

I would love to know what was actually done to produce the mini distribution that thom has done and what others may have tried so that I can get up to speed without all the trial and error that I am currently going through. Any references or pointers that were used.

I am happy to document this fact finding in the wiki if others feel that it would be a benefit - perhaps it could be generalised to apply to embedded development for orbiters in general.

Thanks
Darren
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: tschak909 on April 07, 2009, 04:53:15 am
lenny was initially used, by the time gamma was released, I had brought it over to sid.

Orbiter was not recompiled at all, but rather copied, using ldd to find and deal with dependencies, installing packages as needed to satisfy them, clearing and purging the apt cache as needed, and stripping Orbiter to significantly decrease its disk space requirements.

for development, I used nothing more than a tablet, a usb hub, a keyboard, a cdrom drive, both attached to the usb hub, booting from the cd, quitting to a shell, and manually partitioning the flash, putting a filesystem on the flash, and used deboostrap on the resulting mount.

The hardest part of this, is finding the Penmount drivers to use. Just save yourself the pain, and use the penmount_drv.so from the system, using the xorg.conf I built, and copying the calibration info I generated using penmount's utilities in /etc over.

You'll quickly find yourself out of space soon.

Good luck on SimplePhone, this one will not be easy, and if you succeed, you will learn an awful lot of how Telecom_Plugin, the Asterisk DCE device, Asterisk, and the rest of the system interact. Lots of work will need to be engineered into the system to make this work correctly, because the system assumes any SimplePhone is attached to the orbiter of a MEDIA DIRECTOR, and thus, you'll see all sorts of interesting behavior.

And remember, not everyone will have or want a configuration like this, so you will need to do some _SERIOUS_ brain crunches to work out the UI interactions and anticipate the possible configuration differences.

This isn't a slight to get you off of it, or anyone else for that matter. It is a challenge to see which ones of you are up for the challenge of some _REAL_ work to bring a feature to life. It will force you to seriously think about what "whole house unification" really means.

Are any of you up for it? :)

-Thom
Title: Re: WebDT 366 ongoing development?
Post by: darrenmason on April 07, 2009, 05:16:59 am
Thanks for the quick update thom - answers quite a bit for me and hopefully will speed up some of my efforts.

yeah, already seen some of the code that assumes the embedded phone belongs to the MD and there are definately some challenges there.
Will keep you updated on how I get on.