Topics

46

Developers / Re: Clutter Exercise: Media List - [X] DONE

« on: June 05, 2010, 03:21:12 am »

As a first experiment, let's try to build a media list, using Clutter or Qt.

How about the following:

* A Grid of thumbnails that stretch from left to right, and scroll off the bottom
* as you mouse over one of them, it pushes forward, becomes larger, and expands into a rectangle, containing the thumbnail. and some text.
* kinetic scrolling.

Go.

-Thom

47

Feature requests & roadmap / Meego (was: Attitude of COOPERATION.)

« on: June 03, 2010, 09:39:14 pm »

We intend to move to 1004 for the immediate future. I am doing research to move the stack to MeeGo.

-Thom

48

Developers / Programming Documentation Task: Document DCERouter.

« on: May 31, 2010, 08:15:49 am »

I have a task for someone interested in creating programming and implementation detail documentation,

start with documenting the DCERouter.

The source is here: http://svn.linuxmce.org/svn/branches/LinuxMCE-0810/src/DCERouter

there is some start to doxygen metadata in the code, but perhaps we can improve this.

Anyone want to take this on?

-Thom

49

Developers / Guys, seriously, are there no coders in here?

« on: May 23, 2010, 03:33:37 am »

Really, I'm fed up.

Am I really the only one man enough to do any serious additions to the system?

-Thom

50

Developers / Programming Task: Create new Bluetooth DCE Device

« on: May 16, 2010, 07:51:27 am »

A new Bluetooth DCE device should be created.

This should use the Bluez4 stack. Initially it should perform:

* Hardware Detect Bluetooth Devices, and emit Device Detected events.
** Device Detected events should fill out as many of the event's fields as possible, including device category so that we can detect based on device TYPE, rather than looking for specific devices.
* Proximity Detection of Bluetooth Devices, Sensor Tripped events.

Use BluetoothProximity's logic as a basis, but please, rewrite it as a C++ device. The idea here is to use the same techniques in that program, but do it in C++, and emit DCE events from it.

Ideally this should be structured so that we can add additional classes to handle more device types. This will become the replacement for Bluetooth Dongle.

Once this works, we can pave the way for other pieces, such as proper presence detection, follow me, etc. to work on a wider variety of phones, and not have to be paired to the orbiter architecture.

Anyone want to take this on?

-Thom

51

Developers / Programming Task: make dcerouter name automatically resolvable.

« on: May 13, 2010, 07:29:09 pm »

Hello everyone.

We currently keep the name of the system inside the web admin's network configuration panel.

It is, by default, set to DCERouter, and we need for it to be resolvable by name on every machine on the network, so somebody can go to a windows, mac, or linux machine and type

http://dcerouter/

into a browser, and have it just work.

Any takers?

-Thom

52

Developers / Programming Task: Learn Clutter.

« on: May 07, 2010, 12:52:10 am »

Clutter is being chosen as the animation and canvas management library upon which to build the replacement for Orbiter.

Please, study this system, and start doing small snippets of code to get used to it...

We will probably be using cluttermm to provide a C++ binding.

Links:
http://clutter-project.org/
http://www.openismus.com/documents/cluttermm_tutorial/0.9/docs/tutorial/html/index.html

-Thom

53

Developers / SmartQ V7 as a media playing MID in LinuxMCE.

« on: April 25, 2010, 05:46:46 am »

I've cooked up something of a surprise...

Over the last couple of in been researching an idea, which ultimately turns out to work just fine...

LinuxMCE can support Mobile Internet Devices, with some work on our part. I did the first test using a SmartQ V7 MID. This will also work on the SmartQ V5 MID.

Here is a video showing the SmartQ V7, selecting a video to play from its own orbiter, and even being controlled via one of my WebDT 366 orbiters, _AND_ showing that Follow Me even works correctly!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7VZ7AjIyt0

The Architecture has proven itself robust enough, for me to create a whole new class of portable media device, and the media plugin happily sends streams to it. This was possible because the VLC that ships with the SmartQ not only can play High Definition streams, but it can be remotely controlled, and they provided a module to access filesystems exposed over NFS (and guess what we use to link our media directors to the core's filesystem? )

I have checked in the first pass of a DCE plugin and player pair, that can send media streams via the media plugin, and I have verified this works by triggering video from the same orbiter, but there is still TONS of usability work to be done...

namely:

* figuring out how to sanely expose it to the UI to send media to the devices that are already playing in house (Follow Me will work for this.)
* creating the glue so that screen touches while video is playing will e it wbring up a simple transport and ability to see the orbiter display
* sending back time code to the core, so that it can be shown, and used for bookmarking and follow me and media transfer.
* volume actuation on the device
* creating an agent package that bundles up all the plumbing and sends the appropriate PnP messages to add the necessary devices to the core when first installed.
* getting and testing libdvdcss2 on the smartQ so i can test DVD playback properly.
* overall polishing and refinement...

there is ONE flaw with this particular MID that can not be fixed by me, the wifi drivers. They suck. Performance on them is absolutely terrible. I hope that SmartDevices will release better firmware soon to fix it, so that we can actually FEED high def video to the system and have it work.

Should you all wish me to continue this work, donations would be most welcome, as I am between contracts, and would like to be able to pay my bills and be able to work on these cool projects.

Hope you all enjoyed this, until next time...
-Thom

54

Developers / a Quick Glance, SmartQ V7 Orbiter.

« on: April 06, 2010, 08:24:10 am »

I have done a quick port of the Orbiter to the SmartQ V7 tablet. I had originally bought this device to do next generation orbiter research, but until the Mali200 chip is supported, I will not be able to, so I decided to make it useful in the mean time...

It is an ARM based tablet running on the TeleChips TCC8902 System-on-a-Chip, giving roughly an ARMv7 core.

It has 256 Megabytes of RAM, and comes with a triple booting firmware for Linux, Windows CE 6, and Android 1.5.

The device itself is very rough, but very open. Not of the potential of the hardware is harnessed at the moment, for example the Mali200 3D accellerator present in the device is not supported. However the supplied VideoLAN player does have video codec accelleration for the on-board codec accelerator and HDMI output, hence the moniker of an HD MID.

This is an incomplete port, as it uses the NOKIA770 macros, and thus is missing the various screens for self setup on the Orbiter itself. I will not complete this port unless there is sufficient interest in me to pay for the 20 hours remaining to do the port.

With the port finished, it would allow:

* setup entirely on the device
* installation from the web admin, via a package
* nice icon for launching
* support for the hardware keys for pagination and playlist jumping.

A video is here: http://qik.com/video/5895272

Now, I am back to squashing that last asterisk bug.

-Thom

55

Developers / Programming Task: Modify UpdateMedia to support MyMovies metadata.

« on: April 03, 2010, 01:52:51 am »

A good task for someone would be to update MyMovies to grab metadata, at the very least, cover art, present inside MyMovies folders from Windows Media Center.

The relevant code is in src/UpdateMedia from the LinuxMCE-0810 branch of our code.

UpdateMedia itself is very easy to understand, and should be easy enough to modify and customize. C++ programming knowledge needed.

Does anyone want to take on this task?

-Thom

56

Developers / Why is nobody taking on the programming tasks?

« on: March 15, 2010, 06:35:08 am »

Really, what's up, guys?

Is there not a capable developer among you?

Nobody who wants to learn this system?

Lots of users, no contributors?

Nobody with a sack, much less the balls to try?

-Thom

57

Developers / Programming Exercise: Using QT and WebKit to produce a micro-browser.

« on: March 14, 2010, 03:03:35 pm »

Firefox should be replaced.

QT and QWebView can be used to produce a working micro-browser, running in a thread of a DCE device.

Pay attention to the above statement, what I am saying is to build a DCE device, and attach a thread to it to handle a UI.

Examples of this, would be SimplePhone, LMCE_Launch_Manager...

FlickCharm or some form of kinetic scrolling should be implemented.

Should have the ability to add bookmarks to the main bookmarks menu.
Should have the ability to be controlled by DCE commands for:

* Load URL
* Forward
* Back
* Add Bookmark

and should emit DCE events for:

* Page Loading
* Page Loaded

This would allow an orbiter UI to be built, that could update the currently shown address, and show progress, and actually be able to do the commands above.

There is no visible UI except the beowser view.
There is no address bar
There is no status bar
If you add them, I will smack you, and tell you to remove them.

The UI will be provided by Orbiter.

Come on, fellas. This can be done in roughly 200 lines of code in Qt.
Somebody grow a sack and do it.

or is this another thing I will have to write to prove a point?

-Thom

58

Developers / Task for somebody: Work on Bootup Process

« on: February 28, 2010, 08:08:29 am »

I need someone to start from /etc/init.d/linuxmce and...

(1) add code to do a bootsplash that will work with and without composite manager loading.
(2) fix the spurious switch to the other VT which is not needed, the usplash needs to be visible all the way up until X starts.
(3) implmement hooks for the StartService functions in that file to update usplash.

somebody want to take this on?

-Thom

59

Developers / Programming Exercise: Pandora support using Pianobar's code as a base.

« on: February 24, 2010, 06:09:49 am »

Okay fellas, Programming challenge...

Utilize the libraries that make up PianoBar to make a Pandora DCE player and corresponding PlugIn.

It should:

(1) be self contained. No spawning shells.
(2) be installable from the software modules page.
(3) as such, for this first pass, only have one set of credentials for a given media director. Expand this later.
(4) provide Orbiter remotes and OSDs to switch between stations, and to play/pause, go to next song, etc.
(5) be accessible from the Media menu as a distinct media type. A File Browser source would not make sense here.

notes:

Use Hulu_Player and PlugIn as a basis. Also look at Xine Player/PlugIn.

I can do this in a week, can any of you?

Go for it, and beat me to it.

-Thom

60

Users / A Gift for reaching Beta: Hulu Desktop now Integrated.

« on: October 19, 2009, 04:56:44 am »

Thanks to everyone who helped make the Beta a reality.

To all of you, I have thrown in an early christmas present, for all american users, we have access to the Hulu Desktop, as a media type inside the system, to easily watch content hosted on Hulu.com.

I have placed a demo video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guIhhMdSn5A

Again, Thank you all.
-Thom