Android Touch Orbiter

[rperre]

I have a droidx with the latest android from verizon (2.3.15).

The program runs great with the following issue

When you turn it landscape, it force closes

Other then this it's very responsive and playing media, turning lights on/of etc... works great.

I couldn't get it to work from "outside" the lmce network, is there a special trick?
I have ddns setup, port forwarded to lmce setup, tried IP address, but nothing worked.

Richard

[darrenmason]

Thanks Richard. Are you able to send me a logcat of when you get the force close? I am not getting this problem on the simulator or my phone.

It should work out side the linuxMCE network ( although I havn't tried it ). Will try mine and let you know....

Edit: Just tried it from external and works OK. A bit slower than on the lan but I guess to be expected. Note that there is no security however. My core is my gateway so I just opened the 3461 port and set my touchorbiter to my dyndns address.

[jeangot]

Darren,

I just stumbled on this and it works great on my Droid. Since you said you are open to feature requests: any plans to add user authentication (similar to the web orbiter) so it could safely run over public internet?

Jean

[Enigmus]

This is a network application?  I thought this was a blue tooth based application.

[rperre]

Darrenmason: got it to work from outside, i had to use my ip address though, the ddns name didn't work, but this is probably another problem.

If you could tell me where i can find this log, i will post it here

Richard

[kyfalcon]

I could very well be wrong, but Apache needs to be set up to recognize your ddns name in order for that functionality to work

Darrenmason: got it to work from outside, i had to use my ip address though, the ddns name didn't work, but this is probably another problem.

If you could tell me where i can find this log, i will post it here

Richard

[rperre]

ddns in my honest opinion just "resolves" my ip address to the name i setup, which is a dns issue. should have nothing to do with apache server.

Richard

[darrenmason]

Hi all,

Good to see it in use. Some answers to the questions:

>This is a network application?  I thought this was a blue tooth based application.
This connects directly via a TCP/IP socket to the linuxMCE server. Bluetooth is not used

> If you could tell me where i can find this log, i will post it here
2 ways: If you have the dev kit installed on your PC and are able to connect to your phone then you can use adb. Just do 'adb shell' and type logcat in the shell and you can copy/paste anything relevant. Alternatively there are apps that allow you to push out your log. Havn't used them myself but they exist. See http://code.google.com/p/android-log-collector/ which is also on the Market

>  any plans to add user authentication (similar to the web orbiter) so it could safely run over public internet?
Not by me at the moment, but Adam (los93sol) was looking at something.
My suggestion though to get a secure connection is to use a ssh tunnel. This works fine (I just tried it on my phone) and is much safer than opening up more ports on your linuxmce gateway.
See http://tech.shantanugoel.com/2010/08/02/ssh-tunneling-android.html for instructions. You will want a local port forward from linuxmceserver:3461 to whatever you want locally (I used 3461 as well) then just changes the settings in Orbiter to use 'localhost' as the server address.

btw: I am using dyndns for this and am having no problems connecting to my dns address - not sure why it is not working for you. I am pretty sure it is not related to the Orbiter software.

Regards
Darren

[kyfalcon]

ddns in my honest opinion just "resolves" my ip address to the name i setup, which is a dns issue. should have nothing to do with apache server.

Richard

Apache is capable of hosting many URLs on the same server, not sure how linuxmce uses Apache , if they use the hostname part etc. Was just offering a possible explanation

[rperre]

kyfalcon, yes i understand and i appreciate any help. But it is probably just my stuff that doesn't work

Now i have tried the orbiter a bit and setup the "iphone4" weborbiter for my android which should be close to the resolution it can handle.

I still have a main menu that looks "crunched" like it's scaled about 50% down (this i think is meant to be)
All other menu's and/or media lists only take up half of the screen AND they are scaled about 50%, so both, this makes it hard to read and touch the stuff you want.

I'll probably try to make picture of my screen for clarification when i get to it, hopefully tonight or tommorrow.

Still when i rotate the orbiter it force closes on me and i will try to get a log to you soon.

Richard

[rperre]

Darrenmason, i got this log, hope it helps you. It starts with me downloading the log collector, then i open the android app, rotate it to landscape..... it crashes.... rotate back to portrait hit force close and start the log collector to get this data.

Hope you can make sense of it

http://linuxmce.pastebin.ca/1982247

Richard

[darrenmason]

Thanks Richard, will take a look tonight - it is exactly what I need and should be able to work out your problem.

wrt. your resolution/ image squashing issues: Your device resolution is 480x854 in portrait and 854x480 in landscape so you want to use an orbiter image that preserves your aspect ratio (preferably in landscape). Your is about 1.78 (854 / 480) so just choose the resolution that is closest to that aspect ratio. It can be higher or lower resolution but higher will just mean that the image that gets transferred between your phone and the server is larger and lower will mean that you are not utlising the full resolution of your device.
Obviously, a resolution exactly matching your device can be used.
The app will currently squeeze the image it receives into the device in each rotation. Your current generated image is 960x640 which is 1.5

But send me a picture so we get an idea of how bad it is.

Regards
Darren

[rperre]

Darren,

Some more testing done. I made my orbiter 720x480. I noticed that when i start it in Landscape, everything looks nice and normal, in portrait it's all scaled in.

I can actually go from landscape to portrait without it crashing, but trying to go from portrait to landscape i get the force close.

Touches are very accurate and everything i have seems to be working.

Richard

[darrenmason]

Richard,

Can I get you to try this version?

regards
Darren

[Enigmus]

Will bluetooth support make it on the road map for this application.  My wireless is not part of my trusted network.  I'd rather not go through the whole ssh tunneling to utilize the app.  Though I suppose if that native authentication works it's way in, that would ease the issue.