Android Touch Orbiter

[wombiroller]

Hey Darren, sorry about the delay.. WiFi troubles (dead router)...

The new version works great on the N1 with Froyo 2.2. No more black screens when flipping from landscape to portrait. Speed is still great. The portrait mode looks a bit skewed, but that is to be expected. Also the scroll arrows are tough to press, but again that is more a form factor thing.

Might be handy if we could force to landscape on these smaller devices (user preference) or maybe this is just a good excuse for me to get an android tablet

Thanks!!!

Cheers,
Adriel.

[los93sol]

We've got 2 touch orbiters source code checked into SVN now.  I'm exploring more advanced features like implementing bluetooth support, etc. (Preliminary code for this is in svn already)  Anyways, had a brainstorm and wanted to get some discussion going.  With Android devices we are able to retrieve the last known location, and have several options for location detection, bluetooth, gps, cell triangulation, and wifi come to mind.  With a little effort we can probably do some cool things with location based scenarios (like the mobile orbiter scenarios when away from home).  I'm thinking it would be cool to levarage something like Google Maps so we can make the home aware of where we are/have been.  I wanted to plant the seed and get some feedback, do you guys think something like this could be useful, what ideas do you have for something like this, etc?

Keep in mind that the original mobile orbiter code was written when phones were not nearly as capable as they are today, we need to do some thorough research and assess what we currently have before making any final development decisions.  I feel that the touch orbiter is a definite step in the right direction, but let's not forget there are lots of other features of the mobile orbiters too, and we have the source code so we can be innovative in this area.

[rperre]

Darrenmason, it works great with this last version.

As far as options for tracking location, not sure what could be beneficial to that.

I would like to see the app expand with notifications, etc....
e.g. 10:15 front door opened
       10:17 front door closed
       11:15 motion detected (and house in "Away" mode)
etc...

Richard

[totallymaxed]

As far as options for tracking location, not sure what could be beneficial to that.

I would like to see the app expand with notifications, etc....
e.g. 10:15 front door opened
       10:17 front door closed
       11:15 motion detected (and house in "Away" mode)

Any of the Touch Orbiters can already display those kind of event alerts...but currently they will be displayed as standard Orbiter screens of course. We're looking into ways to extend this in the future in Touch Orbiters & proxy_orbiter (proxy_orbiter2.0 in effect) so that the Touch Orbiter can use the graphical display capabilities of its underlying OS to layout/display the UI. The objective here would be to allow Touch Orbiter to display more dynamic & graphically rich UI's that we can today. This is still very much in its very early stages but as soon as we have something demonstrable we will make it available to the community.

All the best


Andrew

[darrenmason]

Good stuff Andrew, Aligns well with some discussions that Adam(los93sol) and I have had.

Do you see this still progressing with the HAD Designer based screen model with layout in the database and the rendering (in the proxy) producing data structures instead?
This is what I am thinking but interested in what you have come up or thinking about.

regards
Darren

[totallymaxed]

Good stuff Andrew, Aligns well with some discussions that Adam(los93sol) and I have had.

Do you see this still progressing with the HAD Designer based screen model with layout in the database and the rendering (in the proxy) producing data structures instead?
This is what I am thinking but interested in what you have come up or thinking about.

regards
Darren

Hi Darren,

Yes basically what you describe above is where our current thinking is. Our current feeling is that the proxy_orbiter2.0 will be a complete re-write from scratch (and released under GPL too). Functionally PO2.0 will send screen layout/content info to and receive responses from Touch Orbiter and will act as the interface into the existing HAD driven screen architecture (at least for a while). PO2.0 will not send png's or jpg's of whole screens (though it will probably send png's for screen elements such as buttons or other UI elements) and will use an xml like format for describing each screen.

This is all in flux...what we will probably do is build a few proto's and let everyone have a play with them etc to see if this approach makes sense. We think it does but lets see ;-)

Any ideas or thinking you or Adam have on this would be welcome - post any thoughts/ideas for discussion here.

All the best


Andrew

[cht_winston]

Hi Darren,

Just wanted to give you a quick update on our testing of Android devices and the Touch Orbiter:-

HTC Hero (Android 2.1 update) looks fine with a screen res of 480 * 320 (iPhone).

Sony Ericcson Xperia X10 (Android 1.6) looks fine with 960 * 640 (iPhone4)

Have to refresh the screen on the change of orientation and after screen-saver on both devices but other than that nothing to report. Looking forward to any updates.

Winston

[bongowongo]

Using liveCD android 0.3 android version 1.5
When I try to install after download the apk package I get a parse error.

Also if somebody could point me to an better way to install /use andriod in virtualbox, I can test.
______________________________________________________________________________
Edit, I got it working in virtualbox.

• Download ISO here version 1.6 of andriod, do not know how to update to 2.2| http://www.android-x86.org/download
• mount it and install it on a virtual HDD
• connect a cardreader through virtual USB so you can access an SD-card
• after installation, unmount ISO
• Download android orbiter package through browser, run install

presto.

[darrenmason]

If you are trying to run Android in an emulator then just download the dev kit. it includes a skinned emulator which I think is just qemu emulating an arm processor..
but good to see you have it working in virtualbox

regards Darren

[bongowongo]

Well I just do not understand the dev-kit

[Crawtech]

Hi All

Darren Just trying the Andriod obiter out on a 10" Epad (ZT-180) seems to work well let you know how it goes over the weekend
http://gadgetmix.com/mids/zenithink-zt-180-ipad-clone-running-android/

[rchamp]

willing to test too. I have an Android 2.1 HTC hero.

[darrenmason]

willing to test too. I have an Android 2.1 HTC hero.

Feel free. The apk is attached to one of my previous messges in this thread...

Currently I am not aware of any issues other than the need to do refresh_image explicitly sometimes.

The source code is checked into the linuxmce svn server (under people->darrenmason) for those interested

[rchamp]

This might be a noobie question, but what type of orbiter do I need to set up in the web admin to enable the touch orbiter? general proxy orbiter?

[bongowongo]

See the wiki page of weborbiter 2.0, set up accordingly, use that port for your android orbiter.