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totallymaxed
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« Reply #15 on: November 29, 2012, 11:41:17 am » |
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Well all of this comes down to personal choice in the end... and the flexibility of LinuxMCE and Dianemo means that pretty much anything can be accommodated. I do take your point about wanting dedicated devices, either loose untethered ones or in-wall. But having watched how people use the system over many years now I can say for the vast majority of users switching back and forth between App's on a device is no big deal (and happens in about 1-2 secs) and in reality it is only for alerting that you need to have the App on-screen as for the most part you use the Orbiter and then don't use it again for a extended periods of time.
Is the iPad over-specced? Well I don't think it is on reflection because in every instance I can think of people never end up using them in a 'single function' dedicated way. They always end up exploiting the fact that you can have a range of other Apps that are really incredibly useful on the iPad too - and its that fact, and that the iOS Orbiter works so well, that makes them very well suited to the job. The same would apply to Android if the App ecosystem were more developed of course.
In-wall Orbiters have other issues though... they are never actually where you need them is one. I can't tell you how many time we have heard - 'I wish i'd located it over there'. And that means when someone arrives at your gate you still cant see that they have! A better approach approach though to this issue is to have the house wide audio system just announce when you have someone at the gate or play a gate bell chime sound.
Having a wall mounting kit for a portable device is an approach you could take (as you suggest) and they can work well but the really good recessed ones are very expensive and as posde pointed out making connections to them in-wall is a big challenge.
All the best
Andrew
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jamo
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« Reply #16 on: November 29, 2012, 11:51:38 am » |
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Well all of this comes down to personal choice in the end...
Quite right... thanks for the feedback, I think it helps people who are making these decisions at design or planning time to see the types of options and things others are doing. Also helps to know what the market is generally doing because that is where the most supported hardware is likely to be. Good to know. |
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posde
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« Reply #17 on: November 29, 2012, 06:19:28 pm » |
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Well, we have both. We have the iPad and we have the Joggler. Both are at arms length near the couch for controlling our media consumption. There is ONE reason, why the iPad is demoted to a surfing machine: Speed. The orbiter sucks speedwise, when compared to any of the real Orbiters. Yes, the joggler doesn't have a battery, but it still is used more often than the iPad since we have it, because the speed difference is so notable. If I would have had the joggler first, removed it, and came with the iPad instead, SWMBO would have killed me. Even the WebDT is a faster Orbiter than the Dianemo or Roaming Orbiter on the iPad.
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tschak909
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« Reply #18 on: November 29, 2012, 07:48:25 pm » |
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the iPad's speed issues will go away once qOrbiter is ported over (and of course, we have fully formed skins). The performance of qOrbiter is even better than native Orbiter (yes, anecdotal)...
-Thom
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totallymaxed
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« Reply #19 on: November 30, 2012, 05:21:07 pm » |
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Well, we have both. We have the iPad and we have the Joggler. Both are at arms length near the couch for controlling our media consumption. There is ONE reason, why the iPad is demoted to a surfing machine: Speed. The orbiter sucks speedwise, when compared to any of the real Orbiters. Yes, the joggler doesn't have a battery, but it still is used more often than the iPad since we have it, because the speed difference is so notable. If I would have had the joggler first, removed it, and came with the iPad instead, SWMBO would have killed me. Even the WebDT is a faster Orbiter than the Dianemo or Roaming Orbiter on the iPad.
Well I'm doing a back to back test here as i write this between an MD and a iPad1 running the Dianemo App on the LAN side of an NC... the Dianemo App is possibly 1-2 10th's of a sec slower. But no more. So in use that really is not important - we don't get complaints about the spped of the App in local mode at all. If you use the Dianemo App to remotely access your system then the delay can be much longer dependent on the internet connection you have and other factors in between. All the best Andrew |
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posde
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« Reply #20 on: December 01, 2012, 02:19:30 pm » |
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Both orbiter devices are connected on the LAN. And the difference between the two is very noticeable. Glad to hear that others don't feel this problem  |
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jamo
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« Reply #21 on: January 17, 2013, 07:42:57 am » |
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Just some update to what is quite an interesting topic to me....
I ordered the joggler which was, surprisingly, available in my neck of the woods, but when it arrived, it turned out to be a paperback book on the 02 joggler, not the actual device. How odd is that- there is a book out there that retails for the same price you'd expect of the device with the same name. Fortunately, the supplier was happy to refund but that put paid to my joggler plans.
Phase 2, I fell back on the Android tablet option and ordered a point-of-view mobii protab 27 7" android (4) tablet. Well, all well and good except the wifi on this unit was terrible. I used a neat Android app called "wifi analyzer" to check it and compared to my HTC one V, the tablet was consistently receiving 10Dbi or so worse signal. It would constantly drop the signal if I was more than 5-6m away fromt he access pt. Pathetic. Complaining to the support crowd didn't help as they promised to upload new firmware to the website but never did so I returned the tab.
Lesson learned - make sure the wifi is good on the tablet you buy or you're sunk. For weborbiter or Qorbiter that's an absolute necessity since most of these (cheap) tablets don't have a LAN connection as far as I can tell. It's difficult to evaluate wifi connectivity upfront but if you can, it's worth checking.
Never got around to mounting it or anything but I did notice that the power supply was 5 or 6v and I reckon that's pretty standard these days due to the proliferation of USB charging so it should be fairly easy to modify / purchase a POE splitter to supply the voltage and not have to worry about the brick if you're thinking of mounting. However, as pointed out by possy earlier on, they do tend to have the connections (power and usb) on the sides which could make neat mounting tricky.
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slampt
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« Reply #22 on: January 17, 2013, 09:19:37 am » |
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Hey Jamo, Just thought I would chime in here, I have a HP Touchpad mounted in my wall. I use a Modified USB cable to a POE Step down convertor that then plugs into my Switch. It works rather well running android. I have just upgraded to CM10 as qOrbiter is meant to be a little bit more stable on it. So far I think the Linuxmce Orbiter posted here: http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php/topic,13064.0.html is a little more reliable. I will post pics later if interested. Slampt |
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posde
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« Reply #23 on: January 17, 2013, 11:11:34 am » |
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No pics - it doesn't exist!
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jamo
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« Reply #25 on: January 18, 2013, 10:32:50 am » |
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Looks good! Tell me, you're supplying power via POE/step-down but presumably network connectivity is wifi?
HP touch pads are not cheap in this part of the world, either I might add.
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slampt
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« Reply #26 on: January 18, 2013, 10:42:31 am » |
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Yup,
POE from my switch stepped down to 5v.
When they launched the Touchpad here it was around the same time they decided to pack it in so I picked up mine for $99
Cheers
Slampt
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purps
NEEDS to work for LinuxMCE
Posts: 1269
If it ain't broke, tweak it
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« Reply #27 on: January 23, 2013, 09:06:21 pm » |
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Well, we have both. We have the iPad and we have the Joggler. Both are at arms length near the couch for controlling our media consumption. There is ONE reason, why the iPad is demoted to a surfing machine: Speed. The orbiter sucks speedwise, when compared to any of the real Orbiters. Yes, the joggler doesn't have a battery, but it still is used more often than the iPad since we have it, because the speed difference is so notable. If I would have had the joggler first, removed it, and came with the iPad instead, SWMBO would have killed me. Even the WebDT is a faster Orbiter than the Dianemo or Roaming Orbiter on the iPad.
I am also a fan of the Joggler, and you can get them very cheap. Ours is free-standing next to the cooker, used for recipes, calendar, and of course controlling the kitchen MD. I have often thought about mounting one permanently (either in the wall or in a cupboard door), but of course something needs to be done about that metal stand Possy, are you running Android on your Joggler(s)? If so, which one? And have you gone to any effort to hide the USB stick required to boot it? Cheers, Matt. |
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posde
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« Reply #28 on: January 23, 2013, 09:12:31 pm » |
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Foxi352
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« Reply #29 on: February 03, 2013, 01:19:57 pm » |
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