Messages

61

Feature requests & roadmap / Re: KDE Integration

« on: February 04, 2010, 08:56:12 pm »

I've approached the KDE developers (mainly about a separate topic) and they look at LinuxMCE as just needing KDE for a desktop and not necessarily being fully "integrated" with KDE (meaning we could use any other desktop). What were your thoughts on this?

No particular thoughts to be honest.  I was reading over some of the older posts and press releases (mainly by paul webber), and they seemed to be hinting at a closer cooperation.  I was wondering if any thoughts had been had about any technical integrations beyond using the kde desktop blob.

I like kde as a user, and know some of the technologies they have developed for kde4, not sure if any of them are of any use for linuxmce, but it would be good to leverage the fact that they are installed (at present) under linuxmce (thinking kparts, akonadi, phonon et al).

Meh, I know there isn't the resource at the moment.  Only an idle curiosity.

62

Feature requests & roadmap / KDE Integration

« on: February 04, 2010, 12:57:31 pm »

Way back when, there was a lot of talk and a little publicity about LinuxMCE somehow becoming integrated into KDE.  I can see that this hasn't been pushed much since. 
Does anyone remember what the plan/ reasoning was behind the ideas?  Is it still valid in some way?

Should we try to resurrect it?

Cheers,

David.

63

Developers / Re: Android Orbiter

« on: February 01, 2010, 05:40:31 pm »

http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=9562.0

Might check this out too... java universe may be the ticket.

I would be happy to co-operate with anyone on an android device!

I think it's worth pointing out that I've heard talk the orbiter architecture is going to be rebuilt (possibly from scratch) once 8.10 is released.

It might not be the best time to invest time in coding up an orbiter on android until the orbiter architecture is decided.

Cheers,

David.

64

Developers / Java DCE Implementation

« on: January 31, 2010, 01:42:39 am »

Hello linux mce peeps.

I have been beavering away for the last week or so on an implementation of the DCE protocol in Java.

I now have a version mostly ready(possibly), so I thought I would present it for review.

The basic reading of the binary stream is derived from the TivoOrbiter code in svn, and the docs on the subject in the wiki.

I have developed a library that is intended to be usable on both JavaSE and Java ME (MIDP 2.0 via network sockets, not bluetooth).

In order to do this, without hobbling the api to java 1.3 and the ME subset, I've developed the core library in java 1.3 (and ME subset), and then created 2 'profiles' (I'm a java dav, gotta follow sun on this . .) SE and ME.

So I have 3 jar files :-
 jdce-core.jar
 jdce-me.jar
 jdce-se.jar

The 2 profiles provide the API for the device programmer, the core library does the heavy lifting, and is shared.  The 2 versions of the API are very similar, but the SE one uses generics, the collections framework and enums, the ME one . . doesn't.

To get a hold of this library, since this is targeted at developers only, you must check it out of sourceforge subversion.

svn co https://javadce.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/javadce/trunk jdce

Within the jdce directory you will find the 3 libraries, 2 example devices (one SE, one ME) and an ant build file.

To compile all the libs and devices run ant (see below to get J2ME compilation working)

Examine the device source code for usage, feel free to dig into the library source as well.

This is all quite lightly tested, and likely won't work(see the magic numbers below)  It is not release quality, please don't view it as anything more than highly experimental code.

Please note that this is not, and will not be included with the LinuxMCE 8.10 release. it may (going off brief conversations with the devs) be possible to includ it with future versions of LMCE if it is shown to be popular enough and above all stable. So by all means send me bug reports and ideas for improvements.

Please don't hassle the regular devs with this, they don't know anything about it, and won't be able to help you.

Before you submit a bug report about the 'magic' numbers everywhere, I haven't yet implemented scraping the DB for the reference information (a la sql2cpp). I will be doing this as a priority and integrating it into the ant build.  At present, this means that command/ event id's, parameter id's etc are hard coded into the source, and are from my system.  They may well be the same as on yours, they likely won't (as I've made some new commands etc for the bit torrent device).

I'm not trying to re-implement any part of LinuxMCE, only extend the potential reach of the system into Java land, and allow new parts of the system to be developed by all those Java programmers out there.

Have fun, lemme know if any one is interested.

David.

Bugs
Bug reports go to me, not to the LinuxMCE trac; you can put them on sourceforge (https://sourceforge.net/projects/javadce), if you like.

J2ME SDK
You need to have some j2me development kit installed to compile jdce-me and the example J2ME device.  I use the sub WTK2.5.2 (from Sun). The compilation tool I've used (antenna), seems to support most of the others automatically, however you do need to set a property (wtk.home) in the build files (core, me, ExampleDevice) to reflect your installation.

Android
After a, very, brief look into the android sdk I believe that all the classes I have used are within the standard android library, apart from the odd apache commons class I have used.  I haven't tested this, I'm not an android dev, however I will be more than happy to make amendments to support this on android.

65

Developers / Re: Programming Challenge: DCE Device: Torrent Downloader PlugIn

« on: January 26, 2010, 11:44:05 pm »

is anyone still working on this?

-thom

How do all.

I've been developing a java implementation of the DCE protocol.

It's mostly functional, and covers the most used features of DCE.

Using this library, I've developed a bittorrent DCE device.

I've put together a device template, as suggested, with the addition of a download failed event.

The bittorrent functionality is built using the snark (http://www.threerings.net/code/snark/) library.

Seems ok, but quite flaky, so I think I'll swap it out at some point.


The only thing not yet implemented is adding status items to the Task List.  I'll look at this next.

Also, the java DCE lib isn't making use of any command/ ... other ref data, they are all magic numbers at the moment, so I'm going to write a script to generate a java enum for each class of reference data.

I can upload this code to somewhere after a little bit more polishing, where would be best? 

Cheerio.

David.

66

Developers / Re: Message Protocol

« on: January 20, 2010, 03:29:38 pm »

I partially implemented the protocol in Java for a GWT / reverse AJAX proof of concept.  I haven't looked at the code posde suggested so I'm not sure it will offer anything different from that, but I'd be happy to share it if another implementation would be helpful to look at.

The wiki is a good starting point, but to be honest most of what I learned of the protocol came from running through the C++ code.  You mentioned that C++ is not a strong suit, but you'll still probably find reading through some of that code to be helpful (especially that in the DCE folder).  Just my 2 cents

Sounds good. I'd be very happy to have a look. Any chance of a download?

67

Developers / Re: Message Protocol

« on: January 19, 2010, 08:09:08 pm »

Aaah. nice one.  I missed that. Excellent news.

68

Developers / Message Protocol

« on: January 19, 2010, 01:59:50 pm »

Hi Guys.

I played around with linuxmce a whiiillle ago, but got sidetracked by life a bit (babies etc).

I've been ghosting the boards for a few weeks to get a feel of the way things have progressed, and I'm quite impressed.  Apart from the odd bit of name calling (fun!), development seems to be moving on apace.

I'm a java dev, and I haven't really got the time to invest in learning to code C++ particularly well.  Following on from that, I'm interested in making a first class java based DCE device (probably a DCE/ JMS bridge as a POC).  I've found the Tivo Orbiter, which will serve as a good base, and I've read through the majority of the programmers guide. 

I think I understand the basics of the architecture, and the DCE message format (down to binary).  What I'm having trouble tracking down is the message protocol. As in, what are the message types, where are they defined, where do they go etc.   I realise that these are probably, to a certain extent, defined in the dce device code.  My question is, where would the best place to begin understanding the protocol? 

I know this is a basic question, but all I need is where the edge to pick is, I'll unravel the rest.

Cheers,

David.

69

Developers / Re: Simple question

« on: October 26, 2007, 01:49:24 pm »

Paul is not around? What happened to him?

70

Developers / Re: Java/ J2ME mobile orbiter

« on: October 26, 2007, 01:48:30 pm »

David,

I have never looked at the Cisco orbiter stuff, but some comments on using an XML based proxy..
- as a wrapper for either the DCE commands or even for presentation config it would certainly make it easy to deal with from a number of devices
- It still needs to be transported reliably over either TCP or Bluetooth
- The work has already been done to replicate the DCE logic using the BD library, albeit using a prorietary binary format

My suggestion would to have a look at both and see what makes sense.

I am happy to assist where I can. I used to write C++ for a living but havn't done it full time for many years, after switching to Java.

regards
Darren

Hi Darren,

as you say, there will still need to be a transport to push this over, which would logically be bluetooth for local phones/ or tcp or maybe http for a phone far away, over it's gprs link (not sure about that, never done it on a phone before . .)

The question becomes, would it be easier to create a java implementation of DCE (that goes via the bluetooth DCE layer), or create what is in effect another method of transferring DCE commands from the phone to the router.

Not sure, both have advantages and disadvantages.

I think the code needs to be explored now, see what options are available. 
I am up for creating something wizz bang, but my time is limited, so I'm probably going to head for the direction of least effort.

Which brings me to my next question.  How does one get the source? 

I'll check out the rest of the forums I think.

David.

71

Developers / Re: Java/ J2ME mobile orbiter

« on: October 22, 2007, 05:37:52 pm »

There is maybe something similar to what you're looking for. Cisco phone is receiveing XML files describing menus - so maybe digging into that would help. It's somekind of customized Orbiter proxy that sends xml files to phone to display GUI and I guess it contains less (or even none) graphics....

In a long term it would be proper solution to have somekind of Text Orbiter proxy, that could deal with less graphic and more text oriented devices...

I agree, this sounds like a good model.  A generic xml orbiter proxy seems a useful thing to have, as you could have it used by different remotes with no change to the proxy.

This would also have the advantage of removing or at least reducing the need for regenerating the orbiter, and would make using the device that much more feasible over a gprs link.
I think it will still be preferable to transfer some graphics over the wire, but it may be possible to have a seperate graphics service running to give access to those and let the remote device request them when required.

In fact, taking that concept a bit further, if you had some kind of separate service running to serve up media to the orbiters, such as menu graphics, you could then have the xml orbiter proxy tell the device semantically what to render as an xml file, it could then runtime detect the best way (graphic/ text/ combo), then request the correctly scaled versions of the graphics from the DCE router media service, using these to construct the UI.

Something like this would give us a nice development path, create an xml orbiter proxy, create a j2me app that renders them menus as text; then add nicer graphics features in the future.

Has anyone looked at the cisco orbiter proxy code in detail?  would it be easily adaptable as a generic xml proxy?  I'm not very good at C++, so would anyone like the chance to make a huge contribution to lmce and join me in constructing this?

David.

72

Developers / Re: Java/ J2ME mobile orbiter

« on: October 22, 2007, 11:21:56 am »

1audio,  I had also wondered about the graphics, and since at least some phones will have low resolution, it might be worth having an option of a mainly text based UI, menus etc, which are very easy to throw together in j2me.

What do we think?

73

Developers / Re: Java/ J2ME mobile orbiter

« on: October 22, 2007, 11:09:14 am »

hmm, interesting.  I'd kind of picked up that the symbian orbiters worked that way.  Providing a java clone of the current functionality would seem to be the most logical way forward.

I was wondering though, since java (and as you say, jsr 82)  capable phones range from wizz bang top of the range to quite basic low resolution devices, they might require a very low resolution UI.  Do we know if this is already handled well in the symbian orbiter?

David.

74

Developers / Java/ J2ME mobile orbiter

« on: October 19, 2007, 04:31:08 pm »

How do,

I've been watching the forums for a while and I've seen feature requests for a mobile java orbiter appear every so often, with the occasional 'Yes, that sounds great, I'll get on it!'  Does anyone know if this is in progress?

I'm a very experienced java dev, including j2me, and I'd be happy to help with the effort, or start the effort if it's dead at the mo.

I'm a bit hazy about the remote orbiter architecture, and my C/C++ is decidedly ropey, so I can start to do this if someone is willing to give me a few pointers . .

Cheers,

David.

75

Users / Re: ati_usb how?

« on: October 19, 2007, 04:25:38 pm »

Check here, I spent a while with an Ati Remote Wonder that uses that kernel module.

http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=1902.0