Los93soL Android Touch Orbiter

[rperre]

Hey, i setup my orbiter with the android orbiter and it worked great, now however when i start the orbiter it stays in the splash screen and will not time-out.

Is it possible to make the "options" (left) button abort the program and going into the settings. I'm thinking it can't find the address and keeps trying, so i would like to change the settings, but there is no way to get in it.

Richard

[darrenmason]

I'm just wondering if this will work with any android tablet or if there is anything specific I should look out for.  Cheap 7-10" android tablets, the 'aPad', 'ePad', and 'gPad' , all seem to be readily available locally but each has slightly different specs.  Is it even worth considering one of these as a cheap android orbiter?

Absolutely- The touchOrbiter (any version) is very lightweight in terms of the demands on the system it is running on. All the processing work is done on the server. The main app itself just requests a bitmap version of the orbiter screen that is rendered on the server and sends back the co-ordinates of any touch events that occurr.
Adam has built in some additional smarts that allow setup to be as painless as possible.

As long as the tablet can connect to your linuxMCE server it should be suitable - so therefore the cheaper the better really. Especially if this is all you will use it for.
Keep in mind that some of the cheaper ones are just slow in general - but that is not related to the orbiter.

Regards
Darren

[los93sol]

^What darrenmason said

Something else I'm going to do with this orbiter is send events back to the core from the phone.  This will let you guys trigger scenario execution from the phone's state.  Eg. If you connect to the SSID at work, you could have a scenario execute that you are at work.  If your bluetooth connects to your car, it could be driving.  All kinds of things can be done on this front.  I think for the sake of battery usage and security this will end up being an application configuration for what events to pass back to the core.  I'm interested to hear what you guys think about this, what would you use it for, how would you setup some scenarios.  Having some of that up front will help me in planning exactly what is needed to do this nicely.

[PKWilson]

Hi Los93sol

Thanks for the tip on setting it to 4:3 in the setup wizard on the phone. It's regenerating now so I'll let you know how it goes shortly.

I just read your message regarding having it send events back to the core. I was wondering if another option would be to link into the Tasker app. It is on most of the "Must Have" apps list for Android and is a very powerful tool for linking in with phone events (locations, gestures, phone status, wifi status, time, incoming calls, sms' etc etc). It seems to have a way of intergrating with other apps in the 3rd Party Action options. It would be great if it could send commands to the core as Actions in Tasker. Even if it was just sending a scenario ID to the Orbiter app to get it to run that scenario, same as "Execute Command Group" command in the web admin.

BTW, it has finished regenerating after setting it to PDA 4:3 (thats the only 4:3 option I have), but after the regenerate and reload, it is still the same with the taps not matching the buttons. It doesn't seem to have updated the UI when I look at the orbiter in the web admin. It still says Normal Horizontal (3:4), which is what I had it set to previously. The size is still set to 720x480. I'll try deleting the orbiter and starting again and let you know how it goes.

Thanks
Phil

[sambuca]

Hi Los93sol,

There is definitely something wrong when using the orbiter on a HTC Desire HD. After going through the orbiter setup wizard, I saw there was a new size of 533x320 added to the database. (The entry did not have a name, so it won't be displayed in the orbiter web admin page either, but thats another issue). The Desire HD has a 800x480 screen, so why it detects it as 533x320, I don't know...

First time, it created an orbiter image that did not fill the screen properly. I changed stuff in both web-admin and the orbiter wizard several times.
I also tried changing the screen size to 800x480, and this produces an orbiter image that fills the screen correctly. But the touch presses does not match up with the buttons on screen. It could seem like the orbiter maps the touch screen to a 533x320 dimension internally, because pressing the lower right hand corner will result in a touch being sent around the 533x320 position...

I finally got it working in the end. At one point I tried the 533x320 resolution again (with normal horizontal 3:4), and this time it actually fills the screen AND the button presses align. But the image looks scaled (does the orbiter scale the image?) and really bad. I can't recall every step I did up to this though... lets just say it wasn't straight-forward  

I think somehow the resolution detection does not work properly for this device, resulting in this mess.

Other than that, great work  

Best regards,
sambuca

EDIT:
los93sol: See this post for some insight into the issue: ht tp://androidforums.com/application-development/139487-wrong-screen-size.html
Maybe you need to add this ht tp://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/supports-screens-element.html to the manifest?
Forum won't allow me to post links, so you'll have to copy'n'paste them 

[sambuca]

Los93sol,

Don't know if you already read it, but this page seems to thoroughly describe the screen size/density of Android apps http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/screens_support.html

best regards,
sambuca

[los93sol]

Sambuca: Thanks for digging into this, I'll read through it and see what I can do!

[MDH1966]

I just downloaded the app from the server onto my Motorola Droid.  It installed just fine.  I will test it when I get home.  I have LMCE snapshot 23661 and it seems that the latest update for this app to the LMCE-Admin was in revision 23481.  So I am assuming that I already have the proper revisions to do this.  If this is not correct, please let me know.

I read through the thread but I did not see a reference to the Motorola Droid.  Has anyone tried it on this phone yet?

Thanks <M>

[MDH1966]

What kind of impact would harware like this have on LMCE?

http://www.google.com/tv/

Just a thought...

<M>

[rchamp]

to stay on topic, Los93sol, anything I can do to help with the refinement of this? I've been programming for android for a while at my company now and would love to contribute to this segment of the arena.

What kills me still, is that we are still only using the basic webview orbiter. with a webview, essentially, no? I'm down to create a custom interface, so there would be much better performance on the android devices side, but i'm not sure of what I need to know about the orbiter to create/refine a native android client.

los93sol, if you'd liketo pm me I'm eager to dive in and help if there is a portion you are looking to work on and want some assistance on

[MDH1966]

What kind of impact would harware like this have on LMCE?

http://www.google.com/tv/

Just a thought...

<M>

Sorry, I really didn't mean to go off topic, it was more about wondering if the work that is being done on the Android orbiter could eventually evolve into something like the google tv.

Anyway, I tried to setup my Motorola Droid and it kind of worked.  It seemed to do whatever it felt like.  I know that I was having trouble getting the screen to format correctly.  I decided that I needed to concentrate on getting the rest of my system working the way I want and then come back to this. Once I start trying to make it work again, I will keep a log of what I do and what it's response is.  Maybe that will help you get the bugs out.

Thanks for working on this,

<M>

[l3mce]

Attempted on g1 droid running 2.2.1 (froyo).

Originally I got a menu. Unfortunately it seemed that the only buttons that worked for me were lights on and off. These worked as if the area below them were a big column, so if I hit "tv" or "direct dial" or "sleeping menu" it would turn the lights on. I then made the mistake of multitouch resize, and all went black.

Background and L shaped gradient "button" is all that is now visible. Will attach a screen cap later.

Tried every res/aspect.

I will retry to make work/break again and attach log.

[purps]

Adam,

Firstly, thank you for giving us this orbiter, exciting stuff.

I am experiencing the exact same problems that have already been mentioned. Screen doesn't quite fit (black vertical strips to left and right), and buttons don't appear to be mapped correctly. Resolution of my device is 800x480 (Storage Options Scroll 7" tablet).

Tried 4:3 as you suggested, but any options I try on the tablet don't seem to stick, description, UI, etc. Is it safe to go poking around in web admin?

This is my first Android device! Just bought it. Please let me know if I can be of any help with testing.

Cheers,
Matt.

[rages]

I have the same problem with HTC Tattoo with Froyo and CyangenMod.

[bulek]

Adam,

Firstly, thank you for giving us this orbiter, exciting stuff.

I am experiencing the exact same problems that have already been mentioned. Screen doesn't quite fit (black vertical strips to left and right), and buttons don't appear to be mapped correctly. Resolution of my device is 800x480 (Storage Options Scroll 7" tablet).

...

Cheers,
Matt.

Hi,

I have similar problem, although I'm on 7.10 and have installed 2.0 of Orbiter proxy... This touch orbiter seems to work, only I get different actions than presses done. Is this false mapping of touch events limited only to certain cases ?

Thanks i nadvance,

regards,
Bulek