ANN: Orbiter image for WebDT 366

[los93sol]

I know this has been discussed before and it would be a lot of work to extend this functionality to orbiters, but it would be great to be able to listen to voicemails directly on the WebDT and to play music through the device.  I'd really like to use this device as a phone similar to how we can with MD's.

Can someone explain in greater detail the difference between a MD having this functionality and an orbiter?  I'm not fully grasping how LinuxMCE knows the difference or really what the difference is between a MD and an orbiter beyond that MD's can playback media.  I'm also having a difficult time understanding why you wouldn't want to use an orbiter for media, especially now that we have such nice portable touch screen devices available at decent prices.

[tschak909]

Marrandy: both will work with this image, provided there is at least 512 (binary) megabytes of flash on the device for storing the image.

los93sol: an Orbiter can have children. However, the media plugin will have to be modified to handle dealing with Orbiter itself. The trick is to modify the code for media plugin to route messages to any media player devices etc running on the orbiter.

You have a possible out here in that you can have multiple entertainment areas in a given room, and therefore can specify to route to them. You will need to shoehorn a launching mechanism onto the Orbiter to launch Xine Player, SimplePhone, etc. and make modifications to the Telecom Plugin, Media Plugin, etc. to know to route messages to them. This is the trick of it all, understanding that LinuxMCE is all about routing messages where they need to go.

It's more than possible, but you will need to do some serious exploring to pull it off, and you'll need to do some UI thinking in Designer to figure out how to present the more complex issues, such as answering phone calls on the orbiter, versus answering them in the room, etc. (Taking the selected room/EA into account provides a way to determine this.)

-Thom

[los93sol]

I wonder if this is something people would want to donate for, how many hours would you rate the job?

[tschak909]

since this is new territory, and a lot of subsystems involved, it's at least 100 hours of work.

-Thom

[tschak909]

that message is normal, there is no 8042 AT keyboard controller on that unit.

You need to connect a keyboard, and when you see the splash a second time, hit ctrl-alt-T to access a terminal.

-Thom

[tschak909]

then you have a hardware failure.

-Thom

[tschak909]

do not know. try attaching the keyboard at first, and continually pressing esc while booting to see if you can get a prompt, where you can remove the splash options from boot, as well as quiet, so you can see what kernel error may be causing the problem.

-Thom

[tschak909]

in theory, yeah. but I can't tell you off the top of my head what that would be, i've just gotten off the tail end of a 20 hour hacking session to add user feedback to the launch manager, and I need some sleep.

-Thom

[hari]

If you want to donate some money to TSCHAK either use the paypal button on the homepage (goes straight to TSCHAK's account) or buy the image from tkmedia. If not, here is the new gamma image download location: http://www.linuxmce.org/webpad/

br Hari