Orbiter on Framebuffer

[tschak909]

After a bit of work, I was able to get Orbiter to successfully come up and be usable on the Linux framebuffer.

I started from the SDL renderer, and systematically massaged away the X11 code, while also removing mysql dependency, and statically linking in DCE, SerializeClass, PlutoUtils.

The result is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtyJJ7znK0o

and to prove a small academic point, the same bin, running under X:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfF2yXF-zkc

Enjoy,
-Thom

[hari]

awesome tschak!! Wow!! Great work!

[Emiku]

Hi,

So is this a 'POC' or to make the orbiter more lightweight on "small" devices, small arm boards etc etc..?

- Emiku

[totallymaxed]

Hi,

So is this a 'POC' or to make the orbiter more lightweight on "small" devices, small arm boards etc etc..?

- Emiku

Thom's asleep now... but I think its safe to say because of Thom's hard work you should see some developments in the 'small Arm' boards area pretty soon ;-)

Andrew

[darrenmason]

Fantastic work Thom - Opens up a lot of interesting possibilities.

Was it a hard port? I remember reading some of the directfb doco thinking that it seemed to be a reasonable fit for the way Orbiter was written.

Removing the mysqlclient dependancy is big win as well. Have you tried to run it on the webDT? Be interesting to see if the response is improved (not that it is bad)

Should make a native port to Chumby and similar devices a distinct possibility.

Thanks for your efforts

Darren

[massabuntu]

I have a BeagleBoard to test iT!

[tschak909]

Darrenmason: Orbiter did not use mysql at all except as part of a sql2cpp call when the Users page of the Wizard was displayed. Since the Wizard is not being used at all in the non-OSD orbiters, I could remove this code from compilation, and therefore remove the library linkage.

No it wasn't a hard port, basically, it was scissoring around the X specific calls in the existing SDL renderer and OrbiterLinux subclass with #ifdefs. I still need to write replacement code for the progress window and the prompt dialogs.

massabuntu: should you wish to build it, you can get the code, and use Makefile_DirectFB to build it.

-Thom

[massabuntu]

Thom, let me understand.

You made the port on FB, but the os running under should be a media director or could be a simple linux?

Because i could, on a fisrt step install the X11 anyway on the BeagleBoard, and when this works, move everything on FB.

If i get it, you have cut off all the dependencies in addiction to port it on the framebuffer. So i could run it on every distro =) Hope i get it well

[tschak909]

*hmm* no.

This is just the Orbiter.

It's intended to run on lightweight touch screen based devices to provide an orbiter panel. If you know what you're doing, you can extend it to be a full media director, but that's not what I intended.

-Thom

[massabuntu]

*hmm* no.

This is just the Orbiter.

It's intended to run on lightweight touch screen based devices to provide an orbiter panel. If you know what you're doing, you can extend it to be a full media director, but that's not what I intended.

-Thom

This is what i meant,
1) Port "only" the Obriter on ARM devices with x11
2) Port "ony" the  Orbiter on ARM devices on FB
3) Port a complete Media Director an a ARM Cortex v8 with OpenGLES and DSP like the BeagleBoard (this is gonna take muuuuccchhh time i think, and a lot of skill) maybe a device with PoE.... just dreaming.

Anyway, let get it started, where i found the code to begin cross-compiling?

 

[tschak909]

same place as everything else:

http://svn.linuxmce.org/svn/branches/LinuxMCE-0810/

Read the wiki page "Building LinuxMCE 8.10"

-Thom

[serra82]

massabuntu: should you wish to build it, you can get the code, and use Makefile_DirectFB to build it.

I can't find Makefile_DirectFB, Was in Orbiter directory?
thank you

[los93sol]

I'll pony up a donation for extending this to a whole media director.    Anybody else wanna toss into the pot?  I'll start with $50

[massabuntu]

Guy's let's get started porting only the Orbiter, then we could work on MediaDirector.