User interface

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globegrabber
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User interface

Post by globegrabber »

Hallo, people,
I was wondering of it is possible to modify the Toon, and to use it like a sort of tablet, what i meen is is it possible to rebuild Toon with a windows like or android like UI which allowed you to see the free space of memory, probably changing wallpaper with usb expansion as well changing photo gallery as a photoframe, and the see / walk through the different maps like windows or e android etc. and that you are able to start the Toon environment from a desktop icon.
This is only a question, i dont have the skills to do this, nor i new of this anyway is possible.
This is what i would like to reach, to make it easier to download software to the Toon and browse and to install software freely directly from internet.
Second i like to now is, if this is possible then it is also possible to write a complete rom, with the drivers for the Toon so it would be easier to update the firmware of the rooted Toon to the latest versions?

anyone who knows or is curious or have some further ideas,of how see this as a challenge let it now.
Grz Globegrabber
marcelr
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Re: User interface

Post by marcelr »

That's a tall order.

Toon is a small linux computer, with little memory and little storage space. The graphics are handled in a framebuffer, which is the fastest, and least memory-expensive solution for a device. If you want to build your own user interface, you will need to build it from scratch, AFAIK there are no window managers (like gnome, kde, etc). running on a framebuffer device. They all rely on an X-server to do the hardware interfacing.

Publishing flash images for toon is tricky, if not impossible, since toon uses UBIFS as a root filesystem. This type of FS is bound to the hardware, including bad blocks etc. So not every toon is the same in that respect.
AFAIK, software for toon is not available on the internet. I haven't yet come across a repository that publishes code for an ARM-926EJS, that could be useful for toon. Can't say that I looked very carefully, either.

As it is today, the GUI on toon is a qt-executable, with its frontend implemented in qml (a javascript clone, basically). The stuff that you find in the ToonStore is mostly qml code. To not overdo the load on memory, so far only small extensions have been made, and the stuff that you suggest could be implemented in the same way. It just means an extra layer in the startup code of the frontend, which (in theory at least) can be made with the stuff that is available.

I wouldn't hold my breath until it's implemented though, if I were you.
lsiepel
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Re: User interface

Post by lsiepel »

Toon was never build for such a task, so the hardware is not really capable of delivering that kind of user experience. While ToonStore, VNC and SSH can let you do allmost all tasks you want, i think you're better off with a wall mountable tablet.
marcelr
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Re: User interface

Post by marcelr »

Twenty years ago, a complete window system with all bells and whistles ran smoothly on a 100MHz processor with 32MB of RAM, a 320MB disk, and did useful things at the same time. Video was offloaded to a separate device, with a whopping 2MB of video memory.
Back then, 128MB was an awful lot of memory, a 400MHz processor clock was insanely fast. The thing is, current software developers have become used to infinite amounts of resources, so nobody really cares to make compact, efficient code anymore.

If someone would port Slackware 4.0 or thereabouts to toon, with windowmaker as gui, it might actually work :-)
globegrabber
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Re: User interface

Post by globegrabber »

As i read the replayed feeds is the hardware capability of a Toon to little to handle bigger and more high perform software capabilities, not that this a problem i think that i had to must expectation
of the hardware of Toon, of course i new it is only a thermostat and build to run some implementations, but quit a sophisticated thermostat.
So for the moment i will keep the Toon because it is performed quit good and is stable.
maybe in the future i will look to combine different hardware to make a domotica system which is running on a small server and is displayed on a 7 or 8 inch tablet.
Thanks for you commands fellows .
grz. Globegrabber
Toonz
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Re: User interface

Post by Toonz »

This is one thing, the other challenge is to communicate with the 'ketelmodule'. In the end you want the device to be able to act as an thermostat.
Do we have info/insight in the protocol between Toon and the ketelmodule? Is it documented somewhere? If not, can we reverse engineer it somehow?
Without this info I don't see much relevance in building a new firmware from scratch.

By the way: Toon already has a functional photo viewer app ("imageViewer"). You can enable it in globals.qml and upload your pictures to /qmf/var/qt-gui/apps/imageViewer
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marcelr
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Re: User interface

Post by marcelr »

Toonz wrote:This is one thing, the other challenge is to communicate with the 'ketelmodule'. In the end you want the device to be able to act as an thermostat.
Do we have info/insight in the protocol between Toon and the ketelmodule? Is it documented somewhere? If not, can we reverse engineer it somehow?
Without this info I don't see much relevance in building a new firmware from scratch.
Yes, that's done. Built that code in the summer of 2015. D'you want it ;-)?
globegrabber
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Re: User interface

Post by globegrabber »

O yes i am in for imageViewer where can i find this?
Templar
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Re: User interface

Post by Templar »

marcelr wrote:Yes, that's done. Built that code in the summer of 2015. D'you want it ;-)?
Haven't rooted my Toon (yet) but I am curious. :)
marcelr
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Re: User interface

Post by marcelr »

Found it:

viewtopic.php?f=87&t=8743&start=180#p78359

It's in the toon_OTGW_io package.
Caveat: You will need the toon openembedded toolchain to actually build working code for toon ...

EDIT: Since 2015 a few more OT IDs have shown up in toon's software, mainly to control their "warmtewinner". These haven't been implemented in this code yet.
Toonz
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Re: User interface

Post by Toonz »

globegrabber wrote:O yes i am in for imageViewer where can i find this?
It is part of Toon's standard firmware, not sure exactly when they introduced it but version 4.x.x has it.

if you add "imageViewer" to /HCBv2/qml/qb/base/Globals.qml like other apps and restart the gui you will see it in the menu.
Actual app is in /HCBv2/qml/apps/imageViewer

Kind regardz,

Toonz
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