1 (edited by tomwsmf 2012-04-20 22:20:27)

Topic: Chumbymote overhaul and some more features on the way.

I am fairly new to the chumbyverse but once I got my info 3.5 I knew the first thing I wanted to be able to do is control the deivce from a browser so that I can use my smart phone, desktop, tablet, gtv, etc...basicaly not having to be where the chumby is. I started working up some cgi script and then found Chumbymote ( http://wecreategames.com/blog/?p=181)

Basically it is a set of cgi files to be placed in /psp/cgi-bin that allow you to control the device from any brower as well as letting you see a screen cap of the  widget currently showing on the scree.... and it was good...but I wanted it to do more...so I dived.

I wanted to keep the screen  uncluttered as I will be using this on small screens as well as big. Going forward I will try to make a more dynamic layout so it will fit the big and the small of screens in the wild.  In that light I broke things  down into multiple pages with  loose categories....Main, Admin, Radio and Podcast

Main handles screen functions, widget control and volume
Admin handles reboots, restarts and the like
Radio handles streams and the FMradio
Podcast will handle an interface with a chumbized version of bashpodder so that you will be able to stream or play from files the various podcasts you frequent.

I cleaned up the event and control methods and added the hooks for  various functions.

So what is missing, what could be done better, who is good at dynamic layout??

Much thanks to the folks who made Chumbymote in the first place, it saved me some time in getting started on this.

You can get the most current version of this overhauled version at http://tomwsmf.com/chumby/chumbymote/chumbymote.zip

Re: Chumbymote overhaul and some more features on the way.

whats missing/could be better ?
the ability to create a profile from any widgets on the fly and execute it with simple drag/drop, autodownloading of all widgets on chumby.com (spider the catalog file), execute multiple channels by responding to profile read events correctly.
its all doable BTW. profiles are just text files, cgis can generate em and widgets are just blocks of text/flash/images you can copy.
there is also mail functionality on the chumby for hooking into a cool alert system if you want to go deeper. currently chumby does not use this functionality for some reason but does execute it. every chumby has a chumby-mail box setup for some reason.

Re: Chumbymote overhaul and some more features on the way.

I started looking into the profile, widget and other aspects of the devices and have found that they could well be controlled by a web interface . I am going to start wokring thru the various xml, init.d , etc etc files that control the beasties.

On the request of a friend with a chumby I am also going to make up a wrapper so it can be installed from a usb stick insertion...seems many folks do not dig shelling into devices as much as I do:)-

Onward

Re: Chumbymote overhaul and some more features on the way.

I moved to a github repo for the code... enjoy  ... https://github.com/tomhiggins/chumote

Re: Chumbymote overhaul and some more features on the way.

A word of warning.  If you use the directions on http://wecreategames.com/blog/?p=181  There is a typo.  The directions say point your browser to  http://192.168.1.82/cgi-big/custom/index.cgi   That should be cgi.bin

6 (edited by tomwsmf 2012-04-23 19:25:39)

Re: Chumbymote overhaul and some more features on the way.

The WeCreateGames site was someplace I picked for ideas. I have worked out mistakes and code tangles, streamlined it to make it easier for adding new functions, as well as adding a ton of new features...like a chumbized version of bashpodder.  I only added a link back to them for historic purposes and as a shout out of thanks for doing some of the leg work .