I just posted blitmenu, but was forgetting some other tools you guys probably don't need, hehe.
Wouldn't it be nice to sit in your car in traffic jam and read some manual pages on your empeg.
Wouldn't it be nice to let your empeg dial to the internet through your portable in your carkit to fetch your email and read it on your empeg's display.

Well, now you can, introducing my latest tool blitoutput.
blitoutput is a tool which reads from stdin and scrolls the contents over the display. It tries to emulate a terminal display of 80 characters wide and has a buffer of 500 lines; output can be scrolled using the rotary knob (up/down)
and the left/right buttons (maybe... left/right ?)
It's pretty handy in combination with blitmenu.
"ps ax" gives nice output and so does "top -n 1 -b"

In the near future there will also be a manual input mode;
by pushing the rotary knob a list of ascii characters is displayed which can be scrolled through by rotating the rotary-knob (the name says all), just like my nokia 7110(telnet on wap sucks).
This way you can send commands;
Maybe an IR keyboard will be an option.
also very funny is "telnet localhost | blitoutput" when the empeg display really behaves like a genuine output device. You can use your keyboard on the serial-console to issue commands.

I will not provide source yet, but will in the near future.
PS. put ascii.raw /usr/local/images/


I haven't had this fun with a gadget since my speccy...

Frank van Gestel

Hi,

Funny, I took my Newton keyboard down from the shelf last night, and sat wondering how to do something usefull with it on the empeg.

It sends serial stuff out, but pressing 'a' does not give 'a' on the serial. Also it produces output when you depress a key.

Any suggestions on how to connect it to your golden egg?




Lars

Can you connect it to the serial port?
Try to find out it's baud-rate and try to set the empeg to the same.
then run /bin/bash < /dev/ttyS1 | blitoutput
You probably won't see what you type, but the output of commands will be visible. so typing "ps" will show the currently running processes on your empeg's display.

I do not know this kind of keyboard; I was more thinking of an IR-keyboard to do the job. Maybe some win-CE device will work over IR

Frank van Gestel

Well, I am really interested getting a WinCE/PocketPC hooked up to it. What I am thinking of is a system where you could 'export' the database to your PocketPC maybe, but at least could use the PocketPC as an advanced remote (Hey, it can send clear text to your empeg so how hard can it be?). Exporting the database would be nice because then you could edit it on there as well, then once you are satisfied you could send your updated version back. Or with the data from the Database you could make an adaptive remote control program that has search options and the like. Why would you want to ? The PocketPC (iPAQ) I have has a backlit LCD, easier to find the right button (see the thread on new remotes and points of recognition for much used buttons), but there is undoubtedly more. A WinCE variant of the Palm Navigation software I saw mentioned on one of the other boards would be nice too.

Mind you, the question I have with all this is the following : Where does the resposability of the EmpegPeople stop. What I mean is, which part(s) of making such things possible do we want them to do ... Me personally I think it ends quite fast with just a basic functionality in the kernel, possibly some api to facilitate 3rd party software in talking to the original Empeg software (i.e. the playerprogram) and that I think is it. Having said that, what I miss most right now to start dabbling with this myself is information and tools for the IR port. I see some info on it scathered around but no defenite links to useable or example software, correct me if I missed it though.

Hans


Mk2 - Blue - 080000431

Hans,
I don't know if you can use any, but I allready wrote some client-server stuff as where the database get's dumped on an LDAP-server.
look here for details...

Frank van Gestel

LDAP, gosh, there is one term I really need to look into soon. In depth I mean ... Everything nowadays has an implementation or derivative of this onboard. Lotus Notes, ADS (Acive Directory Services I understand is closely related to it), ...

But thanks for the pointer Frank, I will have to look at your goodies .

BTW am I correct in saying irOBEX is about the most interesting method of implementing a file transfer from the Empeg to Device X ... There are implementations of it in most PocketPC's (WinCE too ?), Palm and Co (i.e. visor), Win2K has it etc etc etc ...

Cheers,
Hans

Mk2 - Blue - 080000431

Hi,

I could, but as I said the scancodes it returns are not regular ascii. But I suppose I could write a small program which interprets the input from the serial line and feed it to bash:

my_newton_interpreter | bash | blitoutput

Could that work?




Lars

yep, I think IROBEX is one of the most interesting things to implement.
I ve allready played with c-obex from the open obex page but wasnt very successful :-(
http://www.ravioli.pasta.cs.uit.no/open-obex/index.html

bobo

Cool! I now know my first hack. I'll write a small pipe 'driver' to read from the IR port and convert the scan code presses into regular ascii.

I'll couple it with your cool screen thing. I've got the IR keyboard (the cheap IR keyboard sold for WebTV's), my Empeg arrives Monday.

Uh this isn't working for me. ascii.raw is in /usr/local/images, but running this yields the following:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
empeg:/drive0/local# blitoutput
:0:
empeg:/drive0/local# echo abc | blitoutput
:0:
-----------------------------------------------------------------
etc... Whatever I do it just prints :0: What's going on?


-Tony
MkII #554