This may appear at first a bit of a general question, but its actually quite specific.
Is it feasible to use (or worth buying) a multi-touch monitor for developing and testing mobile Flex/Air applications? For instance one could use the Android emulator and package their Air 2.5 app to run in the emulator, and then use the multi-touch LCD to test it out. Rather than continually downloading the app to the mobile device.
Has anyone tried this?
Brian
I don't think that would work. The problem here is the hardware isn't connected to the software the same way as on a device (which goes through firmware). In this case, it's going through the OS (which I'm not even sure support multitouch) and then the emulator(which I'm not positive will even take in multitouch input from the OS). The emulator might not even have multitouch code in it.
I would stick with using the device. I don't see why that's a problem. If you streamline the compile/deploy/debug process, it's even easier than using the emulator.
Related
ASP.NET Form. If running a form in a browser on a small (Android) device with a barcode scanner, will the scanned barcode go into the ASP.NET textbox? Or I need to add something to the application?
Well, it going to depend on which of the 150+ barcode scanners you decide to grab from google play.
However, the answer is yes, or no. It will depend on the kind of scanner.
If you download just a scanning application (software based - not built in scanner).
The reason is Android (and even iOS) don't allow one application to set focus, get/grab/take data from other applications. Nor is the reverse allowed. If that was possible, then the app could also get/grab/take values from when you are say running your on-line banking application.
I don't think Android thus supports focus to another application during scan that has focus. Now if this is factory supplied software on the phone? Then yes, this works like a desktop keyboard "wedge". That means the program does not know if you are typing from keyboard, or input is from the scanner (hence the name keyboard wedge). These will work with a web form.
However, we now seeing the rise of software based keyboard wedges. That means the software scanner is installed on android as a custom keyboard. And this in case, then once again, it will work in a web form.
So, for devices with a built in scanner? yes, that will work in all applications. For a software only (uses built in camera), then again, this is possible if the software in question works as a keyboard/wedge scanner.
If you going to adopt android scanning? then use a purpose built Android scanner.
And another possible if you want to use a software scanner? Write a small android application and have it talk to your web site. This I think is the best solution, but of course means you have to adopt some Android dev tools.
So how this works will depend on if the android device has a built in scanner, or it is a software + camera based scanner. However, it would seem that even now installable software based scanners in theory can be made to work for any application since the application is running and behaving as a user installed keyboard.
So, you have to check the particular device. The answer is not in all cases, and the answer depends on if you using a Android device with a built in scanner, or you looking to use any Android phone as that scanner.
I have a .NET WinForms app wherein the laptop is connected to both a scale and an GPS antenna via USB. Is it crazy to think we could have this instead as a web app and on a tablet? We're looking to make things thinner and smaller (this goes in a truck.. driver doesn't need bulk of keyboard either).
Obviously the tablet would have to have a USB port (some do, some don't). But then for "stickiness" to USB devices, I'd have to have, what, a Silverlight control on an ASP.NET page? More trouble than its worth?
Thanks for any thoughts/advice.
You could write an ActiveX control or browser plugin to use the USB port (Silverlight might not be able to do what you need). Unfortunately these controls most probably will have to be installed on the machine manually (unless you want to lower security settings for the browser). You might be better off using ClickOnce with your WinForms application to simplify deployment of new versions and keep using your existing codebase.
If all you need is to read the GPS data, you should use HTML5 Geolocation API: Demo and Specification
I have connected USB barcode scanners to iPads through the USB to 30-Pin adapter with great luck. The only trouble is there is a power limitation, if the device draws more than a couple hundred milliamps the iPad will shut of the power to the device. You might have trouble hooking up peripherals that are not acting like a keyboard or a camera though.
I want to work in HMI domain and have started learning it.
In first stage I want to develop Qt GUI based touchscreen application for ARM9 board. Can anyone please suggest how to go for it and any budget ARM9 Dev board with integrated touchscreen LCD for this purpose? I want to use opensource platform as much as possible.
I know I can do it with more ease on an ARM board which support some OS like (say) embedded linux or may be Rasberry Pi with java or Qt based GUI. But I do not want to use OS rather want to develop just a simple touch screen GUI application to (say) turn a LED on the ARM board (without running any OS).
My next step of learning will be using touch screen GUI, Rasberry Pi with raspbian, where I have already found numerous resources Online.
Thanks
It may be better to just get a low end tablet or why not even a phone, much cheaper than a dev board with additional touchscreen. Plus Android is open. It may be a good idea to get an Ubuntu touch compatible device. The Pi, while cheap, is also very underpowered. A cheap tablet or phone will be more applicable, especially since official Android support in Qt is looming on the horizon. So why spend more money on a lower spec'd device with very narrow application range? Not to mention the wide range of sensors you get with a market device - cameras, compass, gyroscope, GPS, accelerometer - those could come in handy in a HMI scenario. Last but not least, graphics drivers are usually better in production devices than prototype boards.
Does anybody know of an existing Flex component that does VT500 terminal emulation?
We are gradually replacing terminal-based user interfaces with an AIR-based GUI.
We would like to have a terminal emulator embedded in that new AIR GUI, in order to give our users an integrated user experience when navigating between our old and new software.
Emulation of other VT-series terminals than the VT500 could also be usefull.
Btw, I'm not interested in writing it myself (nor having it written for me) because it would only be a nice-to-have in our software architecture.
Thanks,
Pieter
Isn't the whole point of using Air and upgrading the technology is that you DON'T need to use a terminal anymore? Seems a bit redundant.
I don't think you'll find anyone that has already created the emulator, but it can't be that hard to implement if you really need the functionality. I know I've seen an AJAX implementation of it (anyterm.org) that uses the ROTE library for the virtual emulator. You might want to look into that.
Does anyone know of a commercial or free .NET CF library/component/api that I can use within my Windows Mobile 6 and .NET CF 3.5 application?
I need to: enumerate the list of available WiFi networks in range, connect and disconnect specific SSIDs/networks in the list, and manage switching between SSIDs programatically (e.g. I'm currently connected to "public1" and want to switch to "public2" to do some stuff, and then switch back to "public1").
I have tried the OpenNETCF library for this and it somewhat works, but it's crashing quite often with Native Exceptions, which I can't handle with a catch() in my C# code so they bubble up to the end user and they get a nasty windows crash screen with the "send" and "don't send" buttons.
OpenNETCF forums seem to be dead, with lots of posts but no replies to most of them, and the last release from those guys was way back in March 2009.
Last I remember the OpenNETCF code was decent and worked without any issues on a number of devices I tried it on. I certainly don't remember getting native exceptions from it.
Is it possible that you're working on a customised platform? It is possible that the real issue might be due to modifications made to your particular device / operating system.
IIRC we eventually switched to Summit cards for hardware or cost reasons which uses a different API but obviously an API that would only work with Summit cards.
I'm afraid I don't know of any other alternatives atm. Sorry. :(