KotiBussi, 3 place and shared challenge price

Related to the previous post in Finnish. It is a description of my entry to the regional app4finland competition, a simple home Buss information display concept.

The idea is to have realtime display of buss(es) on a simple display so you know when to run to the buss-stop. The idea came when I started to think about what is the most annoying thing with using public transport here in my home city of Turku. I personally hate to stand at the buss-stop and wonder where the hell is it, or did it go already ? And at this time there are just a handfull of stops with information displays (that don't even display correct information, last time I needed to take a local buss).

Yes, you can get that from an app or web site. But not everyone has a smartphone. And how much time does it take to first dig the from somewhere, start the app, wait for it to load, then find the particular buss/buss-stop, etc (but the backend could be used for a mobile app, so that is not ruled out)

And this could be used not only at home, but for example at the work place, stores and hospitals. Well, you get the picture.

And instead of having the device polling the information, it uses MQTT to passively listen for changes and that means it does not need much of processing power, a basic arduino is just fine.

The backend part is still to be written, basically a SIRI to MQTT gateway.

Oh, the important part, I won! Third place in one category and shared winner of a specific challenge (transport).

Kotibussi, Apps4Finland demo konsepti

Huom! 

Kotibussilla on nyt omat sivut jossa päivitettyä tietoa!

Kotibussi, Apps4Finland innosta sarjaan demokonseptilaite, josta näkee nopeasti seuraavan bussin tiedot kotoa, ilman tarvetta puhelimelle tai tietokoneelle.

Demolaitte on toteutettu Arduino, Ethernet shieldillä ja LCD näyttöllä.

Arduinossa pyörii MQTT client joka kuuntelee MQTT palvelimella olevia pysäkkitietoja ja päivittää realiajassa tiedot tulevasta bussista, sekä sitä seuraavasta.

Oikeassa toteutuksessa MQTT palvelimelle tiedot haettaisiin reaaliaikaisesta SIRI syötteestä, joka Turun seudulla on tulossa 2015.

Näin bussin käyttäjän ei tarvitse juosta pysäkille seisomaan turhan takia vaan voi rauhassa katsoa näytötä ehtiikö vaikka vielä juomaan aamukahvin loppuun vai ei.

BS: Pysäkin numero
L: Linjanumero
N: Nyt tuleva bussin arvioitu min:sec saapumisaika
S: Seuraavan bussin arvioitu min:sec saapumisaika


Demo ohjelman koodi löytyy github:sta.

Onki now in Jolla Store

Just a quick one to tell you that Onki got trough QA and is now available in the Jolla Store, have fun and a nice weekend!

Onki - Onkyo remote controller for Jolla

Just submitted a preliminary alpha version to harbour of a Onkyo A/V receiver remote control app for Jolla. (Update: Oh, and on openrepos now too!)

Basic functionality is there, you can Power on/off, select input source, adjust the volume, mute on/off and tune the radio up/down and also tuner presets up/down.

For now the only cover actions are Tuner presets up/down. Cover action could be configurable to something else, perhaps volume or input ? What do you think ?

Cover actions (Tuner preset up/down)

Device selection works, only automatic discovery for now. In the future you will be able to add your device IP manually in case your Jolla is for example on another network. (Oh, and having your Onkyo on a public network, not perhaps the best of ideas as there is absolute no authentication...)

Onkyo device selection, for now only automatic discovery is supported.

The main screen will have the common control at the top, with current input as the screen title. The common control (for now) include Power button, Volume Up/Down and Mute.

On the bottom you have the input specific actions, on the screenshot below the tuner actions are visible.

Main view with common control and input specific ones

Input selection is available from the pull-down menu. For now all possible input that a device can have are visible, some might not exist on your device so obviously they won't work.

More functionality will come when I have the time to implement them.

Oh, wanna help ? The ISCP library is available on github, the app will also be soonish.

QtQuick friendly Onkyo ISCP remote protocol library

There are some ready made apps and code around, but none that was easy to plug into QtQuick or in library format so I scratched that itch myself for a change and wrote a simple library.

Still working on figuring out some of the more complicated commands like controlling network playback, but all the basic stuff is there. Will be in a git repo soonish.

Screenshot of test app below, UI is pure QML. (Yes it simple and ugly, it is a test app)

The ultimate ISCP commander!

And yes, this means there will be an application for Jolla and BlackBerry 10 in the near future.

Minor Y-Radio update, version 1.0.5

Related to the previous post about the DockedPanel, I made some small UI adjustments to Y-Radio (and it is already trough Jolla QA, in only 2 hours, that was fast!)

Made the main view a bit more compact and made the play/pause control look more nice.
The connecting and buffering progress bar is now above the control (but for some reason the Audio element won't give proper buffering information for rtsp streams, sigh). Also the main page title is now used for the radio channel name (and will only display Y-Radio when no channel has been selected)

Y-Radio main view changes

Also I made the program view a bit more compact by showing the program details in the list instead of in a dialog, makes it much easier to browse.

Program view

There are some other small thing in there, a bit nicer cover and some text size and color adjustments. Enjoy!

Keep DockedPanel open in Sailfish OS

I'm working on tidying up the Y-Radio UI and just discovered the bottomMargin property of ApplicationWindow, nice for keeping something on the bottom always visible even if you are navigating in the pageStack, so perfect for a media player control buttons right ?

Unfortunately the documentation sucks, as the only component that seem to work properly is the DockedPanel as it does some re-parenting. And the DockedPanel as an annoying issue, the user can hide it. For now I'm using the following uglyish workaround:

onOpenChanged: {
 if (open)
   return;
 if (root.currentChannel!==null)
   open=true;
}