nDroid. Future versions - feature request

[bgowland]

Firstly thanks to those who have tested nDroid so far and apologies for the gap between releases. The last few months have been busy and I'd also painted myself into a corner with some initial design choices for the software. Programming for mobile devices is a whole different ball-game and I've spent a lot of time over the past few weeks undoing a lot of those bad choices.

I'm aiming for another release towards the end of the month so the request is to remind me of anything specific you'd like to see. It will mostly be just a maintenance release to start but with better network handling and potential for future features. I'll try and add any immediate suggestions to it if I can and then work on from there.

Cheers,
Brian

[Nistrod]

Important (well, to me): EPG by time, not channel - like Whats showing now, only more so.

Nice: Access from outside the firewall, Wake-PC functions - mine is ALWAYS asleep when I want to do something.

[bgowland]

Thanks for the reply...

Important (well, to me): EPG by time, not channel - like Whats showing now, only more so.

Do you mean something akin to the NextPVR / NEWA TV Guide? I've thought of this but I'm not sure how usable it would be on small screens. It's something I want to look at further though.

Nice: Access from outside the firewall, Wake-PC functions.

The work I've been doing on the network handling should hopefully mean it's more 'intelligent' when it comes to working out internal/external connections. As for waking PC - I have this working for my WLAN but don't know how to do this from outside of a local network.

Cheers,
Brian

[johnsonx42]

any chance you'd port it to WebOS? you don't need a WebOS device, the SDK comes with a full emulator that works exactly the same as a real phone. I don't know anything about smartphone software developement, but I've read many times that it's pretty easy to make android and ios apps work on webos.

[bgowland]

any chance you'd port it to WebOS? you don't need a WebOS device, the SDK comes with a full emulator that works exactly the same as a real phone. I don't know anything about smartphone software developement, but I've read many times that it's pretty easy to make android and ios apps work on webos.

I've wondered about other platforms but to be honest it's unlikely to be something I'd attempt any time soon.

There seems to be two main camps when it comes to smartphone development - those that develop web-based apps using Javascript, HTML, XML etc and those that write 'native' apps using Java (for Android), Objective-C (for iOS) etc.

I can see that developing web-based apps cross-platform would be relatively straight-forward but nDroid is a native app with perhaps ~2000 lines of Java using native Android components. Porting it would be a pretty big task unless there are any tools written specifically to process one smartphone's native code to another.

Cheers,
Brian

[Nistrod]

There is an app called IceTV which has similar functionality to nDroid. It works with a range of devices. It displays all the shows sorted by start time. All shows that start at the same time have a header with the time, then one or two lines per show, with title and channel. Touch the show and the details appear, with Record and Add to Favorites button. I think it is AUS only.

They seem to have resolved the remote access issue - you register an account, so I guess it is handled on their servers.

Just a suggestion.

I can live with wake-on-lan from the local network. Better than nothing.

[bgowland]

There is an app called IceTV... It displays all the shows sorted by start time. All shows that start at the same time have a header with the time, then one or two lines per show, with title and channel. Touch the show and the details appear, with Record and Add to Favorites button. I think it is AUS only.

I think I'm getting an idea but if you could supply screenshots it would help. It seems they used to cover NZ but withdrew that and I certainly can't find their Android client on the UK Android Market. So, yes, it looks like AUS only.

They seem to have resolved the remote access issue - you register an account, so I guess it is handled on their servers.

Location of servers isn't a problem...location of the mobile devices is the issue. How does their mobile client handle a situation where you choose to Record a programme but you're on an underground train with no network connection?

[johnsonx42]

I can see that developing web-based apps cross-platform would be relatively straight-forward but nDroid is a native app with perhaps ~2000 lines of Java using native Android components. Porting it would be a pretty big task unless there are any tools written specifically to process one smartphone's native code to another.

I think WebOS just got rid of Java too. Or maybe it was JavaScript they got rid of? Not being a software developer, I am unclear on these sorts of things. But yes, I do understand that native apps are a lot more work to port than web-technology apps, though I have read that some native iOS apps have been ported to the WebOS PDK in just a few hours.

[Nistrod]

...location of the mobile devices is the issue. How does their mobile client handle a situation where you choose to Record a programme but you're on an underground train with no network connection?

I presume that you have to have a network connection. But if you have two clients - (the mobile device and the PVR), both talking to their servers, you can get through a firewall, and dont need to know the IP address of the PVR. It does require a server environment somewhere.

Here is a screen shot.

[bgowland]

I think WebOS just got rid of Java too. Or maybe it was JavaScript they got rid of? Not being a software developer, I am unclear on these sorts of things. But yes, I do understand that native apps are a lot more work to port than web-technology apps, though I have read that some native iOS apps have been ported to the WebOS PDK in just a few hours.

I will look further at some point when I have the time but there are no promises. Come up with some good examples of porting apps from Android to webOS and it might help. I don't do the Apple 'thing' so porting from iOS wouldn't help.

Cheers,
Brian