HyperLaunch HQ iPad App - Any Interest?

[tonesmalone]

I've been configuring my HyperSpin / HyperLaunch setup for a month or so now, and one of the things that has blown me away is the quality of the community.

I've been thinking on how I could chip in a bit and have had the idea of creating an iPad version of the HyperLaunch setup tool HyperLaunch HQ. An app that would allow the HyperLaunch settings to be changed per system etc.

Would anyone else be interested in such a creation? I intend to make it for my self anyway, if there's enough interest I'll make it into more of a thing and open source it etc.


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[djvj]

I don't have an ipad app, but if it was able to be ported to android also, that would be sick!

 

[tonesmalone]

Let me look into the possible solutions. Native is often best for mobile development so cross platform often means two separate apps. I'm more familiar with iOS dev than android. But gotta start somewhere.

Let me start pulling some ideas together.


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[djvj]

Sure, let me know what you find.

 

[marxkemp]

An app to remotely change the ini's or hlhq settings from my couch? With a hypermedia checker included? Awesome!!

 

[Agrajag]

It would certainly make things a lot easier for people using low res CRTs in their cabs to set up HyperLaunch.

 

[tonesmalone]

I've been thinking and I think the way forward might be a web app, similar to what is being developed for HyperBase Live except the app/site would simply be served from your HyperSpin box locally.

This approach would allow for a remote management tool that would be cross platform and cross device. It also gets round potential problems of distributing an iOS app of this nature.

What are peoples thoughts on this revised idea/plan?


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[tonesmalone]

An app to remotely change the ini's or hlhq settings from my couch? With a hypermedia checker included? Awesome!!

I'd be focusing on the ini files really. The upcoming HyperBase Live is going to do media management.


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[djvj]

That also sounds like a great suggestion now that you mention it. Not sure if it's better. A remote app could connect to multiple HL installations, but not sure a web app can do that as easily. Like you can run the web app on the box HL is on, but could you connect it to others, or does each PC need to run it's own web server?

 

[Knewlife]

That also sounds like a great suggestion now that you mention it. Not sure if it's better. A remote app could connect to multiple HL installations, but not sure a web app can do that as easily. Like you can run the web app on the box HL is on, but could you connect it to others, or does each PC need to run it's own web server?

Utorrent remote is a web App or Mobile App... Both connect to your utorrent client on windows and get information, allow you to change settings, etc. You just need to create a PCname and password (using the windows client app) to allow you to remote access the windows app... One setup for every PCname. This can work in a similar way right?

 

[tonesmalone]

Some interesting points raised there. I've been doing some further research.

It would seem like we would need a combination of both solutions, for a couple of reasons. One being that accessing a SMB windows share from iOS isn't a trivial task and would require a lot of work and a custom solution. That means that a local web service of some kind on each HL install would be the best way of remotely accessing the HL ini files.

Utorrent seems to work by each boxing serving a web service. This can be accessed by going directly to the local ip in a browser or by accessing the Utorrent remote web service which connects to your box by using DDNS of some kind - this is the part that allows remote access to Utorrent when away from your local network - I don't think we need this for HLHQ. As there is really only a need to access that when your within your local network.

So, pulling that all together I think this is what we need -

- An simple installer of some kind which will serve a custom JSON web service which will allow local remote access to each HL install.

- Native iOS and Android apps which use this JSON service on each local HL install to change settings.

I think we are now locking this down to a fairly concrete solution. Does anyone want to create a little team to further investigate and create this project? I can create the iOS app and help with the JSON web service, though could do with some help with that. Then we would need someone to look into the Android app.

Thoughts?




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[djvj]

I have no experience at all in this area, but this thread is public, so anyone reading it can offer to help. If you want, I can make it an announcement for the front page seeking help?

 

[tonesmalone]

Yeah let's do it. We need someone to create a JSON interface to HL and someone familiar with Android development.


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[brolly]

Creating the framework for something like this should be pretty simple and basically what you said already, have a REST service running on the machine(s) you have HL installed, have that service feed the ini files as JSON to your app and have your app return the JSON edited files to the service which will in turn write them back to the local ini files.
Creating the JSON conversion interface might not be that hard and a few lines of code might be enough to generate it dynamically for all ini files. I could probably help with this, but not really sure if I have the time anytime soon since I have other stuff to do meanwhile.
The hard work will be on the GUI side, you'll have a lot of work to get every single configuration supported. Personally I'd do it in HTML5/JS as it would work on both Android and iOS as well as any PC with a browser and would be a single application to maintain.

Anyway I was already planning to add some REST support to HLHQ so if anyone wanted to write an app for android/iOS to launch games from their cells they could, never intended to provide ini files info though as never thought this would be of any use. I can think about having this built-in in HLHQ though, but this would mean having it running on your local machine the whole time (could be on systray though). But like I said I can't make any promises on deadlines so if there's interest best thing I can do is look into it to have an idea of how hard this would be and let you know.

 

[tonesmalone]

Thanks for considering it brolly.


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[tonesmalone]

Just wondering if you've had a chance to have a look at this yet brolly?

Don't really want to hassle you though mate, as I appreciate there is much other great work going on.

 

[brolly]

Not yet sorry, been pretty busy in the past weeks and I still had a few other things to add to HLHQ before this. But it's not forgotten I can assure you.

 

[tonesmalone]

Cheers for the update brolly.