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Administration #226

closed

Update design documents

Added by Hammel over 10 years ago. Updated 10 months ago.

Status:
Closed
Priority:
High
Assignee:
Category:
08 - Administrative
Target version:
Start date:
09 Oct 2013
Due date:
% Done:

100%

Estimated time:
Severity:
03 - Medium

Description

PiBox is now multiple projects:
  1. PiBox: A platform for custom development
  2. PiBox Media Server: A media server that can stream webcams and video files or serve them up as NFS files.
  3. PiBox Media Player: A media player based on XBMC or other media players

Additionally, PiBox Media Server will include (over time) support for sensor management making it similar to a home monitoring system.

PiBox, the custom development platform, is essentially ready. It can easily be modified to provide additional features in the core but is intended to be extended with opkgs.

PiBox Media Server's prototype is ready. It currently streams from a USB webcam and is initially intended for use in small trailers as a simple rear-view camera that can be monitored from the tow vehicle. Additional work is needed to provide support for streaming video files as Flash to tablets via USB mounted SD cards. Future development will include support for USB digital TV sticks that can be streamed to the Media Player. Support for temperature, humidity and air flow should be easy to add in the near term. A small touch screen will be integrated to display current configurations and sensor readings. A prototype touch screen is on order. The media server will utilize an externally powered 10 port USB hub. Plans are to integrate (and possibly custom design) a 10 port USB hub with external connectors that will allow installation in travel trailers to be more cleanly integrated with cabinetry.

PiBox Media Player is partially done but needs more work. XBMC is not properly tested and sound has not been tested. Additionally, playback with hardware accelerated media players needs to be integrated as opkgs. The media player is intended to work with lightweight DLP projectors via HDMI, with the intent that we display on the side of the trailer for a "personal Drive In Theater" experience (using headphones, to avoid annoying the neighbors). This work is waiting on the Media Server to be completed.

Both the Media Server and Media Player need work on the web server to support configuration of the devices. Currently this is done with bui-network-config, a GTK+ application. What should be done is to port the file configuration support from bui-network-config into piboxd and then use the web server to send commands and data to piboxd to perform the configuration.

The initial target market for these devices are travel trailers, as a replacement for overweight TVs and supporting video players. However, this is just an initial target audience and the applicability of these devices to other audiences needs to be explored.

All of this needs to be pushed to the wiki before plans are written up for a kickstarter project.

Actions #1

Updated by Hammel over 10 years ago

  • Description updated (diff)
Actions #2

Updated by Hammel over 10 years ago

  • % Done changed from 0 to 10

Addtional notes for design documentation:

PiBox platform includes out of the box support for:
  • Wifi client
  • Wireless Access Point configuration (WPA2 Personal)
  • User customizable support for USB adapters via mdev-based USB handler script
  • X over framebuffer featuring Blackbox
  • Synergy for remote X interfaces
  • opkg support
  • Raspberry Pi userland interfaces to GPU firmware and other hardware
  • Reduced SD wear via tmpfs for runtime files
  • Servers and daemons
    • NFS and smb
    • sshd
    • dbus
    • ntpd
PiBox Size:
  • ~800MB for rootfs,
  • <120MB runtime memory used
    • < 75MB for applications
    • > 50MB for buffers/cache

Additional kernel configuration tweaking may help reduce the overhead the kernel takes on overall memory usage, which is about 4MB.

Actions #3

Updated by Hammel over 10 years ago

  • Status changed from New to In Progress
  • % Done changed from 10 to 80

All of this information is now on the wiki. Additional information has been provided that describes products based on the PiBox Development platform and the add on packages available for it.

I think this covers most of what I want to say about PiBox in its current state and where its headed, but I want to think about it a bit more before I close off this issue.

Actions #4

Updated by Hammel almost 10 years ago

  • Priority changed from Immediate to High
  • Severity changed from 02 - High to 03 - Medium
Actions #5

Updated by Hammel 10 months ago

  • Status changed from In Progress to Closed
  • % Done changed from 80 to 100

This is very out of date and no longer reflective of where PiBox has evolved to.

Closing issue - additional documentation will be handled on a per release basis.

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