58 replies to this topic

[Hayvosh]

When will we have screens? Would love to see how it looks!

[dwillis]

I'll see what I can do when I get home...

[dankers]

Hayvosh, on 29 March 2012 - 12:09 PM, said:

When will we have screens? Would love to see how it looks!

The danger is, the look will not be close to final, the screens will change a lot sure as the UI work is not an area of focus yet. I know Steve wants to help with the QML for the Android port as well and several people are working on getting more stuff to QML to help this port. So no pressure to post screens of something that will change a lot and I know some devs only like to post screenshots of things that are close to finished.

[dwillis]

No screenshots yet but if anyone's feeling brave/bored, I've pushed the latest effort to dwillis/GCS_Android...

[K Wells]

I'm going on patrol duty...I'll try in the morning...is there an app installer?

[Spydmobile]

I have a TF101 on ICS, and would be happy to test it and feedback. Can anyone point me on a primer to get rolling?
Franco

[dankers]

Easy guys, this is really exciting but you are not going to have much to look at yet; 90% of this work is the solid foundations that are required to add the display. With QML there is an abstraction between the code and the display, compiling this is going to be interesting only for developers. Most of the hard work is the architecture, the bling will be added later and should be done in short order once the hard work is done on a solid foundation.

[dwillis]

Dankers, once I get the Welcome plugin sorted and Dmytro's QMLView plugin integrated would it be worth posting the qml files as a kind of GUI taster? They can be run in the Qt Quick viewer. I've actually started using that to speed up work on the non-code side of this. I can do all the layout and button click handling stuff purely in qml.

[dankers]

I would really like people to help you with the QML, so that is a great idea, almost anyone can write basic QML whilst it takes a high level of skill to do the actual port. Totally agree, good plan.

I know Kevin is looking at replacing the PFD in the GCS with the QML version also as it seems faster on the Mac but also unifies a plugin between your Android port and the Desktop GCS, which is the final idea where we move as many plugins as we can to QML so we can share code. Not all plugins can do this of course some are not suitable liek the Objectbrowser but many are.

[dwillis]

Do we want to replicate the current view or splitter mechanism used by the UAVObjectManagers in desktop or are we going to basically hard code the qml for each mode?

[dankers]

On a phone it doesn't help much as there would be one gadget per screen I think, on a tablet it could really be important as you can have one page showing you multiple gadgets.

[dwillis]

OK, so we'll need a qml equivalent to SplitterOrView (or whatever the class is called, don't have the source to hand).

[TruckBasher]

If you need someone to run debug on android let me know. I have Xoom ICS 4.04. I use to do it witn Copter-GCS dev. Well more like I run debug and I pass it back to you

[dwillis]

Latest progress: I've modified the welcome plugin's qml to do the page switching purely in qml. I now have a gui with the welcome plugin as the first page and six extremely basic pages (simply show some text). Clicking each button in the welcome plugin will flip to the corresponding page. To get back to the welcome plugin you currently have to flick back through the pages. The intention is that on an android device, the back button will return to the welcome plugin. Not sure what is  best way of handling this in the desktop version: back button in the GUI? This all works in the Qt Quick Viewer. I still need to work on the layout of the welcome plugin to get it to look good regardless of screen size (within reason, nice if I can get this to work on my phone's screen but lets be realistic...). Once that's done, I'll push back upstream and post instructions on how to run the qml yourselves and also modify it to mockup qml GUIs for other plugins.

I've also merged in Dmytro's qmlview plugin so I can have a look at that and work out how it will integrate with what I have so far...

[Scott]

Looking forward to trying this out when you have some code to share. I have a Coby Kryos 7" tablet that just arrived today!

[hhrhhr]

Greetings.
Some time ago I worked on the GCS for Meego (Nokia N9),but very few of these phones, especially the owners of the CopterControl, so the project stalled.
May be part of my work is useful to you, it's a QML-only interface, some gauges and the moving map with autozoom feature (do not know whether the Qt Mobility Location on Android).

This is a test run in QtSimulator, all data is generated in QML code (no C++ binding):


sources - https://github.com/h...r/aeroUInokiaN9

[dwillis]

I'll have a look at that, if it's pure qml it should work with what I have without any effort. Should give a good impression of what GCS could like like on a hand-held device.

[TruckBasher]

Hope to get that instruction....also need to read up on qml....I just got telemetry working on xbee and bluetooth via PC...i next step is to make it work via Android

[dwillis]

Just to let you know stuff's still happening. Pushed another update to dwillis/GCS_Android with some changes to the layout of the welcome plugin. Still not quite there but it now works a bit better at various screen sizes. To have a look at what I've got so far it's probably easiest to pull everything from dwillis/GCS_Android. Once that's done, open OpenPilot/ground/openpilotgcs/src/plugins/coreplugin/ModeStack.qml in the Qt QML viewer (Tools --> External --> Qt Quick --> Preview in Qt Creator). It's currently hard coded to show the welcome plugin and six default mode pages. I've still to determine a way of loading plugin GUIs into each mode page. The buttons in the welcome plugin should be functional (each one will go to a different mode page). The pages can also be changed by dragging.

If you want to try mocking up some qml plugin GUIs, edit ModeStack.qml as follows:

There is a ListModel item at the end of ModeStack.qml that lists all the items in the mode stack control. Currently there are six items in addition to the welcome plugin which has six buttons, one for each item. To try out different qml in each page, edit the 'itemQml' entry for the item. The path to a qml file should be relative to the ModeStack.qml file.

If you want to add more than six items, you'll need to add a button to the welcome plugin by editing OpenPilot/ground/openpilotgcs/src/plugins/welcome/qml/main.qml. Hopefully the format is self explanatory.

At some point I hope to make the welcome plugin add buttons dynamically based on the content of the mode stack control.

It might be a while before I do any more with this as I'm in the middle of a house move so might end up with no internet connection for a while...