Would it be possible to use the idea of the Viewer program we have currently to make a userland app that would be able to display images. I am thinking of it being similar to the Image Pan visual, in that the image would be larger than the empeg's display, but would be able to be panned over using empeg's buttons...

I thought it would be cool to take the map I am using for Escher and be able to pan around on it

I am guessing from the lack of viewing and complete absence of replies that this idea is total crap

No, I think it's a great idea. Somewhere in the wish list I posted a wish for a Mapquest map viewer - something that would be able to convert a mapquest gif into an empeg palette and display it with pan ability. So your idea would be a great start towards that.

Eh... I could hack this up in like an hour, though I'd be using the slow-as-molasses GD library to do it and y'all probably wouldn't love the pan/scroll speed. Unless I increased the process priority/scheduling policy to compete with the player (meaning there would be a chance that the player would skip while you're panning.)

If I were to do this (hint to any budding Empeg developers out there) I'd just call gdImageFromJpeg or gdImageFromPng to load the image and have the up/down/left/right buttons move the origin of the image. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have to worry about manually clipping the image, but I've never really tried displaying an image with an off-screen origin before.

I'd do this, but I have serious questions about the usefulness of viewing a map on a 128x32 screen. That's why printers were created. I don't want to crap on the idea, but aside from the "cool factor" is image panning all that useful? A map in the car is groovy, but the screen size and resolution are just so limited, I'm kinda wondering if it would be all that interesting. I just can't imagine trying to rely on a map showing on such a small screen.

That's why printers were created.

Yeah, but I'm trying to transition to a paperless car and save the environment.

Seriously, why is there a breakout game? Why does the empeg have visuals? Why the calculator? Why do people put neon lights in their PCs?

Because it's cool. (Well, actually, why *do* people put neon lights in their PCs???? )

Maybe it's usefulness would be limited due to the screen size, but there is a certain satisfaction gained from squeezing the most unexpected functionality from a device.

Oh I am completely with you, especially in getting enjoyment out of squeezing functionality out of a device.... But the word functionality is where I've drawn the line so far.. Okay, my trivia game was just a real easy first programming project, and it's fun... But my other projects so far (the alarm clock and my text-to-speech efforts) have been a little more practical. I'm trying to spend what little Empeg development time and energy I have on things that a lot of people will find useful.

But maybe I'll see if I can throw something together soon, at least a skeleton that someone somewhat new to Empeg hacking could expand on.

I've converted a few maps, basically "eye candy" at my site if anyone is interested... www.barbaza.com/gallery/wrx/ under "downloads".

Hi,

The neon lights in PCs helps young processors from getting scared if the computer runs jobs - all alone - in the dark.

At night the blinkenlichten of my machines, hub, ADSL-modem etc give off enough light to easily navigate the room.
Seems to be enough for my processors too...

/Michael

I tried to download the VW boot logo http://www.barbaza.com/gallery/wrx/downloads/TuxLogos/TuxLogos/VW.zip from your page but I got one of these

404 Error -- File Not Found
The page you are looking for (http://www.barbaza.com/gallery/wrx/downloads/TuxLogos/TuxLogos/VW.zip) is not here.

Rafy - I fixed it... damn I'm starting to hate Microsoft Frontpage... it decided to "fix" my hyperlinks and broke them all...

Ok, it seems we've strayed a bit form the original topic. Any way to give some of us hints or pieces of code for actually making this thing work?

I realise that all dev on empeg software has come to a halt, but it really would be great to see this come to fruition...at least in some rough form.

I realise that all dev on empeg software has come to a halt

Easy there, cowboy. Two of the Empeg's flagship 3rd party projects, jEmplode and Hijack, have both had multiple releases within the past week. Is that what you would call "a halt"? In addition to Mike and Mark's efforts, there are dozens of other guys who contribute on occasion, but aren't quite as prolific as those guys.

The reason you don't see as much development on the Empeg as you might on, say, an iPAQ or ReplayTV or Gameboy Advance is simple -- there are only a bit more than 4000 Empegs in existence on this planet, so it's a much smaller pool of hackers to draw from. Given this limitation, and the fact that the product has been discontinued, I think the pace of development is pretty damn impressive.

Anyway, as for this image panner, I've said this is something I can handle. I just have had zero free programming time between work and grad school. If/when I come up with something, I will of course release it with full source.

I continue to be amazed at how easy it is to upset people on this bbs and how critical everyone seems to be about stuff. I suppose I should have included the fact that was not harping on Jemplode or Hijack...as you stated, these are 3rd party developers. I was refering to Empeg, Ltd. development.

For the record, 'halt' is not derogatory.

I know that the empeg is a discontinued product and I also know that it is in very limited quantity...not so sure why you felt that needed to be expressed as I believe it is painfully obvious.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand start rippin...

No "rippin" necessary, we're all adults here. But look at your statement.. "all dev on empeg software has come to a halt." How was I to know you were talking about development at Cambridge? Especially in a thread about writing a 3rd party app. You came off as someone who was unhappy with the dev community, and since I had already said I'd give this a try (but eight short days ago in this very thread), I didn't see why you had to ask again. I admitted I might not get to it immediately, and that turned out to be the case.

Even given the misunderstanding, your original statement is false. They're making fixes and adding stuff, they're just not releasing it to us. I'm not happy about it either but the development hasn't halted, the releases have halted. If you and I were on the alpha team we'd probably be pretty happy with the rate at which we get releases.

Anyway I wasn't trying to bash you, but if you look at your post within the context of this thread, you came off looking like you weren't happy with an image viewer taking more than a week to write. In retrospect you probably didn't mean it that way, but I call 'em like I see 'em.

we're all adults here

speak for yourself tony, im a teenaged monkey trapped in this room with internet access.

Well, my class was cancelled tonight so I decided to throw together an image panner.

I tried to attach it here, but I can't get attachments to work on the BBS to save my life, so instead, go grab it at http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/a/m/amc156/empan-0.90.tar.gz

I'll have a more feature-filled version with source on my website real soon, but I wanted some initial feedback on this one so far. One feature that has yet to be added is zooming in/out on the image...

Anyway, unzip/untar the archive and put its contents on your Empeg. The syntax is:

empan filename.jpg

Where filename.jpg is the file you want to open. The archive includes a small JPEG to test it out with. Because of the many who've asked about pr0n on their Empegs, the test image is a G rated picture of Jessica Alba. I would include something a little more hardcore so it can truly be empr0n, but I wouldn't want to offend anyone...

You pan with the front panel buttons, and push the knob to exit. The knob left/right will eventually be used for zooming in and out once I get that working. This thing probably won't work very will with really huge JPG files, especially if memory is tight. The GD graphics library isn't exactly lean and mean.

Anyway, once I add a zoom feature I'll package up the source and makefile for all to play with. For now though, let me know how this works for you.

There have been a lot of new features and bug fixes since the product was discontinued. There's a lot more neat stuff waiting in the wings.

Rob

That is AWESOME! Exactly what I had in mind. Great job man, great job.

Well don't get too excited until you try it with some larger JPG's... Actually, let me know how larger images are working for you.

Am I doing something dumb? I can't get this working here.

Unzipped on my PC, ftp'd up to /opt/empan. Chmodded empan to a+x so it has execute persmissions. Run ./empan jessica.jpg, and get:

bash-2.03# ./empan jessica.jpg

bash-2.03# image file: jessica.jpg

empan v0.90 running as pid 33

opening display...

entering outer loop...

waitmenu...

And that's it. Nothing on display, and push button doesn't quit (I have to kill the process to remove it from ps)

Any ideas?

Cheers,

A.

I tried a 150K file and it seemed just a bit sluggish in panning, but fine overall. How bout RAW format? I was thinking that we could use emRAWerter to convert to RAW and save tons of space/memory...

You need to quit the player, execute empan, and fire the player back up. It will then bind to Hijack and you can get to it from there. You'll have to use a launching app (IE picker) to start empan before player in order to get this to work on the player in the car.

Ooh, wow, that's a bit fantastic. I didn't realise it bound to hijack - I thought it was just standalone.

Couple of points of note though - it doesn't draw to the full extent of the screen - it misses the bottom line of pixels out, which can be seen if you have an active visual going (i.e. funnelweb) - the bottom line of pixels flickers as it shows one line of the vis.

Secondly, is it possible to make it auto-repeat with the buttons, rather than have to keep stabbing to scroll the image?

Other than that, I love it! Just gotta decide what I could use it for now...

Cheers,

A.

OK, been doing some larger image testing...

First image: approx 50kb, 580x435 24bit jpg.
Time to load after choosing 'empan' on hijack menu: approximately 15 seconds.
Scroll speed: noticeable delay after pressing a button, but not *awful*.
Player issues: none noticed apart from bottom line of pixels.

Second image: approx 500kb, 1600x1200 24bit jpg.
Time to load after choosing 'empan' on hijack menu: Upwards of 5 minutes (still waiting)
Scroll speed: Unknown, but likely to be painfully slow (but hey, it's a *huge* image)
Player issues: Track change occured during loading of image - empeg stalled for approximately 5 seconds before moving on to the next track - presumably due to lack of CPU power. Playback once track loaded was fine however.

Hope this helps,

A.

Update on second image issue - found this in the terminal window - I don't think it's been there long, so it probably came on after about 5 minutes:

VM: killing process empan

buffermem       : 331776

page_cache_size : 298

nr_free_pages   : 90

num_physpages   : 4096

And I was looking forward to seeing that, too

It's also, of course, left my empeg screen covered with the blank square it had on loading, and the buttons are irresponsive, as they are still bound to empan. I don't know if these can be set to be undone if the process is killed remotely?

Cheers,

A.

Auto-repeat of the buttons would require me to actively poll for them instead of blocking I/O. Hijack has this, I just haven't done much with polling except for a quick test to make sure it works. Likely to be issues with speed, etc.

Thanks for noticing the bottom line, that's the famouse off-by-one error, that'll be fixed.

Don't worry about finding uses, I didn't see this as a very useful app as I noted above... I just thought it would be a good example for someone new to programming to take a look at. Plus three or four people asked about it, and it was really easy compared to some of the other things I've been hacking away at.

Perhaps the coolest application I can think of is to find a friend who claims to have the most bitchin' car stereo on the block. Then show him that your car stereo can view pr0n.

Nope, when the process gets killed, you can't do anything. Actually, if you start it up again it will re-bind to the buttons and you can quit out. But that doesn't help you out much.

Not much I can do about that... ReserveCache is your friend until someone out there writes an image viewer in ARM assembler.

I have a better developement environment for you.

NOTE PAD!!!!!

If you want to see what It can do try my website.

(Actually, it was started with notepad, and is maintained with a combo of notepad, pico, vi, some home brewed apps, and JPad Pro. All of which are free (well jpad is $40 after the trial is up))

I love the "made with Windows Notepad" logo you see on some web sites.

I'd put it up on my site just to boast that I do all my web editing in pure ASCII, except that I actually use UltraEdit and not Notepad. But it's the same difference. Death to WYSIWYG web editors!

To my credit, I use the "html" view in Frontpage to make most of my edits. I just use frontpage to manage the files. I used to use notepad and even posted that "created with Microsoft Notepad" icon that Tony mentioned in a thread a few weeks ago.

If you like FrontPage, you really should check out HomeSite.

Similar but better, less of a hog and better behaved.
And as an added value, not from our buddy Bill.

Great work,

Will you add the ability to navigate thru several graphic files?

Hmm, It wasn't really on my list... I was hoping to get most of the "guts" of the image viewing working first (including smoother panning as requested above, and zooming if possible) and then releasing the source for someone else to work on... Someone around here did a "viewer" app which is a text file viewer that allows you to walk your filesystem and view text files, I figure someone out here can use that program's source and mine to come up with something like you're describing.

But if my other Empeg projects become too frustrating, I'll see what I can do. This one is a lot easier to work on, and a nice break from when I'm way above my head trying to get text-to-speech to work.

I am using picker to launch several userlands on my player. To get around the prob of viewing only one image with empan I have made one button in picker call another instance of picker(pick_list2) with more images selectable from there. It is a good temp workaround at least.

I am not familiar with picker, I guess one could keep several empan's running in the background for the meanwhile.

That's the problem with those pesky images, you can't view just one!

Looking forward to a source code release on this project.

In an unprecedented move (for me anyway) I am going to promise to have full source to all of my Empeg projects on my web page by the end of this weekend. I've been stalling for long enough and it's clear there are some hungry programmers who are interested in getting involved. So stay tuned.