Notes about remotising devices

[gregoa/zavai.git] / README

README for zavai

"zavai" is a word of the Bolognese language which means "useless thing of no
value". The idea that I'm trying to do what I can with what I have.

It is written with the purpose of working for me; everything else is optional.
Feature requests for things that I don't need will likely be ignored unless
of course they come with patches.

Getting it to work:

 * Install dependencies

   # Build time
   apt-get install valac libglib2.0-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libgee-dev libgtk2.0-dev \
                   libwnck-dev libdevkit-power-gobject-dev \
                   libomhacks-dev liblua5.1-dev

   # Runtime
   apt-get install devicekit-power

   # Optional runtime
   apt-get install polygen polygen-data

 * Compile

   ./configure; make

 * Install dbus.d configuration file

   cp conf/zavai.conf /etc/dbus-1/system.d/

 * Copy the .desktop files of the applications you use more often in ~/.zavai

   For example:

   mkdir ~/.zavai
   cp /usr/share/applications/tangogps.desktop ~/.zavai
   cp /usr/share/applications/navit.desktop ~/.zavai
   cp /usr/share/applications/vala-terminal.desktop ~/.zavai
   cp /usr/share/applications/midori.desktop ~/.zavai
   cp /usr/share/applications/zhone.desktop ~/.zavai
   cp /usr/share/applications/FBReader.desktop ~/.zavai
   cp conf/satmon.desktop ~/.zavai

 * Copy accessory scripts in ~/.zavai

   cp hooks/display ~/.zavai
   cp hooks/keyboard ~/.zavai

 * Update the information about the polygen grammars installed in the system
   (optional) 

   src/update-polygen-info

 * Run zavai

   ./run

   This will run zavai and restart it if it quits/crashes. If you want to
   restart zavai (for example after you build a new version) just choose
   debug/quit.

Features / guide

 * Power menu

 Push the power button to get the power menu, with options to
 suspend/shutdown/reboot, lock the screen and keep the backlight always on
 (useful if you are using the openmoko as a satellite navigator in the car)

 * Lock screen

 Hold the power button longer to lock / unlock the screen. If the screen is
 locked you see a lock icon in the traybar.

 A short push of the power button while locked will turn on the backlight for a
 bit, which is useful if you want to check the map for a moment. Another short
 push will show the main zavai window, which is useful if you want to see the
 time. Another short push will hide the main zavai window.

 * Main window

 In the main window you see the time. If your GPS has a fix, the time comes
 from the GPS.

 In the top left there is a gps icon. Push it to toggle the GPS to be always on
 (useful to restart tangogps or navit without needing to reacquire a fix).

 In the bottom there is a button to access the main menu.

 * Tray bar

 Zavai shows several tray bar buttons. One kills the current application (or
 goes back in the menu if the current application is zavai).

 One hides and shows zavai.

 One hides and shows the keyboard.
 
 One shows the status of the battery.

 * The menu

 The menu should be self-explanatory. It has options for simple GPS management
 tasks, setting an alarm, running applications, a task switcher, and a polygen
 interface.

 * Alarms

 It is possible to set an alarm, which will be shown in the alarm window. When
 the alarm expires, the phone wakes up if it is suspended, and zavai vibrates,
 turns on baclight, shows a big ACK button and flashes the AUX led for 30
 seconds. It also plays some music.

 You can use the big button on screen or the AUX button to acknowledge the
 alarm and stop all the attention-seeking activities.
 
 If you want to change the alarm ringtone, you can set:
 ringtone_alarm = "file:///some/where/file.ext"
 in ~/.zavai/config; gstreamer is used, so mostly any audio file format will
 work. I'm not sure what will happen if you choose a video format: that might
 work as well.

 Alarms (acknowledged or not) are logged in "~/.zavai/log-alarm/". Still
 missing, howerver, is a way to show that an alarm rang and noone noticed.

 Patches welcome.

 Details: the alarms are scheduled with at(1): they stay scheduled even if
 zavai is restarted, and you can see them with "atq". Please see omhacks for
 simple suspend hooks that will wake up the phone to run scheduled at jobs.

 * Calendar

 You can reach the calendar from the menu or by clicking on the date in the
 main screen.

 The calendar shows notes on every day. You can add notes just by typing on the
 white space below the calendar.

 The notes are saved in ~/.zavai/cal/YEAR/MONTH/DAY.txt, feel free to:
  - sync it with your main computer;
  - create a tool that populates it using the information from your
    favourite calendar system;
  - interface zavai with a proper calendar system, without making the interface
    harder to use (if you can).

 * GSM

 If you have a pin, add 'sim_pin = "1234"' to ~/.zavai/config

 Don't start frameworkd at boot. Get rid of fso-usaged from your system (it
 will be started by dbus when frameworkd starts, if it's there).

 Now you can use zavai to turn on GSM, including powering up the antenna and
 providing the PIN if required by the SIM.

 It does not currently do anything else beside turning things on. It is useful,
 however, to make GSM services available to simple scripts like SMS or contact
 list dump tools.


Stability / design

 Zavai currently focuses on the interface side, trying to make it easy for me
 to reach the functions that I need. I try not to focus on hardware details
 (yet) (when I can), so I build it on the freesmartphone framework, which is
 unstable, underdocumented and sometimes untested, whose developers so far have
 never answered my questions and whose API tends to change every now and again.

 This said, I'm surprised it works for me so far.

TODO list / wish list

 * FSO API "documentation":
 http://git.freesmartphone.org/?p=specs.git;a=blob_plain;f=html/index.html;hb=HEAD

 * Features to add:
 - log
    - write data to disk as log happens (to have at least partial logs if power
      is cut)
    - more detailed GPX data (dop, elev..)
    - message (structured) (json?)
 - turn on/off gsm
    + start frameworkd as a subprocess, configured to only do phone
    + go through the dbus motions of turning on this and that, and entering PIN
      hardcoded in zavai config
    + GSM status on main screen (with messages while coming online, and
      operator, power and so on)
    - log and refuse incoming calls and messages
   to "move" the GSM device to my laptop:
    socat FILE:/dev/ttySAC0 TCP-LISTEN:12345,bind=192.168.0.202
    socat TCP:192.168.0.202:12345 PTY,link=/tmp/gps,raw,echo=0

 - alarm
    + play sound at alarm trigger
    - leave expired alarm on screen until acknowledged
      (alarm status icon that also brings to alarm menu)
    - remember alarm names (on request, maybe with an add feature) and how
      often they are triggered, and show them most frequent first
    - show active alarms and allow to delete them
 - fisheye list music player
   (-> learn/test gstreamer libs)
    - player page with seek/skip controls
    - playlist editor
    - chosen song start playing if nothing is being played
    - chosen song moves to playlist editor: play, add to playlist, add dir to playlist
      (show a standard list multiselectable with all the songs in the dir and
      only the selected song selected; allow to select others, select all, add
      selected to playlist)
    - playlist as reorderable standard list, allow to delete tracks, reorder tracks
    - save playlist to file to reload later
    - pause with headset button
 - audio notes
    - record audio notes, logging start and stop so it gets an associated GPX
    - shortcut icon in main screen
 - check gobject introspection and dynamic loading
    - there could be a basic loader core that just dynamically loads bits as
      available/needed. Only the battery icon and calendar can be loaded on a
      laptop, while on the moko one can also load the power menu.
      Different bits can effectively work as plugins, to be there or not.
      Alternative plugins can be loaded based on different technologies, too (a
      gpsd satellite monitor, or a fso satellite monitor).
 - zavai does not look good in landscape mode
    - replace menus with a widget taking a list of actions, which then lays
      them out according to the screen size
 - set backlight with Randr (xrandr --prop shows "Backlight: 4 (0x00000004)     range:  (0,15)")
   and xbacklight uses it
   (note: the property is not available on the freerunner atm, it would be only
    for desktop systems, to avoid chowning the device under /sys/something)
 - volume control in power menu "Amp Spk"
   (-> learn/test libalsamixer something)
   /usr/share/vala/vapi/alsa.vapi
 - space buttons from sliders, to avoid shutting down instead of lowering the volume
 - battery without devkit: do the parsing via lua
 - contacts: show as a fancy focus+context list (see prefuse)
    - vcard on e-vcard.{h,c}
    - ical on libical-dev
    - vcard+index file
    - lua functions to read things
 - zavai-calendar as a separate app
 - zavai-contacts as a separate app
 - calendar
    - next30: don't update if not shown currently on the notebook
    - gtk_calendar_set_detail_func
 - GPS FixNow mode for sleeping
 - GSM power and network
    - link to open SHR-dialer
 - icon to show if there are new messages
    - link to open SHR-messages
 - switch backlight keep mode when on power/recharging
    - the button changes the default for the current power mode
 - unlock screen when receiving phone calls
 - GPX status icon (off, waiting for fix, recording)
 - GPX waypoint using AUX button
 - GPX + Audio track
 - track EPV (and similar) in gpx and kill trackpoints with bad accuracy
 - Simple wireless scanner (code from guessnet, or minimal wicd client)
 - Suspend phone if not calling and gps is not on and backlight is not on
   (maybe with idle notifier?)
 - Phone from kapula (or just running kapula)
 - Timezone selector
    - Location aware (show timezones in order of distance from current
      location)
 - Show timezone in clock

 * To find out
 + Why sometimes the phone will stop acting normal and will completely ignore
   the screen for the purpose of screen dimming, that is, it will dim the
   screen even if I'm using the touchscreen? (it was old ousaged brokenness)
 - Is there a way to lock the screen completely turning off the touchscreen, so
   that interrupts are not even generated?

 * Not quite needed yet:
 - GPX log with more features (quality, course, speed, ...)
 - Take a waypoint then show a menu with a timeout
    - Add a scribbled note
    - Add an audio note
    - Add a text note (tickling the text input method thing)
   If timeout expires, leave the waypoint with the automatic name
 - get fix events without requesting the GPX resource (and then? gpx log all the time? what for?)