Back a few months ago at max. BlackBerry announced they would be giving away free PlayBooks to developers who develop an application for their platform. I for one am all about free stuff. So I set out to develop a tool that I thought would be useful and I would use regularly. The app I decided to create was a programming calculator.
Today the application is finally complete and has been accepted into the app store.
While creating this app I used the latest version of Flash Builder Burrito. I found it a lot easier to use vs Flash Builder 4. The new built-in mobile wizards and device simulators were very helpful. Also the flex framework really worked great with layout and positioning as it always does. The only real gotcha with flex was how skinning works on mobile devices vs desktop apps. Everything else was a breeze.
Thanks Adobe and Blackberry for making such great tools that work!
So I thought it would be good to throw out some updates on the progress of some of my side projects I’m working on. Over the past few weeks I’ve been focusing on two projects. A new XBMC media manager written in air and a solution for streaming content from a HDHomeRun to the Flash Player. So here we go..
XBMC Media Manager
So this project has been the one I’ve actually worked on the most. It’s something that I believe will be most beneficial to myself and others. I’ve been doing a lot of research into how XBMC’s database schema works. I’ve created a way to take a file location and convert it into a CRC hash and use that to load the thumbnail image. I’ve also wired up a good portion of the program using the MATE framework and also using the SQL Extension for mate. Overall the progress has been good and steady. I haven’t been able to wire frame as much as I would like but I feel that I have a good handle on the user interface and the experience the user will have. I hope to have something released by the end of this year or early next.
HDHomeRun to Flash Player Streaming
This has actually been a lot of fun (I love playing around with video). I researched a lot of solutions. First I started off with what Adobe had to offer. Which seemed rather restrictive. The best way to get video into the FMS is to use an application called the Flash Media Encoder that only runs in windows. The HDHR has direct show filters which is required to capture in FME. But it seems as though the filter isn’t recognized. But maybe in the future someone can figure out how to make a direct show filter that is recognized as a capture device.
After researching FMS for a while i searched through a bunch of other open source solutions. The one that I found to work best and what I will end up using is Xuggler + RED5. Xuggler lets you capture video and transcode it using ffmpeg. The only hard part is trying to get it to capture from a UDP or RTS stream. Both should be doable but we’ll have to wait and see. I’m not sure when I’ll be done with this project but I’m sure it’ll be a great one. Who wouldn’t want a way to watch their own tv shows over the internet? Almost like a slingbox.
In my never-ending attempt to rid myself of a relentless cell phone service that I hardly ever use. I decided to work on another AIR Application a few months back. The concept was to make an application that would easily bridge Google Voice and the free Gizmo5 service to allow you to make and take phone calls from your PC.
I did a bit of research into the web API’s for both companies and was going to give it a shot and see what I could create in an attempt to figure out how I could rid of my blaster iPhone for once and for all. But now that Google has acquired Gizmo5 that may all have changed and I hope for the better. I guess we will see. But even despite of this I’m still working on this application when I have time so stay tuned for more.
So one of my secret obsessions is with video. I like to record video. I like to watch it. I like everything about it. But what I really like about it is the technology behind it. Call me crazy but I love to figure out how to encode a clip or video and see how good I can compress it using different codecs. Maybe that’s why I love working where I work. Since I ‘m a Flash / Flex programmer I have been wanting to investigate different streaming solutions for flash and see what is available and what will work with my little at home project.
This little project I’ve been playing around with is trying to get my HDHomeRun (HDHR) to rebroadcast its live feed to flash. I’ve been investigating technologies like Red5, C++ RTMP Server and Flash Media Server. With anything that requires multiple pieces of different technologies. The hard part is integrating these different pieces together. Luckily the HDHR is open source. So that provides a lot of avenues for development. The only hard part is trying to get the MPEG-TS from the HDHR and convert it on the fly to something flash can use.
So far I haven’t been able to get any of the solutions to work. but as soon as I do I’ll post something here.
One of my biggest covets with xbmc is trying to fix movie and thumbnail information. It’s just a too complex of an operation for a remote and just plain annoying. Being that i don’t have a PC and only use a mac I’ve found it difficult to update the XMBC / Plex database. OSX just doesn’t have as many cool tools and developers as windows does. so I’ve been trying to figure out a good way to edit the database with a separate application. I’ve looked at using Media Companion but then i would have to figure out how to run the application under mono (which so far hasn’t worked).
So as an alternative i started looking into how XMBC and PLEX both organize and manage their thumbnails and have decided to try and make a simple application in Adobe Air to do this. Right now I’m still in the planning stages. So i’ll post more details back here as i make progress.
