our project is in China, where all google services are blocked.
does Tango need any google services, or is it self-sufficient and is able to operate on its own? if it needs services, it is basically useless to our case.
Basically,
Normal Project Tango device's features didn't need online google services.
MotionTracking, AreaLearning and Depth should do well.
you can download the sample apps sources code on here
like c samples :
https://developers.google.com/project-tango/apis/c/
try that, it won't need online google services.
But there maybe some apps which integrated Tango feature with other google services do.
Unfortunately, since Google Services is blocked in China, you can't get the BSP OTA and Play store apps updated, which means at some point you can't get new features and bugs fixed on your devices.
If you need further help. better contact project-tango-help#google.com.
AFAIK it does not. I can confirm that I've been using my devkit offline most of the time.
More generally, the core Tango services are all hosted on the device, and they were preinstalled on my devkit when I got it about 3 weeks ago. However, updates to these services come OTA via Google Play.
The three services Tango provides are motion tracking, area learning and depth sensing. Depth sensing is provided directly by the sensors, and motion tracking obviously cant be done online in a performant way. AFAIK, area learning too happens offline, but you can find more info here.
Related
We have an existing cross-platform Mobile Application, that also has an accompanying web application, that uses AWS as a back end (RDS for Database, Four server instances, and a Load Balancer to distribute traffic). APK and IPA files are packaged and sent to the stores, while components are retrieved from our server per request, which enables us to reduce the number of store builds, and make the process easier for getting changes out to clients.
We are at the stage of Development that we need to move to another platform to better facilitate our fast growing client base.
Due to the conditions upon our clients, these things must be considered.
must be cross platform (Android / iOS).
must be offline based (users need to be able to access without an internet connection)
must be able to sync with an existing database when there is a connection
requires Authentication
Cloud based (? may not be the right term, but meaning the ability for us to store components on a server and have a device check for updates and download a local copy - enabling us to work and distribute fixes faster)
Ideally compatible with AWS
We are currently looking at Xamarin to facilitate us for this move, however there is a lot of documentation and plugins out there to do all sorts of different things.
As developers, we all have some .net / c# experience, however none particularly with Xamarin.
We have a particular timeline that we need to adhere to (and need to ramp up in the next couple of weeks), and right now are essentially stuck in Limbo in a research phase, as we can't afford to get some things right. We are unable to move forward until we know Xamarin (or some other framework) is able to do everything that we need it to do.
It's hard to escape from the 'code it all ourselves' mentality - especially as we don't know where to start looking in terms of third party packages for Xamarin, and their documentation itself.
A lot of documentation mentions various systems of Azure - we would not be against moving to Azure over AWS if it _had to be done*, but because of the existing infrastructure with AWS - staying with AWS is obviously the preferred option (users need to access the current system whilst we build the new system)
This stack overflow post is to ask for recommendations, comments, or other observations on anything and everything involved with the process in regards to choosing frameworks, design patterns, methodologies, third party packages, etc.
Obviously we would like to use best practises for everything moving forward for optimum scalability and cleaner, more robust code. It's just hard to know where to start!
Any input will be highly appreciated.
Cheers!
edit: I am aware that this is 'asking for recommendations' which is 'specifically off-topic'. I have read the posting guidelines about open ended discussion, and am quite confident that this case is different. There is an underlying problem here, in that we are seeking advice on combinations of frameworks and plugins that are fully compatible with all of the items in the list (above)
Let's try to breakdown each of your requirement and constraint mentioned in the question.
1. You need a offline first architecture (With Sync mechanism)
Xamarin + Azure would make a good comdo for you, as it would support offline storage out of box (With a simple PullAsync call).
Albeit there are AWS SDK available for Xamarin. Here it goes http://docs.aws.amazon.com/mobile/sdkforxamarin/developerguide/setup.html
So the call is yours. There are few other ways to achieve caching offline storage in Xamarin, you can build upon those strategy in your logic. Alternatively there is a very interesting C# library Akavache for caching and offline storage.
2. OAuth 2.0 Authentication
Xamarin has a very good library named Xamarin.Auth. Though I would not say it is very easily extendible at this but there has been some serious work going on from Xamarin on this library.
But I would say it is very easy to use. The apps I have developed so far that includes - Google OAuth, Facebook integration, Microsoft account integration. It worked fine for all of them.
3. Cloud based distribution
There are nice tools available with Microsoft. Which makes the distribution easy. Have a look at https://mobile.azure.com . Also hockeyApp is good for distribution I found.
Where to start:
A very good starting point for you would be https://channel9.msdn.com . Just go there search with keyword "Xamarin" and view some videos. May be all these cross platform dynamics will be much easier for you.
Overall I found Xamarin a cool product to work with. Because anything that can be done in native Objective C/Swift or Java can very well be done in Xamarin using C#.
Maybe I have't looked hard enough, but I spent yesterday googling for a bit and found no relevant projects on hacking the DJI Phantom Drone in order to create new coordinating apps. This is besides the app for coordination DJI currently uses for their drone. I'm trying to see if there's a way to communicate with the Drone with a specific protocol in order to accept a set of procedures.
Any help would be awesome,
Thanks.
Great News for you and all us Droneys! DJI has launched their SDK since you asked this question. They released it last November and you can now apply for a license and write your own apps for the Phantom2 Vision+ using their SDK.
Check it out at https://developer.dji.com/
I am already building a project using the SDK - you can follow my progress on my blog / product site. I will also try to update it with good DJI related development links and tips.
This post is old but I think it is good to leave a foot print for others :)
There is this new company called NVdrones, which created a peace of hardware that you can attach to any drone (you need physical access to the flight controller), and once you do that you can use their SDK (Arduino, Java, Android and Javascript) to write your app without the need of hacking, soldering or anything else. It is just plug and play.
Another benefit is that you are not locked with a specific drone (DJI SDK or 3DRobotics SDK), you can use the board on anything you want. Which gives lots of flexibility.
The developer site is http://developers.NVdrones.com
Hope this helps.
This is a great topic!
You could check how to hack your copter here: https://github.com/flyver/Flyver-SDK/wiki/-2.2--How-To:-Flyver-Hack-a-Copter
By opening the drone, taking out the original controller, soldering a few wires and sticking an Android phone to it, you will have the ability to program your Phantom in a modern manner with an open source SDK and application based development. This means that you could add computer vision to it, automation or additional hardware. You could also use smartphones, web and other interactive devices for remote controlling the copter instead of using the standard remote controls.
The Phantom, however, is offcenter balanced due to the fact that most people use gimbal with it. Without the gimbal is a lot less stable from my experiments so you will have to put some extra work in center balancing it.
I am not too sure if this question is suited for this forum. If not, please let me know and I'll delete this.
I wanted to figure out the "easiest" way of keeping online score for a game or quiz on Windows Phone 7. Currently, I am not looking for things like Achievements etc. I know XBOX live provides a lot of stuff on these grounds, but it is not open for all.
I want to submit the score, and maintain the top 200 (may be less) odd scores. I am too lazy to write my own services and host it and go through the full maintenance cycle for that scoring system. Can someone point out some really good and easy to use + reliable services that I can use?
The product offered by Mogade has a lot of the features you have asked for:
Real time stats
Achievements
Logging
Javascript leaderboards & Facebook pages
Always free
No branding requirements
It's a very streamlined library where you only need to set up the bare essentials to get it working as all of the heavy lifting is managed for you automatically, allowing you to focus more time on the development of your game.
briansoli has written a fairly straightforward tutorial on how to get a leaderboard working with in a Windows Phone 7 game.
I hope you find this useful, let us know how you get on with it!
Microosft have just released a new toolkit called the Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games. This should help you out with quite a bit.
Have a look at this Cloud Cover Show, Episode 52 - Tankster and the Windows Azure Toolkit for Social Games
The toolkit enables unique capabilities for social gaming prerequisites, such as storing user profiles, maintaining leader boards, in-app purchasing, and more. The toolkit also comes complete with reusable server side code and documentation, as well as Tankster, a new proof-of-concept game built with HTML5
I wonder if there is a tool/framework available that supports testing Google Wave Gadgets outside Google Wave.
I know these two emulators (1 and 2), but I still always would have to upload my gadget for every debugging run.
I am looking for a tool that displays the current state, allows to modify the state and to send the state back to the gadget.
Any ideas?
The two emulators you mentioned can be used in the way you described. You just have to download one and run it on a local web server. Then you can develop your gadgets offline, without having to upload them every time you want to test.
Here are links to the source for the gadget emulators:
http://github.com/vidarh/wave-gadget-emulator
http://github.com/avital/google-wave-gadget-emulator
There is a Google Wave Gadget API implementation available for Node.js, and this can be run as a standalone service supporting Wave Gadgets running in any web application.
https://github.com/scottbw/wave-node
It isn't 100% easy, but I would recommend setting up your own server on your local machine, for the moment, until someone figures out how or takes the time to wrap such a server into a usable one-click-install tool.
http://code.google.com/p/wave-protocol/wiki/Installation
For what it's worth- Google wave has been open sourced into Apache's WaveInABox: http://www.waveprotocol.org/wave-in-a-box
The term is getting 'hotter' with Microsoft Azure and Windows 7.
What are the benefits + how does the status quo of desktop computing now change? Does the machine no longer need an OS installation (or a highly stripped down version of a typical OS)... what is needed to interact with the 'Cloud' ?
Update: Received my first RTFM on SO today.
To elaborate.. I'm interested in knowing how different is the 'new way' w.r.t. the services provided by a typical desktop OS today (read Win XP/Vista, linux flavors galore, etc.)... NOT the benefits of cloud computing.
Two buzzwords.
Basically its Microsoft's form of competition against Google's recent web-apps boom. So if you want to know what it's all about just open up google docs and gmail, and there you go :)
Now on a personal note, I'm glad Microsoft and Apple(Mobile Me) are trying to fight back against Google. We need the competition, so us the users can choose and get better apps.
Also I'm really not a fan of any corporation, so I'm not all that excited about Google killing off everyone else any more than Microsoft doing the same to others.
When Microsoft says Azure is a Cloud OS, what they mean is that it provides the same kind of services to developers targeting the "Cloud" abstractions that are akin to what a Desktop OS provides developers targeting desktop.
Amitabh Srivistava gave a great interview on Channel 9 explaining it. Basically, if you want to write a notepad application for a desktop user, you don't have to be concerned with writing code that interprets key strokes from the keyboard, or that sets up communications with a printer. This is due to the desktop os. Similarly, Azure lets a developer focus on their cloud app better by abstracting things like load balancing, authentication and authorization, failover, and a lot of concerns that one would normally have to address when developing for the Cloud.
Old school network diagrams always showed the internet as a cloud. Microsofts approach is still a client-server model, although a real 'cloud' os in theory would be a SOA architecture of loosely fit components interconnecting and working together without really being aware of eachother. Example: creating services for email, document authoring, file storage, etc- which could all be interconnected by different services that don't erally need to be aware of the final product.
So different way of thinking of it: the 'system' exists in the network- not one single location.
Gains: Transparency, redundancy (not only of each service, but for replacing parts if vendors drop out) and availability (as long as you are also connected to the network).
Losses: Vendor lock-ins, vendor's dropping out, interoperability nightmare, as far as I know- there are no real standards for this model.
Microsoft did not coin 'cloud' computing term. Please refer to the wikipedia entry for a more specific definition and etymology.
whats with the RTFM questions on SO lately? unless I'm missing some deeper meaning, your questions are obvious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing
Cloud computing is Internet-based
("cloud") development and use of
computer technology ("computing"). The
cloud is a metaphor for the Internet
(based on how it is depicted in
computer network diagrams) and is an
abstraction for the complex
infrastructure it conceals.[1] It is a
style of computing in which IT-related
capabilities are provided “as a
service”,[2] allowing users to access
technology-enabled services from the
Internet ("in the cloud")[3] without
knowledge of, expertise with, or
control over the technology
infrastructure that supports them.[4]
According to a 2008 paper published by
IEEE Internet Computing "Cloud
Computing is a paradigm in which
information is permanently stored in
servers on the Internet and cached
temporarily on clients that include
desktops, entertainment centers, table
computers, notebooks, wall computers,
handhelds, sensors, monitors, etc."[5]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azure_Services_Platform
Microsoft's Azure Services Platform is
a cloud platform (cloud computing
platform as a service) offering that
"provides a wide range of internet
services that can be consumed from
both on-premises environments or the
internet"[1]. It is signficant in that
it is Microsoft's first step into
cloud computing following the recent
launch of the Microsoft Online
Services offering.
...
The idea and push from Microsoft to
compete directly in the software as a
service model that Google's Google
Docs have offered is increasingly seen
by them and others as an important
next step in application development.
In this idea, a software doesn't have
to be installed and managed on the
user's computer. It also allows files
and folders to be accessed from the
web.
So far, it looks like the idea of having software & your data hosted at msft's data centre.
SOA seems to be related to what cloud is offering.
No need to have local software (office will run from internet, your docs will be saved there. so that, you can access it anywhere). I think, the target could be big companies - thereby giving them services (software + hardware (data storage + processing power)) on subscription basis.
An expert can shed light on how this can be useful?
Will people be willing to put everything in the cloud?
Cloud is Time Sharing. Us old timers remember those days. You either wrote your own apps and ran it on their (the Time Share/Cloud providers) systems or you use the software they supplied. Usually word processors and accounting apps.
Google Apps is cloud. And since you get HD space you can already serve up your own app running on their systems.
Time Share was all the rage in the 70's and 80. Cause maintaining a system of your own wasn't cheap. Back then the smallest system any company ran was a mid-range (like Honeywell, AS400, Dec, etc, etc). Fell out of favor as the PC became popular. I remember when Lotus 1-2-3 came out and everyone predicted it would destroy what was left of Time Sharing. And it (along with dBase and other aps) did.
It's funny how we re-invite everything.
PS: Forgot one thing about Time Sharing. Since the Net wasn't around, you had to schedule your time. SO your staff would go to the providers Data Center and work. It was like renting space and the systems. Time Share and Cloud operate differently, but the function is the same.
Well like many new terms, there can be more than one answer. Frequently it can be defined as a compute platform, where the developer doesn't have to worry about resource management, scalability or hardware failures, because the cloud infrastructure handles it. Here is a link to some information the company I work for has:
http://www.appistry.com/resource-library/index.html
There are some good white papers linked here that might be helpful to you.
-Brett
A cloud operating system primarily manages the operation of one or more virtual machines within a virtualized environment.
Microsoft Windows Azure and Google Chrome OS are among current examples of cloud operating systems.
Azure App Service is one of the common and most used services. While it is possible to immediately deploy apps, jobs etc., to the app service, a common factor that baffles decision makers is the wide spectrum of the tiers (options of plans) available in the marketspace. To know more details,visit:https://www.impigertech.com/blog/azure-app-service/