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Jerrem
Newbie
Joined: December 23 2008
Location: United States
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Posts: 16
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| Posted: July 13 2020 at 18:21 | IP Logged
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Hi All:
With the versatility and comparatively low cost of the
Raspberry Pi and associated touchscreen displays, has
there been any thought toward the development of
hosting the Remote Control Center (RCC) application to
Linux?
I have several old Win XP PCs running RCC throughout
the house, these are reaching end of life and am
looking for a low cost way to replace these old
machines. Any insights into this area, has it been
tried, is it too complex... would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Jerry
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gg102
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Joined: January 29 2013
Location: United States
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| Posted: July 14 2020 at 11:50 | IP Logged
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Jerry,
I love the Raspberry Pi. I have several that are doing many different functions.
I have had the exact same thought about using it for an RCC but I'm guessing that
it would be a bit of work to write the RCC for Linux. IDK
Dave has added a feature to the the WEB interface that may be sufficient to be a
workable solution.
Using the WEB interface, and using the new feature &refresh=10, you can have a
workable and simple solution. It will "operate" your system and will update the
screen, but not instantly. If a 5 to 10 second delay is sufficient, this may work
for you. I have mine set to 5 seconds. As Dave has pointed out, this generates a
bit of traffic to the system. You can adjust the refresh rate at a balance of
functionality and network traffic. Just open a browser on your Raspberry Pi and
point it to your PH server and port.
Perhaps something like 192.168.x.y:your_port&refresh=10
Just my experience and thoughts.
Good luck, and keep us updated about your findings!
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dhoward
Admin Group
Joined: June 29 2001
Location: United States
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| Posted: July 14 2020 at 20:13 | IP Logged
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Jerry,
Briefly looked at it but it would be a bit of work since PowerBuilder (the language PowerHome is written in) does not support Linux
development. There is a unique PowerBuilder feature called the DataWindow that is used for the Control Center development that I would be
missing if I were to start from scratch in a development environment supported by the Pi.
What Im hoping to do is to bring the web based Control Center client to be on par with the Remote CC. I think Im getting close with the
recent rewrite of the web CC to allow for the "button" objects to appear as if they've been pressed the same as the Internal CC and Remote
CC does now. What is lacking is the instant update of CC changes. As gg102 pointed out, with the latest beta you now have a "refresh"
parameter which helps some but is intended really as a stopgap.
What Im working on is adding an MQTT version of the Broadcast server (what the Remote CC uses for its updates) and then updating the web
based CC code to use web sockets to subscribe to a CC topic for updates. This should give a result almost identical to what the Remote CC
has now but can even be remote for the local network. With a webpage with an MQTT client over websockets, there won't be any need to
constantly hit the server checking for changes. As soon as a change occurs, it will go out over the MQTT version of the Broadcast server
and be relayed to the remote web based CC client where the change can happen via AJAX in the background.
This would have the advantage of bringing a real-time web based CC to virtually anything that supports a modern web browser.
Let me know if you think this would help or not.
Dave.
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Jerrem
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Joined: December 23 2008
Location: United States
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Posts: 16
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| Posted: July 15 2020 at 15:53 | IP Logged
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gg102 & Dave:
Thank you very much for the detailed replies. As I am
upgrading my system to the current rev (from a much
older version) I'll give the new refresh capability a
try and add my support for the addition of the MQTT
capability.
Thanks again.
Jerry
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Topic: Hosting RCC in Linux
