At my work we are evaluating the feasibility of using some Android devices for data collection/modification purposes.
Right now we use the all too familiar (in the retail industry anyways) Symbol/Motorola Windows Mobile PDA. While these devices work, they are stuck in the past in almost every way. The always have awful resistive touch screens, often don't properly support modern WiFi encryption standards, are very expensive, slow, etc... Not to mention Microsoft has all but dropped support for Windows Mobile/CE entirely, and you have to pay Microsoft for the privilege of writing an application for the platform. Maintaining the app we use for that platform is becoming a pain, and its not going to get any better. Instead of putting any more time into the WM app, we feel its time to move on.
We have already been developing a intranet page to replace the functionality of the Windows Mobile app. What really pushed us towards Android was the fact is has a modern internet browser. This allowed us with just a bit of additional html/css/javascript to serve up a version that works fine in the Android browser. Something we tried and failed to do with the Windows CE browser. We where also able to get it working fine with a external motorola bluetooth barcode scanner for input purposes.
Our only issue now is what kind of devices are out there for this type of application? The ideal device would be about phone sized, or maybe slightly larger (small tablet even), would be a bit more ruggedized than your normal consumer electronics and have Wifi/Bluetooth (cellular functionality not required or wanted) Right now the only device I've found that meets those requirements has been the Motorola ET1 Android tablet. Am I missing some others out there?
The test devices we have been using where a modified Nook Color and a original Motorola Droid, obviously such devices would not be suitable in actual use.
In terms of size i'm sure you have heard of the galaxy note, mind you you might kill it in a comercial setting.
You probably want to google for IP67 certified devices. The Motorola DEFY+ comes to mind since it's so cheap, It also has CM7/9 support and possibly MIUI.
Welcome to Gaming on a whole new Level. Nvidia brings you GaiKai. The next level in cloud based gaming. This is Onlive on a whole new level. This will be Kepler Gpu's pushing the most graphical intense games to your prime or other devices through a new cloud based gaming platform called GaiKai. You might of briefly heard about it but here it is in action on a transformer Prime tablet. playing against someone else on another device. The server with Nvidia's new GPU's powering it does all the work. There will be no loss in graphical quality from streaming, unlike Onlive, which loses some quality.
this will be coming out in December
www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/Android/Asus+Transformer+Prime/news.asp?c=41390
The game you see being played on prime is Hawken. A new graphical intense high res. game only meant to be played on high end PC's. Pretty Impressive stuff here!
Nvidia Brings Worlds First GPU designed for Cloud Computing & Gaming. The Kepler
Those in Australia can forget about it.
svladimir said:
Those in Australia can forget about it.
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Talk about Europe where Onlive isn't available either.
Kashban said:
Talk about Europe where Onlive isn't available either.
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Building enough data centers for the United states is a lot easier than building enough for Europe.
As for Australia, well they probably just don't care about Australia
I like the concept insofar as it will change corporate IT and probably enable me to virtualize games and apps more easily in my home/private LAN environment. It makes total sense on the local lan. But can you imagine the lag in an FPS game when, for example, you play on a server hundreds of miles away where you no longer have your own iteration of the engine available locally? Not only will your environment have to wait for the input of others across the net in your deathmatch style game, as you do today, you'll have to wait for your own input to span the net, be interpreted by the engine on some virtual machine somewhere, then await the result in terms of what is essentially a high-resolution video stream from the server. Even making the decode of that video information instantaneous and transparent via your local hardware, you're still looking at a bandwidth hog whenever you game. That, and not only will the lag be essentially doubled insofar as environmental changes from your own input, but your game engine's responsiveness will be entirely dependent on computing space on some massive server somewhere.
It will, however, enable a crazy amount of objects and polys in a given in-game setting...the server-based engines they'll be deploying will only have to re-iterate the rasterization process, and the effects/lighting/physics happening to, and because of, players on a per-player basis. The environments themselves will be incredibly detailed, because there's no reason for them not to be. The one guy mentioned Hollywood...imagine what it would mean to be able to approach a 3D CG movie the same way you approach a game...Wander around in the latest Pixar dreamscape, for example, with all their rendering horsepower available to you as you explore. You could definitely have environments that near photo-realism with such a process, depending on some massively parallel computing platform for your visuals.
FunCom's new MMO, The Secret World is being developed in Norway, but the servers are in the US. The FunCom devs say they have a 70ms ping to the datacenter on the Atlantic coast...
I think we're getting to the point where you won't have to have a regional server any more.
Col.Kernel said:
FunCom's new MMO, The Secret World is being developed in Norway, but the servers are in the US. The FunCom devs say they have a 70ms ping to the datacenter on the Atlantic coast...
I think we're getting to the point where you won't have to have a regional server any more.
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But are the game engine and environments being rendered remotely and sent back as streaming HD video? With hundreds, thousands, even several million users? Completely different set of things to measure.
GernBlanston said:
But are the game engine and environments being rendered remotely and sent back as streaming HD video? With hundreds, thousands, even several million users? Completely different set of things to measure.
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True.
It'll certainly change what it means to go to a LAN party...all you'll need is an input device and your Prime, Ipad, or some as-yet-unknown display device. You'd need some kind of wired lan connection tho, I would think.
People think, due to years and years of conditioning, that immersion in a game means graphics quality, and that graphics quality means a high level of fine detail and resolution. Yeah, that's one aspect of the beast, but I'll put it this way: Imagine you're watching Avatar on DVD. Not a blu-ray, not even a 4.5 GB 720p .mkv rip of the movie...just a DVD. Sure, it's not the resolution you're conditioned to expect from a game on your own office machine, not even what you'd necessarily expect from your living room tv...but what if it was a game? With that level of sophistication in, for example, the number of poly's being rendered, the lighting, the motion capture, the modeling of the musculature of the characters, the facial expressions...would it bother you that it was only 480p? If you were participating in a battle between hundreds of dragons and a futuristic military, would the lack of resolution be the first thing on your mind? That's the direction I think the industry will head over the next few years.
In other news...
Win8 Release Preview Rundown
I can't game on a 15in laptop let alone a 10in tablet.
fixyourtech said:
I can't game on a 15in laptop let alone a 10in tablet.
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And thats why we have an HDMI out
OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?
David522d said:
And thats why we have an HDMI out
OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?
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At that point why bother gaming on a tablet.
fixyourtech said:
At that point why bother gaming on a tablet.
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Why not?
It's lighter and more mobile than laptops, desktops and consoles are even worse, and dedicated mobile gaming devices generally just kind of suck and have even smaller screens. (Vita may be the change of this, but I haven't even touched one yet)
I'm in the pre-planning stages of putting a new radio receiver together. It will be loosely based off of current SDR technology, but with a focus on mobility. The current scanners on the market (made by Uniden and GRE/Whistler) have issue when it comes to digital audio and simulcast trunked radio systems. With a focus on selling a scanner that can handle a wide range of trunking formats and features that don't benefit the basic operation, they try to keep the scanners in the $5-600 price range. There are trade-offs at that point, mainly how radio signals are processed. SDR takes on the role of being in between commercial scanners and professional radios developed by Motorola, Harris etc that reach into the thousands of dollars to own and operate. They can be very good (USRP N200 for example) but require seperate dedicated hardware that is mostly fixed to a desktop environment. There are some portable options that cost less than $20 that use the RTL2832U+R820 chipset. There has also been some Android development for them such as SDR Touch.
The idea that is being thrown around is turning SDR into a truely mobile solution. Our two options for controlling the hardware would be to build a completely brand new OS from scratch (like those used on the professional series radios) or use something that already exists and modify it. The main question is why reinvent the wheel? We could use something like the Raspberry Pi with Linux, but I feel that Android is more friendly for mobile use. My question is, how difficult would it be to branch Android off for this new project and who will be willing to help? I'm not technical as far as coding, and I'm trying to coordinate the various areas that will be required to get this off the ground.
https://xiaomi.eu/community/threads/mdz-16-ab-mibox-3-vs-netflix-study-results.43619/
Background..these results derive from hands-on testing at a local non-profit Senior Citizens housing complex. Most residents are Korean speakers and own a random collection of tvs.
In 2016, funding cuts dictated that TV service provided by local CATV company would be eliminated.
They still had favorable internet connection in every unit.
A decision was made to encourage interested residents to obtain Xiaomi MDZ-16-AB from local Walmarts. (Walmart graciously donated several dozens of units for needy residents, as well as accumulated units from their returned items bin.)
A crew of volunteers were engaged to configure, install Korean specific video apps, setup the devices in individual apartments and teach residents how to use the devices.
As an interesting experiment, we had each box tested with the resident's tv, using the current version of Netflix. (To their credit, Netflix corporate outreach program donated Netflix subscriptions to the non-profit group running the facility)
Over the course of 16 months, here are the aggregate results...
IN SUMMARY.....
300+ Mibox units deployed.....
2 confirmed DOA units.........
1 unit fails to work properly with Netflix, using a known working HDCP compliant tv.....
202 distinct TV models ranging from deluxe 35" Sony wood cabinet model from 2002 to the latest, greatest 4K units.... (Most models are nondescript, cheapo units of varying vintage)
104 tvs with non-existent or flaky DRM implementation that wont work with Netflix
including 3 identical HEIER brand 4K tvs that fluctuate from working perfectly to not working, depending on day of week, moon phase or whether they were switched on with left hand or right hand.....totally unpredictable
These results lead to the inescapable conclusion there exist many more TVs with faulty or nonexistent DRM functionality that affect Netflix than there are faulty MiBox devices.
TLR If Netflix fails with MiBox, overwhelming likelihood its the fault of your TV
Huawei just finished introducing HarmonyOS and everything looks promising. From HMS core to the updated AppGallery, everything falls into place as Huawei officially unveiled and welcomed everyone to their highly anticipated in-house operating system.
Highlights and Features
HarmonyOS has a lot of new features that makes their system worth checking out.
Combination of Apps and Widgets
HarmonyOS expands the overall functionality of simple app icons and widgets by combining them and creating icons that you can tap/swipe up and see the background activity and convert into widgets if you need to.
One OS for All Devices
As existing Huawei smartphones prepare for their turn on switching to HarmonyOS. Software fragmentation is one of the leading concerns of operating systems in general. This means that some software cannot be easily implemented on other devices because of their difference in terms of hardware and software configurations. An example would be a certain GAME that can be played on DEVICE A which also shares almost the same hardware configuration with DEVICE B .. BUT .. device B is from a different brand. There are scenarios where you can play it on device A but cannot on device B due to this premise.
Harmony OS makes this possible across brands and models and configurations.
Control Everything From Your Huawei Smartphone
As Huawei envisioned HarmonyOS, the smartphone is at the center of almost everything. You can change the temperature on your air conditioning unit, monitor and adjust the air purifier. You can switch in between devices and rooms and control almost every appliance and light bulb in the house. What better way to have a unified and centralized controller other than your smartphone.With this technology, you can even lock/unlock or even start your car.
Smart devices are becoming a main part of the household. Smart coffee machines, toasters, induction cookers, vacuums, bulbs, washing machines, cars and ovens. As technology moves forward, so will smart devices.
Keeping Things "Open" For Everyone
Huawei's goal of keeping HarmonyOS open to all makes things more interesting and more versatile. This allows for more development as well as faster progress and updates not only for HarmonyOS but also for the applications, software and hardware that manufacturers and brands will produce.
Having an open system gives us a bigger ecosystem of devices as well.
Home appliances - Personal equipment - Vehicles - Machines
Everything can be possible. Can't wait to see what HarmonyOS can do more and can't wait to get my hands on it when the update arrives.