HOWTO: RAW photo management on android / tf201
one of the original reasons i wanted the tf201+dock was for digital camera management while traveling. the dock's SD card slot is really what makes this practical. if i'm traveling and shooting 500-1000 photos then having the ability to manage these files out-of-camera becomes very useful. in various cases i would like to:
- review and discard photos
- copy or move photos from the original SD card to internal memory, or a microSD card, or a USB key
- run a slideshow on screen, or hdmi out
- share via email/etc
- upload videos to youtube
if you own a typical point-and-shoot digicam then android is more or less ready to handle all these tasks out of the box. in my case i am shooting with a canon DSLR, the 550D more specifically, in RAW format - as is the case for most 550D/600D/7D/5MD2/1D* owners along with equivalent nikons/etc. each of my RAW files are 25MB and that generally only increases as the cameras get better. RAW files are also raw, meaning the raw CMOS sensor data has not yet been processed and rendered into an image file. this is why working with RAW files is a pain in the ass on every platform - it pushes the limits of both CPU and I/O.
i just spent a chunk of time evaluating what works and doesn't in trying to do all these things with the current state of software. figured i'd share the results in case other RAW shooters come out of the woodwork.
working with RAW photos
RAW files come in various manufacturer- and even model-specific formats which means that android out of the box has no idea what to do with them. nothing in the entire android stack currently recognizes or handles RAW files, at least as of 4.0.3. so you need apps if you hope to do anything other than move the photos around.
at current time in the android market it looks like only 3 apps really try and provide a somewhat complete environment for viewing and handling RAW files. my experience with each of them was as follows:
- Photo Mate - supports viewing, rotating/mirroring, resizing and converting to JPG, backing up, slideshow, ratings, and sharing - all useful features, but amazingly there is no multi-select, meaning you can't do most of these things in bulk. this is a real limiting factor. in a few cases you have the option to do a task on an entire directory, but for most DSLRs this will mean every photo on the card and is unlikely to be what you want. speed of raw thumbnail rendering is fast, rendering of full images a couple seconds so not the best for just flipping through quickly. however the renders are full-res and the processor looks good which means it is excellent for zooming into the 1:1 pixel-level and scrutinizing sharpness and clarity.
- cr2-Thumbnailer / nef-Thumbnailer - has fewer features than Photo Mate but is faster for casual browsing and does more things in bulk. thumbnails render very fast, full-screen images renders quite fast, sub-second. the price is that these are not full-res renders, meaning when you try and zoom you won't find the full resolution to scrutinize.
- RawPal Gallery - couldn't find any way to set the read location to /Removable/SD. even tried editing the shared_prefs.xml via terminal and putting it in myself; app borked on it and reset the field. so, DOA, at least for now.
none of these have any basic developing features like crop or brightness/contrast/color/sharpness adjustments, so they make it to the point of "handler and converter" and then stop. once converted to jpg, if you need to crop something down then the built-in gallery actually does a fine job of this. it's an extra step, so things can start to drag out, but it's definitely usable at least for the one-offs.
working with HD video
videos on some of the more recent DSLRs are encoded in gigantor full 1080p and can chew up 300MB per minute, even more on some models with 60Hz rate. but increasingly codecs are starting to converge on a few and players are getting better compatibility for it. so the issues related to working with DSLR HD video files are about the same as playback of a variety of downloaded content.
in my case, both MX Video Player and BS Player Lite were able to play my 550D's videos correctly (HW accelerated as well). the built-in video player did also play but couldn't select the right audio track so it was silent (and with zero configuration operations, therefore DOA).
uploading to youtube also worked fine through the youtube app.
backup/move/prune files
i was almost surprised to see copying and moving files around between various partitions and physical devices all worked as i would have hoped/expected. the built-in file manager app can be used to pretty easily copy and delete files around the fs. other similar apps like ES file explorer and root explorer also fine of course. operations done via shell in terminal app, also fine. all as expected. the relevant locations that you will be working with are:
/Removable/SD - dock's SD card slot
/Removable/USBdisk1 - USB memory stick via dock's USB port
/Removable/MicroSD - tablet's micro-SD card slot
/sdcard - tablet's internal storage (27GB volume on the 32GB models)
in my testing, copying files across all combinations of these devices worked as expected.
of course, handling files in standard file managers and in shell means no thumbnails which means having to go off perfect memory of file numbers... which is annoying. this is why i'm hoping apps like photo mate will eventually get more multi-select functionality.
Thanks for the research on that! Look forward to seeing these sorts of apps get better.
Did you try Photoshop Touch? http://goo.gl/lPXMX
There is no support for RAW files and it only supports image resolutions up to 1600x1600px (enough for FB, blogs,...) ...but it's probably the best app for photo editing.
For RAW files I hope adobe will make something similar to bridge(+camera raw)/lightroom soon.
Thanks for the info on working with raw files. I want to add one more program to the mix and it is NEF-Thumbnailer which is for those of us that are working with Nikon raw files. It is done by the same people that did the CR2-Thumbnailer program which was reviewed in first post so the same limitations and features apply. Also wanted to note that the RawPal Gallery program let me access my removable card but it seems to need root to do it.I was not to impressed with the program though. RawPal also picked up my DropSync program and did galleries of all my pictures on Dropbox.
Being a professional photographer I would never attempt to use a tablet as a processing platform, NEVER! Firstly, even though the prime is the fastest tablet out there its not enough to run batch process on RAW files even if there is an app for it. Secondly you cant calibrate the colors on any tablet. You mentioned already the file sizes and I have 0 patience on the speed of the SD reader built in to the dock, like usb 1.0 speeds. I shoot a Canon 1D MkIV and 1Ds MKIII that both have enormous files and USB 3.0 reader.
I do use the tablet for previewing images but thats it. I shoot both raw and jpeg and with the Pro series bodies you get CF and SD card slots so I save RAW to CF and jpeg medium to SD. To preview I just insert the SD card and have smaller files for preview purposes. If I need to process images I use my laptop if Im away or desktop at home. Both have the processing power and displays needed for professional results that you cant get out of a tablet.
esm922 said:
Thanks for the info on working with raw files. I want to add one more program to the mix and it is NEF-Thumbnailer which is for those of us that are working with Nikon raw files. It is done by the same people that did the CR2-Thumbnailer program which was reviewed in first post so the same limitations and features apply. Also wanted to note that the RawPal Gallery program let me access my removable card but it seems to need root to do it.I was not to impressed with the program though. RawPal also picked up my DropSync program and did galleries of all my pictures on Dropbox.
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thanks i added information about nef-Thumbnailer to the OP.
i have root on my tf201 but wasn't able to get it to look in the /Removable directory, maybe i missed something. if you want to share instructions on that i can add them as well.
Justin_Thyme said:
Being a professional photographer I would never attempt to use a tablet as a processing platform, NEVER! Firstly, even though the prime is the fastest tablet out there its not enough to run batch process on RAW files even if there is an app for it. Secondly you cant calibrate the colors on any tablet.
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never say never... tablets are just computers like any other and there's nothing fundamental that will prevent them from eventually being good RAW processing devices. quad-core tegra3 clocked at 1.3ghz is already in the vicinity of the minimum power needed to process RAW files in a reasonable amount of time, provided that the RAW processing engine is sufficiently multi-threaded. by next year you'll see 2ghz quad-core tablets hitting the market. it's really only a matter of time until the software starts to strengthen and these devices become viable for real RAW work.
once we have the right software then the limitation becomes the fat-finger interface to a touchscreen for making fine adjustments. the tf201 dock adds a touchpad that remedies that problem. other tablets could be paired with bluetooth mice to gain the same functionality.
and then there's color calibration. well, tablet screens are using current display technology like any other and can be calibrated once the software supports it. it's already the case that one of the programs i listed above supports its own color calibration settings.
Thank you! Photomate is nice and appears to have some bulk features now.
Anybody know if any app take panasonic or olympus's raw file? M4/3 shooter here.
If you are canon user, DSLR controller is a must!! Too many features to use and the developer has more planned. Some of my favorites are the timelapse and HDR features.
Justin_Thyme said:
Being a professional photographer I would never attempt to use a tablet as a processing platform, NEVER! Firstly, even though the prime is the fastest tablet out there its not enough to run batch process on RAW files even if there is an app for it. Secondly you cant calibrate the colors on any tablet. You mentioned already the file sizes and I have 0 patience on the speed of the SD reader built in to the dock, like usb 1.0 speeds. I shoot a Canon 1D MkIV and 1Ds MKIII that both have enormous files and USB 3.0 reader.
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Get back on POTN you jack-ass..
[ <-- BrandonSi ]
I guess being a professional photographer as well, I'll go ahead and disagree with you.
Unless you're printing, color calibration isn't *that* much of an issue, especially if you can profile with sRGB. I would prefer to edit in LR on Windows, but in a pinch, I'd be OK editing on a tablet, especially the prime, with the dock + mouse and keyboard.
It's not an editing machine by a long-shot.. It's not even a laptop, but for a instances where you're traveling or are on-location and want to do a quick edit here and there, it can handle the job.
Whatever the case, having a fast track device to preview, show the client and perhaps even the rate the images before your full blown PC/MAC based workflow is a benefit.
There is a good article in this quarter's C'T digital Photography magazine (German Mag, aimed at world Wide audience) about the benefits of tablet aided photography. Most of it is aimed at the iSlab's with a small excerpt about Android. (See here for a preview)
Android based photography is definetly under exploited and we need more apps out there. If the small developers keep innovating, perhaps the big players (Adobe, Canon, Nikon etc..) will take notice and understand we benefit from such tools. Then there's the niche players like Leica, Panasonic, Fujifilm etc.. where there's very little RAW support.
I'll be watching this thread.. Keep the RAW , Tethered shooting etc.. recommendations coming in.
Some of my recommendations :
- Eye-Fi card for Wireless RAW preview
- DSLR Controller app by Chainfire....
I use RawVision myself, its not expensive for the pro version either.
Makes it a lot easier to show my clients the raw files I just shot on a larger screen. My laptop was much too big to carry around. The Prime is perfect.
I shoot with a 1DmkIII and 7D... So I shoot CF cards. I want to use the transformer to weed out photos and dump the CF cards onto a portable HD. With that said, how do you all have you setup? Will a USB hub work with the CF card reader and HD hooked up, or is the androids still unable to move files from one storage device to another like the case used to be? I want to get rid of the laptop while traveling and I typically shoot 400gb in a week.
Sent from my PG86100 using Tapatalk 2
No one has tested this out?
Sent from my 3VO using Tapatalk 2
I have the TF101, regular Transformeer (not the Transformer prime).
With the keyboard dock, the built in SD card reader can be used to read SD card contents and a RAW viewer app can then render the images.
If you don't have the Dock on you - and I would imagine out in the field you want to be as light with the kit as possible - you could purchase the Asus USB host dongle or the Asus SD card reader. Both work well for me.
It's nothing cutting edge. The SD card shows as a mounted drive and you can then view / copy the contents using a File Explorer or Raw viewer.
Justin_Thyme said:
Being a professional photographer I would never attempt to use a tablet as a processing platform, NEVER!
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Agree, it would be like bringing a Fiat 500 and try to quality for F1 races.
I think most of us here are not proposing it being used as a full photographic workflow or fine editing.
Think of it as a preview tool to help save time when you do come to your true workflow.
Surely there's benefit in rating some of the images on the train ride home ? Yes you couldn't fine edit or view the images on calibrated monitor, but for composition and exposure alone, rating upfront would save time for final workflow.
I agree, no need to fully edit your photos, but some sort of preview and rating app would be awesome.
If you take a couple of hundred, or even thousands, of shots on a trip, then it would be a real timesaver to be able to go through your shots and discard the bad ones, maybe have a three star system for good pics/ great pics, need editing/ excellent pics, need only some tweaking...
And if it could somehow implement a layer of some sort, on the image, where you could scribble down your first thoughts and ideas for editing. The same way you can open pdfs in a few apps and write comments to the text.
Now that Nikon has announced the optional WU-1a Wi-Fi module that can be used with the new D3200 DSLR and an app for android, maybe we are closer to getting apps that can handle raw-images on our devices.
W.Z.
Dark Knight said:
I think most of us here are not proposing it being used as a full photographic workflow or fine editing.
Think of it as a preview tool to help save time when you do come to your true workflow.
Surely there's benefit in rating some of the images on the train ride home ? Yes you couldn't fine edit or view the images on calibrated monitor, but for composition and exposure alone, rating upfront would save time for final workflow.
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Hi jaypm,
Nice list but I'm surprised you didn't mention RawVision.
Indeed it does support multiple selection for deletion, jpeg extraction, import (to empty your card for example), it has support for Eye-Fi transfers. Finally you will be able to quickly share with other apps (flickr, facekbook, dropbox etc...).
Regarding videos, it give a preview but you will still need MX Player (my fav) to read the video properly.
As everyone agrees here, the goal is not to make photo post-processing as we would do on a desktop, but rather to check the photos, sort and share them in a convenient way.
Still, there will also be quick retouching options: crop, straighten, brightness, contrast, B&W/sepia conversion etc... Don't expect U-points, but rather quick image enhancing features.
It can also give more interaction during a shooting by presenting the photos to the model or photographer as soon as it is taken. I think of Eye-fi, but also WT-1 or the Canon equivalent, which will be supported in the future, as well as usb host support, though 3rd party apps can help to mount usb devices, that will then appear in the filesystem.
wernerzero: about taking notes on a photo, e.g. you could extract a JPEG and then send it to the very nice 'Skitch' application (made by the guys of evernote)
I use my desktop somewhat. Play games once in awhile...But mainly use my Prime...It plays games that I like. I stream Netflix for movies, tv shows etc...Why do I even need a desktop anymore.
Would I miss it if it were gone? Not sure.
Have any of you ran into this dilemma?
Well i play games on mine plus i have 3tb of storage that i use to stream movies to two TVs in the house. That and i had a desktop before the prime and resell value sucks so not worth the hassle to sell it for a low amount. And i still use ms office on the desktop.
i actually don't have a desktop...or pc anymore. Completely abandoned them for the Prime. Why? Well first it was because I wanted to see if Android was self sufficient yet - could I do the same things I do on the Prime that I do on my PC...and the answer was an overwhelming YES.
There are lots of wishes though - I wish I had USB 3.0 more than ever. I wish there were at least 2 USB ports on my prime - but the hub seems to temporarily work. Most importantly, however, I wish there was an automatic editing program like Kingsoft or QuickOffice Pro that offered an in-program printing solution. This is probably my #1 complaint.
I use PrinterShare (paid key) for Docs and PDFs (do a lot of printing of those) - and for my photos, I use Canon EPP which works well when I print pictures. However, neither of these programs offer the customization of printing within Windows - such as auto center for pdfs or High Quality color printing within Canon EPP.
Now I know either Acer or Toshiba is coming out with a tablet with built in printing - to any printer!! that's news to me, I only hope it can work effectively, as I still cannot print collate documents all the time.
But why do you have a desktop? Probably because in time you will still need it - or you haven't forced yourself to use Android consistently. Flash is working well for me, one way or another, in either Opera Mobile Browser or ICS Browser +. I haven't used Dolphin in a while but most flash applications and java intensive work well within Opera and Browser+.
I also tend to use OnLive for streaming windows desktop - If i REALLY need something. I know in terms of games with GaiKai system coming it is going to be very different in the future - and one day when I have a fast enough internet connection sure I'll play Skyrim streaming. My big wish was that the Padfone came over to the US before the SGS III - but it hasn't and it won't. I truly wanted to be the all-in-one. I'm tired of checking my android phone when it beeps if it's a text message or email - and then to check my prime for the same thing. I do wish I could have bought the padfone - I think it's a fantastic idea and I dont even care that it's that thick - I just hope they did enough hardware enhancements that the hinge isn't too bad and they added enough counter weights to the keyboard dock. I definitely thought the pricing, for what it offered, wasn't bad at all.
Sorry to go off a little topic but - with your desktop you can do one thing very well......
Be productive!!!
I was thinking of the coolness factor of just having one device, a phone, to which you could connect an external display and have an extended desktop. I am not finding any reference to this on Android (only the MS Surface). From what I have been reading, and remember/understand (may be confused), Jelly Bean brought the ability for windowing apps. However, the apps have to be coded for the capability, unless you root your phone and installed an app that provided windowing for all apps. Also, I have not heard of the possibility of having an extended desktop in Android.
I would like to ask WHY? Why not have windowing and the ability for an extended desktop, on an external display? A bluetooth keyboard and mouse just follows. Does google have to play nice with the manufacturers that stand to loose from people only needing one device? Is there a reason I'm not thinking of? Most phones are fast enough for this these days.
At the turn of the century, I was running GPS software Deluo Routis on a Sony Vaio 505 Pentium 200Mhz laptop running Win98. The 2-D graphics were smooth even while playing mp3's through the car speakers. The mapping software showed the map clearly, and effectively gave me navigation. People have lost sight of how much you can do if you give up the bloat and bling.
Also, I am pretty confused with the merging of Android and Chrome. I never liked Java to begin with; my experience with it is in MS Windows, and it runs slow as molasses. I believe my phone would run much faster if they had not chosen Java. I understand this to be because you have an operating system running on top of another operating system. It just makes more sense to me to have less layers and run apps natively, for better performance. I thought maybe they chose Java for its level of security. Is the screening process for Google Play not foolproof enough?
I like the philosophy of Google better than Microsoft**, so if one of them is going to win, I hope it's Google. I'm hoping Google won't end up with a convoluted Android/Chrome operating system because Lawyers forced them to (the idea I get based on the latest news). I don't understand: do they want to keep their OS architecture simple, but are being forced to make the OS complex for different reasons?
**Apple doesn't even want to compete. They have never wanted to dominate, just make huge profits. Unless they break up the marriage of hardware and software, they won't win. Then again, if Samsung keeps dominating, there may not be much hardware diversity?
Oh, and my main question was: "Why not have windowing and the ability for an extended desktop?". Wouldn't that be a big deciding factor for anyone that wanted to simplify and just have one device?
Anybody? Tell me I'm crazy at least. There has to be a strategic reason, that Google does not introduce full windowing and extended desktop support.
Its coming eventually. though you could do it right now. Motorola tried something like this with their atrix lapdocks.
Sent from my Samsung i437p using Tapatalk and CM 10.2
E_Phather said:
Its coming eventually. though you could do it right now. Motorola tried something like this with their atrix lapdocks.
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Can you do it right now with any android device having a video port?
Well lets look at how we could achieve this with todays technology.
Input:
Bluetooth Mouse & keyboard.
Output:
Wireless display with support for older displays using something like Chromecast.
Graphical User Interface:
A secondary Launcher/Application (Which could potentially see companies like MS & Canonical developing their own UI's and Charging for them if required).
Home & Office use with one device:
Home would be the default UI, but when your device has used NFC to log into the office it would automatically enable your Office profile/UI for a certain length of time (requiring you to log back in after a set time or manual log out via another NFC tap).
This would be very useful as it would enable you to take your "desktop" environment anywhere with you and connect to any HDTV with Wireless display/Chromecast support.
Applications:
So if like me you are finding your phone to become ever more a better solution to your digital needs and you only require your desktop for apps which work better with larger displays (Videos & certain games) you will find this very useful.
Games:
Now games could become ever more better as they could be controlled using standardised control inputs (game controllers could use standardised input methods allowing you to select any compatible controller to best suit your needs) or even a driving game could allow you to see the game on a HDTV yet be controlled with the accelerometer for steering and the right of the devices touch display would be the accelerator and the left of the display would be the brakes for example.
More Business Solutions:
If you could wirelessly connect to the office display then show a powerpoint style presentation that would be great because the very device which stores the file would also be your controller to move to the next/pevious slides.
Media:
Music could possibly be stored in the cloud so when your on the move you can listen to your music as many of us do now, but when connected to a large display it could utilise the large display and speakers to show a music video too!.
Photos could be viewed on the large screen and the next one to be displayed could be select on the device (allowing the use to avoid showing anyone pictures which they don't want other to see - ie: pitcures of you and your friends whilst your parents/grandparents are in the room...).
The TV Guide:
The TV Guide would become a very interactive thing which allows you to see what is available on other TV channels without other people in the room being limited to viewing the content they are trying to watch in a small box in the corner of the display...
These are just some ideas of what is possible, but I know that you could do so much more with this and with 64-bit technology coming to many mobile devices soon that will make it so much easier for devices to process all of this data at once without any serious lag!.
I would love to see a group of developers on XDA team up on an open desktop (secondary) launcher to run alongside the users primary (phone) launcher. if there was a project like this with an open framework to develop apps for I'd be happy to start developing apps for that or separate UI's to run alongside my current (Phone/Android) apps UI's.
Edit:
Also remember that this could be utilised in other ways too eg:: connecting your device to your car and your device could deliver your navigation & music to your vehicles display whilst getting important traffic/weather news using your devices network connection!.
Isn't this exactly what the Ubuntu phone intends to do or have I got the wrong idea?
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Yes, but with Android already having a large ecosystem it would make a lot of sense to build upon that.
Chromecast is not "open" to third party apps. http://www.minyanville.com/sectors/...eeds-to-Tread-Lightly-With/8/28/2013/id/51502
Do they have a displayport version of Chromecast? *cough*
quote from: http://www.tested.com/tech/set-top-boxes/457036-testing-google-chromecast/
"Chromecast is also not a particularly good desktop mirroring option, either. It actually can't do full desktop mirroring, and instead works solely with the Chrome browser. In beta right now is Chrome tab streaming, which sends to Chromecast everything that can be rendered in a single Chrome tab, including web pages, flash embeds, and even full-screen MKV video files if you have VLC installed. I like that Chrome tab streaming works independently of what's showing on your laptop or desktop's screen--like with YouTube and Netflix, you can multi-task and switch to other tabs or windows while one tab is being streamed. The only thing that matters is the window size and screen resolution. Chromecast will automatically scale the aspect ratio of your window to fill up your TV screen, adding black bars on the sides to avoid stretching. A full-screen resolution of 1440x900 looked good on a large 1080p TV, but streaming from a 2560x1600 monitor at full-screen made the text unreadable on my 70" TV."
Wow... I thought only displayport was capable of 2560x1600 (edit: hdmi v1.3 brought this). Even if I hook it up to my 2560x1600 monitor, it won't really display anything but entertainment. Chromecast doesn't seem to be a way to have a monitor, to use your Android phone as a PC replacement.
AllCast !!!
http://www.geek.com/android/chromecast-reject-becomes-allcast-public-beta-now-available-1578674/
However, I still need to add some kind of wifi enabled device to my 30" lcd monitor (like with chromecast). Really, I don't mind a cable connection from my phone to my monitor, if that was an option. If Google continues to be closed like this, then I would go for Ubuntu phone.
Displayport:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MyDP#SlimPort
Any phones have this besides the Google Nexus 4? Actually, I'm not getting a new phone until I know what the hell will happen with Android / Chrome OS
Quote from: http://www.tested.com/tech/android/457205-mhl-vs-slimport/
"SlimPort's support for the DisplayPort standard--specifically Mobility DisplayPort--means it can output video at the same 4K resolution as MHL, though not via HDMI (yet, anyway). And here SlimPort hasn't really made good on its potential, yet; though it's based on the flexible DisplayPort standard, the only SlimPort adapters currently available are for VGA and HDMI connectors. The upshot is that you won't be plugging a Nexus 7 into a 1440p DisplayPort computer monitor anytime soon." http://www.slimportconnect.com/
Chromecast May Get Screen Mirroring With Android 4.4.1
Evidence in Android 4.4.1 indicates that screen mirroring is coming to Chromecast.
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http://www.tomshardware.com/news/chromecast-google-screen-mirroring-kitkat-android,25345.html
It could start with mirroring a primary display, but gradually result in mirroring something that a GPU has rendered for a secondary display.
A dock from Samsung Galaxy phones. Has USB ports, HDMI, and audio.
http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/cell-phones-accessories/EDD-S20JWEGSTA
mraeryceos said:
A dock from Samsung Galaxy phones. Has USB ports, HDMI, and audio.
http://www.samsung.com/us/mobile/cell-phones-accessories/EDD-S20JWEGSTA
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I tried that myself with my previous Galaxy S4 (i9500), It was a great dock and when I connected my wireless KB & Mouse USB dongle & connected the HDMI to my PC monitor it was a good experience when doing things like playing GTA3 on the bigger screen (it was better than the windows version in some ways).
But the device just needed a separate home screen UI to be output to the PC screen to look perfect and to work better with the KB & Mouse input type.
It shouldn't be too difficult to make a UI that simply changes the size of some buttons to a smaller size, enabling more widgets to fit on the home screen and if they could simply force the apps to run in either windowed or full screen that would enable better multi-tasking, then the browsers would just need a small update to detect if the device is running in Desktop Mode if so, then simply zoom out of the page a little to emulate the desktop browser experience.
Just a few ideas... If Google's Android team are reading this, I would recommend that you get that dock to experiment with for future Android builds.
Especially now that OS' like Ubuntu Phone are looking at going down this road of the one device fits all computational needs.
Rather than creating a new thread I thought that it would appropriate to bring this topic back up after the recent announcements that several OEM's have made, that they will be releasing desktops with Android as their Primary/Secondary OS.
I hope that this pushes Google into creating a dedicated desktop UI in the future.
Hey guys,
I'm not really sure if this is the right place to post this question but as I don't really know where else in the web I could find help on this I'll give it a try
TL;DR:Do you know any (and I really mean any - including writing an app or other hands on approaches) method to have a permanent (tabbed) navigation at the bottom of the screen to switch between apps or websites/PWAs?
The background of this question:
I'm coming down a long road trying to hack together a DIY - privacy focused - smart speaker - mainly to switch lights and play some music. I started off back in 2018/19 and found snips.ai one of the most promising FOSS smart speaker projects for my plans and so I got me a Raspberry Pi 3b+ and a Matrix Voice board as foundation. Then half a year I later, when I found the time to put those together, I had to find out, that Sonos just bought snips.ai and their services were to be shut down...
Since then I had a long pause on this but always followed the development of FOSS voice projects including Mycroft (to expensive HW, to bloated, to tied to their web services IMHO), Sepia (to complicated to setup) as well as attempts on hacking OTS speakers like Alexa, Google Home, Sonos et al or combinations with web controllable wifi speakers like Teufel 3sixty (which is really a gold speaker but as tons of other radios has a frontier chip set with its awkward web interface) or even the awesome Squeezelite-ESP32 project. Lately I stumbled upon Rhasspy and got myself together to give my project a new try and was even kind of successful (got a self hosted voice assistant doing what I want - even if I had to learn and write some python here and there). But I figured out that 1) a smart speaker without a display is not really what I want and 2) I'm not really that kind of maker guy to 3d-print cases, plan and build circuitry and what not - or it's just missing me the time to do and especially experimenting on this
So I ended up with the idea of the software that I need (Rhasspy server side + a satellite app, Home Assistant, Logitech Media Server, Spotify/Tidal and maybe some others) and was then looking for some hackable device to serve as interface to that (display, speakers, microphone, wifi + maybe bluetooth). The Sonoff NSPanel Pro was a candidate but I didn't trust the quality of its speakers and read some reviews that were claiming a weak performance. Then I found the Lenovo ThinkSmart View that has all this and this XDA thread and immediately got me a new one for 60 bucks. Now I have a quality device better then I could ever make it with a blank(though not rooted) android, a Rhasspy Voice Assistant running on a local server ready to receive and send audio streams, a promising app to act as a Rhasspy satellite and some quality speakers to play music on. The last opponent I'm facing now is a nice UI on android that can bring all the bits together.
What I'm looking for now is a free (and ideally OSS) panel/kiosk solution with that I can seamlessly switch between Home Assistant (web UI), Spotify (web UI or their app) and some others like a self hosted Web music player. In my imagination I could switch between them with a permanent tab bar at the screen bottom but am open to other ideas. I'm not an Android developer but I consider myself a stable Java dev open to write an own app for this - I'd just need a starting point (read of Webviews, Custom Tabs, Trusted Web Activities but found them not really a solution to what I need - maybe is there some browser which's contents I can just include in an app?). Also I can write (progressive) web apps and do stuff with them but then AFAIK the only method to embed remote sites would be iframes which likely won't work with at least spotify).
I really do not want to bloat this forum with all that stuff - I'm just writing this in the hope that 1) someone is interested in this and maybe is on the same journey and 2) to give some context on my actual question above
Thank you very much in advance!
Just came across your post. I’ve been looking for something very similar and have also been considering the NsPanel pro. I don’t have as much concern for audio quality as I’m less likely to use it for playing music, just responses or notifications from Rhasspy. I have just ordered a Lenovo device as I’m sure I’ll have fun with it.
To answer your question above, I just found this in the HA companion app that might work for you: https://companion.home-assistant.io/docs/integrations/android-webview/#links It’s not perfect but could be used with a button or voice command to launch the app on the device. I’ve also seen other posts about using a key mapping app for using the volume buttons to do other tasks.
I’d be very keen to see what you’ve done for dashboards and how you’re using the Rhasspy app on your device. Has it been as responsive and accurate as you hoped?