Hello XDA Developers!
tl;dr I need either a solid, light OS replacement for Android 2.3 on my Atrix, or I need a video streaming and virtualization app with no lag that works between android devices and either windows or linux desktop.
First I'd like to say how impressed I am with you folks. Massive amounts of work most be done on a regular basis, and so I tip my hat to you in thanks for looking at my potential problem/question.
I've got two devices that I'd like to make some serious software changes to, one of them my Atrix (the other is a Flytouch Tablet ARM11 with Android 2.3, but that's for a different forum). Let me start by saying that I like to think of myself as very technically literate, but when it comes to linux I just don't have nearly as much experience as I do with windows/mac, and it is about to really show.
What I want to do is load a light Linux OS on these devices. Normally, if I was going to install a new windows kernel on a machine I would copy an ISO to a USB thumb drive and make the drive bootable (using the MS program Windows 7 USB/DVD maker), then startup the PC and either through the BIOS or by hitting the proper button during the startup sequence I would ask the PC to boot into the drive and begin the installation.
Questions:
What is the image file type for mobile OS's?
How would one choose the right type of linux OS for an Atrix?
What is the difference between flashing a ROM and installing and OS?
Why is it when I updated my phone recently that it became unrooted?
(and) Is there any way to revert this process to make rooting easier?
Is there any way to capture a video output (like a stream) and broadcast it to these mobile devices so I can avoid changing their software alltogether?
(and) Could I just remotely control another PC from the mobile device, letting it do all the actual computing?
Can I use the Webtop Dock as a monitor for my desktop if I can find the proper HDMI cable to connect it to the HDMI output on my desktop video card?
(and) Can I also connect the Micro USB and use the keyboard/mouse (hooked into my desktop motherboard) on it as well?
(and finally) Can I use my Atrix as a prototype omni-tool by docking it in a docking station, attaching various tools that work with a linux operating system (wide-spectrum ultrasound imaging, temperature monitors, vital monitors, electronic laser saw (USB) (with separate power attachment of course) and extendable, movable USB cameras?) and then strapping it onto my wrist with a cool leather bracer design?
My end-goal is to have all three of these devices on the same network, with the ability to seamlessly access my data between them. For example, if I'm working on a document, I'd like to be able to access the document in a document editing program across all the platforms (imagine google docs with multiple users) however with one MAJOR stipulation: I'll be on a local network with NO INTERNET ACCESS!
Briefly (to better help you understand just what I'm trying to do) I am a freelance archaeologist/deep sea explorer/ROV tinkerer about to do a series of surveys mostly by myself in some VERY remote locations. I'll have a Wi-Fi network to link all of my devices together running out of my boat, but it's only for data sharing between each other, and since Satellite Internet is a joke, I can't think of any way to get data out there, and I've decided to live without it while I'm away.
I have a webtop dock for my Atrix, and the environment developed by Motorola is far too restrictive. I've tried countless fixes to try and get the webtop2SD to work, but I must be doing something wrong (Maybe the latest update screwed it?). I think since I'd like to use some linux applications while on the mobile devices, I would rather install a custom OS for both.
OR (preffered)
Even more simply, I'd like to stream the video feed and remotely control my desktop PC (located on the boat) on the mobile devices, but with yet another stipulation: I can't have FPS lag (I usually get 1-2 FPS with all the virtualization and remote control apps I've tried). This would in some senses be the preferred option, since I really don't want to spend oodles of hours trying to get some program to work in a difficult, restricted environment like these mobile device's current OS's. Is there a good, non-lagging version of desktop virtualization for Android OS?
About that webdock: I can't seem to find a female-to-female micro HDMI cable anywhere on the internet, thought I did find one Micro HDMI extension cable, and bought it promptly. I could buy another, but cut the male ends off and splice the female parts together (**** just got kinky). But if I could, would this work?
Phew that was a lot! Again thanks so much for thinking for me!
I've personally never found any kind of remote desktop software that works without lag, but it might be possible to find some. Someone else might know what to tell you there.
After doing some basic searching, the only collaborative document solution that I've found has been Etherpad Lite. You could set up a desktop or laptop running linux as the server, and all the other devices on your small network could (theoretically) run a browser based client similar (but far less advanced) than Google Docs. This way, everything on your LAN/WLAN could access the application, if it's stout enough to support your needs.
https://github.com/Pita/etherpad-lite
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collab...Real-time_collaborative_text_editing_software
Everything you're looking for just seems to be limited for Android, I wish you the best of luck.
I have always found Teamviewer great for remote PC control from my Atrix. They have a nice app and free license for home/personal use. I get minimal lag controlling my PC at home when at work, but that's over WiFi. Not very fast and pretty laggy if I am on data with my Atrix.
BTW............I can work on documents, transfer files to and from PC's and laptops, print documents on my wireless printer, etc. across my home network from my Atrix, all routed through a Netgear WNR3500L running stock firmware (dd-wrt actually slowed my network down and reduced WiFi range considerably, so I reverted to stock).
First, there is no "magic" within the lapdock device. It is a nice HDMI screen, a couple crappy input devices on the USB side, and a battery. The standard Moto software does recognise the usb device and do some software magic, but certainly you could use the dock on it's own w/o the phone.
As to completely replacing the /osh webtop OS that Motorola provides, that is challanging.
There are 2 basic ways to open it up though. Go to the developers subforum and look for webtop2sd and "full Debian".
Somebody did post recently with an attempt to fully replace the webtop OS. he was using gentoo, so look for that and you should find it. But I suspect it is early, and likely to be a significant WP.
As to learning all this ****. If you do some Linux developement or heavy hacking (which it kind of sounds like) you should set up a full full blown 'droid dev platform and start playing. It is big and bulky, but you will learn faster that way than just searbhing around.
EDIT: just reread your post that you are light on Linux. if you want to do anything more than just follow along, it might be a good idea to setup something like an Ubuntu and get familiar there. 'Droid is way different looking (it really basterdises things around) but yoiu need to know both if you want to play with webtop hacks.
Thanks all. I'll look around again to see if I can find the threads you mentioned. I've tried Webtop2SD but to no success so far.
Thanks again.
I'd like to control an Android mouse cursor with the camera and hand-tracking (or a colored LED), just moving my hands, it should work as if I had plugged in a real mouse.
After a long extensive search, I only found this app that does exactly what I want, but it's head tracking based, so it's no use for me: [MouSense for Android]
The funny thing is that there're a pletora of hand tracking solutions like this for PC/Mac/Linux with full source code avaible, I'm surprised no one has ever made one for Android, I found some hand gesture recognizers, but I need to control the whole device, not just detect a limited amount of hand gestures.
I bet many disabled people would benefit from it, like controlling an Android device connected to a tv. Can anyone help me or find a solution (I tried REALLY hard), please? I'd be very grateful if you can help me or even just suggest a solution, thanks!
I am trying to develop an easily reconfigurable soft keyboard or IME for the disabled. My son has CP and only has use of one hand. As such, it is hard for him to work computers at school. The therapist said no one makes a disabled keyboard because there are too many configuration requirements based upon disability. So, I figured using a touchscreen tablet with configurable IME in place of a keyboard would be an "easy" fix.
Plus it gives 7",8", 10" of geography to work with instead of a small portion of the bottom of the screen.
How realistic that is remains to be seen. But if I can get it to work, there is a community out there which will benefit from the ability to make specialized keyboards to meet their specific needs without spending thousands of dollars on specialized, and generally, poor functioning medical interface equipment.
Android tablet and some open source App, $50-100. Smile on a kids face - priceless
Just got mine today, and am liking it so far. Few small issues I've run into tho:
The placement of the power button is exactly where I hold the device when I've got it folded to tablet mode and am using in in Portrait orientation and it's plugged in. (Quickly discovered this trying to set the device up while charging after first getting it! If it's not charging, I can easily hold the side with the power key at the top, but when it's charging, I prefer to hold it with the charging cable coming out the top.)
There's no way (that I've found) to set the keyboard, onscreen or Halo, to dvorak. I can readily enough install a different onscreen keyboard (switched it to gboard, in fact), but I'd expected to be able to remap the Halo keyboard readily as well. This might be a deal breaker for me, I'm not sure yet.
Halokeyboard...
Halokeyboard supports only one touchpoint. I just want to play Dos games using emulator like dosbox but because of this limit I can't play my vintage games.
the Basic software Note Saver is definitely too limited, some better native software will be welcome. the second webcam on the keyboard side is useless,
I'd like a bordless larger screen for the same tablet size ,
coming from remix os i must say they handled the windowing alot better. for example every application can be windowed and every window can be resized. Although pen input on non-full screen applications can be unpredictable e.g. touch point offset so i can see why lenovo adopted a stricter windowing policy. hopefully nougat will improve functionality.
Not being able to change the default app
I've got 2 of these in the house, I use the Android one and the wife has the windows variant. Both are flawed in their own way, Notesaver on Android is awful, looks fine when writing but pixellates horribly when exporting and Windows cannot take notes when the screen is off, which I use a lot on the Android version. I'd love to be able to change the default app that the hardware button launches to Onenote (or even Squid or Inkredible). I realise this would probably kill the screen-off writing which is very handy but currently we have 2 very similar tablets, that can't even share notes between them without major issues.
Netflix offline isn't compatible... It's Android... How is it different than a 2 yr old $hit$ung 10in android tablet... ?
* No gamepad support
* No OTG ethernet support
* Halo keyboard very sensitive, just brushing past a key is enough for it to engage
* Won't fit in my 10" tablet holder
I bought the Pixel C and the Yoga Book as I couldn't decide on one or the other. I decided on the Yoga Book but not being able to use a gamepad, no ethernet support, and it's inability to fit in my awesome tablet holder w/bt keyboard is really starting to bug me.
I still have the Pixel C sitting in a box ready to be sent. Now I'm having second thoughts. Should I send back the Yoga in favor of the Pixel C?
Skullpuck said:
* No gamepad support
* No OTG ethernet support
* Halo keyboard very sensitive, just brushing past a key is enough for it to engage
* Won't fit in my 10" tablet holder
I bought the Pixel C and the Yoga Book as I couldn't decide on one or the other. I decided on the Yoga Book but not being able to use a gamepad, no ethernet support, and it's inability to fit in my awesome tablet holder w/bt keyboard is really starting to bug me.
I still have the Pixel C sitting in a box ready to be sent. Now I'm having second thoughts. Should I send back the Yoga in favor of the Pixel C?
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Click to collapse
This Gamepad is working fine with mine!
https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B019PXVCDQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Works with any other Android 6 Device I tried.
Indurus said:
This Gamepad is working fine with mine!
https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B019PXVCDQ/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Works with any other Android 6 Device I tried.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow. I didn't know that even existed. Buying one tonight. Thanks!
The Halo keyboard is mostly okay for me, though it's never going to replace a proper laptop for typing (I'd hate to try to write a long report with it), but the thing I dislike most about it is the touchpad. It's pretty terrible, so I rarely use it. It's also much too close to the spacebar so it's very easy to accidentaly touch the touchpad while typing and move the cursor somewhere where you don't want it to be.
I cant figure out how to run a proper linux distribution (assuming it's possible). Can't even find a way to boot from USB (if any succeeds please let me know :crying: ) .
I'm getting random reboots all of a sudden on my Android model. It used to do this with an older update, but stopped when I installed the Dec 9 update until today.
Anyone else seeing the same?
keepcalmrollon said:
I'm getting random reboots all of a sudden on my Android model. It used to do this with an older update, but stopped when I installed the Dec 9 update until today.
Anyone else seeing the same?
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Can confirm, but for me it got better - I think when installing the December update.
I've discovered a new problem-my password manager, Lastpass, which ties into the accessibility settings to work, keeps getting disabled! (android version)
heldc said:
I've discovered a new problem-my password manager, Lastpass, which ties into the accessibility settings to work, keeps getting disabled! (android version)
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Click to collapse
I was getting the same problem too. A question in the Lastpass FAQ suggested disabling battery optimization for the app, which seems to be working so far. Hopefully it'll stick.
Original reference: https://lastpass.com/support.php?cmd=showfaq&id=9272
I like mine alot except that the left top corner tablet portion's pressure and touch is really really bad And there are couple areas (around f keys) where things get slightly wobbly when drawing.
Btw do not get me wrong but people who use online password managers must be out of there minds!!! They were already hacked, I cant believe that no lessons got learned there ;( Use whatever you want but saving your passwords to cloud just defats the whole purpose of security.
hajkan said:
I like mine alot except that the left top corner tablet portion's pressure and touch is really really bad And there are couple areas (around f keys) where things get slightly wobbly when drawing.
Btw do not get me wrong but people who use online password managers must be out of there minds!!! They were already hacked, I cant believe that no lessons got learned there ;( Use whatever you want but saving your passwords to cloud just defats the whole purpose of security.
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Click to collapse
While I agree there's a certain amount of risk with services such as LastPass. Using a strong password and two factor authentication goes some way to mitigating this. I use LastPass and have it configured so only my devices can access my account, any other device is automatically rejected. Plus each time I do log in on my authorized devices, I still need to grant access using an authentication app on my phone. You can also encrypt individual accounts within LastPass using a separate password. So even if your account was compromised, these login details would not be visible.
No two finger scrolling on the touchpad, and the scrolling solution they use is bad because you can't continuously scroll with it
Minor annoyance is if you're trying to do a capital letter you have to hold shift like a traditional keyboard and not like on a Android on screen keyboard.
Skullpuck said:
* No gamepad support
* No OTG ethernet support
* Halo keyboard very sensitive, just brushing past a key is enough for it to engage
* Won't fit in my 10" tablet holder
I bought the Pixel C and the Yoga Book as I couldn't decide on one or the other. I decided on the Yoga Book but not being able to use a gamepad, no ethernet support, and it's inability to fit in my awesome tablet holder w/bt keyboard is really starting to bug me.
I still have the Pixel C sitting in a box ready to be sent. Now I'm having second thoughts. Should I send back the Yoga in favor of the Pixel C?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think you must have done something wrong. because bluetooth gamepads also works with mine. I'm using a Steel series free with good results
Hello.
For a few years now I've been wondering whether there is some app or guide for that would allow to use your Android phone only as a client for accessing a virtual Android device running on a Windows/Linux PC. I have a decent PC with a few spare GB of RAM, a good internet access, and a crappy Android phone, so I thought this would be a great thing if some solution that works properly existed.
I know you could for example "just" start an Android emulator with Android Studio on a separate account on Windows, make it fullscreen or near fullscreen, and use something like Microsoft Remote Desktop or TeamViewer to access it, but then the emulator wouldn't have access to the real device's sensors. Is there something that would also let the emulator access my device's camera, proximity sensor, GPS, NFC, connect to bluetooth devices via my device, etc.? Or at least some of these.
Also it'd be important for everything on the "real", client, device to feel as native as possible. For example when I swipe from the top it'd be nice to get the notification bar from the virtual device, not the real device. But I'd be happy to try to find some solutions for issues like these myself if no one tested anything.
I'll be grateful for any ideas or links.
Have a nice day