[lug] Interest in embedded systems/handhelds coding?

[D. Stimits]

Micah Dowty wrote:
> 
> Well, PicoGUI is very scalable. Just to give you an idea of some of the
> extremes of hardware it runs on:
> 
> - uCsimm, with 16mhz Dragonball EZ processor. PicoGUI itself runs fine,
> but these don't handle anything multimedia-like
> - Tuxscreen, with 640x480 8-bit display and fast (100-something mhz)
> ARM cpu

This one looks really interesting, wish I had the $$$ to buy one.

> - desktop PC? (there has been some thought on using picogui for in-game
> UIs)
> - VTech helio with 2MB of flash, 8MB of dram
> - Agenda VR3 with 16MB of flash

This would sound interesting with 32 MB of memory.

> 
> Most new handhelds are actually quite overpowered, so recent hardware
> should run games fine.
> 
> C++ support is still a bit shaky or nonexistant on several platforms,
> hence PicoGUI being written only in C. I know at least a few PicoGUI
> apps are being written in C++, and uClibc is just now supporting C++.
> Right now the main thing picogui is lacking for good game support is a
> way to memory-map a bitmap or the framebuffer.
> 
> OpenGL support would be welcomed, and it would run on all the hardware
> that supports it and could be turned off at compile time for other
> hardware. I have even been thinking about an OpenGL video driver for
> PicoGUI that would provide backwards-compatible 2D functions, but have
> a hook so that applications and themes can send 3D data. PicoGUI themes
> could use 3D buttons :)

If I owned some of that hardware I'd be trying to port something to it
for games (kind of like the proverbial moth drawn to flames).

D. Stimits, stimits at idcomm.com

> 
> On 2002.02.05 22:33 D. Stimits wrote:
> > Micah Dowty wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi Everybody,
> > >
> > > I was just curious if anyone from my local LUG would be interested
> > in
> > > helping out with a project I've been working on for a while. It's
> > > PicoGUI, a graphical environment designed for handheld computers,
> > > cellphones, and any other embedded system that needs a GUI.
> > >
> > > You can find more info at http://picogui.org, and there's an IRC
> > > channel (#picogui) on irc.openprojects.net.
> > >
> > > --Micah
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Web Page:  http://lug.boulder.co.us
> > > Mailing List: http://lists.lug.boulder.co.us/mailman/listinfo/lug
> >
> > I don't have any of the hardware/handheld stuff this would run on, but
> > I
> > am very curious about something. I have games on my mind, and I'm
> > wondering what kind of hardware resources are typical on
> > these...mainly
> > program size, and C++ support. How hard would it be to port an Xlib
> > app
> > to this? Though it would be a bit absurd under low power systems, how
> > hard would it be to port OpenGL/Mesa to it? How well do these
> > handhelds
> > do with small animations?
> >
> > D. Stimits, stimits at idcomm.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > Web Page:  http://lug.boulder.co.us
> > Mailing List: http://lists.lug.boulder.co.us/mailman/listinfo/lug
> >
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