Revision as of 17:38, 28 February 2010

LMCE Remote

LMCE Remote is an iPhone application which can be used to:

• load available lights from LMCE
• display the lights status
• set each light on or off

Screenshots

Intent

Please note, this is not, and is not intended to be a full Orbiter. The goal of this app is to be lightweight so that it remains very responsive even when used over a 3G connection.

Architecture

There were three possible approaches to connect to LMCE:

Connect directly to the DCE router

Pros: - seemed to be the cleanest approach, closed to a real orbiter Cons: - need to implement the DCE protocol - it is unclear how to obtain a list of the available scenarios through this protocol - remote access is difficult because of the lack of authentication mechanism

Connect to the web interface

Pros: - easy to implement for simple actions - easier remote access as the web server is often made available externally Cons: - requires parsing HTML for more advanced actions and is prone to errors - requires double authentication when used for remote access (apache auth, then lmce auth)

Implement a web service

Pros: - can access all required information in Lmce databases - very lean and network efficient - easily made available externally with apache authentication Cons: - The user needs to install the web service on the core before it can be used

I have chosen to go for the web service approach.

Upcoming features

Some additional features are being seriously considered:

• Add a tab with scenarios
• Add a tab to set security mode