Web Orbiter 2.0

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Version Status Date Updated Updated By
710 Unknown N/A N/A
810 Unknown N/A N/A
1004 Unknown N/A N/A
1204 Unknown N/A N/A
1404 Unknown N/A N/A
Usage Information

A Web Orbiter is any device (such as a iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, laptop, PC, etc.) that accesses the Orbiter user interface (UI) through a Web browser.

The new Web Orbiter 2.0 has been re-written from the ground up to make sure it has a much smoother performance overall but especially on slower lower powered devices and devices that are connected over slow LAN connections or even slower external connections...such as a Mobile 3G network or slow WiFi connection.

So what has changed? Well visually your Orbiter UI will look like it does on your existing standard Orbiters but you will notice that unlike the original Web Orbiter the new 2.0 version does not refresh every 5 secs. The new Web Orbiter now only updates if something changes in the system and that requires the UI screen you are currently viewing to be updated or if you click on a UI button or other UI element and that causes a screen update.

Proxy_orbiter runs on the Core and its job is to render the UI for the Web Orbiter that is running remotely on some other device. Each Web Orbiter has an associated proxy_orbiter and the two work in partnership. Proxy_orbiters do all the 'heavy lifting' rendering the UI and this allows the remote device that is running the Web Orbiter to be much less powerful and very simple devices indeed if needed.

To achieve this the proxy_orbiter has been updated so that it sets a flag called 'ANYNEWS' to 'true' if some element of the current displayed screen has been updated. The Web Orbiter makes a light weight call to query the state of this flag once every second and only gets an updated UI screen if the flag is set to 'true' otherwise no screen update is requested. So in use the new Web Orbiter 2.0 behaves in a very similar fashion to the Orbiter on one of your MD's - and now it even performs with a similar performance level too.

Another change in the new 2.0 Web Orbiter is that screen refreshes are double buffered so that the new Web Orbiter receives the new screen update from your Core in the background and only redraws the screen when it has the complete image stored in memory - this makes the update process smoother and faster.

The overall effect of all these changes is to vastly improve the performance and usability while at the same time reducing the processing overhead of the Web Orbiter massively.

Setup

The procedure to setup a Web Orbiter is simple but the order of steps is important.

  1. First of all, add a new Generic Web Device as a Child Device for your Core:
    1. Goto the LinuxMCE Admin website-->Show devices tree-->CORE. The CORE's detail page should appear.
    2. Click 'Create Child Device'.
    3. In the Description, enter the name of the specific web orbiter.
    4. In the Add child device window, click the button 'Pick device template'. The new pop-up window containing device templates will be opened.
    5. In the 'Device Category' dropdown list, choose 'Peripherals'.
    6. In the 'Device Template' dropdown list, find and select "Generic Web Device" (or just type the template id: 1748 and press go).
    7. Click the button 'Pick Device Template'. The Add Child Device Window will close, and the Generic Web Device will be added to the Core, as the updated Device Tree will show.
    8. A new Generic Proxy Orbiter will also be created automatically. Watch the Orbiter generation process on the Orbiters page: Wizard-->Devices-->Orbiters.
  2. Wait till the Orbiter generation procedure finishes. A message on an active Orbiter or on the Orbiter page will indicate when it has completed.
  3. Click on your new Generic Proxy Orbiter in the device tree, give it a unique name and then scroll to the bottom of the page on the right and look for the field called 'Listen Port'. This field will be set to '3461' by default (if this Web Orbiter is not your first then you should increment this value by one ie to '3462' - each Web Orbiter must have a unique 'Listen Port' number)
  4. Now click the 'Save' button at the bottom of the screen to save the changes you have made.
  5. Now do a 'Full Regen' from the 'Wizard - Orbiters' page (use the 'Full Regen' for the specific Web Orbiter you have created and not the overall 'Full Regen' button at the top of the page. Next when the Regen has completed do a "Quick reload router". Otherwise, the Orbiter won't work properly.

Access to the Web Orbiter

From within your home

You can access the Web Orbiter 2.0 from any of the following Web browsers (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari). Others may also work but have not been tested (your experiences with other web browsers would be welcome here) :


For the 810 releases the correct URL is: http://<core_ip>/lmce-admin/weborbiter.php

  • From within the "internal" LinuxMCE LAN, for example:
http://192.168.80.1/lmce-admin/weborbiter.php (0810)
(This assumes the IP address range set by default at installation.)
  • You can also use the network name of the Core in place of the IP address. For example, if the Core was named "dcerouter" during the default installation, you could use:
http://dcerouter/pluto-admin/weborbiter.php
  • From the "external" WAN side of the Core, the core_ip would be the WAN IP address of the core (ie the one offered to the WAN side NIC on the Core by your broadband Router). If, for example, the core has a WAN side address of 192.168.0.50 offered up by your Broadband Router, use:
http://192.168.0.50/lmce-admin/weborbiter.php
(Note: To use this method, Outside Access must be enabled.)

From the Internet

You could use the IP address:port for your home LAN, with port forwarding to the Core's LAN IP address (enabled by your home LAN router).

  • This is an advanced topic and may not be secure in the current version.

By default, LinuxMCE is not accessible outside your home. This makes the system secure, but it prevents you from accessing the web site via the Internet while away from home. You can turn on Internet access, allowing access to the admin website anywhere. For your own security, however, we recommend you first read about Security & Privacy Issues.

Login page

  • A simple login page should be displayed. Input an existing user name and password, then click "Login".
  • From the dropdown list of devices, choose Generic Web Device. If you have got several web orbiters in your system then they will be displayed in the dropdown and you can choose which one to use. (only one user can use any Web Orbiter at a given time)
  • A page that looks similar to this should appear:
    Web Orbiter.jpg

Troubleshooting

Connect failed

If you try to connect to the Web Orbiter and see this message: "Connect to proxy orbiter failed, please try again", this means that Orbiter generation hasn't finished yet, or that you forgot to do a quick restart of the router.