Orbiters

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Orbiters Page Admin Website

An Orbiter is a high-tech remote control that you use to control your LinuxMCE system.

It can be a laptop, a Blackberry, a handheld remote control (such as a Windows MCE remote control, a Fiire Chief, or a Bluetooth remote control), or even a universal infrared remote control (connected by USB-UIRT). The functions of the Orbiter remote control are displayed on the local video monitor in a standardised Orbiter User Interface (UI).

Obviously, for an Orbiter device to connect, it must either have a connection to a Media Director through an input port, or it must wirelessly connect directly to the home automation/multimedia LAN through a wireless access point (or wireless router with the DHCP turned off). The Wireless Access Point/Router must obviously be connected to the Core server.

While you can administer the LinuxMCE system through a Media Director (which has its own Web Orbiter), you can also control the system from many other Orbiter devices as well.

Types of Orbiters

See the orbiter hardware list for more devices.

Web Orbiter

  • A wireless-capable laptop, a wireless PDA or webpad, and a wireless-capable Tablet PC are some examples of devices that can act as Orbiters.

A Web Orbiter refers to any laptop (or other PC) on the LinuxMCE system which uses a standard web browser interface to display the Orbiter User Interface. The laptop or PC becomes a virtual remote control when used in this way.

Media Director Orbiter

Main Orbiter Screen

Orbiter is just our way of saying remote control. All the Media Directors run an on-screen Orbiter, like the one below. Choose options on the on-screen orbiter with a keyboard/mouse attached to the media director, or with an infrared remote control. The Orbiter software runs on Linux, Windows and Windows CE, and can also be run on webpads and PDA's. Either way, it works exactly the same.

In the lower right on the main obiter screen are the 'who' and 'where' buttons. This indicates what room you are in, or want to control, and which family member is using the Orbiter.

Touch either button if this isn't correct. Even if you are using an on-screen orbiter on the media director in the Living Room, for example, you can still change the location to the Bedroom. That means you would be using the Media Director in the Living Room as a remote control for the devices in the bedroom. Normally you don't change the location for an on-screen orbiter, since that device stays in a fixed place, but you do when you have a wireless web pad or pda you carry around.

Lighting Scenario Page LinuxMCE Admin Website

The icons on the left all lead to a maps, or floorplan, of your house showing your lighting, media, climate, telecom and security devices. Next to each of the floorplan icons are the scenarios for that category and the given room. In the scenarios section of the LinuxMCE Admin web site you create the scenarios for each room. You can have a lighting scenario called 'entertaining guests' that sets some lights, plays some background music, unlocks the door, and so on.

NOTE: Many orbiters have relatively slow processors (like PDA's and phones) and may be running on slow wi-fi connections. So, the orbiters do not retrieve the large, full-size graphics, scaling them, drawing the text, and rendering everything on the fly.

Rather all the graphics on your Orbiter are pre-scaled and pre-rendered by OrbiterGen. This means that if you add new scenarios or devices, or change floorplans or skins, you won't see them immediately on the Orbiter. You must go to the 'Advanced Options' page by clicking the LinuxMCE logo on the main menu, and choose 'Regenerate this Orbiter'. You'll be asked to wait about 60 seconds or so while the renderer creates new graphics, and then the Orbiter will reload.


Telephone-based Orbiter devices

  • Mobile phones can be made to work as orbiters.

Orbiter Setup

Setting up an Orbiter from a LinuxMCE administration screen

Here you add all the orbiters you want to use in your house, no matter what type. This includes the mobile orbiters (ie mobile phones), the regular orbiters (like wireless webpads and tablet pc's), any orbiters you want to run on a normal PC, as well as the on-screen displays. Every Media Director displays an Orbiter on screen as well. All the orbiters connected to the system anywhere will appear on this page.

Room: is where the room where the orbiter is normally kept. For mobile orbiters this selection isn't important since you carry them everywhere. For regular orbiters, whatever room you choose is the room that the orbiter will use until the user selects something else.

Leave Monitor on for OSD: OSD (On-screen display) refers to the orbiters that run on the media directors. These are a little different since the media director is normally connected to a tv. If you want to use the Orbiter on a media director using a keyboard/mouse or infrared remote control, check this box. It means that when media stops LinuxMCE won't turn the tv off right away so you can continue using the Orbiter using the Media Director's keyboard or mouse, or the infrared remote. The TV will turn off only when the screen saver starts, or if you touch the 'power' button and 'turn off display'. If you always control the Media Director using another orbiter, like a web pad or mobile phone, you can leave it unchecked. Then the TV will come on only when you're going to play media or watch TV, and it will turn off immediately when you stop watching media.

This device uses a Wi-Fi connection Is useful for webpads and pda's with a wi-fi signal. Since wi-fi is rather unreliable, the core and Orbiter will constantly 'ping' each other so they both know the connection is still strong enough, and the Orbiter software will automatically exit when the Orbiter goes out of range.

No Effects: Many screens have special effects, like animated buttons, fades, and so on. If the orbiter has a slow processor, this can make it take longer to respond. Choose this to disable any special effects on the orbiter so it runs as fast as possible.

Language: All the text on the screen will appear in this language, if possible.

NOTE: You can create your own menus and translate screens into other languages using Designer.

Size: Choose the screen size you want. If this is an on-screen orbiter (an orbiter that appears on a media director), this will also set the media director's screen resolution.

Skin: There may be several skins, or motif's, to choose from, like 'Wood', 'Marble', etc.

User: Is the person who normally uses this orbiter.

Quick Regen: To make the orbiters respond quickly, all the images you see on their screens are pre-rendered. The User interface is "built" by the program Orbiter Generator. This will cause Orbiter Generator to re-generate the user interface for this orbiter, but it will only regenerate the screens that appear to have changed.

Full Regen: This will cause Orbiter Generator to re-generate every screen on the Orbiter.

Reduce image size by %: This will cause Orbiter Generator to add some padding to the screens. This is useful if the screen margins are being displayed outside of the TV screen. Developer info: although it may sound intuitive that the corresponding DeviceData is also called "Reduce image size by %", it is in fact called "Spacing". The PK_DeviceData for it is 150. The text "Reduce image size by %" comes from the DeviceTemplate_DeviceData table and it's the meaning of the device data in that specific device context

Offset: This will cause Orbiter...

Change the look and feel of the Orbiter

On the Wizard, Devices, Orbiters page you can change the look and feel several ways. <p>To create your own skin or user interface, see Create my own skins or GUI for LinuxMCE

If you want to try version 2 of the User Interface, see the Enabling UIv2 page.

Windows Laptops or Windows CE Webpads and PDAs

Download Page for Admin Site

To set up an orbiter to work on a Windows system, follow the setup instructions here.

Symbian Bluetooth phone

On the phone to to Menu, Tools, Manager. Hit the left button, choose settings, and "Software installation" to 'on'. Set the "online certificate check" to 'off'. On the menu, Connect, Bluetooth, turn Bluetooth on, and choose the option to make your phone visible (public). Then go near a media director with a Bluetooth dongle. Within 30 seconds or so you will see a message on all the Orbiters that a new phone is detected. Select the phone's owner. The software will be sent automatically to the phone as a message in your phone's inbox. Just accept the default installation options. The phone will always update its own software. If the software somehow gets deleted and you want the media director to resend it, turn the phone off, go to Advanced, Devices in LinuxMCE Admin, and check the box "Reconfigure Device". Then turn the phone back on. The software should be resent.

Using the Mobile Orbiter

Every Orbiter has a 'Rooms' button on the main menu

Using LinuxMCE basically consists of selecting scenarios that you created in the LinuxMCE Admin site. For example, you may select the 'Good Morning' Lighting Scenario. If you want to watch TV, you will select the 'TV' scenario for that room. Since the scenarios are grouped by room, the Orbiter needs to know what room you are in so it can show you the scenarios for that room. The Orbiter running on your Media Directors, which you see on your TV or computer monitor, will always default to the room that it is in. You can specify the default room for other Orbiters, like webpads, on the Orbiters page in LinuxMCE Admin. The mobile phone Orbiters by default 'follow you'; whenever you enter a room with a Media Director that has a Bluetooth dongle, your phone will pick this up and switch to that room, showing you that room's scenarios by default. However, no matter what type of Orbiter you use, there will always be a 'rooms' button on the main menu showing the currently selected room. Select it to chose a different room.

Every Orbiter has a 'Users' button on the main menu, except mobile phones

With a mobile phone Orbiter, you don't need to tell LinuxMCE each time who is using the Orbiter. The owner of the mobile phone is specified on LinuxMCE Admin's Orbiter page. But with the other Orbiters, which are shared by the whole family, there will be a 'users' button that lets you pick who is using the Orbiter. This won't affect the scenarios--those are the same for everyone. But it does affect some other things. For example, when browsing media, only the current user's private media is shown. Also, it affects things like speed dials, phone books, and so on.

Selecting a scenario from the phone's main menu

On the mobile phones, the screen is quite small, so rather than showing you all the scenarios for a room, the phone normally just shows the categories of scenarios: 'Lighting', 'Media', 'Climate', 'Security', 'Telecom', 'Other'. Select a category, then select the scenario underneath it. The 'c' button always takes you back to the main menu. The red 'off' button stops whatever media is playing. And the 'menu' button hides Orbiter so you can use the phone as a normal phone again. To show the Orbiter again, hold the menu button until a strip of currently running programs appears, and chose 'LinuxMCE MO'. If the Orbiter isn't running, press the menu button, and choose 'LinuxMCE MO' from the menu. When you do, the Orbiter won't appear instantly--it will only appear when a Media Director is in proximity and is able to connect to the phone and talk to the LinuxMCE MO software. This can take around 15 seconds. While using the Orbiter, all the other keys have different functions depending on what you're doing. A brief legend is usually shown on the screen, and you can hold down the 'c' button for help.

Selecting a scenario from other Orbiter's main menu with touch or mouse

In LinuxMCE Admin, on the Wizard, Devices, Orbiters page, you can select the 'Skin', which is the aesthetics or the motif (wood, marble, modern, classic, etc.), and the 'Main Menu', which determines how the user interface behaves. Therefore, your Orbiter's main menu may look different, and it may not display all the scenarios on the screen at once. You may first choose a category, like you do with the mobile phones. Just touch the button, if you have a touchscreen, or click with the mouse.

Selecting a scenario with a keyboard's arrow keys, or an infrared remote

When you see an Orbiter on the media director, you can also use the number keys, or the up/down/left/right/enter keys on the keyboard or an infrared remote control to select a scenario.

Quick tip

No matter what the user interface looks like, and no matter whether you use the phone, keyboard, or infrared remote, the categories are always numbered as follows: 1=Lighting, 2=Media, 3=Climate, 4=Telecom, 5=Security, 6=Misc. And within each category, the scenarios are also numbered the same, and in the same order, across all orbiters. LinuxMCE tries to encourage consistency, making it very easy to make your selection rapidly. For example, the 2nd media scenario is nearly always TV. So, from the mobile phone, or an infrared remote, or a keyboard, 22 turns on the TV (2 for Media, 2 for TV). Also, you may have noticed that when creating your lighting scenarios LinuxMCE encouraged you to make the first lighting scenario the 'default on', and the second the 'default off'. This means that in any room you normally can hit 11 on any remote to turn the lights on, and 12 to turn them off. If you are consistent like this across rooms, you will find that you remember the number shortcuts in no time and can do common tasks without even looking at the remote.

System concepts for Orbiter Implementation

Here's a simplified UML for Orbiter (pocketfrog implementation).

Integrating custom controls in Orbiter

Orbiter refactoring - the new design

Devel notes:

This section is included for legacy reasons:

Orbiter Interface

The Orbiter is quite simple to use, and all the screens are quite straightforward. Use the LinuxMCE Admin Website to configure your LinuxMCE system, including choosing the options on your Orbiter, such as lighting scenes, climate scenarios, and define what a/v equipment you want it to control.


Mobile Orbiter

Unless you turned off the "Auto Detect new Bluetooth Phones" option for the Media Director, compatible Bluetooth Mobile phones will automatically be detected when they are within range of any Media Director if they have Bluetooth turned on. A message will appear on all the Orbiters asking if it's a phone, and if so, to whom it belongs. Be sure you add your family members to the LinuxMCE Admin web site before doing this. Also, you may need to turn on the TV to see the message on the on-screen orbiter.

If you choose to install the software, the phone will beep. Just hit 'yes' to accept the software, and accept the default prompts.

The mobile orbiter works pretty much like a regular orbiter. The difference is that you don't usually need to worry about the "who" and "where" button. The "who" is determined when you chose to install the software. That family member is assumed to always be the user. And the "where" is automatic-whenever you come within range of a media director it will automatically switch to the correct location. You can press the button under the location if you want to control a location other than the one you are in.

Since the display is smaller, rather than showing all the scenarios on the main menu, you must first choose the category, like lighting, and then choose the scenario from the sub menu that appears. You can also hold the category to toggle 'follow-me' mode, indicated with a red F. So, if you hold down the 2 button, a red F appears for media. Now as you move around the house your media will follow you. All 5 categories have follow-me.

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