Wishlist RPi [1.0.8]

This topic is meant for brainstorming ideas for the next release. It is open for everyone, so if you want to see a specific feature in 1.0.8 for the RPi release, post it here. This discussion will be open until a certain point. At that point all features are freezed and will be the TODO list for the next release. I will add Features and Ideas to the list from your suggestions as I see fit:

Features:
* Optimizations to extend the life of the SD card Link 1, Link 2, Link 3
* Realtime clock support (Lars provided us with a howto => [forum.piratebox.cc])
* Improve time save functionality, this can be achieved by simply touching the right file every n minutes via cron
* (Weekly?) automated builds
* [general ?] Calibre library server
* ...

edit:
* 02/06/2016: Tagged the wish list items if they are general or RPi specific, so we can split the topics, when time comes.
* 02/07/2016: Moved general, non RPi specific wishes to their separate thread here => [forum.piratebox.cc]
* 03/13/2016: Closed Wish list for 1.0.8 added issues to gh repo => [github.com]



Edited 11 time(s). Last edit at 03/13/2016 06:54PM by stylesuxx.

I would like to see the shipped SDCards with some liftetime enhancing features for the SD-Card.

See this thread [forum.piratebox.cc]

Drop Timesave for a Radio-controlled clock that receives WWVB or DCF77. Ive been looking into it. Searching for an old atomic clock who's receiver is still intact....

or this.

another valid option would be to search for the newest file and set the system date to this value, instead of repeatedly saving it.

What would be your effective solution for this?
Only looking in a specific dir, or globally? Where does the board save it's content? Maybe it is enough if we take the last modified date of the files the board touches, as - AFAIK - that is the only part that really *needs* the date to be increasing.

Got PHP configured and installed Single File PHP Gallery

It required some modifications to:
lighttpd.conf:
static-file.exclude-extensions = ( ".php", ".pl", ".fcgi" , ".cgi" , ".py" )
to
static-file.exclude-extensions = ( ".pl", ".fcgi" , ".cgi" , ".py" )
and added a rule
$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/gndn/" {
cgi.assign = ( ".php" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi" , )
}

/etc/php/php.ini:
uncommented this line
;extension=gd.so
Then Rebooted.

So it may be a neat feature to have as all the packages are already there.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/29/2016 05:28AM by TheExpertNoob.

We can pull PHP from the repos, in fact I think we even do pull some PHP related stuff,... which packages would you exactly want to see?

stylesuxx Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> We can pull PHP from the repos, in fact I think we
> even do pull some PHP related stuff,... which
> packages would you exactly want to see?


actually php was already installed. I just needed to make some configuration changes. I also made another tutorial for it here.

mime.types needs this added to it

Language: HTML
".webm"         =>      "video/webm",

but it doesn't seem all files work.

What do you mean by "not all files work"?

Some webm files play in browser, others download. All the files play nicely in the browser on my Apache server. So I'm looking into my Apache's mime list.

SInce disk usage has been implemented, i would like to see a Device info section on the main page, something along the lines of:
Hardware:
Flash Storage:
Wifi Dongle:
Power Setup:

Thanks,
Seksan2

Hi,
I don't want to stop the flow, but I want to throw in some thoughts, recommendations and things.

The features should not differ between the plattforms. Some slightly differences are fine with me.

PHP:
Yes, we don't have official PHP support yet for the PirateBox and the RaspberryPI has the packages installed. I would appreciate that this support would be test & delivered together with the OpenWrt version of Piratebox. This is already in the Pipeline for 1.1 , beside a new upload-tool.
BUT: We have to take care, that you are not able to upload php scripts, that suddenly be executed because of a configuration mistake. The example from TheExpertNoob is good, because it limits php do a particular folder!

webm:
can you please add the mime-type to the mime-configuration and make a pull request on the release-1.0.7 branch. Maybe a video tag is required to display a inline video instead of downloading the file.

Plattform informations:
Interesting idea, I would see that as an optional thing to be added by the owner, because it disclose information about the device.

looking forward your opinions

I understand that you do not want the images to differ too much. Just collecting ideas here. I thought that a lot of ideas will not regard the RPi exclusively - so we will need to fine tune that before starting implementation.

With the platform information I feel similar, not on by default but cool idea anyway.

For the next release I want to build new hostapd for RPi 1.
I added a custom build for 8188 and 8192 to RPi 2 and both chipsets are now covered by this one hostapd. We will see how this works out, and if the results are good, I want to build them for RPi 1 too.

I would also like to see Checksums for all the images, just to give another layer of security, although this is also a topic for OpenWRT, or do the images have checksums?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/02/2016 02:09AM by stylesuxx.

Quote

although this is also a topic for OpenWRT, or do the images have checksums?[/code]
This will be done with the 1.0.7 release. The Makefile already generates it, as you can see it here: [beta.openwrt.piratebox.de]

Matthias

[*] Images directory with thumbnail generation for. Detect image upload and dump to images folder where thumbnails are generated.

Hey guys,

I´ve been lurking around in the forums for the last weeks and finally got my first PirateBox assembled on a Pi2 with the "awesome" 8188cus WiFi module. But everything has come together yesterday and it´s running fine.
Just wanted to chime in quickly regarding the support of Realtime Clocks. I put a cheap DS3231 rtc module in my setup and it works like a charm. Just had to tinker a little bit with systemd and add a "service" script to read the hwclock time at each boot and adjust the system time, but that was done quickly with some googling.
Anyway, as I mentioned I´ve got a Pi2 and some spare SD cards, so starting next week I could give a hand with testing images and stuff if you need a hand. I don´t have as much free time for tinkering with stuff like the PirateBox as I´d like to, you know, work and stuff, but I´d be happy to join you guys.

Greetz
Lars

Hey Lars,
most of us are working, so our time is limited too, but everyone who helps is an asset. The more, the merrier ;-)

More people => more testing => better quality => faster release cycles

This is good info about the HW clock, what do you think about making a topic and explaining what to do in simple steps, including your script, we could then move it to the mods section and in cooperate your script into the official release.

Greetz,
Chris

stylesuxx Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hey Lars,
> most of us are working, so our time is limited
> too, but everyone who helps is an asset. The more,
> the merrier ;-)
>
> More people => more testing => better quality =>
> faster release cycles

That´s what I thought as well. So count me in.
> This is good info about the HW clock, what do you
> think about making a topic and explaining what to
> do in simple steps, including your script, we
> could then move it to the mods section and in
> cooperate your script into the official release.

That sounds like a good plan. As I´m always on the road during
the weekend (long distance commuter), I´ll collect some info
on Monday and will post the script and stuff and Tuesday in the
evening, so we can start to put that into the standard build.

Looking forward to take part in the project. And btw, gonna deploy
my Box into university wildlife in two weeks. Let´s see what happens.

Have a nice weekend everybody!

Cheers!

Matthias already mentioned it in the channel, we need automated builds, should not be too hard to accomplish. But what I also want would be an automated testing rig:

Image is build and dumped to an SD card, after that the SD card reader is deactivated and the data lines are re routed to the RPI, RPI is then powered on. After bootup is done, a Phone connects to the RPi and executes its test Harness. This should be easily doable with an Arduino or similar.

Is this over engineered?

stylesuxx Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Matthias already mentioned it in the channel, we
> need automated builds, should not be too hard to
> accomplish. But what I also want would be an
> automated testing rig:
>
> Image is build and dumped to an SD card, after
> that the SD card reader is deactivated and the
> data lines are re routed to the RPI, RPI is then
> powered on. After bootup is done, a Phone connects
> to the RPi and executes its test Harness. This
> should be easily doable with an Arduino or
> similar.
>
> Is this over engineered?

I'm not sure if it's not too much. But automated builds would be
awesome!
But in regards to your suggested test rig, what do you mean with data lines?
As I read it, you think of one SD card reader that is connected to the
building system and to the RPi, but only one connection would active at a
time?!

Exactly. The SD card is connected via card reader to the build system. Once the build is dumped to the SD, the Arduino deactivate the USB lines, and instead activates the lines from sd to the RPi's SD contacts and power cyles the RPi.

This should be easy to realize with a couple of transistors.

Although a robot arm for switching the SD card would also be cool :-D



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2016 10:44AM by stylesuxx.

Ooh, I'll take the robot arm please! But I guess it's gonna be a fight with my private secretary of finance at home to find a good reason why I'd need a robot arm to change SD cards.

This can be easily argumented:
"Imagine all the time I save with this robot arm, this is time I can spend with you. *"

* Not mentioning the time first needed to get it fully configured and set up.

Also you can print the components,... so if the arm itself is to expensive you've got an excuse to get a 3D printer.

This opens up endless opportunities... But buying a robot arm or building one myself will inevitably lead to someone suggesting I might use it like Howard Wolowitz... And I reeeaally don't want end up like that.

edit: I think we should move that discussion to an offtopic area or to IRC later on... Not that Matthias has to moderate us...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2016 11:47AM by Lars.

I can not imagine Matthias having a problem with us discussing Robot Arms, in fact I think he will join us when he is done with work, but yeah - IRC may be the better place :-) See you on the flipside :-)

I BELIEVE there is an arduino shield that has an SD card reader on it, however I'm not sure if you can direct data lines out to the GPIO pins. You may be able to host the SD card over the ethernet port on that shield and we could set up a boot-from-network for the test pi and have linux build and transfer the image to the arduino shield's SD card.

Also, new signature.

---

PirateBox Installs:
2x Zsun's (both testing, one with serial interface)
A5-V11 (mostly for OpenWRT testing DIY)
2x RPi Zero's
(one active in car 24/7, gets a lot of hits at Walmart, movie theaters and the mall)
2x RPi3's (both home servers, one Ubuntu custom install along side a ton of other services)
1x RPi2 (currently work server)

TheExpertNoob Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Also, new signature.

Awesome!

This maybe a little far fetched and belongs as a separate project altogether instead of PirateBox, but decentralization has always been my mindset when i think about the now and future of the PirateBox.
So to jump straight to the point, everyone knows about tor and how it runs off nodes.
And there was a mesh networking attempt in a older version of PB.
I was thinking of kind of combining the 2 ideas, as well as some of ArkOS.
Basically what i think would be really cool is if you could plug your Raspberry PB into your router and be able to use it as "node", or "verification" to connect to other peoples PB.
Just like how you must be using TOR to access ".onion sites". You must be using your PB to access ".piratebox" sites however it is still made possible over normal internet lines. It might be cool to still use the founding principles of Tor and even encrypt and bounce connections to help with anonymity.