jbmorley / compute

iOS application for using a Raspberry Pi as a compute module

👋🏻 Hi, I'm Jason. I create things. Check out my website if you're interested in me, the ideas behind my software and hardware projects, and what I get up to elsewhere in life. Otherwise, take a look at some of the things I've done around here.

Apps

• Bookmarks—Pinboard client for iOS and macOS
• Builds—GitHub Actions status board for macOS and iOS
• Fileaway—Document management app for iOS and macOS
• Folders—Library app for macOS
• Game Play Color—Game Boy Color Emulator for iOS
• OpoLua—A compiled-OPL interpreter for iOS written in Lua
• Overview—Generate monthly durations for similarly named calendar events
• Reconnect—Psion connectivity for macOS
• Thoughts—Lightweight note taking for macOS

Hardware

• Elsewhere—Livestream picture frame
• Hard Drive Case—Pibow-inspired laser-cut hard drive case
• Little Luggable—Raspberry Pi cyberdeck
• MiSTer Case—Laser-cut case for the MiSTer
• Pilot—Small board for controlling a Raspberry Pi
• PsiBoard—Psion Series 5 based bluetooth keyboard
• StatusPanel—eInk desk calendar and status board
• Thermal Printer Remix—Remixed Raspberry Pi Receipt Printer
• TinyBoard—Bluetooth USB keyboard proxy

Development Tools

• build-tools—Collection of convenience build tools for iOS and macOS development
• changes—Lightweight and unopinionated tool for working with Conventional Commits and Semantic Versioning
• git-tools—Git Aliases and Commands
• github-status—Light-weight command line utility for showing the status of GitHub projects
• InContext—Extensible static site generator

Archival Tools

• download-bookmarks—Generate archives for all your Pinboard bookmarks
• download-github-releases—Script to download all the releases for a GitHub project
• Signal Backup—Backup and Decrypt Signal Desktop Message History

Utilities

• configure-prompt—Minimal Prompt for Zsh
• configure-raspberry-pi—Interactive script for configuring a Raspberry Pi boot partition
• day-one-to-markdown—Convert Day One journal entries to Markdown and Front Matter
• download-bing-image—Download the current bing.com image to a directory, optionally setting it as the desktop
• evernote-bookmarks—Convert Evernote XML Format (.enx) to the Netscape Bookmark File Format (bookmarks.html)
• Photos Scripts—Automation Scripts for Photos.app
• update-dns—Cloudflare Dynamic DNS Updater

Libraries

SwiftUI

• Diligence—SwiftUI About Screens
• Interact—SwiftUI conveniences for iOS and macOS
• SelectableCollectionView—SwiftUI collection view with selection support
• TagField—SwiftUI tag field for macOS and iOS

Web

• pattern.js—JavaScript Pattern Rendering Library
• Writeme
• x-chart—HTML Extensions for Generating Chart.js Charts

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Archive

• Flutter—JavaScript Twitter client
• Locate—Show URLs on a map
• Multifolder—Utility for adding multiple folders to macOS Smart Folders
• Photo Export—macOS utility for exporting photos from Apple Photos

compute's Issues

Update the license on all the source files

Add a button to the iOS app to shutdown the Raspberry Pi

Provide a mechanism for watching for file changes

Many modern build systems rely on inotify as a mechanism to determine when to rebuild. Unfortunately WebDAV doesn't provide support for any mechanism which allows a client to implement inotify. Given this, we should explore other options.

In the short term, something like https://github.com/mhallin/notify-forwarder might be a good start if we can get the daemon to run on iOS.

How do we keep the app running when backgrounded?

Is it possible to do this by maintaining a BTLE or cabled connection to the Pi?

Show third-party licenses in the app

Consider custom hardware based on the Raspberry Pi Compute Module

The Raspberry Pi Compute module (https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/compute-module-3-plus/) is intended to make it easy to build dedicated hardware based on the Raspberry Pi core. It seems like it might be a perfect match for this project, as we don't really need anything other than the USB-C port on the Raspberry Pi to allow it to connect to an iPad. That would permit a far more compact device.

Custom Raspberry Pi image

We should create a custom Raspberry Pi image which works out of the box with the app; something with the bluetooth server running, automating, etc.

Implement a generic way of running a command on the Raspberry Pi

While there are a number of guaranteed things we're going to want to be able to trigger on the Raspberry Pi (e.g., shutdown, reboot, mounting the file system on WebDAV server start), it would make most sense to have a generic way to run commands directly on the Raspberry PI. That way we'll need to make fewer changes to the Raspberry Pi software stack once we're up and running, and we can offer a very convenient way for users to tweak their configurations.

Explore alternative file sharing approaches

Right now, the most powerful / flexible approach would seem to be to have the iPad host files, and have the Raspberry Pi mount them (there are other alternatives, but certainly having the Pi host the files could be restrictive as then it wouldn't be possible to work on files without the Pi connected).

Unfortunately, WebDAV seems to have some performance issues that make some build infeasible (not hugely surprising as it's the first working solution we were able to cobble together). We should explore alternatives that have had more recent development (e.g., NFS, SMB, ...) and see if these work better.

Limit Samba to the usb0 interface

It might also make sense to allow guest access.

Consider bootstrapping the Raspberry Pi setup scripts from the app

This would almost certainly make it easier to iterate on the Raspberry Pi setup and make it more of a dumb-device.

Share the iPad's network connection with the Raspberry Pi

In order to make the experience truly plug-and-play, getting the Raspberry Pi on the network needs to be a seamless experience; right now, the Raspberry Pi needs to maintain a separate WiFi connection to get access to the internet (for downloading packages, etc).

Perhaps the easiest way to do this would be to embed a SOCKS proxy in the app and have this proxy the iPad's network connection to the Pi.

App doesn't seem to keep the phone awake while running (unless under debug)

Auto-mount the WebDAV file system when the Pi connects

We can do this over a bluetooth back-channel and it would be great if we were to present the protocol and address over that channel to allow us to connect to servers over different interfaces (which will be especially useful in testing).

Show an indication of whether the server is running or not

Allow users to add folders to be exposed over the WebDAV server

Automatically update the list of listening addresses when the network status changes

Set a custom tint colour

Perhaps something like this, as a nod to earlier WebDAV offerings:

Show an alert when failing to remove a location

Currently it's only printed to the console. 😢

Show the full list of listening addresses

Use proper UUIDs for the Bluetooth services and characteristics

We're currently using hard-coded, short codes from online sample code. 😱