Rody commented in the "Philips Discontinues Pronto" Thread
[Link: pocket-lint.com] will not be coming I guess.....

Well luckily I was given the core code from Philips with the comment of "see what you can do with this". It took a few emails back and forth to realise what  had just been given to me to work on.

I was told to stop development a few weeks ago until there was a clearer picture on "direction".. Umm well I didn't quite expect the outcome we got yesterday.

I can say it's possible and you don't need any special hardware:

• TSU9400, 9600, 9800
• must be sitting on the cradle
• you need to create custom pages
• limited to 9300 functionality (it should be possible to send RS232 and ip strings)
• custom graphics aren't possible but you can select colours for fonts and buttons.
• Currently setup for iPhone/iTouch but Android and "generic browser" support would be possible.
• Setup is still done in ProntoEdit (using Landscape mode)
   

A list of changes to the ProntoTeam were discussed to make this more seamless (and have support for images and a few other things) which I guess now we won't see. 

ProntoEdit:

Here is a blank template showing how much area you have to work with for a standard browser and then what you’d see on full screen.  The right grey box is for more buttons and they would appear under the left panel as you scroll down.



Here is one I prepared earlier :)
 
Elements can be position anywhere within the box, it figures out what is in which box and places accordingly.
 
You will also notice you can set the button colour and the text colour. These are positional as using some of the iphone CSS you can make it look much better. As downloading images from the Pronto isn’t possible hence no pretty graphics.. But you can still make it look quite good (see below).






Point your iPhone/iTouch/Safari browser to here

There is still a lot of work to do (like support multiple pages) but if there is interest for it I'm happy to continue developing it.

Will there be a fee? Yes

How much? Depends how long I spend pulling my hair out :)

And yes I do realise iPronto was an old pronto model!

Cool! Is this a native app or a browser app?

Browser App currently..

In my iPhone browser, the iPronto logo bar is much talle than yours shown here and the browser controls are also active (not full screen).

So, if it's a browser app, is it actually being served up by the remote?

Hi Jon,

For best effect you need to save it as an App to get full screen.. You will notice the header is bigger as the Power/wifi etc icons sit on top.. Hence why it needs to be bigger.

Jon you are correct effectively your turning your pronto into a mini server. This for one reason why I think not having graphics servered from the pronto is a good idea so it doesn't take up too much CPU time (of what little it has). I might look at seeing if it's possible to have graphics sitting on webserver and just referenced back somehow.

Tenchi,

Yes this looks good but what value can this have if the Pronto platform is going away? In a year or less there will no longer be product available. I guess if it is already in your home that is one thing.

Am I missing something here?

Dave
RemoteQuest.com

I had a quick look at iRule and while everything looks very polished, the functionality came across as very TSU1000-ish.

iRule allows custom graphics and I would expect iPronto to allow the same.

So Tenchi are you trying to get the Ipad/Iphone to work with the RFX9600 Extender?

It can't handle custom graphics as your
a) using the pronto as a server (it can't serve images)
b) using a browser (not an app)
c) integrating with ProntoEdit

Sure could build something that runs on a standalone server but who has one of those lying in the corner at home. Or develop a full iPhone/iPad solution which talks to the pronto but really that would be a waste of time and very little ROI.

Ok the point of this was never to replace a Pronto but just be a handy edition. Your outside, remotes inside pull out iPhone change the music/adjust the volume. Or better yet your driving home late to watch the football turn everything on before you walk in the door.

Expectations was a problem with discussions with Philips and amongst some of the dealers of what was "expected" of an iDevice app. However this was as good as it gets based on the current limitations. Things like images, recursing through objects would have been addressed as I mentioned before with future updates (which we won't see) just arn't currently possible.

Well it does work but you just need a Pronto in the middle. I can happily control my Digital STB which uses RS232 commands.

Note: that's currently all I can control as I haven't added multiple page support as this was a EPOC (electronic proof of concept).

PS: current UI seems to work on an Andoid device I tested it with also.

Hi Tenchi,

Just out of curiosity, what was the reason of connecting the iPhone to a Pronto instead of the rfx extender?

Was that because it wasn't allowed to bypass the pronto in the first place?
Or was the extender not capable enough? (wich i find hard to understand)

Do you think it would be possible to send commands directly to the rfx9600, fo let's say upgrading project in the neir future with other components than the pronto.

That wasn't the purpose of the project. This is designed to run through a browser, connecting to the RFX directly wouldn't be remotely possible.

Alright, good purpose..

Would it be possible with an external server? Or other wise, can I send commands with tcp/ip or http to the extender to launch a command?

Serving images *is* possible, just not very straightforward: you 'd first have to encode the images as JavaScript strings, like:

var x =
"\x89PNG\r\n\x1a\n\0\0\0\rIHDR\0\0\0 \0\0\0 \b\x02\0\0\0\xfc\x18" +
"\xed\xa3\0\0\0\x04gAMA\0\x01\x86\xa01\xe8\x96_\0\0\0\x03sBIT\x05" +
"\x05\x05\x18&\xdeC\0\0\0\x03sBIT\x05\x05\x05\x18&\xdeC\0\0\0b" +
"IDATx\x9c\xed\x95\xb1\x11\x80@\f\xc3\x94;/A\x07\xfb\x0f\xc5w\x8c" +
"\xf1l@*QE\x03D\xe7\xc2qm\\\xc2a\v.\x5bp\xda\x02=\xc1\b\x1aj\xcb" +
"E\xc8\xe3\xde'\xb7-X\xb6@O0\x82\x8e\xc2\xee\x01\xf2 \x04\xf9W" +
"\x04y\x10\xfeH0\x82o\ny\x10\x82<\bA\xfe\x15a\xd9\x02=\xc1\b\x1a" +
"^\xe5\xce\x14o\x10\x10\xb9h\0\0\0\0IEND\xaeB\x60\x82";


After which this string can be sent back as the response of an HTTP request, serviced by a script.