Has anyone thought about writing their own operating system for the Pronto?

How about if someone out there with computer knowledge re-writes the Pronto Edit user guide. What most of us need is a how to manual with more complete instructions. This forum is proof of what's needed.

I am not extremely computer-savvy, and I don't have an extra 8 hours per day (for a week or more) to program my pronto. (In fact, I have had it a week now and I am still trying mapping out how I want it to handle my components. When I finally get the time to sit at my computer and delve into ProntoEdit, it would be nice to have a comprehensive guide on downloading other's work, manipulating it, creating original work, etc. I fear that I won't be able to start really using my remote for weeks!

I know that there are those who believe that we should learn to "walk before running," but I (and I am sure many others) really don't have that much time. I have read many posts from individuals who are quite experienced at (or is it mastered) this awesome remote. Although this forum is extremely helpful (Thanks, Dan), It would be a Godsend to have a detailed guide. Heck, I would probably pay an extra $15-20 for it!

I agree that a new and improved user's guide would be useful. I do documentation quite a bit, and it probably would not be very hard to do something like this, and $15 per manual would sound pretty good to me!

If I create a Pronto and ProntoEdit manual, complete with hints and screen shots, things covered in the FAQs, etc., would anybody be interested? I could probably find time between family, landscaping, and drag-racing do this in my spare time. Just look at some of my files under Fun and Games, Design Elements, etc. See what you think and let me know, this could be fun and really enhance the Pronto community!

Yep, Sounds a good idea, if only the raw API was documented people could create there own UI - also would allow extra apps to be written as its the same processor as a Palm, maybe even a palm emulator ;)

But there is little if any chance of the API being published so if anybody wants to they will have to reverse engineer the pronto rom...

Cary - if you get it done before I figure this thing out on my own, you have your first customer.

Cool! All I needed to hear... I will start a thread on this topic alone, and ask for suggested sections.

I found this WEB site to be extremely helpful in figuring out how to get started the right way and how to define my menus so that I didn't have to redo it 2 or 3 times.

Lots of thanks to David Siltz, aka Barenada

[Link: members.aye.net]

I agree, that is a pretty good site, but I don't know how much you delved into his CCF, but he goes to great lengths to control what the user can and cannot do. If you have a system that can be controlled with discrete codes, you can have your own screens, locked from the user, and a complete set of user screens, and still not use up the space that his does. It is indeed a good site for new users to start at to see what the thought process might be as you go thru programming the Pronto. I also think that a hardcopy is good to have because you can take it anywhere and read thru it, on the plane/train/automobile (wasn't that a movie?) etc. If I do the manual, I will list his location as one of the resources on the web.

I'm all for a user-supported operating system for this beast!

I agree with Gary that reverse engineering the ROM is the only likely way this could proceed. If Philips released the source code/API etc. (with whatever licence they deemed appropriate) the community could take it from there. Who knows - we could even end up with Linux/X running on the Pronto! ;-)

In reality this would be a big project (in terms of people's time input at least), we'd need to co-ordinate a collaborative project employing a range of skills from hardware hackers/reverse engineerer's/embedded system guru's/OS designers/GUI programmers and so on (not to mention good documentation Cary :-) ).

Are there people out there with the time & skills willing to get together to pull this off?


Andrew.

I install custom audio/video equiptment for a living and i can wire your house all the way to programming your crestron or pronto. I have a very large database of completed ccf's as well as individual pages just for specific units( lots of makes and models).I can pretty much program the whole remote at home but it needs to be hooked up the right way, which is actually the easiest way to operate it also. If anyone is interested we can talk, i have had success with peopleonline before. Just e-mail me at [email protected]

Having Philips release the source code for the Pronto has been tossed around before, however it's extremely unlikely Philips will ever do this. And while Philips doesn't seem to mind folks creating supportive utilities, I don't know how they'd react to reverse engineering the ROM. Probably not well...

Andrew,
FYI, I believe one of the Philips reps once mentioned that the Pronto uses the pSOS OS/kernel. This is a commercial OS/kernel used in embedded applications. It probably makes up only a small portion code though, with the rest being proprietary code developed for the Pronto.
Doug