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Controlling An Embedded Device Using Flash
JimCricket writes "Art & Logic has just released a web server toolkit based on the open source GoAhead WebServer. The cool part is that it can communicate with Flash presentations using XML-RPC. The idea is to create GUI's to control embedded devices using Flash in addition to (or instead of) HTML. They've posted a little demo running on Windows, but in the real world the server would run on a low-power device. Seems like a great idea for the embedded world, given that Flash interfaces _can_ be very low-memory (as long as Flash designers stick to the vector-based graphics and ActionScript)."
...would listen to its customers. We run one of Germany's largest flash-based web sites. We are happy with Flash and what it can do, but we encounter little bugs and annoyances every now and then.
Macromedia doesn't fix them.
To make things worse, the German product manager basically tells us "we don't have to fix this. We don't care. Without us, your site wouldn't exist. You better be grateful."
If only there was an alternative to Flash to escape this.
(Yadda, yadda, closed source, I know, I know. Trouble is, there is no alternative to Flash at this time.)
the first thing i thought when i read this was "controlling blah blah using sector-programmable EEPROM"... sigh; been in the hardware side too long.
side point: flash programs themselves are small and neat -- but the actual client (that reads, processes, and displays the animations and all that) always have seemed quite processor intensive to me, though... so besides being fancy and neat -- i am sure there are more power-saving interfaces you can use if that's really what you are after.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Requires Macromedia Flash Player 6
on the little demo page. Too bad I removed FLASH due to it's abuse by web advertisers. I hope Macromedia will put out a player that can be set by default to not play flash. HINT HINT! I'm not going to install it to watch a demo and remove it for the rest of my browsing. Is a play button too much to ask?
The truth shall set you free!
The real advantages here aren't so much in the "hey neat" category, but in the application of this technology. Not all of us are all that efficient at gathering information from text logs or what have you - many of us are more visual. If I could have a small flash application based on this technology that used images or even sounds to say, help me visualize the load on each of my servers from home, great! Instead of browsing through several megs (or gigs) of logs, I just look for the image of the server on fire. It won't eliminate the need for "down and dirty" work, but I can certainly think of many examples of where it could minimize it.
For a lightweight interface system that talks XML-RPC/SOAP and is easy to port to other platforms.
It's written in Java, but natively compiles on Linux/Win32. None of the speed problems of Java (thanks to a different design tack with Box rendering).
Of course, the obvious advantage over Flash is the fact it's open source (GPL).
They wouldn't have done this unless there were some good reasons to do so. The Flash engine is small and runs on embedded devices due to Macromedia's tireless attempts to get it everywhere they can. A simple Flash player and Flash application can come in under 500k and there is no browser on earth that can match this. Flash supports XML calls although it doesn't validate them. This idea neglects a security model as Flash doesn't have one with respect to the server so I hope these guys are not planning on doing stock quotes or transactions or something like that. The Flash interface is a good idea on precisely those devices and may yet gain more acceptance than Flash in the browser ever did, because the browser is really meant for HTML and nothing else.
Solution 2: Yeah we know, it says so right there where JimCricket submitted it and Hemos posted it.
Bleh!