Looking for VPS SDK, or world scale AR cloud options. Already explored Sturfee too.
There's a few different options but none that can do it well over really large areas. Most of the outdoor ones work as well as Sturfee does within prescribed regions.
Indoors, most have restrictions around size and/or issues with changing environments as this is an ongoing research problem. You can try ARWorldMap in iOS or Cloud Anchors in Google, they all have space and time limitations because of the research problems mentioned before. You could also try our very own PlacenoteSDK which helps you get started really quickly with pre-built cloud solutions.
Related
I want to read how much data from 3G every app uses. Is this is possible in iOS 5.x ? And in iOS 4.x? My goal is for example:
Maps consumed 3 MB from your data plan
Mail consumed 420 kB from your data plan
etc, etc. Is this possible?
EDIT:
I just found app doing that: Data Man Pro
EDIT 2:
I'm starting a bounty. Extra points goes to the answer that make this clear. I know it is possible (screen from Data Man Pro) and i'm sure the solution is limited. But what is the solution and how to implement this.
These are just hints not a solution. I thought about this many times, but never really started implementing the whole thing.
first of all, you can calculate transferred bytes querying network interfaces, take a look to this SO answer for code and a nice explanation about network interfaces on iOS;
use sysctl or similar system functions to detect which apps are currently running (and for running I mean the process state is set to RUNNING, like the ps or top commands do on OSX. Never tried I just suppose this to be possible on iOS, hoping there are no problems with app running as unprivileged user) so you can deduce which apps are running and save the traffic stats for those apps. Obviously, given the possibility to have applications runnning in background it is hard to determine which app is transferring data.
It also could be possible to retrieve informations about network activity per process/app like nettop does on OSX Lion, unfortunately nettop uses the private framework NetworkStatistics.framework so you can't dig something out it's implementation;
take into account time;
My 2 cents
No, all applications in iOS are sandboxed, meaning you cannot access anything outside of the application. I do not believe this is possible. Neither do I believe data-traffic is saved on this level on the device, hence apple would have implemented it in either the network page or the usage page in Settings.app.
Besides that, not everybody has a "data-plan". E.g. in Sweden its common that data-traffic is free of charge without limit in either size or speed.
I'm working on a pretty complicated app right now, but I just got a really good, niche market idea for an AR game for iPhone. I would love to get some preliminary research done on whether or not it is worth the effort. I got a few (about 4 days) in which to code this. Is this a realistic timeline for what I'm trying to accomplish?
While I'm pretty familiar with the CMDeviceMotion, and can get location updates from GPS, there are 4 features that I think may take a colossal amount of work:
1) Working with camera in real time to draw augmented reality controls. Are there any good tutorials on how to overlay a view on top of a live camera feed?
2)Making the app work when GPS reception is spotty. It seems that some apps know how to keep updating the location based on accelerometer/gyroscope from the last known location. Where would I start on this front?
3)The networking component. I'm very new to multiplayer games. I got a website that can run PHP. Should I abandon my networking idea until I get a web server? Or is there some way I can run this in P2P over 3G without a base station?
4)Google maps integration for fast updates. Does this take a lot of effort?
I'm sorry if any of these questions are too broad and vague. I'm very excited about this idea, but would like to know what I'm dealing with before spending time on the app and realizing that I'm dealing with a monumental task!
I think you are dealing with a monumental task (especially the multiplayer part, where you'll encounter issues like lag/timing).
For the augmented reality part of your project, you can take a look at mixare augmented reality engine. It's free and open source software and the code is available on github: https://github.com/mixare/
Be aware that if you base your code upon mixare, you'll have to release your app under the same GPLv3 license as mixare.
Good luck for your project!
HTH,
Daniele
Does any other provider offer a cloud computing + storage layer like S3/EC2, with free data transfer between the two layers?
I have looked at:
Softlayer CloudLayer Storage -- no free transfer between the cloudlayer storage and cloudlayer computing instances.
Rackspace CloudFiles - Quite a bit of marketing mumbo-jumbo, and something about Cloud Connect, I gave up on the site once the Live Chat CSS Popup started following me around.
Does anyone know of any others?
I'm looking to store some large (non-random access) files for constant re-processing on a storage solution, and process it nearby, without paying transfer costs daily (looking to store in the 500-2000GB range, re-processing it all daily).
Re-processing requires a (Linux) server with a "decent" (weasel word alert) configuration.
Thanks!
'Cloud computing' is a bit of a myth.
They're all just, essentially, virtual private servers. 'Cloud' instances tend to have the flexibility to be billed by the hour, rather than monthy, but they're still just a VPS.
Persistent storage is a useful feature from a very limited number of VPS providers, but one that can easily be emulated by having two+ VPS' in the same data centre (Linode are an excellent VPS provider with free local data transfer, sadly they're rather limited by capacity). I don't know of any other VPS/Cloud providers who offer their own persistent storage solution.
It is something you can easily achieve yourself. VPS servers tend to be a little restrictive on hard drive capacity if you're looking for 500-2000GB, Perhaps you could consider a dedicated server and handle storage and processing on the same machine... you can't get data more local than the same machine!
First, the short version: stop looking for “free”.
Now, in more detail: you're looking to consume some somewhat-non-trivial computing, data storage and networking resources. Presumably you've got a good reason for doing this; if you truly have, you'll have the ability to also purchase the resources required for what you want to do. There are a few options on this front, none of which are free:
Buy and host your own hardware.
Buy the hardware and host it in a colocation facility.
Hire the hardware
Long term hire
Short term hire
All the Amazon are doing is short-term, easy set up hiring of resources. Their prices are quite keen (if some other option is cheaper, it's because it is missing something significant that Amazon do; maybe it's something you don't need but that's up to you to figure out). You can host the core of the Amazon API quite easily on whatever resources you've hired (see Eucalyptus) but be aware that going from having the software and the API to having everything work smoothly is a really big step; the more I work with Eucalyptus installations, the more impressed with Amazon I become. And that's despite being also pretty impressed with Eucalyptus itself.
But none of this is free. It takes real resources to provide – e.g., electricity to power the machines and keep them cool and a building to house them in – and ultimately, that's got to be paid for somewhere. To expect otherwise is to believe that others should have to pay for things for you; it's pretty rare that that happens, and the more you need to consume, the rarer it is (especially if the economy isn't doing too good). So stop thinking in terms of how you can get it for nothing (“freeload”) and instead take a good look at what it really costs to provide through various routes and seek to minimize your costs. If you can't afford even that, your #1 problem isn't hosting but funding; fix that first.
Rest assured you're not alone in this matter. This is what lots of other people worldwide have to do to make their projects into reality. Good luck!
GoGrid has an external storage with free transfer and access over typical protocols like SMB, NFS, rsync, FTP. The first two allows for mounting as normal drive.
Note also that many providers will allow you to create cloud servers with 2 TB instance storage. For sure not able to name all of them, but you can find some with cloudorado.com .
I just watched Google Wave Keynote video on Google I/O and I must say I was very impressed with pretty much everything mentioned in the video, the possibilities with Google Wave are enormous.
I'd like to ask if there are any projects using Google Wave already in beta (usable stage) and I would also like to know when is Google Wave supposed to be available for the rest of us who didn't attend Google I/O.
As great as the technology is. It is safe to say it will only be used to find more inventive ways for us to:
Not socialize in real-life
Make communications that would be ill-advised in real-life
Buy things we haven't seen in real life
Unlearn things that are useful in real life (like spelling)
Joking aside, you can signup for the sandbox (as I have) and play around with apps and robots and whatever. You can Sign up here for the developer preview and have a look at what is going on!
You could also run your own wave setup using the information here and experiment with the down-and-dirty!
You can request developer access to the wave sandbox at: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/wavesignupfordev/
It might take a few weeks.
In the last two months I've worked as a simple application using a computer vision library(OpenCV).
I wish to run that application directly from the webcam without the need of an OS. I'm curious to know if that my application can be burned into a chip in order to not have the OS to run it.
Ofcorse the process can be expensive, but I'm just curious. Do you have any links about that?
ps: the application is written in C.
I'd use something bigger than a PIC, for example a small 32 bit ARM processor.
Yes. It is theoretically possible to port your app to PIC chips.
But...
There are C compilers for the PIC chip, however, due to the limitations of a microcontroller, you might find that the compiler, and the microcontroller itself is far too limited for computer vision work, especially if your initial implementation of the app was done on a full-blown PC:
You'll only have integer math available to you, in most cases, if not all (can't quote me on that, but our devs at work don't have floating point math for their PIC apps and it causes many foul words to emanate from their cubes). Either that, or you'll need to hook to an external math coprocessor.
You'll have to figure out how to get the PIC chip to talk USB to the camera. I know this is possible, but it will require additional hardware, and R&D time.
If you need strict timing control,
you might even have to program the
app in assembler.
You'd have to port portions of OpenCV to the PIC chip, if it hasn't been already. My guess is not.
If your'e not already familiar with microcontroller programming, you'll need some time to get up to speed on the differences between desktop PC programming and microcontroller programming, and you'll have to gain some experience in that. This may not be an issue for you.
Basically, it would probably be best to re-write the whole program from scratch given a PIC chip constraint. Good thing is though, you've done a lot of design work already. It would mainly be hardware/porting work.
OR...
You could try using a small embedded x86 single-board PC, perhaps in the PC/104 form factor, with your OS/app on a CF card. It's a real bone fide PC, you just add your software. Good thing is, you probably wouldn't have to re-write your app, unless it had ridiculous memory footprint. Embedded PC vendors are starting to ship boards based on 1 GHz Intel Atoms, and if you needed more help you could perhaps hook a daughterboard onto the PC-104 bus. You'll work around all of the limitations listed above, as your using an equivalent platform to the PC you developed your app on. And it has USB ports! If you do a thorough cost analysis and if your'e cool with a larger form factor, you might find it to be cheaper/quicker to use a system based on a SBC than rolling a solution using PIC chips/microcontrollers.
A quick search of PC-104 on Google would reveal many vendors of SBCs.
OR...
And this would be really cheap - just get a off-the-shelf cheap Netbook, overwrite the OEM OS, and run the code on there. Hackish, but cheap, and really easy - your hardware issues would be resolved within a week.
Just some ideas.
I think you'll find this might grow into pretty large project.
It's obviously possible to implement a stand-alone hardware solution to do something like this. Off the top of my head, Rabbit's solutions might get you to the finish-line faster. But you might be able to find some home-grown Beagle Board or Gumstix projects as well.
Two Google links I wanted to emphasize:
Rabbit: "Camera Interface Application Kit"
Gumstix: "Connecting a CMOS camera to a Gumstix Connex motherboard"
I would second Nate's recommendation to take a look at Rabbit's core modules.
Also, GHIElectronics has a product called the Embedded Master that runs .Net MicroFramework and has USB host/device capabilities built-in as well as a rich library that is a subset of the .Net framework. It runs on an Arm processor and is fairly inexpensive (> $85). Though not nearly as cheap as a single PIC chip it does come with a lot of glue logic pre-built onto the module.
CMUCam
I think you should have a look at the CMUcam project, which offers affordable hardware and an image processing library which runs on their hardware.