UI building blocks

April 23, 2008 3:29 PM

I want to build my own UI on a portable/embedded device. Where do I start?

I want to build my own simple interface from scratch, preferably on a an device w/ touchscreen and internet. The less programming, the better.

I can live with very basic functionality, something like Samurize, where I can display text files/script out on a certain X,Y coordinate on the screen, or even images (possibly buttons?), or a dumbed down version of Kofab/Dashboard.

I know my options are pretty much linux only, and I am a linux noob. I've heard of GTK and QT, and thats the extent of my knowledge of those. I'm fairly proficient in Perl and Python, and wouldn't mind learning/doing a bit of programming to get something up and running.

I'm thinking one of the Nokia tablets, but I have no idea how to implement this idea.

As a side note, a small embedded linux PC with a VGA touchscreen and wifi would work. I just have no idea where to start- what distro and software combo and/or programming framework I should use.

posted by mphuie to computers & internet (7 comments total)

The Apple Touch and iPhone are both touchscreen and have Wifi support. The iPhone SDK offers a framework for writing your own iPhone/Touch apps. You can create your own widgets or use prebuilt.

It's ObjectiveC, but if PyObjC support works, you could use Python to make ObjectiveC calls, so as to build a GUI in Python.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:16 PM on April 23, 2008

Seconding iPod Touch (you don't need a phone or phone plan). Sexy, commodity hardware + nice development tools that you can use in shallow or deep ways as needed.
posted by rokusan at 4:34 PM on April 23, 2008

Last time I checked, you couldn't develop applications for the iPhone/iPod touch without (a) a Mac running OS X 10.5, (b) agreeing to an Apple NDA, and (c) buying a $99 digital certificate. You might be able to get away with a web application, depending on your requirements.

If you want to go Linux-based, check out PyQt, PyGTK or wxPython. It looks like the Python bindings for GTK are pretty well supported on the Nokia tablets.
posted by teraflop at 5:39 PM on April 23, 2008

Last time I checked, you couldn't develop applications for the iPhone/iPod touch without (a) a Mac running OS X 10.5, (b) agreeing to an Apple NDA, and (c) buying a $99 digital certificate.

You don't need (c) (I certainly didn't), and after the final SDK is released at the developer's conference in July, it's likely you won't need to agree to the non-disclosure terms (just like any other final Apple SDK).
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 6:32 PM on April 23, 2008

Cool, really? Everything I've been reading says that the SDK is free, but only people who've been accepted into the "iPhone Developer Program" can actually run code on anything besides a simulator. I'll be pleasantly surprised if that's not the case.
posted by teraflop at 6:57 PM on April 23, 2008

A Nokia n810 with Python is programmable even on the device itself.

Here is an older article that might give you a taste.
posted by bottlebrushtree at 8:40 PM on April 23, 2008

Chumby
posted by PenDevil at 6:45 AM on April 24, 2008