Keyboard Control

Some users run ReelPortal on a Home Theater PC, and wanted to use their remote control to operate the software.  So I just added some rudimentary keyboard controls:

button1=1
button2=2
button3=3
button4=4
button5=5
button6=6
button7=7
button8=8
button9=9
button10=0
exit=q
fullscreen=f

For example, pressing 1 is equivalent to clicking on button 1, and press 'q' to exit.

Caution:  When running the web client in a browser, keyboard input is disabled by the Flash Player when the app is in Fullscreen mode.  Press Esc to switch back to Normal mode.  This is not an issue if you run ReelPortal on Adobe AIR.

The below applies to Adobe AIR version only:

To modify the keyboard mapping to your liking, just create the following file in the directory where ReelPortal is installed, and change the keys on the right hand side of the "=" sign.  Do not change the order of the buttons or delete any buttons!  It will mess things up.

keyboard.txt:
button1=1
button2=2
button3=3
button4=4
button5=5
button6=6
button7=7
button8=8
button9=9
button10=0
exit=q
fullscreen=f

As always, I welcome any comments/suggestions.

iPhone & iPad Port

Adobe just released AIR 2.6 SDK, which seems to support cameras and microphone on the iOS devices.

On iOS devices with a both a front- and a rear-facing camera, you can only capture video from one camera at a time. On Android devices, you can only access the rear-facing camera.

Too bad, they didn't update it for Android to access multiple cameras.  I will look into porting ReelPortal to iPhone/iPad now.

Update:  Not owning any Apple devices (iphone/ipad/mac), this task may not be as easy as I thought.  I'd need to find someone with the devices to help test.  Any volunteers?


Update:  (June 4 2011)  First beta available for testers.  A few things are not working yet (text chat), but video/audio are streaming okay.  Both front and back camera work!

Update: (July 18 2011)  Version 1.0.0 for iOS has been submitted into the App Store, waiting for approval.  Text chat is supported.  Performance seems a little sluggish compare to Playbook and Android.  I wonder if it's due to the single core CPU, or the Adobe iOS packager, or both. 

Update: (July 23 2011)  See this new post.

Calling Others

To make a direct call to someone, just click one of the side window with a "blue head" on the right, and a "Make Video Call" window pops up, then click on the ">" and a list of names appears. Click on any nick to place the call.

If you did not join a room, then the list would contain the names of people who also did not join a room.  This provides a way for people who do not know each other to make contact.

If you joined a room, then only people who are in that room are listed.  This allows you to avoid being seen/called by strangers.

Android 2.3 Front Facing Camera Access

Even with Android 2.3, which supports multiple cameras, software written for Android 2.2 would still not be able to access the front camera.  The reason is the old interface is hardcoded to search for the rear camera.  I've posted more details at this thread:

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=947018

Hopefully someone can make that simple change and recompile it.  It would allow all video chat apps to work with the front camera, not just mine.  As for Android 2.2, each device provides a specific API to access the front camera, so one would need to change the open() method to invoke that specific API, and of course, recompile.

Looks like this multiple cam access feature has been requested since 2008 (link), if not earlier, and now we finally see it in 2011.

Compatible Android Devices

The following devices are known to work correctly with ReelPortal app, with the appropriate setup (ROM, AIR, Dashboard, etc). Note they all have a single front camera (no rear camera):

- Viewsonic gTablet (more details)
- Archos 70/101 Tablet (more details)
- eLocity A7 (more details)

The app runs on other Android devices, but only the back camera would work.  So it's not practical for doing video chat.  I'm disappointed to find that while Android 2.3 supports multiple cameras natively, Adobe AIR 2.5.1 can access only one (the rear one).  So hopefully Adobe hurry up and release an update that'd support multiple cameras.