Revision as of 13:33, 19 January 2008

Some project ideas

Add support for wifi and bluetooth

Add support for most used USB wifi and bluetooth USB keys.

Bluetooth remote control

Add a remote control via bluetooth and wifi.

Make more human-readable flash.log

The flash.log in the nfs share more human-readable. Maybe add some more info inside.

PHP interface for reflashing camera(s)

PHP web interface to reflash one or multiple cameras with ktest (show camera status), control options, browse log files. It would be useful to add memory, FPGA and other hardware and show results -- i.e. get JPEG image and check if the image is "normal". The interface should allow to configure all ktest parameters (and probably much more) individually per camera.

For production flashing include PoE switch control to reboot the camera.

The streamer

Audio

Implement audio from alsa source synced with video.

Subtitles

Implement subtitles what might be optionally read by the client. Subtitles should be able to handle info from EXIF and any user defined data.

Write to disk

Implement an option to stream to the network and/or to the hard drive / CF.

Exif

Add fields for geo-location (GPS), orientation of the camera and some user defined data. The camera model should also include sensor type and model.

Make a block diagram of the boot process

It is needed for new devs and to be able to have an overview of the process and be able to enhance it.

Better usage of busybox

Enable cool and useful staff from busybox such as passwd, cfdisk, minicom, ... (Please post a list to this section for discussion before doing what)

Hardware Test Software

Hmm... will be described later.

Do some magic to be able to pass params to the kernel over reboot

Implement (or just improve - something is already done) passing parameters to the next booted kernel. This can be done in different ways:

• passing kernel params truth RAM
• using KEXEC kernel function
• simulate the green button pressure at boot time (to boot in flashing mode)
• destroy signature magic after usage - even powered down SDRAM can hold data for many seconds

Green button

The green button on the back of the camera can be used in different ways:

• at power up to put the CPU in flashing mode
• 1-2 seconds after power up and hold for ~8 seconds to boot the camera with squashfs and tmpfs instead of jffs. When a special script can be used to relink safe files from sqauashfs to jffs. (cf [1])
• something else user configurable after init 5

Init levels

Implement init levels, init 3 should have only GNU/Linux with telnetd, everything camera specific should run from init 5. The default level will be 5, but ktest should be able to pass init=3 to the kernel.

NetBoot

Better output

Some more output should be added to netboot to make it more verbose and user-friendly.

New function

Add new function and param to read & copy partitions from the flash to NFS for debuging.

Ethernet LEDs

Hack in to the ethernet driver to make a better usage of leds. For example during flash with pressed button boot with orange led ON, blink orange while booting the kernel, blink with the green led while copying from NFS to flash and green ON when completely flashed and ready to be rebooted. While normal operation leds can be used in a more nice way when now.

Genres

Enhance Genres plugin to get rid of multiple languages and dependences and rewrite all using only one programming language. Make it more stable.

camvc

Repair broken/buggy AJAX code, port CGIs to PHP and move to lighthttpd instead of boa. (keep them both at least at the beginning to compare te speed and stability)

Security

Lighthttpd

Add https to lighthttpd and add .htaccess protected directories.

Add SSH

Separate user privileges

Add passwd command, implement users and groups with separated privileges. Make groups for FPGA and other hardware (as HD) access and make Lighthttpd/PHP run as user.

Netfilter firewall

Port the latest netfilter to be able to setup a firewall on the camera.

Ideas

Change the structure of the boot process

I like how partitions are organized in OpenWRT. The root partition should be read only squashfs. The same root partition should be used to boot from flash or from ktest. Then a read/write flash or tmpfs partition can be mounted, squashfs remounted to a new directory. And files from / linked to the /squashfs directory.

During the flash process files from squashfs will be symlinked to the tmpfs and to the flash r/w partition.

Like what we always have a clean squashfs, links from the r/w jffs partition can be removed and replaced by real files with different content. We can also implement a function for the green button to erase the files from the r/w partition and relink them to /squashfs. It's a simple way to get back to a known point without reflashing the camera.

Flashing via USB

It seems really simple to implement flashing via USB Flash/HD. If the camera find /autoupgrade.sh script on the USB-flash during the boot it upgrade the firmware.