nephros
commented
9 months ago Disregarding the fit as a supported device for Amazfish for a moment:
- most, if not all functionality needed in the backend to fully support Flipper devices is actually in qFlipper: https://github.com/flipperdevices/qFlipper
- especially the
backendandpluginssubdirectories implement an interface to a device, complete with handling the protobuf protocol. - it even builds a loadable .so plugin for applications to use.
- it's written in Qt (Qt5.6 though). A branch exists on https://github.com/nephros/qFlipper/tree/sfos which at least compiles with Qt5.6 though. Not huge issue, as Qt5.15 is available on Chum.
- however it depends on QtSerialport, and only supports communication via serial, which is obviously suboptimal on a Sailfish OS phone. (Trying an USB-C serial adapter hasn't been tested though, it might even work).
-
the Android app, https://github.com/flipperdevices/Flipper-Android-App, however supports much of the same functionality, and does is over Bluetooth (LE).
From this we know that we can build a companion using only BLE.
From this we are presented with these options:
- Look at the implementations of Flipper and the Android app, and rewrite their functionality for AMazfish (or a dedicated app).
- Fork qFlipper, and remove/replace serial port dependencies, add BLE instead (or additionally).
- Fork QtSerialport and oimplement its interfaces on top of BLE, possibly utilizing https://github.com/piggz/qble/
This project started out as a fork of Amazfish, simply because some or most of the base infrastructure matches the need of a "companion" app for a Flipper device.
Namely support of BLE and the basic use case of receiving and sending various kinds of data from and to a BLE device.
But, the use cases if a companion app for fitness trackers and smart watches might not align with the ones wanted by a Flipper keeper. This remains to be seen.
This issue is to keep track and discuss any issues pertaining to the architecture and other considerations regarding the building of such a companion app.