Question: why split repos for app/ui?

[cmitz]

Hi Andrew,

First: excuse me for bothering you with an email about "just" a question. Second: I'm incredibly grateful that you made this application. It's awesome!

Now the question: why are the app and UI part of the system split into different repositories?

I've currently spent a few minutes in the app, and became quite frustrated with the UI being in a remote place. Changing something in the UI means committing and pushing in UI, and running Yarn again in this repo. Thats get old very fast...

[andrewhao]

Sorry for the trouble, @cmitz! If you want, you can just dump the UI code into the local Express assets folder if you want to iterate faster.

We had originally hoped to decouple the "server" from the web UI because we had a separate project to build out a native iOS app, so we thought it would be a good idea to decouple them. Additionally, decoupling the apps started us down the journey of building out a more rigorous interface between the two.

Unfortunately, we ran out of steam. This project is now basically unmaintained, as I don't have the free cycles to work on this anymore.

What are you working on? Anything I can help you with?

[cmitz]

That sounds like a good plan! Sorry to hear that your time has run out. I'm not sure if I have anything to add in the near future, but I used it at a prom of our student association.

My plan was to run it on a Pi Zero W. However, I quickly learned the Pi was not nearly powerful enough to run the server and client.
In the couple of hours I had, I hacked a new route in the app to be able to receive the "shoot" command via WLAN. Thanks to the broadcast (emit) way of Shmile that was very easy. Behind this plate I attached a Pi Zero W with a button soldered on the the GPIO.

I might use this for future events, so when I have something good I will submit a PR ;-)

[andrewhao]

That's super rad, @cmitz! Would love to see a wiki page on how you got it to work, with aforementioned photo :) Glad it worked for you!