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sparkmicro / Ki-nTree

Fast part creation for KiCad and InvenTree
GNU General Public License v3.0
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Demo #4

Closed WhiteChairFromIkea closed 4 years ago

WhiteChairFromIkea commented 4 years ago

Create a demo platform (web server / virtual machine image) for easier start. Just leaving this as low priority to do here 🙂

eeintech commented 4 years ago

@WhiteChairFromIkea I agree, the entry level for installing the application is quite high. I was looking into Beeware software packaging suites to create an installer, is that what you had in mind? Or did you mean more like a Docker image/container?

WhiteChairFromIkea commented 4 years ago

I meant you could preconfigure a small linux installation inside Oracle "Virtual box" and provide *.VHD (virtual disk image) for users to download. Users of interest should then install Virtual box and use VHD you provided in order to try things. Your VHD would follow latest changes, because you should reinstall latest version inside your VHD (also - this would be good for you as a troubleshooter).

I think there are no licensing issues - Oracle "Virtual box" is under GPL2, small linux distro like Puppy Linux shrinks to under 100Mb (as far as I remember). You could share VHD in your google drive. Virtual box runs on any platform. Installing Virtual box on user OS makes similar impact as would installing all the dependencies on windows (bash, python..).

eeintech commented 4 years ago

It might be the first time I hear about Oracle "Virtual box". While I understand how it would all come together, do you have an example application which is packaged in such a way? I would like to get a "feel" for the end user.

eeintech commented 4 years ago

@WhiteChairFromIkea I started playing with Gitpod, I can get Ki-nTree running and interact with it, however it rendered useless by the fact that KiCad isn't installed on the system it is running on, it should be ran on the same system. InvenTree could work because the API can connect to any given URL but still I don't think there is any benefit in this "demo" version versus spending the time to set it up on your own system. Does it makes sense to you?

EDIT: If you want to checkout how the application runs and looks like on Gitpod, use this link to open it in a new workspace: https://gitpod.io/#https://github.com/sparkmicro/Ki-nTree/tree/gitpod

Note: I think you'll need to login into Gitpod first. It takes a while to start the virtual machine up, please be patient :smiley:

Once the interface is loaded wait for the init script to complete then run python3 kintree_gui.py in the terminal. Click on "Ports: ..." on the bottom-right corner, port 6080 should be running and available. Click on "Open Browser" button, it will open a new tab with Ki-nTree GUI application running.

Note: If port 6080 says "Detecting..." and does not offer the "Open Browser" option, reload the current page

WhiteChairFromIkea commented 4 years ago

Wow, you gave very precise instructions (especially port 6080 "Detecting..."), and I can see VM with Ki-nTree , but don't know what to do next :D, but I am willing to know :)

image

Demo experience should be like partkeepr or partsbox, but I don't have a knowledge about how to do that, sorry. I also don't have an examples for Oracle VM as demos, this was just an idea, and is similar to what you have done already, instead yours Gitpod is true online version, which is cool.

eeintech commented 4 years ago

Ki-nTree is focused towards InvenTree, I am not really planning on supporting any other part inventory systems, unless someone would be willing to put time into it.

Do you already have an InvenTree instance running locally or on a server? Do you use KiCad or are you only interested in the inventory system side-of-things?

WhiteChairFromIkea commented 4 years ago

Ki-nTree is focused towards InvenTree, I am not really planning on supporting any other part inventory systems, unless someone would be willing to put time into it.

This issue is about creating user friendly demo, partkeepr and partsbox from previous post were just an examples of how online demos should look like;

Do you already have an InvenTree instance running locally or on a server?

No, installation on Windows was unsuccessful / too complex, so I created this issue about creating some kind of demo platform for new users (like me);

Do you use KiCad or are you only interested in the inventory system side-of-things?

I am a KiCad user, currently tied to PartsBox. PartsBox free plans are not sufficient when running two or more PCB assembly batches at a time, so I wanted to try InvenTree / Ki-nTree and faced difficulties as a starter.

Edit: I realized just now... I have failed to setup inventree server, far away to from trying Ki-nTree. It seems I have created an issue in wrong github project :)

eeintech commented 4 years ago

@WhiteChairFromIkea Sorry for being so interrogative and thank you for answering thoroughly, I was trying to get a sense of your target setup and application.

I understand you are looking for an existing InvenTree demo setup to play with so that you can use Ki-nTree to add parts to, I had assumed you only needed the latter :grimacing: InvenTree and @SchrodingersGat (the creator) do not provide demo instance of InvenTree. I think it would be a good idea to have but I can see many problems to hosting a write-enable instance accessible by any user off the internet, it could get really messy. A read-only version like PartsBox or PartKeepr provide is more likely, but in that case that wouldn't solve anything on your side...

Do you have a Rasperry Pi or old laptop you can convert to Linux and run InvenTree on?

eeintech commented 4 years ago

Edit: I realized just now... I have failed to setup inventree server, far away to from trying Ki-nTree. It seems I have created an issue in wrong github project :)

That's totally fine! Sorry I couldn't help you more, happy to brainstorm here or there :smile:

eeintech commented 4 years ago

@WhiteChairFromIkea What do you think? I'm gonna close this issue for the time being, feel free to open a new one!