Hi all. I'm new here, but it looks like a great thing you all have going! Anyway, I'd like to bounce an idea off of all of you Kindle experts and see if you think it sounds reasonable (i.e., can the Kindles handle this).
Basically, I'm hoping to be able to hack a bunch of Kindle Touches to run a full screen web app (custom written for the kindle) on batteries for about 11 hours a day (screen saver/sleeping turned off). 95% of the time during the 11 hour time period, the Kindle would act as a refreshing informational display. Once a minute (ideally...but can be every 5 minutes if necessary to save batteries), the Kindle would contact a local web server to get information and do a cpu-lite refresh of its display. The other 5% of time there will be user interaction with the web app. Nothing computationally expensive, but during this time there would be some wifi traffic and page loads.
So
question #1 is do you think that 11 hours is a reasonable-to-expect battery life? I could determine the answer to that question by making a dummy web app to try and mimic the approximate amount of cpu/screen refreshing that the real app would have, but if you all already know that my expectations are clearly reasonable or clearly unreasonable, that would save me a step. I have a feeling my expectations may be borderline here (and thus might have to test to be sure). Please let me know!
Batteries aside, I
know I could write the
web code needed and
think I can handle enhancing
K5 WebLaunch in way to make the software actually
run on the Kindle with the desired additional features. However, I don't know what I don't know about the Kindle platform as a whole, if that makes sense. If you could give me some heads up on things I should be aware of--gotchas or pitfalls for this type of application--that would be awesome, and please consider that
question #2.
Finally, regarding enhancing WebLaunch, which I just mentioned, that leads to
question #3: anybody see any obvious issues to me eventually being able to figure out how to add the following functionality?
- Ability to launch the app so you hold the kindle in an upside down orientation.
- Ability to either block or (even better) remap the home button.
- Ability to play sounds. (In my case, a short "ding" type clip to attract attention to the display a couple of times an hour.)
My rudimentary understanding is that there are Pillow/LIPC calls that could be used to make those happen, right?
Thanks in advance, and apologies for the long post! If you're curious as to what all of this would be used for, check the spoiler. *I* think it is something cool.
Spoiler:
Basically we run tournaments for this cool board game (semi-random picture from a recent event):
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Smaller image:
The tables would usually be full (this was a slow time), but you get the idea. Picture several dozen people playing that miniatures game simultaneously. Each individual board/map would have one kindle next to it in a stand and would perform the following functions to help us run the tournament.
- list the map number of that station
- at the start of a round, every kindle would list the pairings for all maps ("Player A vs Player B on map 1", "Player X vs Player Y on map 2"). You consult any kindle at the beginning of the round find out where to go/play for that round.
- provide information about the details of the current round in the tournament (time limits and such, who is playing at this station),
- provide certain useful game-related reference information plus details about the map the players have in front of them (e.g., allowed areas on that map where they can place their armies at the start of the game, etc.),
- provide a timer for how much time remains in the current round
- provide browseable tournament result information (for following along how other friends are doing during downtime if you finish your game early)
- would be what the players use to send the results of their game (who won and some other details) back to those of us running the tournament. The game results would then be used to determine correct Swiss style pairings for the next round of tournament, eventually leading to identifying our winners.
- provide a button to call a referee over for a question or ruling
- might (this is lower priority) also be used to register yourself for the various tournaments we run through the day (you have to provide information on what figures you are using in your army and it could check to make sure it meets the requirements for the rules of a particular tournament). The idea behind this last one is that there is time between one tournament finishing and the other starting. Players could just grab any available Kindle and register themselves instead of us (the organizers) doing it at our main computer, which is a bottleneck.
The above system, if it works, feels pretty slick to me. It would help with getting game information recorded accurately and round/map information distributed quickly and widely. Depending on the tournament format, games getting called on time (running too long) can be an issue and when there is a lot of that, it threatens to make the schedule slip. Finishing one round on time and getting the new set of parings determined swifty (which this whole system would REALLY help with) helps things run on time which makes everyone (players and organizers) happier.
BTW, we're all just fans of the game. Nobody is making money on this. I have the chance for a screaming deal on the Kindle Touches so hope to determine if this is feasible pretty quickly while I can still get the deal. Even with the deal this will still be pretty pricey to put into play since we're talking about a lot of Kindles.