Re: Some upcoming CQC 1.4 teasers

["Dean Roddey" <droddey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> the current patchwork of things I use.  That's why I asked about tutorials
> and such, so I could ascertain the product's usefulness to me before
> risking, however slight, that a new SW installation disturbs something.
> No
> offense intended to your programming skills but it doesn't, apparently,
> take
> much to make many uninstall programs issue the message: "Some files could
> not be removed, etc., etc."

There are overview documents in the Documentation section, that discuss CQC
at a high level in terms of its architecture and what it does. The Overview
and Using CQC documents are good documents to start with.

The product will not disrupt your system. It literally only installs files
in its own installation directory. It create a couple menu items, which even
in the worst case nuclear case you cold just delete with two clicks. It
doesn't update any system files or install anything in any system
directories. It uses a service to run the background programs, but you can
start and stop that as you want, so you don't need to leave it running if
you want to take a few days to play with it. You can just start it up when
you want to play and then stop it. With the service stopped, it is doing
absolutely nothing and will have no effect whatsoever on your system.


> little details, and it shows.   How difficult would it be to animate a
> floor
> plan in CQC?  I'm talking about a tabbed floorplan, by story, that would
> show things like spinning attic fans, [OK] symbols above appliances and
> devices operating within defined parameters, temperatures within zones,
> status of doors and windows, room lights, outside lights and such and
> could
> alert me if a floodlight was on during the daytime.

Sure, you can do that. It'll be even better in the upcoming 1.4 release
since there's now an animated image widget for the user interface system. So
you'll be able to show a spinning fan type of animation. You could already
do things like show a window open if it's open or show status lights over a
floor plan and that kind of thing. Here's a simple example of that from
another demo I was working on for on the road demos (based on the device
simulator.)

http://www.charmedquark.com/www2/Downloads/Demo_Security.jpg


> I really liked the screen captured at:
>
> http://www.charmedquark.com/www2/Downloads/MikesPreviews/MediaOverlay.jpg

That's part of the upcoming media management stuff that will be in 1.4. In
that example it's talking to an Escient Fireball media server, but the media
architecture is driver based so we'll be able to support a number of them.
We'll be doing a UPnP based media driver since there are a number of UPnP
based renderers and repositories out there.

-------------------------------------
Dean Roddey
Chairman/CTO, Charmed Quark Systems
www.charmedquark.com