Last update : September 1, 2020

Referring to my recent post about the Tux Droid History, I would like to share my findings about the progress of the software development done by the community to keep Tux Droid alive.

Test environment

I use the following equipments to install and test the software :

1. PC Windows 7 64 bits

Windows 7 Edition Familiale Premium
Service Pack 1
Intel Core2 Quad CPU Q8400@2,66 GHz
RAM : 4 GB
Screen resolution : 1.024 x 768 pixels

2. PC Windows 7 32 bits

Windows 7 Edition Familiale Premium
Service Pack 1
Intel Pentium D CPU@2,66 GHz
RAM : 4 GB
Screen resolution : 1.280 x 1.024 pixels

3. Laptop Vista 32 bits

Windows Vista Home Premium
Service Pack 2
Intel Core2 DUO CPU T6400@2GHz
RAM : 4 GB
Screen resolution : 1.280 x 800 pixels

4. Laptop Linux Debian 32 bits

Gnome 3.4.2
Intel Core2 CPU U7500@1GHz
RAM : 1 GB
Screen resolution : 1.366 x 768 pixels

5. Tablet Samsung 2 7.0

Android Version 4.1.1
Dual Core Processor 1GHz
Memory : 16 GB
Screen resolution : 600 x 1.024 pixels (in portrait mode)

6. Tux Droid V2

Firmware : ?
5 ATMEL AVR microcontrollers
RAM : 128 MB

First Tests

Tuxbox 2.0

To start testing, I installed the binaries TuxBox_Setup_French_7_Vista.exe from the Tux Droid community depot on PC 1 and 2 and on Laptop 3. On Laptop 4, I installed the package tuxbox-French-TTS-3.1.4-i386.deb from the same website.

TuxBox 2.0 is running fine on all four equipements.

I uninstalled TuxBox 2.0 on the different computers before continuing the tests to avoid a mixing of libraries and files.

TuxDroidServer

Joël Matteotti developped the TuxDroidServer, using the TCP protocol, to manage the Tux Droid. I installed his Windows binaries TuxDroidServer-rev150-win32-binaries.zip on equipement 1, 2 and 3 and his Linux tarball TuxDroidServer-rev150-linux-i686-binaries.tar.gz on equipment 4. Here are the results of my tests :

• PC 1 (Windows 7 64 bits) : works as expected, but only in compatibility mode XP service pack 3
• PC 2 (Windows 7 32 bits) : works (with crashes) in normal or compatibility mode
• Laptop 3 (Vista 32 bits) : crashes even before the server is started, in normal or compatibility mode (see following figure)

•  Laptop 4 (Linux Debian 32 bits): Installation fails due to missing file libcurl.so.4. I was not yet able to find and install this shared library.

When the server is started on Windows, libtuxdriver version 29 is indicated. I expect to see version 30, referring to the documentation.

I don’t find any information about the warning concerning the STATUS FRAME.

TuxDroidClient

The window of the TuxDroidClient has fixed dimensions of 728 x 888 pixels and cannot be resized. I can only use it on PC 2 where the screen hight is sufficient to display the client window.

The error message displayed by the TuxDroidClient seems to have a problem with the character unicode.

Android Controller

I copied the Android package TuxDroidControler-1.3.0-Android-2.3.3, created by Joël Matteotti, to my Android Development workspace and installed it succesfully with the command

adb install bin/TuxDroidControler.apk

on my equipment 5 (Samsung tablet 2  7.0 ). After saving the IP address, port number and Tux key of the server in the app, it works as expected (knowing that it is still a proof of concept).

Next steps

In the next step I will try to set up a Tux Droid Development environment for Windows and Linux to compile the binaries from the SVN sources and to progress with my tests based on the most recent software revisions. I will also have a closer look at the firmware and at the driver updates and check if my Tux Droids have the latest firmware. Finally I will file all identified bugs in the Bug Tracker.