iOS App
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Hi, are there any iOS developers? I would like to have a iOS app for DWC, because it sucks to use a browser every time I need to control my duet (when I am not close to the printer)
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I flatly do not get the "app instead of web page" idea. Honest question, please help me understand.
Launch the app by touching an icon... or launch the web interface by touching an icon*... what is the difference you expect in your "user experience"?
I understand why COMPANIES want to push apps. They want branding and lock-in. But end users? Literally, what is the difference?
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* Not "Launch the browser and find a history or favorite". I understand why that is a pain... Instead, literally, one click of an icon on the "home screen", precisely exactly like an app launch. Both iOS and Android will save a link to a web page as an icon, directly on the "phone desktop", just like any other app.
Delta / Kossel printer fanatic
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I know I can add the link to my homepage, but it is still a website, and the experience on mobile is not that good
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@danal and another thing, I want to check my print status on my apple watch, OctoPod does this really well, but it is octoprint only, no duet wifi support
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@danal I really tried to use the website on my AW, it worked, but it suuuuuuuucks
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Fair enough... and I don't want to override your original request, if there are developers that are interested... but personally, I'd phrase it as "can we improve the web interface on mobile?". That way, no app to fall behind or get out of sync.
If there is a developer interested: The underlying service model is dead easy. I was able to produce "multiduet" web in just a few days.
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But one thing still is true, an app optimalization is much better than a website optimalization on mobile because the mobile browser allows zoomong and sideways scrolling and it is not as smooth as in an app, you cant do anything about it, as well as the watch integration, that is only possible on an native app
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I’m an Android developer, I have thought about doing an app but just haven’t had the time.
To be honest I can usually just glance at my printer to see the status, have my computer on or just load dwc on my iPad. So haven’t really felt the need to make an app.
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@patakopecek that’s not entirely true. The watch thing you are right about. Modern web applications can be highly optimised for use in mobile browsers and now DWC has been rebuilt in Vue.js the performance should be vastly improved. The zooming/scrolling behaviour of websites on mobile browsers can all be controlled if the page is setup in the required way.
A huge amount of the apps out there are not true native apps. A lot of them use other technologies such as web JavaScript frameworks and they are either then compiled to run native machine code or wrapped to appear as a native app.
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@richardmckenna what language do you use? If you would use react native or something like it it would be super easy to port over to iOS, and if the data would be acessible in variables it would be easy to make a watch extension
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@richardmckenna yeah, you can optimize it and it was optimized a lot compared to DWC1 but it will never be as good as a native app optimalization wise, because the browsers do not allow it
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@chrishamm woudl you add this to the website code? <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes" /> I am not familiar with vuejs but I will learn it eventually
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@patakopecek For Android I did use Java but switched to Kotlin last year. For web applications I generally use Vue.js and Firebase nowadays.
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@richardmckenna oh really? I heard that kotlin is very easy to port over to swift
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@patakopecek yeah they are very similar languages. I love the fact that Kotlin is so interchangeable with Java.
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@patakopecek - this is something I have been playing with as a background project to learn iOS programming. My goal was to replicate the look and feel of the paneldue display as an app.
Motivation is threefold, one I don’t want to pay £50+ for the display when I can use the DWC (with inconveniences as my PC is never near my printer) , two - I have lots of old iPhones lying round and. Three I was interested to see how hard it is to write an app
It’s slow going as I can’t allocate any time to it (also building a new Delats printer and that is more fun). I’ll post photos once I can move it forward to a prototype.
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@jim would you mind sharing the progress? I maybe could help a little bit
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@patakopecek Yes, I can add it to DWC2-RC4.
There is already an app for Android which does an mDNS broadcast in order to discover Duet WiFi boards on the local network but once you select a machine, it only displays the web interface in a web view. mDNS support on the DuetM and Duet Ethernet still needs to be implemented.
