Hacking a Smart Response XE (Pt.2)

Updates

I'm baaaaack!

Let's Catch Up

I finally decided to pick up this project yet again and, with some better soldering skills (and tools! Pinecil is great!) under my belt, I successfully flashed Larry's SRXE Bootloader to a board and fixed the UART connection, which means that I can now develop my very own firmware for the Smart Response XE!
Well, by start, I really mean that I've already started, and it's really starting to take shape.

Care For A Demo?

By the way, if you're curious as to what Innonet is, I'll talk about it briefly in this blog post, and more information on it will come soon™.

The firmware will be uploaded to a GitHub repository in a preview state by the time this blog post releases.

What Exactly is Done so Far?

• So far, the UI is about 70% done (most of it works, need to implement other dropdown menus and fix some bugs).
• If you have a keen eye, you will notice the header said DremXE, as opposed to the original name (which was DremduinOS XE). A little birdy told me to drop the "duinOS". It's cleaner.
  
• Applications and tasks are both currently working (technically). More on both later.
• Code is in place to initialize a LoRa modem over UART. It's hard coded for now, but will later use the flash chip to store user-inputted settings, as well as take user input to directly control the modem.
• Crammed my logos into laughable resolutions and made them a whole four colors, which somehow turned out way better than expected.

What's Next?

• Although the UI is mostly done, there is still a bit of work to do.
• I'd like to make the taskbar a different color, maybe (kinda just thinking out loud here).
• A second (perhaps even a third) dropdown menu needs to be added, which would probably act as a sort of right click and contain functions on a per-application basis.
• The applications are obviously not actually developed yet.
• A DCL interpreter (yet another project I get to discuss soon™).
• DCL Applications would probably be stored on the flash chip, and be downloadable from the Innonet, or other LoRa networks that have a file hosting server.
• A file hosting server? What do you mean?! Well, I've been planning to develop a way to download or upload files though a LoRa network. It'd be like FTP, but for LoRa. I'd love to talk about it here, but I'm tired. But do not fret, I will talk about it soon™.

What's This DCL Thing?

DCL is a programming language I'm currently developing that's designed to add a layer of abstraction so that an application can be written for one platform with the "Drem" name and work on other platforms with the "Drem" name.

I'm currently working on a document that lays out the standards a DCL interpreter must meet, but it's very primitive.

The syntax is similar to MMBASIC because its original purpose was to be used by the UI I'm developing for the Color Maximite 2 as a way to run other applications that aren't built into the same MMBASIC script. More on the UI in another post!

I estimate it'll be a long time until anything DCL comes out.

What are Tasks?

Tasks in my firmware are essentially glorified booleans that determine whether an application will update it's information/do whatever it does, even if it's not the foreground application. Only one application can be in the foreground (I could do some sort of windowing or tiling system but... no), so this just allows the device to bring at least some form of multitasking to the table. Tasks will be able to be ended in the Tasks application.

One More Thing

I found another device that I may be able to port DremXE to. It's another clicker/response device that's almost suspiciously similar to the Smart Response XE. It's called the Turning Technologies QT, and below I've attached an image of it. It also has a younger brother named the QT2, which I believe is mostly (if not completely) the same under the hood, being just a redesign. I can't verify this because I couldn't really find much documentation of the devices' internals, so this is mostly uncharted territory!

I currently have the J-Link EDU dingus and am waiting on a breakout board and new cables. I'll have to solder new wires to the jtag port as well.

Look at it. It's like if a SRXE had a child with a Blackberry. I love it.


Soon™ count: 3. Wow!