Roku Developer Program

[jordanmessina]

I ported node-whiteboard, my node.js/HTML5 Canvas app, to the Roku. It allows you to collaboratively draw using any browser supporting HTML5. A video demo w/ an iPad and Safari can be seen here: http://yfrog.com/jb76977570z . The Roku version uses roImageCanvas for display and long polling to grab all user points from a node.js server. The issue with the Roku version is it's very slow to render. I've posted the code on github in the roku subdirectory: https://github.com/jordanmessina/node-whiteboard

Here's a quick video demo of the Roku version (don't mind my dog):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOIzC4kPMr4

As you can see, it's somewhat slow to display the points on the Roku. I thought it might have been the url request blocking on the thread and not allowing the canvas to finish rendering, but upon further investigation it doesn't seem to be that. I was hoping to get some advice with a more efficient rendering technique, or even a better Roku object to use that would accomplish the same thing as roImageCanvas. Thanks in advance for any help. Also, fork it and make it your own if you wish 🙂

[mainmanc]

Are you running 3.0 SDK?

You might take a look at the newer/updated components for 2D rendering like:

roScreen
roBitmap
roCompositor
roSprite

Cool proof of concept though. 🙂

Cheers.

[jordanmessina]

"mainmanc" wrote:
Are you running 3.0 SDK?

You might take a look at the newer/updated components for 2D rendering like:

roScreen
roBitmap
roCompositor
roSprite

Cool proof of concept though. 🙂

Cheers.

Wow, I guess I completely overlooked this announcement. This is exactly what I'm looking for, and I've already got about 90% of the work complete 🙂

Thanks for the heads up!

[uarlive]

pretty cool. just checked out the demo. have you thought of turning this into a game similar to charades? just a thought.

[jordanmessina]

"mainmanc" wrote:
Are you running 3.0 SDK?

You might take a look at the newer/updated components for 2D rendering like:

roScreen
roBitmap
roCompositor
roSprite

Cool proof of concept though. 🙂

Cheers.

After looking at the firmware version on my Roku and trying to understand the development blog, do I still need to request access to the firmware to run the 3.0 SDK or will it run on Roku firmware v3.1? I was using SDK v2.9...

[jordanmessina]

"uarlive" wrote:
pretty cool. just checked out the demo. have you thought of turning this into a game similar to charades? just a thought.

Thanks for checking it out! I was considering it. I've been having a lot of fun porting it to different devices and just using it as is. All the code is on Github, so anyone who wishes to turn it into a full fledged game can do it if they want!

[renojim]

"jordanmessina" wrote:
After looking at the firmware version on my Roku and trying to understand the development blog, do I still need to request access to the firmware to run the 3.0 SDK or will it run on Roku firmware v3.1? I was using SDK v2.9...

It will run on 3.0 or above, so 3.1 or 4.x is fine.

-JT

[jordanmessina]

Thanks for the advice and info regarding the SDK v3.0! I used roScreen and it's working perfectly. Here's a new video showing it off: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4dhYm3iArU

Like I said, the code's on github so feel free to do what you want with it.

Thanks again,
Jordan