Systems

Applications using Kamaelia

This section describes some systems that have been created using Kamaelia. Some of these are available for download, or as part of the main Kamaelia distribution. If you'd like to add a description of a system you've built (large or small), please let us know!

Providing Tools to Provide the BBC the OPTION to put the Archive online

This is a complex area in itself, so we discuss this in the Challenges section of the Kamaelia website. This is the core motivation for Kamaelia from BBC R&D's perspective. Kamaelia is however a general toolset, and can be used to prototype new mechanisms for delivery of content to new platforms in new ways. These prototypes can then evolve into useful tools and systems. As they do, they will be described on here. The main tool developed so far, as part of the above aim, is Kamaelia itself.

(NB when we say "the archive online", we mean as much as is reasonable, practical, and as much as the license fee payer, BBC, & industry deem appropriate within the context that much of the archive has many rights issues. Kamaelia aims to knock down the technical challenges)

"As Broadcast" Radio Monitoring System - BBC Radio & Music

Availability: Internal to BBC Radio & Music only

Similar in concept to a "PVR for radio". Kamaelia has been used by BBC Radio & Music to produce a record of transmission (for 8 BBC channels 24x7). This is a development box for internally monitoring what is actually broadcast vs what the EPG data says. This enables prototyping of new services (subject to all sorts of restrictions). Examples include podcasts of all of BBC radio, particular tastes or genres. That then allows people to decide if they want these things and decide how to move forward with the industry.

Kamaelia's role was to be used to build a proof of concept prototype. It did prove the concept, so they worked on a traditional style, production quality replacement. We're now working with them to work towards a second generation architecture.

"Kamaelia Present" - Presentation Tool

Availability: Tools directory of Kamaelia distribution

This presentation tool has been used now for all presentations on Kamaelia since Europython 2005. If you've seen some cool stuff using it, then this is the tool used. If you thought it sucked, it's constantly evolving to include new features and stability :-) .

It features the following:

• The ability to take 2 sets of slides, and overlay them on top of each other. Both can be advanced independently, and use alpha blending to fade out either set of slides as a toggle
• Can take a set of "graph slides" for presenting more complex information easily - such as the structure of component systesm, choices through a system, or could potentially be used to show the structure of chemicals. Essentially anything that has blobs & lines joining them can use it. The layout of the blobs and lines uses the Topology Viewer Component , which uses a simple physics model to layout the components, which results in a dynamic pleasing layout, which can be moved around during a presentation.
  
  Like the slides, the graph slides can be advanced independently of the other slides. People who've seen me using this will know this is useful for making several points regarding a particular idea hinted on a background. Like the normal slides, the graph slides can also be faded out using alpha blending.
• Ability to incorporate a ticker into the presentation tool as well. This is nice for saying "and we're also looking at these things", without having to go through. The ticker is limited to the same sort of maximum rate for TV subtitles, so most people should be able to keep up, meaning that you don't really need to talk through the options (Indeed doing so would be laborious for an audience)

Limitations:

• Slides are collections of images. You currently need to create the slides in another tool and export as PNGs or GIFs
• The graphslides, whilst stored in an XML file, do not allow you to go *backwards* through a presentation. This may well change shortly, but is worth knowing about.
• Currently the ticker is a one shot affair - you can show one ticker, once, and what it shows is hardcoded.

However this is sufficiently useful, interesting to build on a move forward.

"Kamaelia Paint" - Image Creation

Availability: Kamaelia CVS, in Sketches

Many moons ago there were paint programs on systems like the Amiga. Things like Deluxe Paint, Photon Paint, and so on. They differ from tools like "the gimp" and "photoshop", in that they're not primarily aimed (or originally) at modifying an existing images (Photoshop, Gnu image manipulationprogram), but rather with providing tools an an interface aimed at creating images, using pixels, from scratch. Deluxe paint also had very nice tools for painting animations.

As a result Kamaelia Paint serves the following purposes:

• To show how to create a paint program using Kamaelia
• To aim towards making available once again this sort of incredibly useful tool.
• To have fun - this isn't a sponsored project by anyone, this is purely done in the personal time of Michael.

Currently (29/10/2005) this tool is incredibly primitive, but in conjunction with a (low cost :) graphics tablet is quite nice. An interesting difference from a traditional paint program is that it allows a command console as well (due to being written using Kamaelia).

Networked Audio Mixer Matrix

Availability: Kamaelia CVS, in Sketches

Detail TBH

Collaborative Whiteboarding

Availability: KamaeliaCVS, in Sketches/MH/Sketcher

An experimental sketch drawing program, where multiple users can connect together and all see and draw on the same sketch. You can also load and save the whiteboard. The fun bit is that instances can act as both client and server, meaning users can connect together in an ad-hoc peer to peer fashion. It is implemented using our pygame and networking components, and a few new ones.

Run sketcher.py with neither, either, or both of these command line arguments:

• --serveport=<port>
  Tell sketcher to allow other instances to connect on the specified port.

• --connectto=<host>:<port>
  Tell sketcher to connect to another instance listening on the specified port.

Draw using the mouse (or stylus if you've got a tablet). At the top is a drawing colour palette and eraser tool. Click on them to select them. Click with the right mouse button to toggle in and out of a fullscreen mode.

Whilst it is running, you also get a command prompt. This injects commands directly to the drawing Canvas component. Primarily it is there for you to load and save sketches (in bmp format, ensure you include the extension) and to clear the whiteboard:

>>> load "filename.bmp"
>>> save "filename.bmp"
>>> clear

The design centres on a Backplane component that acts as a bus. This connects together:

• The local 'sketcher' (Canvas and paint tools)
• Any clients that have connected (if you allowed serving)
• A connection to a server

Whenever something sends to the backplane, everything else receives. So, if two or more backplanes are coupled (by, for example, network connections) then they effectively behave like a single distributed backplane.

This has started out as a pet, personal time project by Matt.

General Stuff

Availability: Many of these are in Kamaelia's CVS, in Sketches

At R&D we've used it for sending subtitles to mobiles, building a networked audio mixer matrix, previewing PVR content on mobiles, joining multicast islands together using application layer tunneling and also a game for small children :-)