So here’s a post about EVE Metrics 3.

We’re getting close to having everything polished and ready for release. The main issue at hand thus far has been the homepage; I say this like it’s a small thing but it’s required me to learn some new and interesting things about CSS, Makurid’s done some excellent work to produce some feed scrapers and elements for the lower portion of the page… there’s a lot to it.

I thought that it’d be good to list a few of the changes we’ve made for version 3.

• Complete redesign of the site thanks to Rettic
• Market detail pages have been entirely renovated
• Various pages which haven’t been improved in some time have now been tidied up
• API key management has been improved
• API key permissions management has been improved
• Backend processors for API functions and upload processing have been improved and made more reliable
• My Metrics has been entirely renovated, now with sparklines for wallets and a new layout
• Orders and transactions have been moved from My Metrics into their own detail pages, with a summary on My Metrics
• Journal information has been added and given it’s own detail page
• Player Owned Structure integration has been added, though still in it’s infancy
• Sensitive portions of the site now make use of SSL transport encryption (HTTPS) automatically
• Wormhole pages have been updated
• Improvements to the corporation pages through refactoring to share view code between character and corporation pages
• Graph improvements
• Complete test coverage of every line of code (Nah, just kidding, we’re still pretty thin on those test things for large chunks of UI code)
• 0.2% more cowbell
• 5% other features I’ve not listed above, plus 100% more polish overall

Excited? We are! There’s a lot of work in the lines above and I think you’ll like the results. We’re not sticking to any firm release schedule because we’re terrible at sticking to them; we’re students, not full-time developers (incidentally, if anyone’s got any jobs available for temporary/contract work, SE UK preferred (or work-at-home), 6 weeks max, let me know!). That said, we hope to have a release before the end of July.

We’ve also been rewriting our uploader! That’s right- Linux, Mac and Windows support all in one neat package. The GUI’s not anything special but it works, and we’ll be polishing it and getting it release-ready before long. Huge thanks should be directed to TTimo, who has been the driving force behind this with some welcome Python experience, and Makurid for assisting him in developing the new client.

Once we’ve gotten that polished, packaged and rolled out, we’ll be running a 5 billion ISK contest to promote it- the three winners (each receiving a portion of the 5 billion pool) will be selected from the most active uploaders for the week or two after the competition is announced. We’ll finalize all the details and have it posted up when we’re ready to go ahead with that, of course. If you’d like to make that 5 billion figure larger, you can contribute ISK to the character MMMetrics Agent ingame! So far, thanks go out to Rilcon, Chribba and Entity for contributing to the current pool. The new uploader will be released after the new site – we’d like to change one thing at a time so we can iron out all the kinks. Once we’ve gotten it out and tested it thoroughly we’ll roll out the upgrade- your existing uploader will prompt you to update when you start it.

One last thing – I’ve personally submitted a proposal to the CSM regarding development efforts from CCP surrounding the API and EVE Gate. If you’ve not done so already, I strongly urge you to read my proposal and support it if you feel, like I do, that CCP have made some serious mistakes lately in this regard. The thread can be found here. It has been picked up and supported by at least 3 CSM members so far, but the community support will help considerably to drive CCP to consider it seriously.

The app is Charactr, a web based skill training monitor and planner with both email and SMS notifications. Go check it out!

The team (MMMetrics) is the same team who will be attacking the problem of EVE Metrics 2. A quick rundown of the features of Charactr:

• Support for as many API keys as you want
• Flexible notification framework
  • Send notifications via text message or email
  • Get notifications on specific characters, accounts, or everything
  • Receive daily summaries, messages before or on completion
• Powerful skill planner
  • ‘New Character’ training speed bonus support
  • Learning skill suggestions
  • Reorder, add and delete skills
  • Training for item/ship
• Secure and fast access anywhere in the world
• SMS messaging to over 750 networks in over 200 countries

Enjoy!

I’ve been working on this for the last few days. It basically takes Open Sound Control (OSC) packets- from any number of clients- which specify a DMX address, value and fadetime. The server is written in Processing, and uses the oscP5 library. Right now it uses the ENTTEC USB DMX Pro adapter to talk to DMX via serial comms, plus an excellent DMX class published on the Processing forums.

Why would you want this? Well, it means you can use anything that supports OSC to control your lighting and theatrical effects. Beat-syncing music is a piece of cake, controlling from an iPhone/iPod Touch likewise (Just write a little webapp and you’re good- or use a tool like TouchOSC). It’s stable (I threw strobe commands at all 512 channels for 12 hours and it was still running just fine afterwards), works a treat, and is perfect if you’re writing an OSC app and want a quick and easy way to hook into DMX controls.

The only documentation is this: It expects a message to /set with typetag iif, in the format address (1-<unisize>, default 128), value (0-255), and fadetime (0.0-n, where n is a large float). Other than that, run and enjoy. I’ll be throwing the odd update to this up but I expect the API to remain the same. I’m using this for a project where we want to do some interesting things with a large number of LED parcans very quickly, so performance is fairly vital- it’s designed to be quick, but I’m not Java genius, so suggestions are welcome.

Using the Ruby OSC library, you can whip up a simple client in seconds:

This sets channel 1 to snap on. Easy, eh? I’ve not tested this with bundles but it should work fine.

You can grab the source (Processing required to run) over here on Github.

I’m under a bit of time pressure at the moment but might end up writing this again in openFrameworks. It’s C++, so much faster, and should be more flexible in terms of sheer speed. Sub-second strobes and so on should be attainable. My next hardware project? Bodged strobe controller for Arduino….