I’m not super experienced with API development, but I’m trying to learn!
I don’t see any windows instructions on the getting started page is there any way i can download starlark, or am i not able to do that?
Thanks
**I’m going to piggy back on the top of this thread to help make some of the information more organized and easy to access. The goal here is to make a thread for people with little coding experience who want to get started making apps for Tidbyt.
Appreciate the offer, but ill pass. I just built my new gaming rig and im trying to keep it cleaner then my last by not installing a bunch of extra stuff on it I don’t need.
Im not a developer by trade so whole second OS is just not really worth it it me. Maybe Ill pick up a spare laptop from a friend or something and try that out. Hopefully in the future a more streamlined windows solution can be offered??
I know what you mean, I just got a new computer… and all the development overhead is not something I want either!
I am going to use a virtual machine, running Ubuntu, to see if I can get that to work. VirtualBox and Ubuntu should be easy to do, maybe the newer Hyper-viser (sp?) would work as well.
-Scott
[Update: I just finished installing VirtualBox, Ubuntu, and Pixlet, and ran the Hello World pixlet test. It was pretty easy.
If you need help, let me know.
Basically:
Download Virtual Box, install it. If for some reason you don’t have Hypervisor enabled, you may need to activate it. Google can help.
Download Ubuntu LTS version, create a New Virtual Box Virtual Machine, point to the Ubuntu ISO File. I created a 30GB virtual drive and I had about 10GB left over.
Start your Ubuntu virtual machine. Open a terminal, install curl: sudo apt install curl
Open Firefox in Ubuntu and search for pixlet (I went to Tidbyt, home, SDK, clicked the link to get to the github for Pixlet. Downloaded Pixlet .gz file.).
Go to the Downloads folder (or wherever you put the .gz file, of course). gunzip the .gz file. Then tar xvf the .tar file. (Can probably use tar xzvf now that I think about it…) At the level of pixlet, run the test command, in the Readme, from the command line. This starts the Hello World pixlet app on a local pixlet server (local to Ubuntu). Note, it (the pixlet server) will ‘stay open’ until you ctrl-c the process at the command line. This is good. Just let it stay there for now. Come back when you are done and ctrl-c to stop the server and get back to the command line.
In Firefox on Ubuntu, go to http://localhost:8080 … you should see the Hello World pixlet app display a “Hello, World!” message in the browser window:
Quick question before I try and jump into this. My new PC has an old 1TB HDD slapped in from my last rig which I mostly use for file store. That way the new 1TB SSD I bought for my new rig is strictly just steam gaming stuff.
Theoretically I could install all this virtual box and Linux stuff to the old HDD and it would still all work?
I feel like it kind of a dumb question, but I just want to make sure first!
No question is a bad question… never hurts to ask!
VirtualBox will install on your main drive in your program files, unless you try to install it elsewhere. It won’t take up much space (relatively). The Virtual machines can be installed onto any drive, so, yes on the old drive is fine. Just point to the drive letter when you make the virtual machine.
You can also make a restore point (I think) in Windows to undo things if they don’t go the way you like.
I had the same question, and disappointed I just now found this after trying to work around stuff for the last 5+ hours. I wish there was a streamlined way for Windows users – I was really looking forward to making some super personalized screens and maybe stuff like Twitch go live notifications, but unfortunately all of this finagling for Windows users just isn’t worth it to me.
Going the Windows WSL and VScode route as suggested by @jeremy wasn’t as much of a hassle as I expected it to be once I got my files in the right location.
@jeremy or @pineapple Would you mind outlining the steps you took in a bit more detail?
I was able to grab an old laptop from a family member that I’d live to just strictly use for development purposes. Right now I’m using @Scottorama method on my personal pc.
So I think I did the following steps to get it to work.
1.Download wsl using the install instructions found here.
2. Install VSCode and installed the Remote Development extension there. (I don’t know how much this is really required, but I did it anyway). You will be able to call the Ubuntu terminal through VSCode or through the Ubuntu app (just a terminal when you search it in the task bar).
3. Download the pixlet binary file into the bin folder of the Ubuntu (in windows file folder this is \\wsl$\Ubuntu\usr\bin).
4. While in the bin folder from the Ubuntu command line using sudo tar -xf <filename> where filename is the pixlet binary.
5. From here you should be able to download the zipped source file from github to get the examples (place this somewhere where you have write access on the Ubuntu side). ‘Ubuntu/home’ should work. It may be easier to download on the windows side and then unzip it to the remote side.
6. The examples outlined on github should now work.
I’m working to follow the directions to get pixlet working on my windows machine, but I’m encountering an error when I try to run the sudo tar -xf where filename is the pixlet binary. I am supposed to type the command as sudo tar -xf , right?
I’m getting an error that says -bash: syntax error near unexpected token `newline’
I’m doing a lot of googling, but Linux and coding in general is new to me.
@rohan, Would there be a more user-friendly method for windows coming out in the future?
Sorry @Keith_Leonhardt - I’ve not been checking in over the festive season. Did @pineapple get your issues solved? Once you have it up and running from VS Code with the remote WSL plugin, you probably won’t ever need to go into Linux unless something breaks
any idea what i need to do to get Step #4 to work here i keep getting this same error? Im not sure if this is useful info, but I have and intel processor. Should i be using the arm binary file instead of amd?
I’m not sure why it’s saying you can’t open the file or directory unless you aren’t in the folder that you put that .tar.gz file in, which would do it.
I was able to download the .gz file and unpack it just fine using that command. If you go to that file and right click the .tar.gz file from github and copy the link address and run sudo curl -O -L <copied link address> and then do sudo tar -xf pixlet_0.8.5_linux_amd64.tar.gz that should work for this step.
However I haven’t been able to get pixlet to work past 0.8.2 as I may be missing a library or something. I opened up a github request though concerning that while I troubleshoot as my roommate is getting the same error.
I’m not sure why it’s saying you can’t open the file or directory unless you aren’t in the folder that you put that .tar.gz file in, which would do it.
This might be where my problem lies im just launching unbuntu and then typing that sudo tar -xf command is there a specific way i need to access my bin folder within Unbuntu before i type that sudo tar -xf in.
Also, i really appreciate the help ive never used Linux so that is all an exciting learning experience for me!
