after pushing a custom app using pixlet, it appears just once on the device and then disappears forever
it isn’t listed as an app on my phone and isn’t listed as an installed app via the api either
Hello
The PUSH api functionality is only intended to display an image on the TIDBYT at this time, and it is not stored.
I would like the feature you suggest, that after pushing to the tidbyt, it will become one of the apps.
However, this might be an issue if you push many images and then they accumulate, then you would have to remove many apps, or remove the item right after you push if you did not want it to persist.
I think the Push method is good, and there should be a PushApp method that allows you to push an image/app, and it stays persistent as an Application on the tidbyt.
Or modify current Push with some parameters, one being “keep app” and maybe another can be “seconds to display” if you’d like to show it once for 2 minutes, for example
Another reason this might not be implemented yet, is because the method of creating a “app” it basically is a one-time rendered output of the Pixlet code. We would need the pixlet code to be stored in the backend to produce our “App” in a proper fashion. Otherwise we would be rendering the same output each time which is static. Apps are rendered at display time (assumption) on the Tidbyt servers and then an image is pushed to it.
We are only doing the image Push, so the tidbyt is just going to receive what it should be displaying at that moment. Which is just a one time thing, for every display the tidbyt presents us.
ok, but i purchased this based on the ability to write my own apps and have them installed on the app based on what i saw on your pixlet github repo
it is very deceptive for you to document a push feature both on the repo docs and in your blog without saying “by the way, it will just appear for a few seconds and then it’s gone, it will not be installed”
very disappointed and may need to request a return
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I too was under this assumption. After reviewing all the documents they provided, it was clear this is planned functionality.
I have confidence in the development team of this product and they will deliver the function you mention.
They must be working on these capabilities. I just hope they would come sooner than later. My worry is it may be complex to accomplish and takes long time.
Then I think about scaling it, how can they support a pixlet app that needs to refresh from a web socket 1 times a second? It might not be possible? Can that scale based on the architecture? What about when there is 1,000 Tidbyt’s receiving screen updates based on high frequency times chosen by users, will there be issues?
Hopefully not with today’s advanced cloud solutions available. Scaling goes way past hardware you’re running it on.
Interesting to see where this goes. I’d be devastated to find it a paperweight if things don’t go well.
Wait and see? Curious any return / warranty was available
Consider this functionality in mean time
If you have ability to run the push from your system, you could run a schedule to execute the pixlet render MyApp.star, then push command, you could simulate the device getting the app in rotation with the other apps.
App integration would require additions to the mobile app and more I expect
Hi, Mats from Tidbyt here.
First of all, I’m really sorry for doing a poor job communicating the state of DIY apps. We’ll do our best to make this clearer going forward. @bmckinney, if you want a refund we’ll 100% make that happen. I’ll send you a DM in a bit so we have a direct line of communication.
Currently, the only way to get your own content on the device is via the API. And as mentioned in this thread, multiple pushes are required to keep an image displayed for a longer period a time.
In the near future (and I do apologize for not being more specific) we hope to extend the API so that additional pushes are only required when you wish to refresh the content.
Ultimately, our goal is to open up the platform completely, so that your Pixlet scripts can be published and made available to other users (if you so wish). We’re not there yet, but learning that there’s real interest definitely helps us prioritize our work.
Again, I’m really sorry our comms haven’t been clearer. We’ll try to do better.
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Hi Mats - has anything changed on this front (I think it’s been a year and a half since). The pixlet documentation still only seems to allow pushing an image to the pixlet. Is it necessary to publish to the community apps repo to get any custom applet actually on the device? Like the other folks, I’m pretty surprised/disappointed that it doesn’t seem actually possible to run anything custom on the device.
Bump. It’s September 2023 and this is still the case. Any progress being made on this front?
I’ve created a tidbyt manager web app which allows you to upload/render your own starlark file. It will then render your file on an interval (default 60 minutes) and push to your tidbyt via official API. You must supply device id and api key for this to work. Click below and create an account to try it out. Using the official API is good because you can still control the official apps with the Tidbyt app while also having custom code pushing which is configured via the web app.