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Help: Web UI

Updating Web UI from Web UI.

In some cases, especially if you think that something does not work as it should, try to update Web UI once more, overriding version checking for the second update. This may be required because of some changes we have possibly made to the updating routine, thus you shall retrieve the updating routine code with the first update, and then use it for the consecutive update.

Web UI Development.

If you want to help us with developing of the web interface for our firmware, here is what you need to know beforehands. Cameras are very limited in terms of space and performance. The only available option we have now in the firmware which is more or less suitable for dynamic generating of HTML pages is haserl, a fancy cousin of ash bent for serving as a CGI wrapper. Did I say ash? Right, because we don't have bash, tcsh, zsh in our Linux. Ash it is. As in A shell, full name Almquist shell. Tiny, lightweight, and kinda limited. System is limited, too -- in most parts it is busybox. So, if you still feel comfortable to make your hands dirty with a very 80s style of web development then welcome aboard.

Recent interface is built around Bootstrap CSS framework which is a little overkill for the purpose but allowed us to fast-track from the original microbe web to what we have now. We would like to slim down the original Bootstrap bundle and create a custom pack with only the features we use. If you posses such a skill, come and work with us.

Also, we're considering the possibility of switching to a client-side web interface builder, leaving only data-tossing to the server. Vue.js or similar. Have something to add here? Spill it out.

Any other ideas? We would like to listen them, too.

Running a development version of Web UI.

To start improving the web interface, clone its GitHub repo locally and set up an NFS mount on your camera to the root directory of the local copy:

mkdir -p /tmp/dev
mount -t nfs -o nolock,tcp 192.168.1.123:/full/path/to/web/files /tmp/dev

(replace 192.168.1.123 and /full/path/to/web/files with your own IP and path)

Then start another instance of httpd daemon to serve your version of Web UI on another port of the camera, say port 86:

httpd -p 86 -h "/tmp/dev/var/www" -c /dev/null

Now you can work on Web UI source code in your favorite IDE or a text editor on your workstation, and immediately test the changes with a web browser pointed to port 86 on the camera. (E.g. http://192.168.1.10:86/)

Remember that you substitute only web server contents, but there are also supporting scripts residing outside web directory. These scripts might require updating on camera in case you make changes to them, as well. To update a script on camera, open ssh session to the camera and copy updated version of the script from /tmp/dev/usr/sbin/ to /usr/sbin/.