Web Based Gamebuino Emulator / Mobile App

[blakewford]

Underclocked2.png (99.91 KiB) Viewed 63526 times

So I did something interesting today to confirm where I stand on Android support. Currently, I have seen the Javascript based version run at anywhere from ~2Mhz to 7Mhz highly dependent upon local settings and desktop processor speed. 7Mhz requires newer i7 processors. For Android, I have spent the last month or so aggressively trying to implement and optimize a native build. Alas for all my effort I can only pull out about 4Mhz using a combination of C++ paired with a Java based UI. The UI updates cost me about a Mhz, but even without I am sadly still unable to approach ~16Mhz.

To confirm my emulated clock speed I decided to underclock my Gamebuino. After doing so, the look and feel of code running on my Nexus 5 is actually surprisingly accurate. This leads me to push the project in a new direction. I feel like I can reasonably emulate some wearable projects(typically ~8Mhz or less), so I plan to focus in that direction for awhile. I will keep testing on new Android device generations to gauge processor upgrades, but honestly I have not seen amazing gains from a 2010 era device to my Nexus 5.

For now, awesomely accurate web based or Android based Gamebuino just isn't possible with the infrastructure I have built, but I find it likely I can do good elsewhere. I'd like to thank everyone for their appreciation. I won't be dropping Gamebuino support, just adjusting focus. If you have questions, concerns, or feel the need to contribute to the source in some way, I'll still be here.

Blake

[Hark0]

Hi @Blake... you can send-me a APK file with FPS / debug info activated... and I test on my samsung S4 (rooted)...


hmmm How you are rendering? opengl? SDL?

[Myndale]

Thanks for all your work on this blakewford, it's been really interesting watching its development progress. I'm wondering if a maybe a viable Javascript emulator might have to resort to techniques completely different to what any of us have been doing so far in the existing emulators. You're always going to be hit hard by the fact that Javascript is a single-threaded VM, so the only way I can see any serious gains being made is by taking advantage of JIT compilation (specifically, on a per-instruction level). But if the target machine doesn't support that then, well, I'm not sure there's much more that can be done, at least not without resorting to native solutions.

[blakewford]

Thanks for all the positive feedback.

In a moment of shameless self promotion, if you are part of, or follow such things, I'd ask that you drop by and take a look at the Hackaday Prize 2015 page.

https://hackaday.io/project/6873-boardmicro

[johncalvin]

I can't express about your company not only using words. In reality, gamebuino has more experience to create mobile applications. I was amazed look at your application. I expect, you have to keep this good idea.

[adekto]

if you know how to port this, i got an apple dev licence i can put it up there for free

[blakewford]

I believe it to be fully possible to port, but I just don't have the time to figure it out at the moment. I could build it, but it would require significant UI work and it would most likely be rejected by Apple if you tried to put it in the App Store. While a version exists in Google Play, the app was rejected from the Amazon App Store for being an emulator that could potentially be used to pirate copyrighted material. I'm not really convinced there is a protected way to distribute content for the Gamebuino in the first case, but if Amazon is sticking to it I am confident Apple would as well.

[superfreaky]

I haven't used Dropbox, but the examples are running horribly, unusable slow. I have a Google Nexus 4. It should run fine right?

[blakewford]

It will always run slowly, check out this post in the thread history.

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1381&start=59

[superfreaky]

But is it really supposed to be least than 0.5 fps?