Ardour on linux pda ?

It is possible to run ardour with a linux pda device ? (like zaurus…)

Thanks

it mostly depends on floating point support from the processor

Interesting idea! Never thought about it… So please excuse the following babble:

Most “current” PDAs use something ARM-like and I believe they do not have native FPU, or MMU for “protected” memory management. However there are some Zaurus model’s in Japan (SL-C3200) that use Intel XScale PXA270 (which I don’t know).

I am not making a blanket statement saying all PDAs are like this. But the market for Linux based PDAs is lower that I’d like!

I believe all (most) of the Zaurus’s come with Qtopia (which is NOT X11, it’s Qt) and Ardour needs GTK on top of X11! If it was written with Qt widgets… porting would be simpler. But to port the UI tools to Qt would be a waste of resources – the core of Ardour needs more focus / not the widgets! And I believe GTK is better / smarter set of widgets to use (in part due to licensing).

The other issue is performance as in raw CPU performance, (memory) bus throughput, and storage device transfer rates. The SL-C3200 comes with 6GB HD… Which is enought for smaller Ardour projects.

Last would be “quality” ADC/DAC (sound hardware)…

You would be better off getting some sort of “micro” portable thing – don’t have a model yet, but there are some new Intel based smaller than portable “brick” like all-in-wonder PCs coming out.

The idea is still interesting.

–Doug

Thanks for answer !

Open Zaurus, don’t have GTK ?

the familiar project for HP with GPE ?
“GPE uses the X Window System, and the GTK+ widget toolkit…”

I think one feature very intresting is run only ardour GUI on a linux PDA to control an ardour on pc by wifi !

Olivier

That is also a good idea. It has been touch (in various ways) by support for the various control surface APIs (hardware) that are available. Ardour already supports (basically all) midi-based control surfaces (like the BCF2000) and is including support for additional APIs (search around this forum for more information – including one wireless device for transport control from Frontier Design [the Tranzport])

But I understand (in part) your idea… Perhaps adding an “open” (aka documented) API for some networked controlled API. I seem to remember some MIDI over Ethernet (or perhaps it was IPv4), perhaps that is all that is needed to extend MIDI access to a wireless PDA.

Would you be using the PDA for transport control (goto marker, rewind, stop, record, playback, fast forward/rewind, etc.) ?? or full blown surface control (sliders, pan, effects – anything that is some sort of “automation” control).

Both are doable (in part) from MIDI, so perhaps that is the focus (to find or add in some way) – MIDI over (I recommend) the Internet Protocol (IP).

–Doug