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General feedback on the Onion Omega

  • M

    Howdy,

    Firstly let me say, mint device!

    I was getting sick of running out of memory on Arduino’s spotted the KickStarter video and had to buy one (well 3, lol).

    The lure of being able to mount USB drives (that solved the memory issues instantly), wifi being included by default and no more C programming, I had SOLD on my forehead 🙂

    However I have some feedback for the developers and thought here would be an apt place to leave it.

    Obviously these are my personal opinions take them as you will. I’ve done my best to keep them all constructive.

    #1 The initial setup
    Overall this was really easy.

    But...

    I learned about the install on YouTube and not here from a tutorial. It would be nice for a couple of video tutorials for someone getting started for the first time.

    #2 Missing a PHP Setup Guide
    There is no dedicated guide/tutorial on setting up & using PHP.

    This is a shame because there is details on this in the forums here https://community.onion.io/topic/39/simple-php-web-gpio-example-switching-leds and a decent git hub resource https://github.com/ageeweb/php_onion available.

    #3 No nano app
    nano is not installed by default. Boooo 😞

    A small thing I know, a personally favor it over vi as I can never remember the commands, nano is much more newbie proof with CTRL commands

    #4 Text Editor woes
    When creating a file using the text editor, the file permissions are very low (I believe 0600) and cannot be set using the editor to anything else, quite frustrating.

    A couple of other bits of feedback for the editor:

    1. A refresh button for the text editor area would be very helpful, saves having to go up a folder & back in again to see new files
    2. A key bind to Ctrl + S for save in the text editor would also be most helpful

    #5 rebooting
    This is probably tied to wrt, when running the command “reboot”, some feedback in the console would be nice (eg like the normal warning of an impending shutdown you normally get in a *unix system.

    #6 The USB as rootfs

    A silly thing I missed was that when setting up a USB drive as extra storage, the USB stick needs to be set up as ext4, tutorials are lacking on the interwebs, this one was the one I followed and the tool is free http://en.code-bude.net/2013/02/12/how-to-create-an-ext4-partition-on-windows/

    But that didn’t work and in my other forums post here https://community.onion.io/topic/592/daft-question-re-usb-storage-as-rootfs it turns out the package of disk ultities “e2fsprogs” cannot be installed. Quite frustrating!

    #7 - Web App Responsiveness

    The onion console isn't responsive on an ipad (both 3 & mini versions), using Safari or Chrome. It suffers from really badly resizing issues with icons the sizes of a hand, both in portrait & landscape.

    PS. I did read a few comments about the ability to add custom apps to the desktop view, that is a brilliant idea!

    Anyway....

    So far I’ve spent my time messing around with a USB drive rather than actually coding, way over an hour and getting nowhere, then finding out the tools I need cannot be installed. What started as a great experience, ended up as an frustrating one. All I want is some more space!

    It’s obvious a lot of time & energy has been spent on Onion Omega. I hope my comments help others that follow me 🙂

    Matt

    PS. Oh and somehow the first one managed to be shipped to the wrong address, you might want to check the PayPal payment process not just to use the billing address and to check the delivery address instead.

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  • M

    Also one more, the ability to paste to the text editor would be handy. The menu function is there, but it doesn't work

    Matt

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  • K

    @Matt-Ogborne I may be mistaken, but I gather that you have only very recently got your Omega.
    Have you done an upgrade on your Omega since getting it?
    If you haven't, I would highly recommend doing so before doing any other significant changes/installations since the firmware/software has greatly improved from the original "as -shipped" version.

    You can do the upgrade in one of two ways:

    1. Either: in the browser console, go to Settings->Firmware Upgrade
    2. Or: using command line on your Omega, run oupgrade

    With the latest firmware, the Editor works as expected with respect to the right click menu items for cut/copy/paste etc. as do Ctrl-X/Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V

    0 M 1 Reply
  • M

    @Kit-Bishop

    Good point. I was taken through that process in the setup and I'm at the latest version (0.0.6 (b275)).

    And actually I was incorrect, the paste function I meant was in the terminal, it appears you can't "paste" in from an external source, rather than the text editor. My bad.

    Matt

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  • K

    @Matt-Ogborne I wonder if issues you may be having with pasting into the Console Text Editor (it appears you can't "paste" in from an external source) may be related to issues with your OS and/or browser.

    I am using Windows 10 and Firefox browser and can copy text from a document under a completely separate program and paste it in Console Text Editor.
    I cannot however copy a file from From File Explorer and then paste it - but that doesn't really surprise me.

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