OSA on a cheap Windows tablet PC (Chuwi vi8, Intel CPU)

[dj-eon]

Hi.
Out of shear curiosity, I've purchased a Windows tablet PC to try and run OSA and some hardware on.
This is against some of your recommendations on the forum.

Considering its spec, its quite a performer.
Anyway, I have installed MySQL, OSA 0.4.8 without any hardware yet and it appears to be running well.

It does have some downsides, and its not fully up and running yet.
The issues I currently have with it are:

Windows 10 home - What on earth are Microsoft thinking installing random apps from their store whenever they feel like it?
Charging this device is a little odd. If the charger power is switched off then back on, it does not continue to charge - but I believe this is a windows thing.
They have installed Windows 10 x86 even though its a 64 bit processor.

I hope to overcome these issue by putting Windows 7 x64 on it, just working on backing up windows 10 at the moment which has been a task in itself.

On the plus side, this only draws 10 watts of power, and the cpu usage with OSA/MySQL is between 5-30 % most of the time. Hopefully better on Win 7.

A side note irreverent to OSA, this device can be setup to dual boot Android/Windows. I don't know how it can do this, but that is off topic.
(Just in case you think this is a Windows RT tablet, its not. I already have OSA running on it.)

I will keep this thread updated with my progress.
Thoughts?

[kherron]

Why would you not install OSA on a home PC(Server), something with more processing power for MySQL,
Then run only OSA Client on the tablet?

If I'm not mistaken, you can attach devices to a client, so then the whole system has control of them.

For example, Lets say you get another tablet, and install OSA Client on it.
Now that tablet can access devices connected to the other tablet, not to mention anything attached to the server directly?

Both tablets will actually become devices of the Server.

It could help you with execution speed and processor usage!!

Anyhow, GREAT work keep us posted.

[Vaughn]

Awesome to hear it is running ok and such a low power machine.

This is one of my biggest roadmap issues right now.

Do I improve OSA's core logic but require more computing power
or
Do I streamline and reduce the core logic running all the time so it has lower hardware requirements

Either way I will try to increase the efficiency of the existing SQL, from the current metrics, there is too much overhead right now and I really need to optimize SQL running on timers. And because that seems to be so hard, I am hesitant to add any more logic until the existing SQL runs much better.

[dj-eon]

Your enhanced logic, is this part of the AI assistant type thing your building?

If so, could this be written as a plugin? Sorry I don't know OSA's architecture as well as you (obviously )

I've had no luck changing Windows 10 home over to Windows 7 on this tablet, so I'll just have to stick with it for now.
But yes, it does run surprisingly well. I had a feeling it would be ok when I saw how some games on it performed from the Windows store.
Its amazing value for money.

[Vaughn]

The logic I mention is OFF TIMERS, Plugin Monitoring, and Occupancy.

It is not that they should be plugins, it is that they should be DB Triggers, but since everything is an object, a trigger on an object updating another object is called a recursive trigger and we have those disabled in the DB. So instead I run the logic as an event, which causes it to be ran even when not needed.

The other problem is the Object view in the DB links back to itself and many other tables. So if I just need the State of an Object, and I get it from that big all inclusive view, it is very expensive and the DB looks up lots of info just to give me that state. So I need to make new views or temp tables to hold common things like the state of an object so when it runs thousands of times, the savings are really big.

I could also just enable recursive triggers and just have to be careful that we don't create any endless loops then, which I am sure will happen at one point or another, which is why I tried to avoid that setting. But with that enabled, I could avoid ever counting plugins unless a plugin state changed for example saving the Second Event from ever having to look at them.

Vaughn

[Automate]

Awesome to hear it is running ok and such a low power machine.

This is one of my biggest roadmap issues right now.

Do I improve OSA's core logic but require more computing power
or
Do I streamline and reduce the core logic running all the time so it has lower hardware requirements

My vote would be to allow the user the turn off optional features. I run on a low power Atom CPU so I've modified some of the SQL scripts such as to disable the "timer" feature since I never use it.
It would be nice to have System Properties that could be used to enable/disable unused features.

[dj-eon]

If anyone else is thinking of buying a Chuwi vi8 tablet PC to do this, I'd suggest you hold off for now.

It has an issue where it does not charge whilst switched on, even though it says its charging in Windows.
At the moment, I'm trying other power supplies and things to get it to charge.
Its very weird as it charges perfectly when switched off (I can even see it pulling much more charging current when off).

I've read this might be a registry option in Windows 10, but I've not had luck finding more info.

[Vaughn]

Automate,
I am working on turning some of that off or making them an option this version. Not sure how far I will go with it, but it will the trend I follow going forward.