====== Linux + E70 + Python? Remote controlled presentations! ======

{{ blog:media:20071111-amora.jpg?120|Amora}}
A couple of months ago, [[blog:2007:06:new_toy|when I got my E70]], I searched around the web for an application that would allow me to use my new S60 mobile as a remote control for presentations under linux. The first such software I encountered was the [[http://shop.psiloc.com/en/Application,262200,Psiloc+Wireless+Presenter|Wireless Presenter]] from Psiloc, but of course that one was Windows only((and quite expensive on top of that)). After that I fell over [[http://bemused.sourceforge.net/|bemused]], which looked promising although needing some work to be misused for my goals. But since a lot of stress at work then kicked in I never had the chance to give it a shot.

And today, rather by accident, I stumbled over a new piece of software: [[http://code.google.com/p/amora/|Amora]]. And it must have been written by someone with my exact problem, namely finding a decent small linux-compatible suite for remote controlling your bluetooth-enabled presentation notebook from your S60-3rd-edition smartphone that "just works"<sup>TM</sup>. At least that's what I take from the [[http://code.google.com/p/amora/wiki/projectDetails|notes on what motivated the development]]: 
<blockquote>
Most of notebooks are bluetooth ready, and case negative, a bluetooth dongle is really cheap, as also cellphones with bluetooth are common place for geek users.

Even if there are already MS-Windows only applications with similar purpose, Unix users are forgotten. And strangely, the opensource projects are cryptic to use (or not strangely after all...) or plain and simple don't work.

I decided to write this code to answer my own need of an application that has:

    * Nice GUI on cellphone
    * Server side doesn't require any configuration
</blockquote>

And the result looks promising. Amora consists of a server (written in C and running on your presentation pc) and a client (written in Python for S60 and running on your mobile) which communicate with each other via bluetooth. The server allows control over the pc's mouse (and partly keyboard) via the XTEST extension of the xserver and can even send a screenshot of the currently active window back to the client which then gets displayed on the phone. [[http://code.google.com/p/amora/wiki/roadmap|Future plans]] include a stopwatch and a prepared debian package of the server (yay!) as well as a SIS file for the client app.

I gave Amora a quick test run with my T43 and some LaTeX beamer slides and am thrilled at how easy it was to set up and how smoothly it works, so I can only recommend it for usage in your next presentation -- I will use it for sure :-)

{{tag>tool linux opensource python e70 presentation}}

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