Hello from Houston

[David Ashley]

Hi all, my name is David Ashley and I discovered Doug Coulter's site when it showed up on digg. The forums looked like an interesting place to hang out so I asked him to set up an account for me, and here I am.

My homepage is here:
http://www.xdr.com/dash/index.html

From that you can find links to my resume, essays I've written, my blog, and a bunch of linux freeware I wrote.

Mostly these days my focus isn't on making money, but rather trying to discover Truth. We're living in an age where lies are rewarded and Truth is intentionally obscured. I still hunger for Truth even though the quest may be painful.

[Doug Coulter]

Sounds like my kinda guy, actually. Welcome on board!
Edit - if you know android down at the socket level, I have a little code I'd love to have for android, and I just don't have time to add an nth language and libraries to my own coding right now. It is the code I put under a thread here, landns, with two processes (could have been done in one but, easy how it was) called tellem and tellme. I can translate the perl for you if you need it - it's really pretty simple stuff. Here's the link: viewtopic.php?f=33&t=687

[David Ashley]

Sounds like my kinda guy, actually. Welcome on board!
Edit - if you know android down at the socket level, I have a little code I'd love to have for android, and I just don't have time to add an nth language and libraries to my own coding right now. It is the code I put under a thread here, landns, with two processes (could have been done in one but, easy how it was) called tellem and tellme. I can translate the perl for you if you need it - it's really pretty simple stuff. Here's the link: viewtopic.php?f=33&t=687

I skimmed the thread that mentioned this. My first instinct was to suggest the same thing as someone did: Install a configurable router in between the router connected to the outside world, and configure that one for static IP's. Meaning you hardcode the MAC <=> IP address on that router so it will pass back each device's IP address to it statically based on its MAC address. I'm not sure what the problem was with that approach, maybe such a router wasn't available, or the power drain would be too wasteful...

Anyway I kept reading and it now looks like you've got a perfectly workable system that is in place and you just want it implemented as an android app. Now I'm not sure of the equivalent of /etc/hosts on an android. Not even sure what the meaning would be for such a gadget, where there really isn't a command line interface. But if you wanted an android app that would perform the tellem function such that everyone else knows the android device's ip address that seems perfectly doable (and trivial, actually). Especially since your chosen port 53831 is not in the low 1024, implying there would be no need to root the device.

Would such an app be immediately useful to you? Meaning the tellem function as an android app?

[Doug Coulter]

Actually, yes, tellem would be super nice - my tablet is the only machine here everything else can't find by name (and sometimes an IP scan takes awhile). Tellme is much harder (perl just made it look easy) since it has to also delete machines, kind of like a deadman switch - if someone in the existing list doesn't report in for a couple minutes, they get wiped out of /etc/hosts.

I have an app for android that is called "File Manager" and when I look under the "System" directory, yup, there's an /etc/hosts and it has one line:
127.0.0.1 localhost

I'm running on a plain stock Nexus 10 for that. It's not super important (I'm using dropbox to move stuff around now) but it'd be cool, since it's WAY faster than a rasperry pi for the same power - it might become the always on receiver for my data logging project instead of the pi.

Ah, like on normal linux, /etc/hosts in android is a root-owned file....crap. I've been resisting rooting this thing, I have a lot of other uses for it and don't want to brick it - it's my radio and movie player, as well as what I browse on during low power times (I am fully off grid). I think they wipe out your DRM keys if they think you've rooted the box - that'd be a lotta money gone.

[David Ashley]

Whoops, the intent was to avoid long threads in these introduction posts. I moved my response to the relevant thread here:

viewtopic.php?f=33&t=687&p=4704#p4704