Can I use iPod Touch / iPhone / iPad to control my system?
Yes. Thanks to Stardraw Control 2010's support of WebServices you can use any device that supports HTTP: or runs a browser
as an interface device to talk to your Stardraw Control system and this includes iPod Touch, iPhone and
iPad. For the rest of this FAQ we'll refer to these devices as 'iProducts'.
The UI that's shown on your iProduct is NOT an App: it's simply HTML, i.e. a web page, and can be written in your preferred HTML editor, e.g.
Expression Web, FrontPage, DreamWeaver etc., or indeed any text editor, even NotePad. This type of UI is called a "WebApp" and the technologies
it employs follow the same open-architecture principals that make Stardraw Control so powerful and flexible.
Thanks to certain design
features of iProducts, WebApps are very easy to deploy and they operate in a fashion that is indistinguishable from an
App, without any of the drawbacks of an App. Furthermore, HTML extensions supported by Mobile Safari allow for
some nice UI features like animated transitions and orientation detection so that a different UI can be displayed
depending on whether your iProduct is being held in Portrait or Landscape orientation.
When you deploy your project, you save the HTML in a folder beneath the one that holds your
Stardraw Control executable. The Stardraw Control project, which contains a WebServices driver, serves
up the HTML to your chosen device and manages bi-directional communication between the HTML UI and the
system you are controlling/monitoring. Because Stardraw Control supports true Client/Server operation you can
use as many iProducts as you want to control and monitor your system at the same time and the UIs will remain
synchronized. To see this in action, please see the video on the right of this page.
To host the UI on your iProduct you simply open the HTML page in Safari, click on the '+' button
at the bottom of the browser and select "Add to HomeScreen". This adds a Stardraw Control icon to your homescreen
and your HTML will look and operate just like an App, not a webpage.
You can check out a sample UI by entering one of the URLs below into Safari on your iProduct:
- For iPhone / iPod Touch: http://www.stardraw.com/ui/unicorn/iphone.html
- For iPad: http://www.stardraw.com/ui/unicorn/ipad.html
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