System Requirements for PatternPaint

baatbaat
edited March 2017 in General Help

Hi,

  1. Could you add the system requirements (OS minimums at least) to the download page: http://blinkinlabs.com/blinkytape/patternpaint/ ?

  2. Is there an older version of PatternPaint that works on Mac OS X PowerPC processors? I've got Macs running 10.4.11 (Tiger) and 10.5.8 (Leopard).

Comments

  • Matt MetsMatt Mets

    Good suggestion. I'll try to see what the oldest version we support is- Unfortunately I think it's closer to 10.7, there were some fairly major changes around that time.

    Were you able to download it to see if it will run?

  • Matt MetsMatt Mets

    Ok, I found a list. We're using the Qt 5.8 framework for PatternPaint, so I would expect it to run on roughly any platform supported by that:
    https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/supported-platforms.html

    And it appears the oldest OS X version is actually 10.9. I'm sure it's complicated, but it would probably run fine on a newer version of Linux running on that hardware.

  • baatbaat

    Hi Matt,

    Thanks for checking. Prior to my creating this forum topic, I had already tried PatternPaint 2.1.4 on the PowerPC Mac OS X 10.5.8 (Leopard) and it gives a message that it is for the wrong architecture.

    I did some research and PatternPaint 0.1.0 used Qt 5.1.1, which according to this page needs a minimum of OS X 10.7 (Lion): http://qt.apidoc.info/5.1.1/qtdoc-online/supported-platforms.html

    Qt 5.0 appears to have officially dropped support for Mac OS X on PowerPC. So, I'm out of luck unless I want to try compiling Qt 5 from source -- not worth it for what I'm trying to do.

  • Matt MetsMatt Mets

    That sounds right, unfortunately. It would be pretty cool to see PatternPaint running on a PowerPC, though the 0.1.0 version is probably not worth resurrecting :smiley:

    What are you looking to do with PatternPaint?

  • baatbaat

    I'm using PatternPaint to experiment with what I'll call an "offline mode" heartbeat indicator that the BlinkyTape is hooked up and ready to receive light patterns programmatically in real time ("online mode"), probably via a perl script. It replaces the somewhat ostentatious default rainbow pattern that's very bright, with only one or two LEDs blinking on and off every 10 seconds or so. This gets saved to the BlinkyTape. Having PatternPaint working on the PowerPC Mac would have been a matter of convenience. For now I've moved an old Windows laptop into the same room as the PowerPC Mac in order to use PatternPaint.

  • Matt MetsMatt Mets

    Cool! There's a new feature in the latest version of PatternPaint that might be interesting to you, then- the firmware manager. It allows you to load a custom hex file, which you can then use as a replacement for the default (PatternPlayer_Sketch) firmware that gets uploaded with your patterns. For instance, you could use it to modify the firmware behavior so that the BlinkyTape can time out and go back to playing the built-in patterns if it doesn't get a command from the computer after a few seconds.

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