I have just released an app to open/use Apple PassKit passes on ubuntu touch:

https://open-store.io/app/passes.s710

The app allows to import passes in .pkpass format and display them in a list, similar to iOS' wallet. Each pass will be shown with it's entire information, including the respective code which can then be scanned.

Core features:

• Import passes (.pkass files) into the app
• Share passes from within the app
• Fetch updates for a pass (in case it provides a webservice for updates)

Feel free to leave comments, and let me know if you encounter any pass which won't work with the app.

Got it, after googling even more. Some guy at the QT forum revealed:

   Connections {
      target: Qt.application

      onAboutToQuit: {
         audioPlayer.stop()
      }

This works

Teaser:

When trying to switch to UT, one of the blockers for most people could be the messenger apps, especially WhatsApp.

I personally will be unable to pass on WhatsApp, since I have too many contacts there, who are not willing to use other messengers. In addition, basically every organization of group events (birthdays, vacations, etc.) takes place in WhatsApp groups.
This forces me to keep on using WhatsApp, although I would like to replace it.

Now when making the switch to UT, this would mean I will need some sort of replacement, or ways to access my WhatsApp chats by other means.

Currently, I am aware of 3 possible solutions:

• Use WhatsApp web
• Use waydroid + WhatsApp native
• Use some sort of bridging (e.g. matrix)

I have tried all 3 of them, and found that all 3 of them are sub-par, and rather a pain to use than good.

• WhatsApp web is slow, not a real app, and not feature-complete.

• Waydroid can't be kept running 24/7 since it consumes too much battery. Also, its not (yet?) very well integrated, means you will always have a full android window.

• Matrix bridge works in a way, I have this running on a private home server for over a year. While it suddenly stopped syncing (for no obvious reason) during several months, and suddenly continued to sync (for no obvious reason), it basically allows me to chat with WhatsApp contacts using a matrix messenger (currently using Cinny). However, it has a whole bunch of disadvantages; matrix + bridge setup is overly complex, their documentation is severly lacking/incomplete as well as confusing, matrix will update year-old chats every now and then with some meaningless events ("Your security code with XXX changed"), audio-messages don't work at all.

So the question is, what is your solution for using WhatsApp on UT, and how happy are you with your solution?
(And please, for the love of god, don't spam this topic with "Just don't use WhatsApp" and the likes).

One thing that actually came to my mind recently was about the recently introduced European Union guideline for big messengers to force them to provide interoperability between messengers. E.g. WhatsApp must connect to Telegram, to allow WhatsApp chats within Telegram and vice versa.
Would this be a potential approach which was viable for UT also? So imagine we had an official UT messenger, and we could integrate with WhatsApp directly, this means we would have a native WhatsApp client? What you guys think about this?

... has just been published to the store:
https://open-store.io/app/scooter.s710

Its a port of my existing SailfishOS app, now its available on UT.

The app provides the following features:

• Log into an existing Bird account using E-Mail/confirmation code
• Show profile details
• Show scooter locations and restricted areas on a map
• Ring scooter
• Unlock scooter / start ride by scanning the QR code on the scooter
• Show pending/active rides which have not yet been stopped

This means that an existing Bird account with associated payment information is needed. It is not possible to create a new account with my app (use official iOS/android app).

Since undocumented APIs are used, there are several limitations. While it is perfectly possible to unlock scooters and take a ride, it is not possible to:

• coupon codes / ride passes can neither be displayed nor used. This means that even though a user buys a ride pass for free unlocking on e.g. iOS or android, using my app will not consider this, and the user will be charged more than necessary. I think this is caused by a recent change in the API, since some weeks ago the API would return the actual cost as well as "cost_without_coupon" when ending the ride, and charge the discount price, which no longer is the case.
• price information is displayed in USD, regardless of the user's country
• no interaction with the profile/payment information is possible, neither is the creation of accounts
• group rides and purchasing ride passes is not possible

If anyone is good in reverse engineering and wants to help, contact me

I have contacted Bird (as well as a number of other scooter providers), asking for help/documentation of their API in order to provide a better user experience, but I am not that optimistic.
Bird is the only provider of electric scooters I found where parts of the API are documented, including scooter unlocking/riding, however in case I get a response from other providers, or anyone comes up with API endpoint documentation for other providers, I can add them to the app.

In case errors occur during app usage, theres a log view in the settings, which can be used to send logs to me which might help analyze issues.

I added:

{
    "policy_groups": ["location", "networking"],
    "policy_version": 16.04
}

And now the map works as expected. Thanks again.

@emphrath said in How to create a plant identification app for ubuntu touch?:

I thought that was hilarious. Got another answer I wanted to share since it s outta my field of competence:

"1. Don't you think supporting Ubuntu Touch using the website is enough : https://docs.ubports.com/en/latest/appdev/webapp/index.html

2. the mobile app is made using React Native, unfortunately, https://github.com/status-im/react-native-desktop-qt is no longer supported but maybe there is an alternative?"

What do you think ? What should I answer ?

Didn't get to this until now. Give me a day or two, and I will see what kind of app I can come up with. Will be a native UT app.
In case it's enough, it would be maybe worthwile offering it to them and/or asking for improved API usage agreements.

@emphrath said in How to create a plant identification app for ubuntu touch?:

@s710 Wow, awesome. I guess it won't be using ReactJS then ? Do you think I should let them know sth is being worked on native-wise and pass along your suggestion of extended API rights ?

Correct. I have a working prototype, which is able to pick images from your camera or gallery, and then use their API to identify it. Currently I am working on displaying the results / designing the UI for the results.
As I don't have time to work on it today, I would say by the end of tomorrow I will be able to provide screenshots of the app, which you could then send them if you want.

Basically, there are no technical issues or blockers here, its just a matter of time to get the UI nice and polished now.

Great!

I think I forgot to add a function which either converts images (e.g. PNGs) into jpeg, or warn the user. I think Pl@ntNet only accepts jpeg. This might lead to unspecified errors when someone tries to upload non-jpeg images.

Gonna add this soon.

@emphrath said in How to create a plant identification app for ubuntu touch?:

@arubislander Well how do they make their own android app work then ? I don't get it.

Yeah well, maybe they're using non-public APIs. Those, of course, can also be reverse engineered from the binary.
I am no expert in reverse engineering, but I was told that virtually anything can be reverse engineered with enough efforts. For example, someone reverse engineered the HTTP APIs used by the Bird Scooter app (which, btw, enabled me to make a scooter app).

Unless you're using a dedicated authentication (user must login within the app), there is virtually no way of publishing something secure, you simply cannot ship credentials/hidden stuff. Of course, this is from a pure security perspective. The owner might still decide to ship apps like this and rely on no one caring about reverse engineering, which might be an acceptable risk.

In the end, it completely depends on what Pl@ntNet wants to do. I just wanted to point out that if I was given a dedicated API key, and Pl@nNet would increase limits for this single key, I would need to ship it within the app, which would be insecure per design. Of course, I can try to occlude it as best as I can, but it won't be bullet proof. If Pl@ntNet accepts this approach, I don't see any real issues, since I guess that not so many people would be that eager to get into possession of a Pl@ntNet API-key with increased limits so that they would actually take the efforts of reverse engineering it out of my app.

@applee My response was not meant to be offensive, rather curious. I am new to UT, and just need to figure things out.

I am the author of the Scooter app (https://open-store.io/app/scooter.s710), which supports operating Bird eletric scooters.

I have support for another provider in the works, and therefore needed to also change Bird-related code.

However, unfortunately, Bird withdrew from my hometown, so I no longer have accessto Bird scooters to test my app.

Therefore I want to ask if there was someone in the community with access to Bird scooters & UT phone willing to help me test the existing Bird functionality of my app? Basically I would supply an updated version of my app, and it should be tested whether or not searching for scooters, locking/unlocking and so on still works as before.

Okay, so it turned out that all the time I had

MainView {
   id: root
   objectName: 'mainView'
   applicationName: 'myapp.s710'
   automaticOrientation: true

//   width: units.gu(45)
//   height: units.gu(75)
   width: units.gu(100)
   height: units.gu(200)

Because when running as clickable desktop, the window would be tiny otherwise. However I never noticed a difference when deploying to the phone, so I thought it was okay.

However, after I had just set QGuiApplication::setAttribute(Qt::AA_EnableHighDpiScaling); - which didn't have any effect - I also changed back the MainView size to 45/57, and voila, now the contents of the webview scale correctly, same as in the Morph browser.

Long story short:

• no need to set the user agent
• set QGuiApplication::setAttribute(Qt::AA_EnableHighDpiScaling);
• leave MainView dimensions set to units.gu(45)/units.gu(75) (which is the default after clickable create)

No worries, I'm aware of that. I really just wanted to know what possibilities already exist.
I'm a developer, and I started to work on UT apps, so maybe in the future I'll come up with something. Depends on time and energy though, already got a lot of ideas popping up in my head.
But for now I'll port my SFOS scooter app to UT, and then lets see.

I am currently working on porting my SFOS Scooter app to Ubuntu Touch, and I am basically done. The only feature which is missing is the scanning of QR codes.

In the app, I am using the awesome qzxing library, which allows to use video filters for QR code recognition. Unfortunately, on Ubuntu Touch, it will not work. I have reported the issue already here, but I'd like to get this over with, so I am asking for your help.

The core issue is, that qzxing relies on converting QVideoFrame objects to QImage by mapping the raw data into memory using QVideoFrame::map. However, on Ubuntu Touch, this very function does not work, because the image is saved as OpenGL texture in the QT internals. The same is the case for e.g. Android, which is why there is suggested solutions which can be found on google.
However, I am unable to come up with a working solution, most likely because I am neither familiar with OpenGL, nor with image/video formats.

I have asked for help already at stackoverflow and the qt forum, unfortunately no one answered yet.

I am aware that there is a QR code scanning app in the open store, and that I could copy the solution used in that app, however I'd like to stick with qzxing for two reasons:

• I find the use of video filters to be the more elegant solution
• I can maintain a somewhat compatibility to my SFOS app which helps keeping maintainance efforts low

So if anyone would volunteer to support or maybe knows the solution, please let me know. The relevant code parts would be here.

Maybe I am also missing the obvious, and qzxing can already be used in UT and I'm just missing something, in this case I would also extremely appreciate your help.

@cliffcoggin Okay I see, as per https://phone.docs.ubuntu.com/en/apps/design/building-blocks/list-items#actions the delete action should be when swiping from left to right.
Coming from iOS (where its the other way round), I just didn't know this

I have published v1.1 which switches positions, delete is now swipe to right.

Also the manual stream favourite saving had a typo, thanks to @domubpkm for reporting, its also fixed.

And thanks to @Vistaus who translates almost faster than I can publish

@aarontheissueguy said in Wallet/Passes app for UT:

@s710 Great work! We really needed something like this. It would be great to allow importing QR and Barcodes (maby via tagger) and make it possible to create custom passes.

A corresponding issue was opened on github:
https://github.com/patrickjane/ut-passes/issues/5

I'm going to check this and maybe put it into the app in case there was a feasible solution. Have not yet heard of this, so I need to check this out first.

@josele13 said in Wallet/Passes app for UT:

@s710 Sorry if I have not explained well, if you are making a generic template is important not to cover the information, I thought that the same pkpass file told you the location to put the barcode, not being so forces you to adjust it manually, now I send you the pkpass file, and a link in github if you can take advantage of something.

No, there is no information about the barcode position inside the pkpass file. And for your case, also I think that no "important information" is covered, since it's really just a background image.

Your pass looks pretty different within iOS wallet, so I need to check whats missing here. I will provide a fix with the next update, which also includes the theme support.

@moem said in How to create a plant identification app for ubuntu touch?:

@s710 said in How to create a plant identification app for ubuntu touch?:

@moem If using the API provided by plantnet.org, such an app would be trivial to make.

That is good news. I hope it's possible, I would be happy to use it. Personally I can't make apps, no matter how trivial.

I can do it, if you want.

@emphrath You can show them those screenshots if you want. The app is coming closer to being finished. The screenshots show the workflow of starting with an empty app, adding a picture for identification, receiving the result, saving the result, and then displaying the plant in the overview of already identified plants. I have omitted screenshots for selecting a picture from camera/gallery.
But I guess the order of images got messed up, I'll try to edit the post to correct the order.

Open points:

• Language detection for localized identification result (plant "common names" in local language)
• Automatic resizing of input images (API requires a certain max size)
• Add settings page for API-Key configuration & setup instructions
• Make the app icon

I guess I will be able to finish the app during next week, and publish it to the store. I can also not publish to the store and only upload to github, in case Pl@ntNet is interested in taking over the app. The app is written in maybe 50% C++ and 50% QML. Storage layer & network functionality is implemented in C++, display stuff is in QML.