PCM Hammer - The Uno UI, Improvements, and priorities

[crowbarmaster]

Correct, both the dialogs and these checks are used for any platform within the Uno app.

Currently it resides in the action setup page and is called before the Read/Write managers in PcmLibrary. WinForms has no issues with invoking from this library and so there really hasn't been any real changes to that. A conditional check added just prevents these checks from happening under the Uno environment for a second time, it's default state allows these checks to run. It's true, I only left that snippet behind for WinForms to use, but to call that an effort is a bit much

[antus]

Ok cool. Just thinking about what we'll need to do with any future refactoring or testing if changes are made for uno to ensure winforms works. I want to get a v2 out soon, probably just with winforms as I prefer the traditional desktop style app on pc and consider the app part solid so need to make sure new issues dont come up. I think i've figured out the stability issues are in the vpw routines not the flash routines, but then changing that breaks the p04 (again) as we have that 'stability knife edge' issue that comes back up with and DLC changes that challenged us for years and we never really got to the bottom of, just got it perfectly balanced. Now we have AI I think i'll probably learn from kidturbo's method and see if I can add a cli option to the app and let AI have 2 or 3 PCMs connected on different interfaces at the same time and try and make the DLC code data sheet perfect and get it working on say p04 p01 and p11 overnight.

[crowbarmaster]

I have the flow figured out down pat now....

I present to you - The action setup dialog!

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This dialog blocks after the button press, the result spits out a loaded ECUActionArguments class. The ControllerActionPage is then called and this is forwarded to the constructor, working out much nicer than my prototype efforts.

I'm currently in the midst of thinning out the permissions into separate categories, so they can be called in places more feature specific (When switched to BT in settings, access to file storage the first time, etc.) so that it should be more obvious why the perms are being granted. I should be able to test things when I land home!

It also turns out (I haven't been able to test it just yet, but seems to be working without denial) that while Bluetooth needs all of these permissions to exist in the manifest, this doesn't mean we need to have them all granted. I'm going to test when I get home, but I believe we only need to ask for nearby devices to be successful, which should make this feel "safer".

In windows:

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Just a shot of the old WinForms still working strong.

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There are builds of this progress can be had here if you'd like to check it out:

https://github.com/crowbarmaster/PcmHam ... 4901193241

Still a lot left to work in yet, stay tuned!

[antus]

That's great! Is that ECUActionArguments in pcmlibrary / winforms? I'd like to add a CLI mode, or CLI front end and that sounds like it would be really useful interface to the library for that.
Edit: I had a bit of a click through the commits. Lots of changes there! What I saw looked pretty good. I'm not sure about creating an osidinfo object for every osid, I think that could blow out memory usage, but what was there was already not the right way to do it, so I'm not bothered by that for now. Maybe it's not as much ram as I am worrying about too.

[crowbarmaster]

Yes! That is indeed part of the shared library, and I had CLI in mind for that too! The Desktop variant actually launches in WSL, so I think it's totally possible to provide the Nix guys with a UI. However, I made a comment somewhere back that these folks would probably prefer a trusty CLI.

I do love my basic objects! But I always try to keep objects like that tight. Since its nothing but a string and a few integers packed in a class, memory usage is next to nothing:

Screenshot 2026-04-24 205845.png

The whole StoreECUs object serialized to file comes in under 400Kb, this includes structure. Even if we expand the ECU count threefold memory storage would be well under a Mb. I've done much larger array-of-object types and memory storage has never been an issue. For your sanity however I'd like to include that the Profiler is one of my best friends, and I refer to it often to make sure something isn't hot looping or filling memory.

Feel free to poke around those changes! If there ends up being a better way to do something, I'm always listening... After all, I'm no "professional" by any means. Just smart enough to be dangerous

[antus]

well its not that, I want to be able to loop with AI doing kernel development where it can modify and build a kernel then test it and see how it goes from the CLI, and interate. Then I can modify the kernel DLC code and have several PCMs attached on different interfaces and see if AI can solve the instability in the P04 kernel, and improve the DLC stability also. But yeah, again, good work!

Good to see we're only at 62kb for the osid data structure. I guess that isn't much for a modern PC

[crowbarmaster]

Things are lookin' good!

I wrote up a nice static service class for the dialogs I have currently in play:

Screenshot 2026-04-26 033402.png

We now have a prompt for each permission, with a brief explanation of why we want it. I need to word these better yet, likely a standardized message could go there. This also gives us the opportunity to save a user variable in settings to remember the denial. This will be what shuts down BT, or skips the notification updates.

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This also comes in play with some logic to update the devices in the window on a DeviceCategoryChanged event.

I tossed down a blank Console app project tonight, It should be rather simple to template out the minimum for a CLI, then Antus can go nuts tweaking it for AI use

[antus]

Thats looking pretty good. Read tests ok. I was able to crash it attempting a read operation after a write (write button went grey, no dialog appeared then crashed after a few more clicks). I tried a param block write from a fresh restart and it went through the motions but didnt do the write. I guess that is expected for now? Great progress, UI and general stability as well as read is all a win.

On my phone I didnt get the nice permission dialogs, I got the android specific ones with the settings set and had to click back to continue and save them. Thats not a deal breaker, the OS might force that, and if so then that just is how it is.

[crowbarmaster]

Thats looking pretty good. Read tests ok. I was able to crash it attempting a read operation after a write (write button went grey, no dialog appeared then crashed after a few more clicks). I tried a param block write from a fresh restart and it went through the motions but didnt do the write. I guess that is expected for now? Great progress, UI and general stability as well as read is all a win.

On my phone I didnt get the nice permission dialogs, I got the android specific ones with the settings set and had to click back to continue and save them. Thats not a deal breaker, the OS might force that, and if so then that just is how it is.

Okay, good stuff! Glad things are working okay on your end for the most part!

Just checking here, is it navigating back to the home screen okay after closing the action page? I had some earlier difficulties with that navigation working on some devices and not others.

I want to make sure I understand your flow there. You: Performed a successful Write op, Closed the page, auto-navigated back to home, Read/Write page, Pressed Read and it failed? It could be the other way around, but even that's interesting... The current setup feels hacky, I might need to take that setup dialog OUT of the routing setup and call it with ShowAsync. We might have a better handle on things since we can then void it out afterwards.

Yeah... Android does not let me handle permissions automatically and that's the best we can do. I figured we can tune the message to reflect that minor disconnected feeling. The dialog also gives us the means to remember a user doesn't want notifications, and while I can't imagine who wouldn't want that, there are all kinds out there

[antus]

I did a read, which was successful. Saved the file. Then clicked the write button, and it greyed out like it actioned something but nothing popped up. I gave it 30 seconds. Then started clicking more things other buttons went grey but didnt pop up, and then it crashed. On a restart I clicked the write button again, and it worked.