Project direction and objectives

Hardware Little Backup Box
1

Hello Dmitri and community

For what its worth would you consider that rather than have this project in permanent beta that the non-Oled support Little Backup Box and the Oled supported (Little Backup Box V2 ??) version be considered as two separate projects.

This way the non-Oled version could be left fairly stable with bug fixes and minor updates as required for those that don’t want to head down the display supported option.

Some ideas for improvements of the display supported version I personally desire include;

  1. More informative instruction screens
  2. If people want a graphic display of progress rather than Copying file xx of xxx
    then the Oled support would probably need to change to another oled library (Adafruit or similar)
  3. Improved error handling / checking for sufficient space on the destination storage.
  4. The non display version could have LED stoplights added for status indication - although personally if I was going to do this I would just go the whole way and add a display but others may feel differently.
  5. Eventually moving the I2C interface onto GPIO pins so that a single push switch can be used to wake-up, shutdown or reboot the pi using scruss’s shutdown/reboot script.

Thanks for considering my thoughts, looking forward to any discussions. Trevor

2

Hi Trevor,

Thank you for your kind words and thoughts. You idea of splitting the project makes sense, but I’d suggest a slightly different approach. We create a new branch called something like oled-support instead of setting up a separate project. This has several advantages. Firstly, it would make it much easier to roll new functionality into the stable version. I work on Little Backup Box in my spare time, and I can’t support and manage two versions. Also, I don’t want to fragment the project.

Point 2. Simon has already made some significant progress (see Little Backup Box August 2019 update - #6 by st599).

Point 3. Good idea

Point 4. Well, this is up to individual users. They can extend and improve Little Backup Box in any way they want. :slight_smile:

Point 5. I have no particular preference. If someone could provide instructions on how to implement GPIO support, I’ll do it.

Please, feel free to create issues in GitHub (Issues · dmpop/little-backup-box · GitHub), so we can track and implement your suggestions.

Kind regards,
Dmitri

3

Hi Dmitri

Thanks for your reply. As for managing 2 branches your idea sounds right. Have a stable version that would be more suited for people that don’t have the desire or ability to tinker but have access to a stable working version that they can install and just have up and running with a minimum of effort.

Then have a more active branch that is build on the stable base that is undergoing major rework and occasionally might have some bugs or inconsistencies that won’t upset the tinkerers so much.

Yes i understand the time constraints that we all have and are grateful for your efforts. I don’t feel that I would like to create and maintain a separate fork but am keen to be able to help with ideas and code snippets as I can. I would prefer that everything is under one project as it seems wasteful for multiple people to reinvent the wheel and you have done and are doing an excellent job with this project.

Thanks
Trevor

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