Version 1.2510/18/2018

Setting up and using the prototype

IBM UBIQ visual communication system

Jonathan Connell

1. Prerequisites

The client software runs under Windows XP (and probably 95/98/ME). It has not been tested under Vista.

The server software runs under Windows Mobile 5.0. It was designed to work on the Verizon VX6700 phone (aka Audiovox 6700 aka HTC Apache). It has not been tried on any other phones or versions of Windows.

2. Installation

Copy the PC client executable “UBIQ_rx.exe” to your computer. It can reside in any directory you want.

Copy the executables “UBIQ_main.exe” and “UBIQ_mtx.exe” to the “\My Device\My Documents\Personal\jhc”directory on the mobile phone. The “mtx” program must reside here so that the “main” program can find it.

3. Establishing a connection

On the VX6700 make sure “Flight mode” is turned OFF by clicking on the little antenna symbol at the top of the screen (red box in picture).

Next, from the Start menu, select Internet Explorer. In the address bar type in some external site like “ and hit enter. The phone will attempt to start up an internet connection with the message “Dialing # 777 …”.

Now, from the Start menu select File Explorer. Use the stylus to and navigate to “\My Device\My Documents\Personal\jhc”. Click on “UBIQ_main.exe” to start the application. Respond “Yes” to any security warnings. When the program starts you should see a yellow screen with the “Awaiting connection …” message.

On the PC start the “UBIQ_rx” client program by double clicking it. In the “Remote Device” field type in the value displayed on the title bar of the server application running on the mobile phone (red box in picture). Hit the Enter button or click on the on-screen “Connect” button.

When all goes well you should see live (but fuzzy and jerky) video in the little window on the PC, and clearer and smoother live video in the window of the mobile phone application.

4. Viewfinder mode

In the PC application you can select a variety of codecs using the collection of buttons under the small video window in a group called “Uplink Codec”. The “Stills” (MJPEG), “Gray” (progressive), and “Lines”(sketch-like) codecs work fine. The “Blobs” codec is still being implemented. Note that you can swap codecs while running by simply hitting a different button.

Overall, to freeze the current image click the red “Stop” button. If you need to restart the viewfinder after some other operation then click the “Live” button.

5. Capturing an image

To grab an image from the mobile phone click on the green “Capture” arrow. Generally, this will stop the viewfinder, temporarily drop the connection to the phone, then slowly upload the captured image (watch the progress bar). Note that it can take up to 10 seconds sometimes to initiate snapshot mode.

During the capture operation the mobile phone holder also needs to perform several additional operations. First, once a capture has been requested by the PC, the screen of the phone will change to the special camera application. The phone holder then needs to click the camera button (red arrow) on the upper right corner of the phone (when held sideways), then click the central joystick button (green box) to accept the image. At this point, the screen will return to the normal UBIQ application. The phone application’s window will show the captured image and the upload progress bar will start moving.

For capture you can specify one of three spatial resolutions using the collection of radio button in the group “Pixels”. Selecting a smaller image results in a quicker upload, but obviously a blurrier image. For the phone client “High” means 1280x1024, “Mid” means 640x480, and “Low” means 320x240. For the PC server (“UBIQ_tx.exe” for use with webcams) the “High” resolution is also only 640x480.

For the quickest capture select the “Low” value. This has the added advantage of not requiring the mobile phone to go into the special camera application and hence much less user intervention is required.

6. Manipulating an image

Once an image is captured it is displayed in the large window on the PC application. You can save this image for later use by clicking on the “Save Full” button under the image.

To zoom in on the image, click and drag on the “Zoom” slider under the big image window. You can undo all shifts and zooms and return the image to its original state by clicking on the “Full” button.

Also, by clicking and dragging the mouse over the big image it can be shifted from side to side. A magenta cross appears temporarily in the center of the image as a guide for subsequent zooming. You can save the current altered image by clicking on the “Save Crop” button.

Other stored images, like diagrams, can be loaded into the large window by clicking the “Load File” button. These images can then be scrolled and zoomed as described above.

7. Downloading and drawing

Whatever is currently displayed in the large image window can be sent down to the mobile phone using the red “Send” arrow between the large and small windows.

You can also draw on the small image by clicking and dragging the mouse over it. These markings are transferred in real-time to the mobile phone and are also viewable on its screen. The color of the pen can be selected by clicking on of the buttons in the “Drawing Color” group.

Clicking “Erase” will allow you to correct local parts of the markup. Click “Clear” to get rid of all the markings on the current image.Click “Blank!” to get a completely white image to draw on.

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