Why my Xcode macOS app connects to an unknown remote server - scenekit

a quick question for what is strange behavior in my opinion.
I'm developing an app which, for the moment, is meant to run fully locally, with no network access at all.
Well, since when I've introduced some 3d graphics I'm having this in the debugger log window (in light sky blue)
Please note that such (apparent?) CDN access was fully absent before the addition of a 3d scene.
Could someone tell me what Apple is asking to a CDN and, most important, how can I prevent such accesses that have not been explicitly authorized/configured by the end user?
Thank you

In this case "CDN" does not refer to a Content Delivery Network, but rather to Apple's CoreDisplay framework. The following command will show that these logs come from the framework:
strings /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreDisplay.framework/CoreDisplay | grep "client setup_"

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Azure Kinect: how to find the windows device id

I have been developing a Win application that uses 3 Azure Kinects. Since there is no C# wrapper available yet, I made a C++ app that does what I need and the C# app just grabs its output files.
I now need to figure out which camera is which. In the C# app I can get the windows device id in a form similar to
\\.\USB#VID_045E&PID_097C#001007692912#{A5DCBF10-6530-11D2-901F-00C04FB951ED}
However the C API for the Kinect only provides ways to get the serial number of the device.
I tried to dig into the API, since I'm sure it must be somewhere in the code but, due to my limited C skills, I got lost pretty quickly.
Anybody with the same issue or can help?
Thanks,
Guido
The SDK is designed to use serial number specifically to determine which device or devices you are connected to. If you are just trying to use 2 Kinects with 2 instances of your C# then you will need to open devices until you find the serial number you are looking for. If you are trying to use multiple devices in a master/subordinate configuration then you can query for jack state to determine if you have connected to one or the other.
Also please be aware that we just released our own C# wrapper for the SDK. Checkout https://github.com/microsoft/Azure-Kinect-Sensor-SDK/issues/608 and https://microsoft.github.io/Azure-Kinect-Sensor-SDK/master/namespace_microsoft_1_1_azure_1_1_kinect_1_1_sensor.html for more details.

Is it a good idea to use a Screensaver on a raspberry pi as digital signage?

I asked this question in the Raspberry PI section, so please forgive me for posting this here again. Its just there doesn't seem to be as active as this section of the forum. So, onto my question...
I have an idea and I'm working on it right now. I just wanted to see what the community's thought was on using a screensaver as digital signage. Every tutorial I've read shows someone using chromium in kiosk mode, and while that's fine and works well for some uses, it doesn't work for what I need. I have successfully completed a chromium kiosk, and it was cool. But the signage that I need to create now, has to work without internet. I've thought about installing LAMP locally on the PI, and still using chromium. I still may have to if this idea doesn't pan out. All I need from the signage is a Title Message in the top center, and a message body underneath it, with roughly 300-400 character limit. My idea is to write a screensaver module, in C, that will work with a screensaver such as xscreensaver. The module would need to be able to load messages from a directory on the pi. Then for my clients to update their signage text, I would write a simple client that sent commands as well as the text via SSH to the pi. I want to know what other people think about this. Is it a good idea? Bad idea? Should I "waste" my time doing something like this?
Thanks in advance.
I am already using a rPi as digital signage, just over a year. I am using two different setups:
version 1 uses Raspian loading xdesktop and qiv image viewer to cycle images stored on the Pi itself, synchronized with a remote server. The problem I found was power and SD stability, when the power fails, which it will do no matter what, just when... The Sd card can become corrupt due to all the writing that Raspian does all the time. Certainly does not really need to write to SD.
version 2 uses a RO-filesystem and a command line image tool. Uses the same process to show images from local, and sync with server. But power fail causes no ill effects.
I am not using screensaver to display images, that seemed redundant to me, and unnecessary to wait for the SS to start just to display the images.
Some of the images are created using imagemagik, which is nicely dynamic where needed.

Proprietary USB device access via browser... possible? Silverlight maybe? (Java is excluded for now)

Probably there are a lot of similar questions around, but since I know only few solutions to this which I am not sure will work for us, I am looking for something else, maybe new technologies...
What we have is this USB device which is not so fancy (of course, it requires a driver to be loaded), and it has couple of C++ dlls to help getting certain output from it. On top, we made a C# desktop application which makes use of the device in a more attractive way (plenty of interop inside).
So far so good, but to have the application lifted up to the web in order to gain more flexibility... What options are there?
Known solutions are:
1) ActiveX - kinda old technology and not cross-browser;
2) .Net 'applet' - not so common (is this even a solution?)
3) Java applet - well known, but JVM needed (since we went for C++ C#
maybe is out of scope);
4) Web service on the usb device itself - our device is very
light, we cannot have it there.
Are there other ways? Is Silverlight 4, 5 (maybe "out of browser") a feasable solution? What about these new technologies nowadays? Html 5 or something?
EDIT1: In particular I am interested in Silverlight. Is there a way using Silverlight?
EDIT2: I found this question: Can Silverlight access a .Net library that accesses a USB port? . What shall I understand from that? Is really Silverlight not a feasable solution for my scenario?
EDIT 3: VERY IMPORTANT!
These devices need to be used on customer side! People browsing must use them locally on their PCs!
Thanks in advance.
to have the application lifted up to the web [...]
Simple solution: Let the webserver (http server) run on the PC connected to the USB device, and use one of the webserver's interfaces like CGI to talk to your USB device. This way you need to code only a USB-to-CGI wrapper program, which can be C++ or C#.
Another way is to write a browser plugin.
The issue that you're going to face is that content in a browser is often run in a sandbox, in such a way that the web app does not have access to the computer. There are good reasons for this - security, primarily. One way to have some code running in the context of the computer is to have a browser plugin that can access the computer's hardware resources, but that can interact with browser content. Unfortunately, you may end up writing a different plugin for different browsers.
There do exist frameworks out there that make writing browser plugins more manageable. A simple search should turn up some of those candidates.
You can use Silverlight 5, it can give you access to your file system and USB storage device. If you want to get control for other USB device (printer, scanner, etc), you should give a device type. I know, Silverlight 5 works fine with a file system and web-cams...)

How do you debug Share Picker extensions?

I have registered my Phone 7 app as a Share Picker Extension. It works—my app is in the list of Share options and it gets launched and I can load the chosen image. Okay, great.
But then things go wrong in my code. I would like to be able to debug the issues, but I can't seem to keep the debugger attached.
I cannot debug this in the simulator, since the Pictures app (and thus the Share Picker functionality) is not present in the simulator.
I cannot debug this on the phone because as soon as I pick my app from the Share list, the debugger detaches... right as my app is "launching" again.
Is it possible to attach the debugger to a running WP7 app? Is it possible to keep the debugger attached? Am I doing it wrong? Any suggestions, advice or guesses are welcome because I'm tearing my hair out.
When doing M+V hub integration (sorry, haven't done any pictures hub integration yet) I initially used a crude debug technique (Messagebox.Show, etc. - like Justin mentioned) to verify what was being passed to the NavigationEventArgs of OnNavigatedTo and wrapped the whole method in a try..catch block to learn what was going on. I then refactored the code when I knew what could be expected. (Remember OnNavigatedTo will be called when your app is launched normally too and so e won't be populated in the same way.)
When the app is launched from a/the hub it creates a new instance of the app and there is currently no way to connect to this for debugging while the main page is being navigated to.
Great question. I'm unsure if that's possible. As far as I know, there's no way to attach the debugger to when the WP7 O/S starts an app (which wasn't triggered by the debugger).
Photo Share picker extensibility, music+Video hub extensibility and other O/S extensibility points seem to not play nicely with the VS debugger. Normally I resort to MessageBox.Show to debug any problems with WP7 O/S integration.
1) Connect the Device
2) Turn off Zune
3) Start C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.1\Tools\WPConnect\x86\WPConnect.exe
To properly debug your application that uses the Media Library, you'll need to use the Windows Phone Connect Tool (WPConnect.exe) as described on MSDN. Jaime has some additional tips on his blog.
Once you are connected, you should be able to debug your application. Fingers crossed anyway. If that doesn't help, I'll dig a bit further.
It's not so much about the WPConnect tool. The nature of your application means that you have to have it closed and the user should pick a photo. Only after that the data is returned to the application.
You should read about the application execution model on Windows Phone 7. Also a good explanation is available here.
Initially, I would say that you should look at tombstoning (a good explanation here) but then again, the image returned will re-start the app and won't allow you to directly attach the debugger.
Yeah, looks like this is impossible...
All the answers above seem to be missing the point: I presume you're able to debug your app in the "standalone" mode (when it's launched normally), but not when it's launched via the Share Picker Extension. Am I write? This is the wall I'm hitting... :-(
I thought the proper way would be to attach to the process once it's launched.
I tried to use Debug > Attach to Process, then select Smart Device as the Transport and Windows Phone Device as the Qualifier... But in return I get the ugly "Unable to connect to 'Windows Phone Device'. Not implemented" message.
Bummer :-(

What could be causing my WP7 app to crash on only some models?

I've been working on this problem on and off for about a month. I don't expect anybody to be able to give me a definitive answer. I'm just completely out of ideas at this point and could use anything.
The problem is that my app crashes on only some models of phones. I have an HTC surround and it runs fine. It has also been tested on a Samsung Focus and it works there to. It crashes pretty consistently on a HTC mozart. There are other phones it crashes on but I don't know what models they are. I don't have access to an HTC mozart so debugging has been very difficult.
I'm handling the application UnhandledException event and I have try catch around every background thread. The error handling code never runs.
What I know:
Sometimes it freezes and requires a press of the power button. At least once it required the battery taken out. Most of the time it freezes and then crashes.
Most of the time it crashes on the main menu, before everything displays.
It's not 100% consistent. Sometimes it works for a little bit, but never very long.
It's not because it's out of memory. Most of the time it crashes while using less then 8MB.
When all the exception handling didn't work I added debug logging. This slows things way down but at the same time the issue goes away.
These symptoms make it sound like a deadlock to me. Although I have gone over the code and there is no thread ever entering more then 1 lock at a time.
Any ideas on how I should track this down would be appreciated.
Edit: This is a WP7 version of my game. I've just been able to confirm with a volunteer with an HTC mozart that the simplest conversion of the code meant for to run on the web will crash on the phone. That's code has no networking, isolated storage, or sound.
I also should have mentioned that this has passed certification and was in the marketplace for a few days until I took it down because it got bad reviews (because it was unplayable for some people)
If the devices are locking up, then my suspicions would be to look at the areas where you are closest to the driver level/hardware, which (looking at your game) are:
the display
the sound
It could also be just about due to processing/CPU activity - but generally "User level" code shouldn't be able to lock up your phone - that functionality is reserved for kernel software.
The only way of really testing this is to get hold of a device where this "reliably crashes" (e.g. a Mozart) and to go through the process of disabling bits of functionality one by one.
If this is a Silverlight app, then I'd expect Microsoft to want to help - I'd contact them via AppHub and via their local Evangelist team - they'll have the means and the motivation to assist you.
I'm happy to assist on testing on a developer-unlocked HTC Trophy if that helps!
The only thing I can think of that's unique to the Mozart is that it has an 8MP camera and all others have a 5MP camera.
Are you using a CameraCaptureTask and expecting the returned image to be a certain size?
Other than that, what does the app do? what services and device functionality are you using?
Do you have any network access running on a background thread?
I had roughly the same problem when developing my WP7 app. As far as I can tell it isn't as much model bound as it is device bound. In fact I had my app deployed to 15+ Trophy's (my company gave all their employees one of those) and it would repeatedly crash on some of them all having the same firmware. Some of the feedback I got through the reviews seems to indicate that it also happens in the wild.
In my case the crash occurs primarily (only?) when the app is launched. There does seem to be a strong correlation between internet connectivity and crashing in that I can 'recreate' the crash by putting my phone in flight mode, unplugging the network cable from my computer and then deploying the app. In that case too it immediately crashes and no event or break point is ever raised.
My gut feeling tell me it might have something to do with the map control as that does tend to respond funky to poor connectivity when the application is loading (like displaying an error message that the card cant be loaded while simultaneously displaying the map)
Does your app also use the Map Control (in combination with a Pivot control perhaps?)
Some of the devices have issues where you need set things to "content" instead of "embedded resource" in your project.
Although i've more heard about that issue related to app startup time, as on some devices (HD7?) the load of the app was taking enough time that the app was never allowed to start, the OS thought it was taking too long and killed it.

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