[Galaxy S III Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] Olywa123:
Thanks all for responses - this is looking more promising by the day, nice donation pot building, now we just have to convince a Dev to get involved :)

My suggested approach would be to end up with a single clear post in this thread of exactly what we are asking for here and that we all agree what we expect. Given that a Dev who chooses to get involved may know nothing of Mirrorlink, we would need to VERY clearly identify the functionality we want from this (and explain how it is currently), provide them with as much info as we can and minimise the amount of effort on their part, if they have to spend time researching/understanding things then that’s less time coding.

Ideally want them to just decompile the Samsung app, strip out the unnecessary code/restrictions (including whatever is blocking the screen time-out for the phone) and then recompile – once this is proved working then they can tweak accordingly to try to get it working for non GT-I9300 phones (i.e. anything outside of the existing Drivelink app compatibility). Personally I think this should be compiled as an entirely new app containing only the Mirrorlink display, audio and key-input/relay protocols (removing the actual Drivelink app/interface altogether).

There are similar apps on the play store that do what Drivelink tries to do (i.e. large in-car interface for all your existing apps) only better so these could in theory be used with the newly created Mirrorlink app if wanted. Stripping out Drivelink completely will also reduce the size of the running app and in-memory usage and hopefully reduce the chance of problems. Having the Dev create it as an entirely new app would also mean that if we choose to, we can still run the original Samsung app on our phones rather than only being able to install one or the other (after all Samsung's app may get better).

We do also need to be clear about compatibility with ROMs/Android versions (bit concerned about possibility of supporting phones/FW’s where the original Drivelink app is not currently running already as a Dev who is good with the protocol stuff may not necessarily be good with the compatibility issues across devices but we will see what they say – might end up needing two devs, one to get it working as is, one to make it compatible). We also do not want the Dev to feel he will be hassled for constant tweaks and updates outside of what we initially agree but we would obviously like some sort of support after he drops the new app.

Once we have a clear definition, we could make a request post in the Dev or Apps forum referencing this thread. I've also identified a couple of Devs who have experience with the VNC stuff so would PM/Email them directly to see if they might be interested in this. We also need to somehow ensure that the Dev has confidence that he will get the promised donation for his effort, perhaps working with one ‘tester’ from the group here and only releasing it to the others once a donation is made – or if we find a Dev with a good reputation/post count here we donate in advance (not sure how happy you guys would be on that)?

I do think we need one main point of contact here for the Dev (who can collate feedback from all involved so the Dev is not spending time sifting through and replying to loads of posts or emails from all of us all), again focusing his effort only on the coding. I’m more than happy to run with all this but I do only really get a chance to make posts late in the evening (pretty busy with work during the day/family in the evening), if someone else would prefer to ‘take charge’ I’m more than happy for that too.

What do you think guys?

Stakeholders in this are:

$20 djwilliams100 - GT-I9300 (FW?) - Original Drivelink running fine

$20 Andre! - GT-I9300 (FW?) - Original Drivelink running fine

$30 Olywa123 - GT-I9300 (Stock XXBLG8 ICS 4.0.4) - Original Drivelink running fine

$20 cell128 - (SCH-I535 /FW?) - Original Drivelink App NOT currently running

$20 mrjoshzombie (Model?) (CM10 Nightlies) - Original Drivelink App NOT currently running

$30 shirazdindar - Galaxy S II Skyrocket (CM9)- Original Drivelink App NOT currently running

Total – $140 (~110 Euros)

*Guys, if not above already – can you confirm which firmware/ROM/model you are using or if anything I have already stated is not correct? Also, I’m assuming everyone here has the XAV-601BT unless I hear from you otherwise.

Hopefully we can have a final ‘summary post’ by the weekend sometime and start pitching to Devs

Hope we can pull this off.

More tomorrow evening, now I can go to bed! :)