Feasibility Q: Android App that does what Overlay does

[roumba]

I love the utility of Mumble's overlay, I can set it up to show the names of people who are currently speaking in easily read locations, fonts, and colors. It is very helpful for communicating with new people or with people whose character of voice isn't unique enough to recognize.

However, some programs on computers don't get along with the overlay and can stop it from working. Sometimes, if the overlay is enabled, it will work but the program will crash very often. Is there a way I can have my android phone that's always plugged into my computer to charge run an app that displays the names of people who are speaking?

Perhaps there is already and app that does this, or do I need to make it myself? I am quite familiar with C# and Python from doing lots of scripting at work, so how difficult would it be to learn enough Java(?) for this?

[kissaki]

No, that is not currently possible.

More complex than the android client would probably be making the overlay data available to the android app. Mumble itself uses shared memory to communicate data to the overlay. Other than that nothing is in place to make it available/accessible.

[roumba]

Is there a way to access that shared memory from the connected phone?

[kissaki]

Not directly.

[roumba]

Could you elaborate, please?

Does this mean even my imaginary rubegoldberg app that magically accesses that overlay information from a shared folder on my wireless network is out of the question?

[hacst]

The shared memory interface is unlikely to be helpful for a mobile client. It transmits pixel data to display in part of a normal computer screen which doesn't fit well with your idea.

What you would want is something similar to the G15 extension we have which forwards the information in a way optimized for the target device. In your case probably a simple list of users with corresponding attributes. Unfortunately we do not yet have a plugin interface that would support this and this seems to be to specific for the core client :(

You could achieve a similar (but admittedly limited) experience by having the android app connect to the server as a minimal mumble client or - if you control the server - by using ICE to expose the wanted information (maybe the channel viewer protocol would suffice but its support for real-time "who is speaking" updates is limited). That would also remove the need for the android client to be able to directly talk to your computer which might be an issue.

Not ideal. Sorry about that. We really need to create that plugin interface....