Devlog 7 - There is always a Solution

Focus V/S Feature Dilemma

• I thought it would be a cool feature addition to display the current resource consumption (CPU/RAM) and some other system details of the computer right on the mobile app.
• but my concern was that these features are basically "extras" and I really didn’t want to slow down my core functionality.
• I was about to drop the idea entirely, but at the last minute I decided to ask Gemini about it and guess what? There is always a solution I mean, what did I expect? Its engineering after all

Smart Subscription Architecture - the solution

• well, my main concern was the wastage of resources and WebSocket bandwidth, which might bottleneck my main selling point: ultra low latency under 5ms control command communication
• But this architecture perfectly solves that.
  • so basically, the server will only blast data at me if I am explicitly subscribed to it. Otherwise, it sleeps.
  • and since this project uses WebSockets on a local network, there is generally only one user. So, if I unsubscribe from the service (like closing the telemetry component), that particular data broadcast will completely pause, saving precious resources on both the mobile client and the computer server
• forgot to mention : the server updates this system data every second if user is subscribed, else sleepyy

The Scalability FOMO

I am well aware my app won’t probably be used by more than 10 people for 10 minutes, but my Senior Software Engineer came shouting -

“Your current method to render different views, that too without using react-router, it will become scalability issue as application grow”

• in my initial HL system design i was going to use a single page and conditional rendering for different layouts on same page to avoide a package i decided not to use the react-router for my client web page

• but now i have like 5 pages and as i am building i keep getting more and more ideas…

• I fixed this issue by

  • creating a standard state for different viewModes and changing props/types to support it (nothing just some painful refactoring)
  • implementing a component mapping (view registry) for all the views. Now I can just plug in any number of views without writing spaghetti if/else statements.

The important thing is as i am not using the react-router, i will to keep an eye on memory and component lifecycle to free up the space in memory from components which are not in view.

I should have used react-router from beginning 😭

I am thinking to add a button to force kill a process from the phone, but again i am standing at a point where these features are kind of feelign like extras and note my core application

• attached image of the QR code that i use to pair the mobile with the computer, will add some security in future