Reset Screen Layout and Hide/Show Screens both ran ft-layout. Steam lists
entries by program, so Hide/Show launched Reset. Each gets a wrapper.
From PR #17 (only this part of 9618be8; its host_command change is for the
Nix packages).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Conflicts with experimental's pause_toggle, steam_menu and command: actions and its
AnnounceOverlay: both kept. The spin bindings join the Meta tap in the defaults, spinning
doesn't need pointer mode, and like other actions it does nothing while Frametop is paused.
AnnounceOverlay now sends through the PR's SendPointer.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Add KEY_MUTE as volume key. It will be mapped to KEY_MACRO28 and
use wpctl to toggle the mute of the default audio sink. The toggle of
the mute state will be done once when the key is pressed instead of
continuously toggling it when it is held down.
This allows the mute button on keyboards to work properly.
Signed-off-by: SuperTuxii <123881249+SuperTuxii@users.noreply.github.com>
GetComponentStateForDevicePath with no input source handle fails for
every render model component while a VR game runs (checked 2026-10-03
with a game up: all 21 components of frame_controller_right). TipOffset
then fell back to the controller's pose, which aims 40 degrees above the
Frame controller's laser. In games, pointing at a screen's middle missed
it and pointing below it hit, so the new aim-to-laser only worked from
the bottom; the controls' reveal and pin/roll aim were off the same way.
GetComponentState still answers then, with the same tip.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
SteamVR's own floating windows take the laser while a controller points
at them in a game and give it back when it points away. Frametop's
panels didn't: with the controllers left to the game (outside_games, the
default, or dashboard), they couldn't be clicked without the dashboard.
ft-screens now sets MakeOverlaysInteractiveIfVisible on a screen or
floating window while a hand controller's laser pose meets it, its
controls, or its popups (UpdateAim; curved screens hit on their
cylinder), and clears it 0.3 s after the aim leaves a wider margin. A
drag or a held button keeps it on. The keyboard, one overlay, uses
ComputeOverlayIntersection and now follows the mode when a game starts
or ends while it's open. This replaces the reset button's own aim zone.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
8 is about 0.2 degrees on a 3.4 m wide 3440-pixel screen 2 m away, so a
trigger press turned into a drag unless the hand was very still. 32
(about 0.9 degrees) felt much better in the headset (2026-10-03).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Each desktop screen gets a reset button left of its bar (a reticle). It
puts every screen back in its layout around where you are now, like
Meta+Shift+R (ft-layout apply).
In a VR game the screens leave the controllers to the game (the
outside_games and dashboard modes), so a controller couldn't click any
of their controls. Aiming a hand controller at the reset button now sets
MakeOverlaysInteractiveIfVisible on that button's overlay alone, so the
trigger clicks it; the flag clears half a second after the aim leaves a
zone twice as wide, and the game gets the controllers back. The aim
comes from the laser poses ft-screens already reads to show the controls.
The ft-layout spawn is now RunLayout(cmd), shared with the arrange.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Consent 2026-10-03, after a non-lawyer review: who runs this and how to reach
them, the dataset is public (Hugging Face, possibly abroad), the Hugging Face
username shows next to the contributor id, purposes (no identification), safety,
the maintainer grant passes to whoever maintains Frametop next, withdrawal
before and after merge, rights such as the GDPR's, and what a new version means.
Residents of Illinois, Texas and Washington can't take part for now (biometric
privacy laws): a third checkbox, profile consent.region_ok, checked by
validate.py from this consent version on. The DRAFT banners are gone, so uploads
no longer need FT_HANDREC_ALLOW_UPLOAD.
hands/rec/install.sh installs the recorder on a Frame with Frametop: container
packages, hand tracking and panel builds, ft-camd's capabilities, menu entry.
test_qml_backend also checks each call's argument count against the slots.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
When the checklist says no controllers, exported poses.jsonl has left and right
null and feedback lines carry no controller state: controllers left switched on
still get tracked (one wandered 2 m in a real session) and would read as the
hands' ground truth. Poses and live-tracker feedback inside deleted ranges are
left out too, as the images there are.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
sets.bin's capture_ns is CLOCK_MONOTONIC_RAW; poses.jsonl and prompts.jsonl are
CLOCK_MONOTONIC. On 2026-10-03 the two were 0.80 s apart during a session and
1.11 s apart five hours later, so images can't be paired with poses by
capture_ns. take.json now samples RAW minus MONOTONIC as each recording part
starts and stops (as ft-hands' raw_minus_mono_ns), so readers can put each
exposure on the poses' clock.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The Upload page is now three numbered steps: choose the export, log in to
Hugging Face, upload. Log in runs hub.py login, huggingface_hub's browser
login (OAuth device code, as hf auth login does): the link opens in the
browser and the page shows the code to enter, with Copy code and Cancel.
hub.py saves the token; the window never sees one, and nobody pastes one.
The terminal upload and the login command are gone from the page, and
UPLOAD.md is now a short 'About uploading' under the steps.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Frametop's Konsole sets XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/UID/frametop, where podman finds
no container state, so 'distrobox enter dev -- hf auth login' failed with a crun
error. The command the Upload page shows now sets the real runtime folder.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- ft-screens "spin next|prev|<degrees>": every unpinned screen and
floating window turns together about a vertical axis through your
head (0.3 s, eased), so the next panel on the right or left comes to
straight ahead; the arrangement stays as it is. Taps during a spin
add to it, from where the panels are headed; grabbing a panel or
placing it (ft-layout, ft-floatd) takes it out of the spin
- when a spin settles, the panel in front gets the pointer (recenter),
typing (as after a click), and KWin's active window: its floating
window, or the top window on a screen (ft-floatd "front N", the KWin
script's activate-output). KWin's outputs follow the screens'
new places (ft-layout scale), as after a move
- the input relay: spin_next and spin_prev actions, Meta+Alt+Tab and
Meta+Alt+Shift+Tab by default; Frametop Input Settings lists them.
Not Meta+Tab: that's Cmd+Tab on a Mac reached through a remote
desktop like RustDesk, and the relay would take the Mac's app
switcher. Meta+Alt+Tab (Cmd+Option+Tab) is unused on macOS,
Windows, and KDE
Used on the Frame (SteamOS 0.3.0 build 20260922) with one screen and
three or four floating windows, through RustDesk to a Mac.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
af2ea7c put _stay_awake between exportSession and its @Slot, so the
window's Export button called a method QML couldn't see. A new test checks
every backend call in main.qml against Backend's slots and properties.
Export and Upload now say Exporting…/Uploading… with a spinner the moment
they're pressed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The helper now reads SteamVR's list of panels every 20 s instead of every second, so a panel
made in between (a floating window's menu, frametop.float.N.sub.K, or the Frametop keyboard
the first time it opens) couldn't be clicked with the mouse until the next read. ft-screens
now sends "overlay <key>" to @ft_pointer_helper right after it makes one, and the helper adds
it to its list at once (only frametop.* keys). An older helper ignores it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The calibration panel runs for as long as the gaze service does, hidden nearly all the time,
and it woke 20 to 30 times a second to look at its socket and SteamVR's events: about 0.9% of
a core, the main cost left with gaze idle.
It now waits in poll() on its command socket: up to a second while hidden, and up to 10 ms
while shown, as before (it still drains SteamVR's events each pass, so a quit is acknowledged
within a second while hidden). A command wakes it at once, so "show" draws sooner than
before. With --watch-stdin, its stdin closing wakes it as well, so stopping it doesn't wait.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ft-gaze's loop slept 2 ms, so 500 times a second it read the head pose
(GetDeviceToAbsoluteTrackingPose), checked the eye tracker's counter, and drained SteamVR's
events, for samples that come 90 times a second.
It now sleeps 4 ms. A new sample is printed within 4 ms of appearing, 2 on average (was 1),
and the pose history still has a pose within 2 ms of any sample's time, which keeps the
head-pose error under 0.2 degrees for a head turning 100 degrees a second. Sleeping until
the next sample is due would have thinned the pose history to 11 ms.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The panel-edge test read visible[edgeKey], and when the last panel the cursor touched was
gone from the overlay list, that added it back as hidden. The map then had more entries than
there are handles, which made the 50 ms visibility poll run every frame, and since the last
commit it also counted as a visibility change each time, so unchanged frames were never
reused. The edge test now looks the key up without adding it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ft-gaze computed and printed all six sources for every sample: about 1.3 KB of JSON a line
with our tracker (practice2), 120 KB a second through podman's stdio relay for ft-gazed to
json.loads 90 times a second. It also read SteamVR's gaze action for every sample outside
games (UpdateActionState and GetEyeTrackingDataRelativeToNow, two calls into vrserver, 180 a
second), though with our tracker ft-gazed only uses own and mmap1.
- ft-gaze takes --sources LIST (action, mmap1, mmap2, left, right, own, and eye for the EYE
object; all by default, so the probe and ft-eyes-session are unchanged), and with
--watch-stdin a line "sources LIST" on stdin switches them. A source left out isn't read
and prints as {"ok":0} ("eye" as null), so every line keeps the same keys. An older
ft-gaze ignores both, and prints everything as before.
- ft-gazed asks for what it reads: own,mmap1 with our tracker; left,right,mmap1 with
SteamVR's eyes; the source plus mmap1 and mmap2 on the older one-source path. While a
check or the calibration runs or waits to open, all of them, since checks record every
source (the calibration fits the action's correction too) and the fit check reads "eye".
It switches as soon as that changes, well inside the check's 0.45 s settle.
- So the action is read only during checks, or with --source action.
On recorded samples, a line with own and mmap1 is about 700 bytes instead of 1,300
(practice2), and one with left, right and mmap1 about 550 instead of 940 (test1).
gaze/test/idle-test.py now checks that ft-gaze starts with every source for a check and is
then switched to those in use, without the action or own; all its checks pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The relay sent the helper one "move" per SYN_REPORT, so a 1000 Hz mouse sent 1000 datagrams
a second to a helper whose loop runs every 8 ms, and each one went through a dozen sscanf
and strncmp tests in the helper before reaching the move handler. In a 200 ms test at
1000 Hz, 149 reports now make 45 moves with the same total.
flush() on a report now sends only once 4 ms have passed since the last move; tick() sends
the rest when due, and the select timeout shrinks to match. Buttons and the gaze
keys still flush first, unconditionally, so a click lands where the pointer was. In the
helper, "move" is now tested first in the command dispatch, and its handling is one lambda.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The gesture reader fetched vrserver's /input/getstate.json over HTTP every 3 seconds, the
whole time the relay runs, to notice a controller's root path changing when the 3D mouse
takes or gives back its hand role.
It now looks them up when it connects, when a message comes from a device path it doesn't
know (at most every 3 s; the device is read from the message with two string searches, not
a JSON parse of all 160 a second), 1.5 s after the relay's 3D mouse connects or lets go (the
relay tells it through GamePause.controllers_changed), and otherwise every 30 s. The keys
test's pause stub gets the new method.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The session now turns KWin's blur and contrast effects off by id (blurEnabled and
contrastEnabled in the desktop's kwinrc), and a KWin that renamed them would quietly
leave them on. The check looks for their built-in factories (KWin::blur_factory,
KWin::contrast_factory) in kwin_wayland, which it already reads for --output-count,
and warns if one is gone. The kwin and plasma-workspace retest hints gain the blur and
the hidden autostart entries.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
While its window was open, Frametop Remote Access ran remote-ctl.sh status every 2 s,
and each run spawns bash, curl (the tailnet name from tailscaled) and python3 to parse
it. It now checks every 5 s, plus when the window comes to the front and once more 2 s
after turning remote access on or off or changing the password, so a change still
shows within a couple of seconds. A check doesn't start while one is still running.
Doing the check in-process would duplicate remote-ctl.sh's idea of "running", which
the session and the pause code share.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Export and upload are done in the headset now: the export page only notes
that VR may stutter a little. Upload opens the pull request first (a
draft) and shows its link, telling the person to plug in the headset and
leave it until it says Uploaded; the files then go to refs/pr/N, and the
pull request is marked open at the end. A retry of the same export goes on
in the same pull request. While an export or upload runs, a host unit holds
a logind sleep inhibitor so the Frame stays awake with the headset off.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
While copying, ft-eyegrab woke every 300 us (about 1,500 to 3,000 times a second) and
fingerprinted all eight slots each time: 8 x 256 strided reads from DMA-BUF memory.
- Each look now checks only the slot each camera writes next. The order is known (camera 0
3,0,1,2; camera 1 7,5,4,6,5,7,6,4), and the next slot follows from the last two; the table
starts from those orders and learns from every frame, so a SteamVR update that changes
them costs a few seconds of full scans, not frames.
- A camera with nothing in its expected slot 1.5 frames after its last one, or with no
order yet, gets all four slots checked, as before. A frame that turns up in an unexpected
slot means full scans for that camera for 2 s.
- A slot's fingerprint is taken again when it stops being one of the two in use, so a later
check sees only a new frame. A frame is still passed on when its camera starts the frame
after next.
- Between frames it sleeps until 2.5 ms before the next is due, then looks every 1 ms, with
0.5 ms of timer slack (PR_SET_TIMERSLACK, --share only). With no frames from either
camera for 0.5 s (headset off) it looks every 4 ms.
- --rec keeps its 0.3 ms polls (and the expected-slot checks), for its timestamps.
Tested offline by building poll_frames against simulated cameras that write each frame in
four bursts, the last after the next frame starts (6 s, both cameras): 1,076 frames passed
on, none torn or skipped, with the known orders and with camera 1 in a different order.
Wakeups 1,486/s -> 207/s, the poller's CPU 3.6% -> 0.8% of a core (in plain memory; the real
DMA-BUF reads cost more), and a frame's start is seen 1.35 ms after it begins on average
instead of 0.76. With a camera stalling 15 ms every 2 s, the old poller passed on 22 torn
frames and the new one 8 or fewer.
Built (glibc 2.38 symbols at most, the host has 2.39), not installed: it runs as root from
/etc/frametop, so it takes effect only after gaze/tracker/install.sh (sudo).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The loop polled the input devices with a 100 ms timeout and then, on every wake, did
SteamVR's part: PollNextEvent, the headset's activity level and every device's pose, all
IPC calls to vrserver. Input wakes it at once so the displays come on with the first
key or motion, but a moving mouse sends hundreds of events a second, so moving the mouse
meant hundreds of rounds of IPC a second instead of 10.
Every wake still drains the input devices and the control socket and counts input as
use straight away; SteamVR's part, and the backlight read that goes with it, now run
only when 100 ms have passed since the last time, and poll sleeps until then. Built in
the dev container (power/build.sh, no warnings); not run, since the live ft-powerd holds
@ft_powerd.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Handle() held the state lock through a chain of up to a dozen sscanf calls per command, and
RunFrame, which vrserver calls every frame, takes the same lock, so a burst of commands
(about 116 poses a second, plus moves and buttons) could hold up vrserver's frame. Commands
are now parsed into locals first, and the lock is held only to store the result.
RunFrame also called UpdateBooleanComponent six times and UpdateScalarComponent twice every
frame, and TrackedDevicePoseUpdated every frame even while disconnected. Components now go to
SteamVR only when they change (all of them on the first frame). The pose still goes out every
frame while the device is connected, as a tracked device's should; the disconnected pose goes
out once. The helper now sends a pose only when it changes, so the comment says the driver
keeps the last one.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The relay sent to @ft_pointer_helper on a blocking socket. When the helper stalled, a
layout placement or grabprobe holds it for seconds while ft-gazed keeps filling its socket at
90 Hz, the relay's one loop blocked with it: keyboards, the volume keys (which must never
reach gamescope), and pausing all stopped until the helper read again.
The socket is non-blocking now. A command the helper doesn't take (EAGAIN) waits in a queue,
and everything after it queues behind it so the order holds; tick() sends what it can on each
loop, and the select timeout drops to 20 ms while anything waits. Mouse moves add up into one
queued move. A scroll notch is dropped rather than queued, since scrolling seconds late is no
use; its release still goes. Presses, releases, show, hide, and the rest are kept, so no
button stays down. The queue holds at most 512 commands. While paused, the configured
pointer's queue still drains, so the releases and "hide" from standing down arrive. A
"vrbind" that hits a full socket is sent again on the next loop instead of being lost.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The nested Plasma session runs the system's XDG autostart entries. Discover's update
notifier (/etc/xdg/autostart/org.kde.discover.notifier.desktop) started
plasma-discover --mode update inside it, 520-620 MB resident and about 9% of a core,
with flatpak-system-helper and AppStream downloads behind it. IBus started a nested
ibus-daemon with kimpanel and ibus-extension-gtk3, which no app in the desktop can use:
KWin's input method is ft-textinput (zwp_input_method_v1, focus reports only; the VR
keyboard types through ft-screens' seat), and the session already drops QT_IM_MODULE,
GTK_IM_MODULE and XMODIFIERS. Nothing in Frametop talks to IBus.
Before Plasma starts, the session script copies both entries into
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/autostart with Hidden=true, which plasma-session honours for that
desktop only. It does this once ([Defaults] autostart=1 in frametoprc) and skips a name
the user already has a file for, so deleting the copy brings the program back. The
geoclue demo agent stays (it answers apps' location requests outside GNOME and idles at
0%), and orca's entry is OnlyShowIn GNOME-family desktops, so it never ran. Tested
against a temporary XDG_CONFIG_HOME, including an existing user ibus.desktop left alone.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The nested kwinrc had no [Plugins] group, so KWin ran its default blur and background
contrast effects, and kdeglobals had no AnimationDurationFactor, so animations ran at
full length. KWin renders through zink on Turnip, on the GPU vrcompositor needs, and
blur re-renders what's behind every translucent panel and menu; each animation frame is
another frame for KWin and ft-screens.
Before KWin starts, the session script now writes [Plugins] blurEnabled=false and
contrastEnabled=false to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/kwinrc and [KDE] AnimationDurationFactor=0 to
its kdeglobals, each only if the desktop's own file has no value for it. It does this
once and records that in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/frametoprc ([Defaults] effects=1), because
System Settings deletes a key put back to its default: without the marker, turning blur
back on wouldn't survive a restart. The ids blur and contrast are the built-in effects
of KWin 6.2.5 on SteamOS (both enabled by default in its plugin metadata). Tested
against a temporary XDG_CONFIG_HOME: fresh config, an existing blurEnabled=true kept,
and a deleted key not rewritten.
README and docs/reference.md say how to turn them back on.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Every frame (about 116 a second) the helper tested the cursor ray against every visible
overlay twice with ComputeOverlayIntersection, set the dot's alpha, width, transform and
visibility (five calls into SteamVR), and sent the driver a pose datagram, even with the
mouse and the head still.
Now a frame reuses the last collision result when the mouse, the anchor (1 mm) and the
eye (5 mm) haven't moved and no overlay showed, hid, or changed handle. The passes still run
at least every 100 ms, since overlays move on their own (a floating window's controls follow
it), and always while dragging. The dots' setters go to SteamVR only when their value changes:
the placement when the dot moved 0.2 mm or the eye 5 mm, which turns or resizes it by well
under 1%, and the width on a 0.5% change. The plain pose goes to the driver only when the
laser's origin moved 0.2 mm or its direction 0.04 deg (0.1 mm where it lands, 15 cm on), and
at least every 100 ms; the driver keeps the last pose and reports it every frame. A tilt's
pose, a placement, or waking sends the next one regardless.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ft-screens gave KWin a frame callback for every committed screen on each tick, and the tick
was an 11 ms timer set again after each run, so it slid through the display's frame and came
about 85 times a second at 90 Hz: the desktop repeated a frame several times a second (judder
in scrolling and video), and KWin drew every screen in one burst at a random point of
vrcompositor's frame. Hidden screens got the same 90 Hz unless Frametop was paused for a game.
- Ticks run on a timerfd at absolute times, once per display frame, 1 ms after the vsync
(IVRSystem::GetTimeSinceLastVsync and the HMD's display frequency, read once a second), so
KWin gets its callbacks early in the frame. Measured with --no-vr: 91 wakeups a second
instead of about 85. On the Frame the vsync times SteamVR reports lie on a 90 Hz grid.
- Each screen's callbacks come at a rate for how much of it you see (vr.cpp,
UpdateAttention): every frame while focused (within 12 degrees of where your head points,
a laser or the mouse on it in the last 1.5 s, carried, or typed on), 15 a second for the
rest of what you see (within 60 degrees), and 1 a second when hidden, behind you, or
paused. Levels rise at once and fall after 1.5 s (focused) or 0.5 s (in view). KWin draws
a screen only after its callback and its apps wait for theirs, so this throttles the apps
too. A screen where nothing changes costs nothing at any rate, as before.
- A video in view keeps every frame: 8 commits in a row that each redraw 6% or more of the
screen, at 10 a second or more, count as one (from the surface's buffer damage).
- "rates F V H" / --rates set the three rates (default 0 15 1, 0 = every frame), "rates?"
shows them and each screen's level, "watch S" gives everything full rate for S seconds for
a remote viewer (vnc-bridge.sh renews it), and "phase MS" moves the ticks for tuning.
- ft-screens' main thread runs at nice -5 after the session starts: SteamOS allows down to
-8 once the soft RLIMIT_NICE is raised, and KWin waits on these ticks. It had spent nearly
3 times as long waiting to run as running.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ft-eyes looked for new frames about 1,000 times a second: each pass of its loop asked the
control socket with a non-blocking recvfrom (a BlockingIOError nearly every time), read
both cameras' counters, and slept 1 ms. The frames come every 11.1 ms per camera, and only
as counters in ft-eyegrab's shared memory, so there's no fd to wait on.
Now each pass ends in select() on the control socket, with a timeout until 2 ms before the
next frame of either camera is due (from when its last one was seen), then every 1 ms until
it comes. A command wakes it at once. A camera with no frame for 0.1 s (headset off,
grabber idle) isn't waited for, and with both stopped it looks every 20 ms. Waiting for the
frame grabber's file uses the same select, 0.2 s at a time, instead of sleeping through
commands.
A new frame is still seen within about 1 ms of when it lands. On a synthetic share at 90 Hz
per camera, on a heavily loaded headset (load average 23, so ft-eyes rarely sat idle), its
waits went from 178 to 81 a second; unloaded, the old loop's 1 ms sleeps add up to about
1,000.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
While FreeRDP ran, vnc-bridge.sh called ft-layout remote-view every 5 s, which scans
all of /proc for plasmashell and runs kscreen-doctor -j: about 4.4% of a core for a
layout that rarely changes.
It now stats the two files the answer depends on, the nested KWin's
~/.config/frametop/kwinoutputconfig.json (positions, scales, primary) and
~/.config/frametop-layout.json (screen sizes), once a second while FreeRDP runs. After
either changes it reads the layout every 2 s for 10 s, since KWin's outputs follow the
file a few seconds later; otherwise once a minute, in case a change touched neither.
With no VNC viewer connected nothing runs (previous commit).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
vnc-bridge.sh kept FreeRDP connected to krdpserver from the moment remote desktop
started, so krdp captured and H.264-encoded every KWin redraw in software (openh264)
with nobody watching: krdpserver 55-78% of a core, xfreerdp 16-27%, Xvnc 6-11%, with 0
clients on :5900. krdp 6.7 creates its screencast session per RDP connection and drops
it when the connection closes, so krdpserver itself idles without one and stays up.
The bridge now counts established connections to Xvnc's port with ss, starts FreeRDP
when a viewer appears (the desktop shows about 3 s later; the VNC screen is black until
then) and stops it 45 s after the last one leaves (VNC_IDLE_SEC). Xvnc has no client
hook, so its log output, which it writes for every connection, wakes the bridge early;
otherwise it looks every 5 s while idle (0.1% of a core measured, against 0.9% for ss
once a second) and every second while FreeRDP runs. The layout check runs only while
FreeRDP runs.
While a viewer is connected the bridge sends "watch 15" to ft-screens (@ft_screens) at
once and every 5 s, so screens at a reduced frame rate (out of view, headset on a
stand) stream at full rate; it lapses by itself if the bridge dies, and an ft-screens
without the command just answers an error. The window search after starting FreeRDP
now ends when FreeRDP exits instead of polling for 30 s.
krdp on 127.0.0.1 with a fresh password, VNC on the tailnet address with VncAuth, and
remote-ctl.sh start/stop (pause and resume) are unchanged.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The main loop slept a fixed 8 ms, about 116 wakeups a second, whether the pointer was awake
or not, and every second it looked up every overlay's handle and read a string property from
all 64 device slots to find its own device.
With the pointer off and hand gestures off, the loop now waits in poll() on its command
socket for up to 250 ms, or 20 ms while mapped Frame controller buttons are being read
(SteamVR input has no event to wait for). A mouse command ends the wait at once. The
headset's activity level, the game check, and the "vrgame" and "gazeawake" repeats keep
going at that pace. The 50 ms visibility poll and the 1 s handle lookups run only while the
pointer is awake, and waking forces both. The device index is looked for only while it's
unknown, and again after SteamVR activates or deactivates a device. The HMD pose history is
kept only with hand gestures on, its one user.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ft-eyes and ft-gaze run in the dev container through distrobox, so they live in podman's
libpod scope: frametop-gaze.service's limits never reach them, and they ran at nice 0
next to vrcompositor and vrserver, also at nice 0.
- ft-eyes sets itself to nice 10 and SCHED_BATCH at start, before its threads. Batch
turns off wakeup preemption, so a frame ft-eyes wakes up for can wait out a running
compositor's turn; a few ms late costs the gaze little.
- ft-gaze sets nice 5 before its threads start, but stays SCHED_OTHER: each sample goes
on to the pointer, and batch would add the same wait to every one of them.
- Both only ever lower their priority (a higher nice already set wins), and a failure
is logged and ignored. Checked in the dev container: nice 0 -> 10, policy 0 -> 3
(SCHED_BATCH) without any capability.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The helper ran `vrcmd --overlays` once a second while the pointer was awake, and in gaze
mode the pointer never sleeps. Each run is a shell plus vrcmd, a new SteamVR client, about
26 to 30 ms of CPU, so about 3% of a core all the time.
The list is now read every 20 seconds, and at once (at most once a second) when it may have
changed: the pointer waking, the dashboard opening or closing or creating an overlay, the
scene app changing, an "overlays" request, and a left click that hit nothing, which may be
on a panel that came up since. The thread waits on a condition variable instead of waking
every 100 ms, so it sleeps while paused. The main loop looks the keys up again as soon as a
new list is in, rather than at its next 1 s tick. Overlays already on the list still show
and hide within 50 ms, from the IsOverlayVisible poll.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Nothing called cv2.setNumThreads, so OpenCV kept a pool of one worker per core for
pupil windows of 140 to 240 px. Live, its idle workers spun and yielded about 14,000
times a second each, about a quarter of a core, next to SteamVR's compositor. numpy's
OpenBLAS also started 8 threads that never had work.
eyes_pupil.py now sets OpenCV to one thread, and ft-eyes sets OPENBLAS_NUM_THREADS and
OMP_NUM_THREADS to 1 before numpy loads (a value already in the environment wins).
Replaying fit1 into a scratch share (ft-eyes-replay, 14 s measured, capped at one core
with the replay): threads 13 -> 1, involuntary context switches 3,812/s -> 430/s,
system time 6.9% -> 1.6% of a core. Under that cap the frames it kept up with went from
21-36 to 57-69 a second per eye.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The dot is the current tracker's distance guess, often wrong; the ring is
where the hands should be.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
host-spawn starts a host command in the caller's folder. Started from /tmp,
the app's folder in the container is /run/host/tmp, which the host doesn't
have, so starting ft-camd (and every other host command) exited 127.
host_command now runs from home (env -C), and the launcher cds there.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The checklist page measures the light when it opens, starting ft-camd if
nothing runs it (and stopping it on quit), instead of saying the cameras
aren't running. The round's lighting defaults to what the cameras measure:
daylight or indoor, from the mono cameras' ambient infrared. Lamps give off
little infrared, so dim and normal rooms read alike; picking dim, room or
daylight still overrides it. session.json gets source, measured and
ambient_ir.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
vrserver sends a controller's state only when something on it changes, and one lying still
or asleep may not even send its first one. The check subscribed to one controller and failed
after 3 s of silence. It now subscribes to all, and silence after a good handshake is a skip.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The gaze service ran ft-gaze and our own eye tracker all the time: with gaze mode off, ft-eyes
still took about 60% of a core, and ft-eyegrab, ft-gaze and ft-gazed 3 to 4% each. Now ft-gaze
and our tracker run only while gaze mode is on and someone wears the headset, while a check or
the calibration is open or asked for, or under a "wake" lease, which the Gaze page of Frametop
Input Settings renews while it's open. 30 s after the last use they stop, and the frame grabber
idles with our tracker.
- The pointer helper answers "gaze ? headset" with worn|away (SteamVR's activity level for the
headset); an older helper answers it as before, and the service then goes by gaze mode alone.
- A quick check, calibration, or fit check asked for while idle wakes the tracker and opens once
it sends; the automatic calibration waits quietly while it starts.
- Status has "awake" and "idle" (why), and the Gaze page shows it.
- gaze/test/idle-test.py runs the service with a fake helper and ft-gaze, offline.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ft-camd tells the side cameras apart by XRService's buffer allocation order,
which some XRService starts reverse; both of 2026-10-02's starts did, so the
cutouts missed the hands. HANDS_SWAP_SIDES=auto (the default) has ft-hands
vote from hands seen in both side cameras: the landmark rays meet in front
of both cameras only under the right naming. While undecided it probes the
exchanged naming with the landmark model. It decides in about 2 s of hands
(right on all 7 recordings replayed), swaps the views in place, and publishes
sides.json. 0 and 1 still force it, with a warning when the hands disagree.
Recordings carry each part's naming and the session's decision; review,
export, validate and ft-handreplay put the names right, and takes.py sides
records a decision by hand.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Frametop kept using the headset during games: with gaze mode off, our eye tracker still took
about 60% of a core, remote desktop about 2 cores while on, and KWin kept drawing hidden
screens because ft-screens sent their frame callbacks at 90 Hz. Pausing gives that back, and
resuming brings back only what pausing stopped. It's also a way to keep the gaze service and
our eye tracker off during games, which PR #13 asked for.
Paused (input/game_pause.py, run by the input relay):
- frametop-gaze stops (ft-eyegrab then idles by itself), and hand tracking and remote desktop
stop if they run
- the desktop hides and slows down: ft-screens "pause on" hides every panel and sends KWin a
frame callback once a second; or, with pause_desktop "close", the desktop closes and starts
again on resume
- the relay lets go of the 3D mouse, typing goes to Steam, and mapped buttons and key
combinations do only pause_toggle, steam_menu and commands
Toggled by both thumbsticks clicked together twice (configurable), read passively from
vrserver's web socket (input/vrws.py) so it works in games and takes nothing from them; by the
new pause_toggle action; by input/ft-pause; and, with pause_auto (default on), by a VR game
starting and ending, which the pointer helper now reports ("vrgame 1|0"). Frametop Input
Settings has a Games page for it. update-check.py checks the web socket, and doesn't count a
paused gaze service as failed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Since the relay leaves a node it can't read yet for the next scan (12f2e84, PR #12), it
checks os.access first, and the test's fake /dev/input paths don't exist, so the relay never
opened them and every key check failed. The fake os now says they're readable.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The second real session took 16 minutes, half of it 36 still poses. Labels
come from the auto-labeller, so what matters is variety, not clean holds.
A sweep step shows a strip of pose pictures and lights one every 4 s while
the hands move slowly near and far; each cue is a prompt event with
"cue": true. The core session is now 15 steps, about 5 minutes recorded.
The pose groups, the one-hand sweeps' groups and the cue order are shuffled
per session, seeded from its id and saved in session.json. A quick round
(--quick, or the checklist's choice) is about 2 minutes for extra lighting.
Touch the dot has 6 dots, the push sections two heights.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
After the headset wakes, XRService sometimes fails to load the colour module's
VCINT FPGA image; then only the two side cameras run, without the IR light,
and the tracker finds no hands. hands/camcheck.py reads XRService's log, the
video nodes it holds and ft-camd's ring, and says ok, degraded or unknown.
The recorder won't start while degraded (--ignore-cameras overrides it), offers
a confirmed SteamVR restart, and stops the first hand-size step when the
tracker sees no hand at all. ft-camwatch (unit file only, not enabled) follows
the log, notifies, and with CAMWATCH_AUTO_RESTART=1 restarts SteamVR when the
headset isn't worn and nothing else uses VR.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
An X11 window in a Flatpak can give KWin an app id with no desktop file:
RustDesk's says com.carriez.flutter_hbb (its GTK application id), and the
Flatpak's desktop file is com.rustdesk.RustDesk. A profile recorded that
id, so it couldn't relaunch the app (PR #16 keeps that from killing
ft-floatd's socket). And the window's pid is the sandbox's own, so a
launched window matched neither by process nor by app id, and didn't
float.
desktop_name() finds the desktop file whose StartupWMClass names the
window's class (or app id) when the app id has none. Capture records
that name, a profile claims open windows by it, and a launch's window
matches by it.
Profiles saved before this keep the old id; save them again.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Gio.DesktopAppInfo.new() returns NULL for a desktop file that doesn't
exist, and PyGObject raises TypeError ("constructor returned NULL")
rather than returning None, so launch()'s `if info is None` never ran.
The exception escaped the control socket's GLib callback, GLib dropped
the watch, and ft-floatd stopped answering everything: the float key,
dock, Launch as Standalone, and profiles, until the desktop restarted.
Found on the Frame (2026-10-02): a profile saved with RustDesk's
Flatpak open records its window's app id, com.carriez.flutter_hbb,
which has no desktop file (the Flatpak's is com.rustdesk.RustDesk).
`ft-layout use` on that profile asked ft-floatd to launch it, and
ft-floatd went silent. With this, that launch replies "error no app
com.carriez.flutter_hbb" and the profile's other apps open.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The headset's right-side click button (KEY_SELECT on gpio-keys, read without
a grab) now works the session: Next while a step waits, pause during a hold,
resume while paused. With no mouse connected the hints lead with it.
The push sections say plainly to push straight out from the headset and pull
back, with a side-view picture of the head, the headset and the arrow, and
the bar's ends read "At your chest" and "Arm out". The bar labels are sent
as one field, so labels with spaces no longer split.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The first real session moved on every 5 s with text only, too fast to follow.
Each step now waits for Next (Space or the window's button), counts down 3-2-1
while recording, then holds. P pauses, R redoes a step, S skips a section;
"Advance by itself" (--auto) keeps the old timed flow. Nothing records while
a step waits: each step is its own recording part.
The panel and the window show a picture of each pose (hands/rec/poses,
generated by make_poses.py from a parametric hand, MIT) and a diagram of where
to hold the hands and how far out. prompts.jsonl gains ready, wait and redo
events; session.json gains mode.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
hands/rec/validate.py (standard library; Linux and Windows, Python 3.12+)
checks an export before upload and when it's received: SHA256SUMS, an
allow-list of files, the manifest's schema and keys, the consent version,
a uuid4 contributor, no identifying fields in calibration.json or
device.json, every sets.bin.zst decompressed to its end as a stream with
each FHSET01 header checked against the manifest, jsonl lines, the total
size. It decompresses with compression.zstd, zstandard or the zstd
program. validate.py DIR [--json].
hands/rec/hub.py uploads an export with huggingface_hub, as a pull
request to contributions/<contributor>/<session>: validate first, refuse
a repeat of the same export, check the login (whoami) and access
(auth_check), upload_folder(create_pr=True) with the manifest summary as
the description, then record the PR under "uploads" in session.json.
Errors are explained (terms not accepted, not found, 401/403, network).
--dry-run makes no network calls. FT_HANDREC_DATASET overrides
HF_DATASET (DeeJanuz/frametop-hands); while the texts are drafts a real
upload needs FT_HANDREC_ALLOW_UPLOAD=1.
The Upload page shows the login with "Check again" and how to run
hf auth login in a terminal (the token never enters the window), then
Upload with a phase, progress and Cancel (hub.py as a child process), the
PR link, and a warning for an export uploaded before. The manual
command stays as the fallback. ft-handrec --hub-dry-run.
session.py also saves device.json: cv.cad_from_cal and head from
/persist/device_config.json, the labeller's shape, nothing identifying;
export copies it. Session ids with a -N suffix are accepted everywhere.
hands/rec/rehearse.sh runs it all without the headset: ft-ringplay plays
30 s of a capture into a ring, session.py records a short test script
with ft-handpanel --no-vr and a tracker, then export, validate and a
dry-run upload (--repo ID uploads for real). It runs in one frame-job
scope, deletes its data and stops its processes, also on Ctrl+C.
hands/rec/tests/test_validate.py covers good and broken exports and hub.py
without the network. The dev container gains python3-huggingface-hub.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
hands/rec/ft_handrec.py + main.qml (Kirigami, dev container; host launcher
hands/rec/ft-handrec): consent (CONSENT.md, asked again when its version
changes; profile.json with a random contributor id), the before-you-start
checklist with the lighting and free-space checks, the session controls
(Space pauses, Esc stops), review with a frame-set viewer that deletes
ranges, takes and sessions, export with progress and cancel (warns while
the headset is worn), and the upload page (UPLOAD.md, the
huggingface-cli command; HF_DATASET is a placeholder). --dry-run runs
sessions without processes, for testing.
hands/rec/takes.py (standard library): indexes sets.bin and sets-N.bin
without reading pixels, reads one set's cameras, keeps deleted ranges in
take.json, and exports: deleted sets left out, zstd -10 -T2 at nice 19,
manifest.json and SHA256SUMS, nothing left behind on cancel.
CONSENT.md and UPLOAD.md are drafts pending a legal review; the window
says contributions aren't open yet. The dev container gains zstd.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
hands/rec/session.py runs a recording session from script.json: it starts
ft-camd and a tracking ft-hands as transient units only if they aren't
running, records each section as one take (ft-hands --record-only at
10 sets/s, a new sets-N.bin after each pause), drives ft-handpanel, and
writes session.json, calibration.json (identifying fields removed),
prompts.jsonl and take.json. Feedback comes from the live hands file and,
in the controller sections, from the panel's device poll. It also runs
from the command line (--dry-run, --speed, --ring, --no-start).
hands/rec/script.json: 11 sections, about 9 minutes without the object
and controller sections.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A head-locked SteamVR overlay for the hand recorder (hands/rec/DESIGN.md):
1.2 m ahead, 12 degrees up, 36 degrees wide, drawn with stb_truetype
into three shared DMA-BUFs as ft-gazepanel does. It shows the title,
step, wrapped instruction, note, countdown, hand chips, near/far bar
and a "Paused" cover, driven over @ft_handpanel.
It also places the touch target, a 2 cm dot in its own overlay fixed
in the room where the head was at the first command for that point,
and logs head and controller poses to poses.jsonl at 250 Hz from a
thread of its own. Both threads take one lock around OpenVR calls.
--no-vr prints each picture's state to stdout (and --dump writes the
pictures), for testing without a headset. hands/rec/build.sh builds it
in the dev container.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ft-hands --record-hz N records at most N frame sets a second, for the hand recorder (10).
DESIGN.md lays out the recorder: the headset panel, the session runner and its script,
the files, review and export, consent.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
From curiousjtuber's PR #13: with the gaze service running, SteamVR
restarted its eye tracker every 10 to 13 s of Beat Saber, as if the
headset came off, and each restart took input focus from the game.
The PR stopped every read in a game. Only the action path reaches
SteamVR (UpdateActionState on the gaze set at overlay-global priority,
then GetEyeTrackingDataRelativeToNow); the mmap and our tracker are
read-only files. So only the action is skipped while a scene app runs,
and gaze keeps moving the pointer over the dashboard in a game. The
action source is only used with --source action.
Co-Authored-By: CuriousJ <curious.j.tuber@gmail.com>
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
From curiousjtuber's PRs: the relay leaves a new input node for the next
scan until udev gives it to the input group, rather than marking it seen
after a failed open; and ft-screens' catcher takes a screen's overlays
from one copy of All() instead of begin() and end() of two temporaries,
which crashed libc++ builds on the first click.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
While a button pressed on a screen is held, UpdateCatcher checks every tick
whether the laser is still on one of the screen's overlays. It built that list
from s.All().begin() and s.All().end(), but All() returns a std::array by
value: iterators into two different temporaries, which is undefined behaviour.
A clang build of ft-screens got a garbage length, threw std::length_error, and
aborted on the first click, taking KWin and the desktop with it.
A new /dev/input node is root:root 0600 until udev applies GROUP=input. The
scan probed each new node once and marked it seen even when the open failed, so
a node caught in that gap was never opened. Behind a KVM, a switch brings back a
hub of devices at once: on the Frame, four nodes failed with EACCES in one switch,
the keyboard was never grabbed, and its keys went to gamescope instead of the
desktop screens. A node that isn't readable yet now waits for the next scan.
From jlneal's PR: a trigger press on a desktop screen stays put until the
laser moves more than 8 logical pixels, so controller jitter doesn't turn
a click into a drag. On top of it, only a hand controller's press starts
the filter: the 3D mouse's laser reaches the screens the same way, and the
PR as sent turned the mouse's short drags into clicks.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The 3D mouse drives SteamVR's laser through the ft_pointer virtual
controller, so its events reach the screens the same way a controller's
do. The filter held every press, which turned the mouse's short drags
(selecting a character or two, nudging a slider) into clicks. Mark
button events from hand controllers and start the filter only on those.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
container-up.sh starts the dev container in a scope of its own, so
distrobox enter finds it running and skips its wait for distrobox-init.
On a fresh install, init was still setting up passwordless sudo when
dev-container.sh ran sudo dnf install, and sudo asked for a password
with no terminal to read it from. container-up.sh now waits for
container_setup_done itself, and the container's sudo calls use -n,
so a password prompt fails at once with a clear message.
Fixes#9
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A user on a fresh install got "Calibration failed: only 0 of 21 dots" with
no reason. The installer never installed our tracker, so gaze used
SteamVR's, and the only way SteamVR's tracker rejects a dot is losing an
eye for most of the look. The panel just showed a red ring.
- install.sh: step 9/10 installs our tracker (gaze/tracker/install.sh)
after gaze mode, yes by default; it needs sudo, so --yes runs it only
when sudo won't prompt. If it fails, gaze keeps SteamVR's tracker.
Configs that still say GAZE_TRACKER=steam (the old template) are asked
whether to switch.
- GAZE_TRACKER=auto, the new default: ours when it's installed (the
frame grabber, its unit, and ft-eyes' Python), else SteamVR's.
ft-gazed rechecks every second, so installing it switches over. Input
Settings lists Own tracker first as recommended, and says how to
install it when it's missing (checking the host's /etc through
/run/host from the dev container).
- The calibration panel has a note line, orange over the instructions:
why a dot wasn't taken (an eye lost, a blink, the eyes disagreeing for
SteamVR's tracker, from steady_samples' new drop counts; ft-eyes' reply
for ours), what a click is still waiting for after 1.5 s, and a failed
calibration's most common reason, which the Gaze page shows too.
steady_samples keeps the same samples as before (checked on 2037
windows of recordings); a lost eye is named before a blink, since its
openness reads 0.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Turning gaze mode on without a calibration opened Calibrate only on the
off-to-on change, and only if it could open right then. With the headset
off, the eye tracker silent, or the panel not built, or with gaze mode
already on when the gaze service started, nothing opened and nothing said
why: the pointer just stayed a mouse.
- The gaze service now checks every second: gaze mode on, no calibration
for the tracker in use, eyes seen -> the full calibration opens. One
that closes unfinished opens again only after the headset comes off and
on, gaze mode off and on, or Calibrate, so it doesn't loop. A start that
fails retries every 10 s.
- Its status says why gaze mode can't work yet (checks.problem): not
calibrated and opening, open, closed unfinished, or can't open and why.
- Input Settings shows that under the Gaze pointer switch, along with the
gaze service not installed or not running and our tracker missing its
frame grabber.
- ft-gazectl on notes a missing calibration.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
hands/ft-cutouts on|off|status starts ft-camd and ft-hands as transient
user units with ft-hands' new --no-gestures: hands are published for
ft-screens' cutouts, but no pinch or grip is detected, so nothing clicks
or drags and a closing hand doesn't raise the tracking rate. It needs a
build and ft-camd's capabilities, not hands/run.sh install. Its units
conflict with ft-handsctl's, so each stops the other, and they stop with
SteamVR.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A Meta+key combination (Meta+J for gaze_left, say) hides Meta's release
from the desktop, and the relay skipped share_key for it too. frame-voice
saw Meta go down on @frametop_keys and never come up, so it held all
dictated text back, waiting for that release. Keys of grabbed keyboards
are now shared as pressed, before key_binding() decides what the desktop
gets.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Key combinations (and mouse and controller buttons) get two new actions:
- steam_menu: Open Steam menu / close dashboard (steam/ft-steam menu).
- command:CMD: run CMD with sh -c, as the relay's service, with layout/,
float/ and steam/ on its PATH. Input Settings offers it for key
combinations as Run a command...
Both work without pointer mode.
A modifier on its own is now a key combination too: a tap, pressed and
released with no other key, mouse button, or scroll in between. A bound
tap sends the desktop F24 before the release, so Plasma's launcher stays
shut. The defaults gain a Meta tap for the Steam menu; this replaces
META_DASHBOARD, which only worked in pointer mode.
input/test/keys-test.py runs the relay against fake devices with every
outgoing socket renamed, so it's safe next to the live relay.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
steam/ft-steam menu opens the SteamVR dashboard on Steam's menu, or closes
the dashboard if it's up, without pointer mode: it asks Steam's UI over its
debugging port to show its dashboard overlay (ShowVROverlay, what Steam
calls itself) and focus the Steam frame's left menu (MenuStore.OpenMainMenu).
ft-steam check says whether those calls still exist, and update-check.py
runs it, since a Steam client update can rename them.
The CDP client moves from display-settings/steam_settings.py to
steam/steamui.py, so both use it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Typing on a pass-through keyboard tells the helper "typing". With the
helper not running (SteamVR off), that send raised ConnectionRefusedError
and the relay exited, dropping every grab until systemd restarted it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-10-01 17:01:31 -06:00
19 changed files with 52 additions and 966 deletions
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ A Steam Frame is someone's personal headset, and they may be wearing it while yo
- Don't kill or restart `gamescope`, `steam`, `vrserver`, `vrcompositor`, the gamescope session, or the Frametop desktop without asking. Each one ends or disrupts whatever is happening in VR.
- Don't run host `sudo`, `steamos-readonly disable`, `steamos-devmode` changes, pacman installs, or reboots without explicit approval. Three installers need host `sudo`, and they ask for it: the Bluetooth fixes (`setup/bluetooth/install.sh`), hand tracking (`hands/run.sh install` and `caps`, which set ft-camd's file capabilities with `setcap`), and our own eye tracker's frame grabber (`gaze/tracker/install.sh`).
- Write only inside the repo, `/tmp`, and the container unless told otherwise. The installers are the exception: they write the user services, launchers, and the SteamVR driver into the home folder. The Bluetooth fixes and the eye tracker's frame grabber also install root-owned files and system services under `/etc` (`/etc/steamframe`, `/etc/frametop`, `/etc/systemd/system`). When an installer starts writing something new outside the repo, add it to `uninstall.sh` too: users uninstall with that script, not with each installer's `uninstall`.
- Write only inside the repo, `/tmp`, and the container unless told otherwise. The installers are the exception: they write the user services, launchers, and the SteamVR driver into the home folder. The Bluetooth fixes and the eye tracker's frame grabber also install root-owned files and system services under `/etc` (`/etc/steamframe`, `/etc/frametop`, `/etc/systemd/system`).
- Never copy `.netrc`, SSH keys, or Steam config off the Frame or into this repo.
./desktops.sh uninstall # the launcher's Desktop entry goes back to the stock desktop
./desktops.sh relay uninstall
pointer/helper/run.sh uninstall
power/run.sh uninstall
pointer/driver/install.sh uninstall # then restart SteamVR
input-settings/install.sh uninstall
display-settings/install.sh uninstall
remote/install.sh uninstall
setup/bluetooth/install.sh uninstall # if you installed the Bluetooth fixes
hands/run.sh uninstall # if you installed hand tracking by hand
gaze/run.sh uninstall # if you installed the gaze service
gaze/tracker/install.sh uninstall # if you installed our own eye tracker's frame grabber
gaze/probe/install.sh uninstall # if you installed the gaze probe
```
It works in two steps, so it never takes away the keyboard, mouse, or desktop you're using while it runs:
1. It stops Frametop from starting. Launch a program → Desktop opens the stock desktop again, and Frametop's services, its SteamVR driver, its menu entries, and the system files of our eye tracker and the Bluetooth fixes are removed (those need your `sudo` password). Everything running now keeps running until you restart the headset, and it offers to restart it for you.
2. After the restart, run the same command again. It deletes the code in `~/frametop`, and asks whether to delete your settings, any eye or hand recordings, and the build container (1–2 GB) too.
To see what it would do without changing anything, add `-s -- --dry-run` after `bash`. If the code isn't in `~/frametop`, add `-s -- --dir <folder>`. From the repo, the same script is `./uninstall.sh`.
Don't delete `~/frametop` by hand before you uninstall and restart: the desktop and the input relay run from it, and without it Launch a program → Desktop no longer opens anything. If you've already deleted it, the command above still works, since it doesn't need the repo.
Unless you ask for them to go, your settings stay: `~/.config/frametop.conf`, `frametop-input.json` (button maps and key combinations), `frametop-layout.json` (the layout and profiles), `frametop-float.json`, and `frametop-remote/` in `~/.config`, the gaze calibration in `~/.local/state/frametop`, and the desktop's own Plasma setup in `~/.config/frametop`. A later install picks them up again.
Your settings stay: `~/.config/frametop.conf`, `frametop-input.json` (button maps and key combinations), `frametop-layout.json` (the layout and profiles), `frametop-float.json`, and `frametop-remote/` in `~/.config`, and the gaze calibration in `~/.local/state/frametop/gaze`. So does the desktop's own Plasma setup, in `~/.config/frametop`. Delete them too for a clean slate.
## How it works
@@ -196,7 +197,6 @@ A Plasma session runs nested inside ft-screens (`screens/`), a small Wayland com
| --- | --- |
| `get.sh` | The one-line installer: picks stable or experimental, clones or updates the repo, and runs `install.sh`. |
| `install.sh` | The one-step installer. Safe to re-run. |
| `uninstall.sh` | The uninstaller: run it, restart the headset, and run it again. It doesn't need the rest of the repo. |
| `desktops.sh` | Start, stop, and configure the desktop, and install the input relay. |
| `screens/` | ft-screens, the compositor (wlroots and OpenVR). |
| `session/` | The desktop session script and its config example. |
@@ -185,8 +185,6 @@ KWin renders with OpenGL through zink on Turnip, Vulkan on the same GPU vrcompos
The nested session also runs the system's XDG autostart entries, being a KDE session. Discover's update notifier started `plasma-discover --mode update` in it (520 to 620 MB resident and about 9% of a core, plus `flatpak-system-helper` and AppStream downloads), and IBus started a daemon, the kimpanel panel and its GTK extension that nothing can use: KWin hands text input to the one input method it starts (`ft-textinput`), and the session drops `QT_IM_MODULE`, `GTK_IM_MODULE` and `XMODIFIERS`. The session hides both for this desktop only, with `Hidden=true` copies in its own autostart folder. The geoclue demo agent stays: it's what answers apps' location requests to Geoclue outside GNOME, and it costs nothing while idle. Orca's entry only starts in GNOME-family desktops.
Plasma 6.2.5 keeps each panel on a screen number (`lastScreen` in `plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc`), and the numbers rank the enabled outputs by priority, so 0 is the primary screen. A panel whose number is past the screen count gets no view, and Plasma never moves it: the remap it runs at every start only moves a panel whose number has no desktop, and this desktop keeps a desktop for every output it has seen, spares included. So the taskbar was lost when the number of screens went down, and once it was found saved on a spare output, number 8 of a desktop with three screens ([#18](https://github.com/DeeJanuz/frametop/issues/18)). Before Plasma starts, the session runs `session/fix-panels.py`, which moves any panel numbered past the screen count, with its system tray's containment, to screen 0, keeping its widgets and settings. A panel stays put when screen 0 already has one on that edge, and comes back by itself if the screens do. The file is backed up to `<file>.ft-bak` first. Plasma's scripting can't do this while it runs (`panel.screen` is read-only in 6.2.5), so a lost taskbar comes back at the desktop's next start. `scripts/doctor.sh` and `scripts/report.sh` list the panels and their screens.
Remote desktop is a chain (krdp, then FreeRDP inside Xvnc) because nothing on SteamOS serves KWin over VNC directly. Kept connected all the time, it cost about a core with nobody watching: krdpserver 55 to 78% (it encodes H.264 in software with openh264: VA-API finds no driver for the Frame's GPU in the container), FreeRDP 16 to 27%, Xvnc 6 to 11%, and the bridge's layout check every 5 seconds another 4%. krdp creates its screencast session per RDP connection and drops it when the connection closes (`SessionController::onNewConnection` in krdp 6.7), so an idle krdpserver costs nothing and can stay up; only the RDP connection has to go. The bridge connects FreeRDP when a VNC client appears and disconnects 45 seconds after the last one leaves. Xvnc has no hook for its clients, so the bridge counts established connections to its port with `ss`, woken early by Xvnc's log output; looking with `ss` once a second cost about 0.9% of a core in bash, against about 0.1% this way. `Xvnc -inetd` from a systemd socket would start a server per connection and lose sharing between viewers. The layout check (`ft-layout remote-view`, which scans `/proc` for plasmashell and runs `kscreen-doctor -j`) now runs only while FreeRDP runs, and then only after `kwinoutputconfig.json` or `frametop-layout.json` changes, with one check a minute in case a change touched neither.
Program names stay within 15 characters, because Linux truncates process names there and the scripts find programs with `pgrep -x` and `pkill -x`. That's why the prefix is `ft-`.
@@ -226,5 +224,6 @@ On the Frame, SteamVR is part of the OS image (`/opt/steamvr`, the `deckard-stea
- A controller button that shows the screens during a game. Games own the controllers, so this needs SteamVR input actions for ft-screens.
- Drawing KWin's cursor on the screens.
- Plasma can lose its panels when the number of screens goes down, because they're saved against a screen that no longer exists. Removing `plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc` and `plasmashellrc` from `~/.config/frametop` brings the default panels back.
- Frame pacing and GPU cost with several busy screens haven't been measured.
- Real standby on a stand, with rendering and tracking paused, not just the backlight off. SteamVR has no call for it, and its activity level follows the proximity sensor.
The Hand Recorder records your hands with the Steam Frame's tracking cameras for Frametop's open hand dataset ([DeeJanuz/frametop-hands](https://huggingface.co/datasets/DeeJanuz/frametop-hands) on Hugging Face). These are the Konsole commands to install it.
> **Known issue (October 5, 2026):** the recorder currently works only on headsets with the Arcturus color passthrough module attached. Without the module, the camera check stops with "Not all of the headset's tracking cameras are running (ft-camd publishes only 2 of 4 mono cameras ...)", and restarting SteamVR or the headset doesn't help. A fix for headsets without the module will be published within 24 hours (by October 6). Once it's out, run the commands under [Update](#update).
Join the [Frametop Discord](https://discord.gg/W3X9f7z3Bc) for questions and help with recording.
For now the recorder runs inside Frametop's desktop, so these steps install Frametop first. A standalone recorder that runs from the SteamVR dashboard without Frametop is planned.
## Before you start
- You must be 18 or older, and for now you can't take part if you live in Illinois, Texas or Washington (USA). The [consent text](https://github.com/DeeJanuz/frametop/blob/main/hands/rec/CONSENT.md) explains what's recorded and what you agree to. The recorder shows it again before your first session.
- You need a Steam Frame on the stable SteamOS release (not the beta), an internet connection, and a keyboard (Bluetooth, or the on-screen one).
- You need a `sudo` password. If you've never set one, run `passwd` in Konsole first.
- Recordings are several gigabytes per round, and uploading one needs about the same again free while it runs. `df -h ~` shows your free space.
## Open Konsole
1. In the launcher, choose Launch a program → Desktop.
2. In the application menu, open System → Konsole.
This clones Frametop into `~/frametop` and runs its installer. The first run downloads 1–2 GB. The installer asks a few questions (gaze mode, the eye tracker, the Bluetooth fixes); the defaults are fine. At the end SteamVR restarts, which closes Konsole. If Frametop is already installed, this updates it.
## 2. Install the Hand Recorder
After SteamVR restarts, choose Launch a program → Desktop again, open Konsole, and run:
```
~/frametop/hands/rec/install.sh
```
This builds the camera broker, the hand tracker and the headset panel (the first build takes a few minutes), asks for your `sudo` password once to let the camera broker read the cameras, and adds Frametop Hand Recorder to the application menu.
## 3. Record
Open Frametop Hand Recorder from the desktop's application menu. It walks you through the consent text, a short checklist, the recording, a review of what you recorded, and the upload to Hugging Face. Nothing leaves the headset until you press Upload.
Run the second command after SteamVR has restarted, as in the install.
## Uninstall
```
~/frametop/hands/rec/install.sh uninstall
```
This removes the menu entry. Your recordings stay in `~/.local/share/frametop/hands/contrib`; delete that folder to remove them. To remove Frametop as well, follow [Uninstall](https://github.com/DeeJanuz/frametop#uninstall) in the README.
## Help
Ask in the [Frametop Discord](https://discord.gg/W3X9f7z3Bc), the [Frametop issues](https://github.com/DeeJanuz/frametop/issues), or the dataset's [discussion page](https://huggingface.co/datasets/DeeJanuz/frametop-hands/discussions). All three are public.
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