TcMenu direction

[davetcc]

TcMenu as it turns out is particularly useful for smaller displays with a rotary encoder or other form of button/keyboard input. There are a few people using it for larger TFTs with touch screens, but most users fall into the first category. To be clear, nothing will be removed, but where effort is expended will be focused on a smaller footprint.

Honestly, I don't even know how many people are still using it, because we have no tracking or usage stats in either designer UI or libraries. The only thing I know is about one hundred people a month download the app.

The team burnt out trying to deliver far too much for a small project, I've been having a rethink about what we can deliver, and this is my view. In priority order.

1. Continue to support Arduino as now and ensure it is compatible with a few of the new offerings. I will investigate the newer boards and make any changes needed to support them fully and properly. EDIT - I've checked and the main change is the move from mbed to Zephyr.
2. Keep the Designer UI up to date against the latest JavaFX version and include small service patches to improve functionality.
3. Add support for ESP32 IDF with or without Arduino component installed. Maintain and improve the Pico-SDK support.
4. Focus the support on 32-bit boards, LCD, OLED and smaller TFT displays with encoder or button/key-based input.
5. We need to continue to support Arduino based mbed, but using mbed directly will be deprecated, given the platform is also deprecated this should come as no surprise. Basically, aim to keep the lights on.
6. Move towards using open standards for remote communication. There are not enough people working on it to maintain our own network stack and mobile/desktop UI system, we need to harness open standards instead of trying to do everything in house. I am looking here at MQQT and existing open-source home automation integration.
7. Provide either simple examples or plugins showing how to use with a few common cloud/home-automation providers.

If you do disagree with this, I'm happy to hear other views, but do understand that this is effectively an unfunded project that is being maintained by a small number of people.