OpenDeck - StreamDeck Alternative

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Introduction

Starting off with this project, I knew I wanted a language and tech stack that could cross-compile to most systems, especially Raspberry Pi, as this is where the client would be running. I investigated numerous ways to do this, including:

• C# with Maui
• Rust + Tauri or Go + Wails
• Flutter
• Go with Fyne

I have a soft spot in my heart for C#, and while MAUI leaves a lot to be desired, I was willing to tough it out. But ultimately, even though the name is Multi-platform App UI, it doesn’t even support Linux, let alone Raspberry Pi.

The next option was Rust and something I have some experience with: Tauri. While this was somewhat appealing, unfortunately, this didn’t quite fit my use case, as the ability to cross-compile to ARM for my Raspberry Pi was not supported. There was a workaround with GitHub Actions or compiling directly on my Raspberry Pi, but I didn’t want to deal with the hassle of copying the files to my Raspberry Pi every time, committing every change to Git, or waiting on the limited power of the Raspberry Pi to compile.

The next option was Wails. Once again, this had a similar issue. I could cross-compile with GitHub Actions, but this would be too time-consuming, and it also doesn’t support mobile. The ability to run the client on a mobile phone is appealing, even if I wasn’t sure that’s where the project would go.

Flutter seemed like a good option, but I didn’t really want to learn Flutter at the time. I wanted to continue with a language like Go or Rust. And I could be wrong, but from the digging I did into its viability, it seemed like the cross-compilation route would once again involve GitHub Actions.

Ultimately, I settled on Go with Fyne. Now, building UIs with it does seem a little counterintuitive to what I am used to (HTML and some WinForms with C# back in my high school days), but the existence of fyne-cross was a huge selling point.

To be continued…