So welcome everybody for the last session of the day. I understand that you mostly hate to fall asleep probably that's why in this room Okay, I don't know if Thomas was in the room Anyway, so thank you for coming. This is gonna be Talk about CDF and most probably the last talk about CDF at least in the current form. So The next one I'm going to propose will be either about great CDF has been accepted and we're going to merge that in a kernel We'll do something else it started too long ago it was Actually, if I'm not mistaken so one year two months and one week ago exactly since I posted the first version And since then I don't know if any of you know your Greek mythology But I felt a bit a bit like that. Does anyone know what that is? No one Come on Yeah, well, okay So that's the Dan ideas In the Greek metal mythology there are women who were sentenced to pour water in jug that Had leaks in the bottom for the rest of well, I would say the life But I should the rest of the death and that's small as how I feel about CDF It's just a never-ending story and every time I talk about CDF with people every time I have meeting Every time I try to give a talk in a conscience. Well People come up with new ideas and instead of moving the project forward it actually sometimes feel it just keeps going backward So we're going to try to summarize that today See where we come from what problems we're trying to solve the different proposal that have been posted and until today how they have been accepted or rejected or something in between and At the end of the talk I actually wanted to have a question and session that should be a bit more of a discussion session Because I want you to take this as an opportunity to get feedback from from you And to see how we can try one more time to get to get CDF something that looks like it upstream so Does any of you want me to start by the quick overview of the display concepts in the couple of previews Previous stokes have given about KMS or display. I started with an overview so everybody will be on the same page And there are many people who knows who know nothing about the display in the room One on the back two don't be shy three. Okay. There's a couple So just briefly go through the key concepts that won't take long Everybody else can fall asleep and I'll signal when you have to wake up Display it's Display the next nowadays. I'm not talking about 3d. I'm not talking about GPU the the hardware acceleration I'm just talking talking about the display getting pixels out of the screen that getting images out of the screen And that's a really basic concept. You actually have two key concepts in that The first one is the concept of scan out. So scan out is taking Pictures taking images that are stored in a memory buffer somewhere that's called a frame buffer in the terminology that we use and Read that there's a hardware component that will read that memory and that will do whatever is needed to get those Pixels and a physical bus so you can think about the scan out phase as going from memory from a memory frame buffer To a physical display bus that can be any kind of any kind of bus parallel bus where you get your uncompressed pixels You can have hdm. I can have pretty much anything you want But it's just a transition between the memory and the physical world when you get your electrical signals signals out Out of the system. So that's the first key concept The second key concept is composition Composition composing is the act of taking several frames several images And putting them together to create a single one so that can involve scaling input images that can involve rotating them That can involve pretty much any operation you can do in all the the input images and then blend them together With trans transparency possibly and just create one output frame that is going to be sent out of the system So usually the component that's responsible for the scan out process is going to be responsible for the composition process as well So that that just really the two key concepts in display if you understand that that's more or less What display hardware do today? If we look at what we have in the Linux kernel now because we're talking about Linux We we have a couple of display APIs. I'm not even going to mention FB there Well, too late. I've mentioned it, but I'm not going to talk about it Today in the kernel the display of choice is KMS And that's what you that's what you need to use if you will write a new display driver go for KMS driver If you need to write an entirely new display stack under Ubuntu people in the room If you need to do that go for KMS as well don't think about FB dev Everybody is going away from FB dev. Android doesn't require FB dev There's no reason to use it in any embedded space. There's no reason to use it in the desktop space either It's it's a thing of the past. So we're going KMS and I'm briefly going to introduce a KMS concept because that will be relevant to CDF So KMS Splits the hardware models the hardware in a couple of blocks on your left-hand side You get the green boxes that represent represent the memory object So that's frame buffers that kind of images that start in memory. So that's outside of the hardware. It's it's a memory It's all sort of display hardware And then you get what they call the CRTC. So that's a CRT controller It's pretty old name that would be replaced by something else nowadays But that's a piece of hardware that will that will handle composing and that will handle the Scanner process After that you get pixels on a physical bus out of the CRTC That bus can be inside USOC It can be outside of USOC on the board, but it's still a bus where you transmit pixels directly And that goes to encoders so an encoder is a chip that will take pixels and input and output pixels and in between it will while translate between LVDS and HGMI for instance Parallel RGB display port. Well, what whatever conversion that you need to do that's handled by an encoder The KMS model supports multiple CRTCs and display on the on this picture just for the sake of simplicity But you can have several CRTCs You can have several encoders that are connected to the same CRTC or different CRTCs And at the output of the encoder you still have a physical bus with signals going on that and that goes then to connectors So connectors KMS you have to remember KMS comes from the desktop days And on the desktop days when you had a graphic card while you have connectors on that You didn't have you didn't have panels that were directly embedded inside your desktop Computer case, which would have been a bit useless. So you get connectors at the output of the encoders and Nowadays those correspond to either real connectors They could actually be the display panels as well in laptops in embedded systems And that's really the three objects that KMS is based on so that's the CRTC That's the encoder and as a connector and that creates your whole display pipeline in the embedded world There's a bit of split so frame buffers. They're always in memory. That's a memory object The CRTCs all is inside USOC and the encoder can be either inside the SOC as well Or you can have encoders that are located outside of the SOC the connector obviously is not part of the SOC That's on the board That's Really the KMS core device device model We could talk about the frame buffers and memory management that but that's a bit unrelated to CDS I got a couple of slides on that I will go back to that if there are questions at the end of the talk But let's keep frame buffers. Let's keep game objects. Let's keep buffer sharing Mode is still a key concept that we need to go through because that's really rated to CDF as well So when you go to display You get what we call display mode so display mode is just parameters that are used to configure the way you display will output the image physically and Part of display mode is a really important parameters that is just the width and the eighth of the image So that's a resolution of your display. That's the core parameters that users will see But then we have a couple of other parameters that are related to the that created display timings And that's related to horizontal and vertical blanking So when when you will get an image output on a physical bus The pixels will be output one after the other and at the end of the line you have what we call a blanking So that's a time during which there's no active pixel being sent And that is used usually by the hardware that receives the image to prepare for the next line And to be able to tell the difference between The active part of the image and the blanking and know that we're going to new line We have a synchronization pulse So we have synchronization signals in the horizontal direction and in the vertical direction And the timing of the pulse in the blanking area is something that needs to be to be configured And that's a core parameter of the display mode That's usually that's something of the user the end user will see because you they mostly can't but resolution of the display The timing is really important on the for the developers for the drivers So timings are gonna add with as I mentioned as there are synchronization pulses that have a width You have a new react called the back porch. That's after the sync pulse You have the activity of the image and you have the front porch. That's before the sync pulse You have to imagine that you have that just one image, but you can have several images You are you actually have several images going one after the other So the front porch to react that's right over here is actually also right before the sync pulse of the next frame In KMS, it's going to be differently So this the values are computed a bit differently, but that doesn't matter much here We can go back to that as well if we have any questions The important the important operation in KMS has created to the mode is well, the name is pretty simple It is it's the mode set operation KMS stands for kernel mode setting. So the main purpose of that is to set the mode of the display And it takes lots of parameters. So basically it will tell you get to use a space called turning the display hardware I want to use this this CRTC and I want to scan out this frame buffer And I want the output of that to be available on a couple of connectors Well at least one otherwise There's nothing being displayed and you can have several connectors as well when you when you want to clone your display And you want to use a given mode. So you also may want to crop the frame buffer so that's Parameters that's that have passed as well. So there's a set of parameters passed to the driver It's a pretty simple API just a single call But behind the scene there's a lot to configure when you want to do about that because you won't you will want to Configure UCRTCs and all the connectors and all the encoders you have in the system and verify that the mode That user that the user will give you will work on the on the many turners connected to your system So there's lots of work in KMS handles that there's lots of Helper functions that that make your life easier when you when you want to ride the driver But the basic concept of mode setting in just this it's just a single function call Another concept that's not really well That's not part of KMS at the moment is the media controller concept and that's something I need to to go through quickly as well because that's a key part of CDF also So I'm not going to skip that the media controller aims at modeling complex media hardware and Exposing the topology of the hardware to use a space That's the core purpose of the media controller So it's a model of the hardware and a way to expose the topology of the hardware to use a space It's models the hardware as a graph as you can see over here That's actually a pretty simple one compared to what we have today in embedded devices it models a graph as entities so boxes that are connecting it through links the arrows between the entities and on every entities you get connection points where you can attach your rows and We call those pads So you get you get an entity that has a couple of properties It has a numerical ID. It has a name. It has a type will couple five these like Information like that. So that's a building block a hardware building block the media controller only models the hardware So there's no software concept in there Then you go to pads so that's a connection point on an entity if you have a display panel It will have a single input that just one pad if you have an hdmi encoder that takes our GB signals and that outputs hdmi You get two parts and you can have entities that have more less parts depending on what they do So a pad is just a number it has an index and that's pretty much it And then we connect entities through their parts through their pads and for that we use the links So a link object is just a source a sink and a couple of Information about the link whether it's active and not for instance because you can break and recreate links and media controller will activate and deactivate the links So that's really what the media controller is about Modeling hardware and exposing that to user space So it is a kernel side with objects that you can use to model the hardware And then you got to use space API that exposes that use space that you space can see what's inside The media controller is not used to configure all the hardware underneath That's a responsibility of while the came a subsystem the video for Linux subsystem the alza subsystem when we deal with audio So it's totally separate problem Just exposing things to use a space so that the other subsystems will not have to do that themselves And we'll be able to build on top of that now getting to CDF I want to go through the different problems that I had to solve It started extremely simple The first couple of problems that I got tends to solve was actually to create device rebinding's Format display hardware. Well, I'm not sure that's extremely simple. I should have scrubbed that example, but back then I had FB dev devices Well, one a bit of device. I had to create a device rebinding. So they're just a Device inside the SOC one output a panel outside So I thought, OK, that's not going to be difficult. I'm just going to create device rebindings for my device and for the panels and just have a connection in between. And I realized that to be able to create device rebindings, you actually had to standardize things a bit. Because on the panel side, if I want to describe a panel in the device tree, I have to describe the properties of the panel. And to be able to use that properly, I will have to describe them in a more or less standard way. So I looked in the kernel and tried to see how panels were handled by the display drivers. And then I realized that we actually have lots of display, lots of panel drivers, that are more or less generic. There's a panel driver model that we have, but that's really tied to FB. So it wouldn't work with KMS, which was a pretty bad thing. And we also had panel drivers that were actually specific to different drivers. So TI had panel drivers for the OMAP. Samsung had panel drivers for the Exynos. There were a couple of other ones. So if you have the same display panel in two different systems, one using a TI OMAP chip, one using a Samsung Exynos chip, well, you had to write two drivers for that. So it was a bit of a mess. I thought, OK, can't we maybe create a single panel driver model that would work in the kernel? So that's the second problem I thought that I would have to solve before creating the DT bindings. And I thought, OK, that's not going to be really difficult because what's a panel? It's a simple piece of hardware. It takes video streams as an input. Usually, it's not configurable at all. It has a default mode, a native mode. You just need to query the panel driver to know the mode and just use that as the only possible output resolution that you can use. And well, maybe you've got two GPIOs to control the panel, to control the backlight. There may be a couple of regulators, but really simple stuff. And then I realized that actually we have more complex panels. You have panels that you can control through I2C, for instance, or SPI. And you also have panels that you can control through video bus. There's a standard called MIPI DSI and MIPI DBI. So those are two video buses, a serial bus and a parallel bus that just send data, video data, to the panel. But that can also be used to control the panel. So it can be used to send control messages, to read information back. So you've got a video bus that sends video stream to the panel. But it can also be used to get information back. And I had a couple of panels like that on the platforms that I needed to support. And I realized that we actually didn't have an infrastructure in the kernel that could control bus. So the MIPI DSI bus, there was no model for that. And once again, there was a model inside the TI or map the display driver, inside the Samsung Exynos display driver, but nothing that would be common. So I thought, OK, if I want to solve that problem, well, I have to create an infrastructure in the kernel that I could use to support the different MIPI buses for the panel. And then about that time, I also got asked to write a KMS driver for display hardware. And it was actually for the same display hardware that I had an FBDF driver for. So I didn't want to have two panel drivers for the same panel want to be used by FBDF and want to be used by KMS. And so for that reason, I thought that part of the problem was also to create a framework that was not tied to FBDF, not tied to KMS either. But that could be shared between the two. So that's like the four problems that I thought I needed to solve. And then came round two after talking with people, sending a couple of RFC patches upstream, well, two mailing lists. There came a couple of other problems. I realized that, well, it's great to have a framework that can support the panels and have DT bandings with that. But it's not only panels. I mentioned we have encoders. They can be inside the SOC or outside the SOC. So you have, for instance, HDMN transmitters that you want to control through I2C. And well, we needed drivers for that. We had a couple of drivers, but they were really tied either to a specific subsystem specific API or tied to a specific driver. And that's something that I felt I should try to solve. Because having a panel framework in the kernel, that was modeling the panel as an object with an input bus and abstract operations and that. I thought, OK, it's not going to be difficult to extend that to actually support encoders as well. So bridges, encoders, transmitters, that's small as the same concept, just different words. And I wanted to create something that would support that as well that wouldn't require to have one framework for the panel, one framework for the encoders, and have two completely separate things that would need to interact with each other. It would be more complex in the end. So I wanted to do that as well. And the problem for that is that, well, I had to write DT biolings. That was my first goal. And when you think about it, when you have encoders and panels, you can create a pretty complex display pipeline. It's not just about one CRTC going directly to a panel. You have one or more encoders in between. You can chain them. You can have multiple encoders connected to the same output. You can have multiple panels connected to the same encoder. It's a graph. It's not just a linear pipeline. And for that reason, I thought, OK, well, my device rebindings that I thought would be pretty simple in the first place, they're going to be able to describe complete videograph. So it probably became more complex. And with the device rebindings, I also realized that we have another issue that comes with that. Before device 3, when we were living just with the platform data, and on the desktop side as well, that's the same thing, what we usually had is that you had one platform device that was your display device, and a big data structure with platform data for that device. And in that data structure, it was like a list of encoders and a list of panels. So a display driver, when it gets pro, when it probes a device, when it initializes a device, it will go through that information and say, oh, I got a panel over there. So I'm going to create the panel device. It creates a panel device, then the panel driver is loaded, is associated with that, is bound with the device. And at that point, you get the panel object, you got a driver that works with that, and you can work with it. With the device 3, it's completely asynchronous. You can't rely on the display driver creating devices because the devices are located in different places in the device 3. If you have an SQS-C HGMI encoder, it's under the SQS-C master, the SQS-C controller node. That's right on top of here.  You also have your display controller node that's inside the SQS-C on the same bus as the SQS-C controller. And while you can have your panel, you can have an HGMI connector described in the device 3 as well. So they're located in different places in the device 3 and there's no way you can predict the order in which they're going to be probed. So when your display driver gets probed, well, the panels might not be there yet. The HGMI encoder might not be there yet. It will come later. So that's not really a DT issue by itself, but it showed that when moving to the device 3, the model we had to initialize all the drivers that broke. So one more problem I had to solve. And then, well, that's not really a secret, but that's not the core goals of CDF at the moment, but one thing I want to do is to actually share the drivers. Well, not really for the panels, but definitely for the encoders, for instance, between KMS, FBDF, and video for Linux. And actually, FBDF is out of the equation at the moment, so it just KMS and video for Linux. But still we get two completely separate subsystems that don't interact with each other. And we have chips, we have components that are used by one or by the other. And we don't want to duplicate the drivers. So that's an additional problem. That's long-term. That's not in the CDF proposition that have been sent to the list. That's, yeah, when if CDF is accepted, as a next step, I might work on that. Bonus problem, we actually have panels that sit on multiple control buses. So you have a panel that has an I2C interface, and that also can receive comments through the video bus. And you have to control part of the panel, you have to configure part of the panel through I2C, and then send configuration messages on the other bus, and then go back to the I2C. And that's something that we don't model right in Linux. So that's not the core issue of CDF, but if we can solve that, that's great as well. Couple of use cases, and I want to emphasize the fact that they actually real use cases. And that's things that I've made up completely that do not exist in hardware. It's things that exist that I work on, things that I will work on in the near future. The first one, I've put names, company names, so that you can see the real. That's a renaissance hardware, that's a display, the display, the DE with the display unit, so there's a display controller for renaissance. Doesn't matter much if you can really read the small print, but basically what's in blue is inside the SoC, and what's in green is outside the SoC. So we got encoders that can be chained. We got an HDMI connector, VGA connector, and a panel on the output, and a whole topology inside. So that's a hardware I need to support. If you remember, in KMS, we got a model with a CRTC, an encoder, and a connector. And in a power plant like this, you have more than three blocks. So we have to more or less push that in the KMS model and group blocks together. But at some point in the future, we might actually want to expose that to user space somehow because there are links that can be controlled in between. And if you group all the blue blocks as a single block, well, the links disappear all of a sudden. So they have a default configuration on boot time, and you can't change that. The next one is also a renaissance hardware. Apologize for simplifying the diagram a bit. The hardware is more complex than that. That's a video processing unit. So it takes images from memory, process them, there's a scalar, there's a composer with alpha blending and writes it back to memory. On the top you get your memory, your form memory inputs. There are form memory outputs over here. And a couple of processing blocks. There's some missing in the middle. So that's totally unrelated to the display. It works from memory to memory, except that the engineers thought that it would actually be good if we could output the images that get generated by that instead of outputting them to memory, they should go to the display as well. That's useful. So there's a small block over here on the lower left corner that has a pad on the bottom that's connected to nothing. That's because it goes to the display controller over here. So we get two separate devices. It's really two different IP cars inside the SOC. They're handled by completely separate drivers. One KMS driver for the display controller, one video phone X driver for the video processing engine. They don't interact with each other, but there's a link in the hardware that we have no way to model at the moment. Next use case, Xilinx FPGAs. Well, it can be an eFPGA, but I'm working with Xilinx. So that's the name I'm using. So we get the capture pipeline in green. You get a camera sensor that you could find in a cell phone or any kind of device. And you get an HDMI decoder. So you've got an HDMI connector to input images. You get a couple of processing blocks. You got MUX inside so they can re-route the streams and you can capture using DMA to memory one of the two streams directly or you can scale one of them. And you can also send one right to an HDMI encoder and out to an HDMI connector. So you get a complete pipeline from the left that goes through the hardware and out to the HDMI connector without going through memory at any point. There's no memory involved. You can get your sensor image, process that and send it to HDMI. That's video capture. It has output as well, but there's no way we're going to support that directly with the KMS driver now because KMS is modeled around the concept of frame buffer that's in memory and we have no memory in here. We got another pipeline in blue. That's a display pipeline. So you got a scaler. You got a composer that can compose a full image or a scale image and output that on HDMI as well. The diagram is a bit simplified, but that just to show you the key concepts. So we get one video following device. We got one KMS device and we have two chips that can be used by either. Exactly the same piece of hardware, two instances on the board, but in one case that needs to be a video following driver to work with the video following subsystem. In the other case it needs to work with the KMS subsystem. Same for the scaler. Exactly the same scalers, two instances. One used on the camera side, one used on the display side. And it's an FPGA so you can do pretty much whatever you want with the configuration.  So all of a sudden we have a single device. We don't have two totally separate devices anymore. You get something that can be considered as a capture side, as a display side, but there's a link between the two. And so it's back to the previous use case with Renaissance where we actually have KMS devices and video following devices that need to talk with each other. So they need to talk and they need to share drivers. Going now to what is called nowadays a CDF. It actually started with a different name. The first version was called the Generic Panel Framework. That was posted as I mentioned a year, two months and one week ago. Well, I don't count that. It's because I've checked it today. And that's version, the first version only aimed at supporting the panel. So the first round of problems I mentioned just supporting display panels and that's it. And I came up with a device model for that. So right in the middle in blue you got your panel drive. So your panel driver is going to be configured. It's going to take either platform data or it's going to take device tree data. That's on the right-hand side. So that's configuration data that is passed to the panel driver using the, well the platform data mechanism or the device tree passing your driver. That's pretty common. Then the panel driver needs to talk with the panel using whatever control bus the panel uses. So if the panel is an I2C or an SPI device it will use the I2C or SPI API. Possibly it could be memory mapped. Or it could be controlled through the DSI video bus. So you get a couple of options underneath but that's pretty usual. If you get an I2C control panel it's going to be an I2C driver. It's going to work with the I2C subsystem as usual. No rocket science in there. And then you get to display controller driver that needs to interact with the panel. And there are two interactions that are needed. The first one I called it the configuration. So for a really simple panel there's not much to do. It's more, it's really about querying information. I want to know what resolution in what mode you support because I need to configure myself for that mode. You also need to enable and disable the panel. So it's really control and configuration of the panel. But the panel also gets video data. It receives video data. So we get video operation that can be used to start and stop the video stream. So that's really pretty simple that model. You get to your display controller driver that gets called by DFB Dev on the KMS API on the top and then it will call to the panel driver that will call back to display controller driver to control the video stream. That was the model. Then as I mentioned I realized that it was too limited and I wanted to expose more to support more than just panels and namely encoders. So I came up, I renamed the proposal and renamed that to the common display framework. So it's not just panels anymore. Now we're talking about encoders as well. And the first version of that, it was actually called V2 because there was the common, the generic panel framework before, was using a control model that we referred as the Russians doll model. So basically you have a pipeline, just a linear pipeline. That's the only thing we use to support with several encoders and that will end at some point with a panel. And to control that, the display controller driver on the left side will just call the next entity to see. So we get the big green box that contains a transcoder and that also contains a panel that's connected to it. So it will call to that driver that knows that it's connected to a panel. So it will just forward the call. So the calls come from the display controller and go from driver to driver from device to device until it reaches the inner device. And at that point the panel controller will call back on the video controller API to say I want a video stream or start or stop the video stream up to the display control driver. There was quite a lot of positive feedback. So there were people who took the patches and posted reworked versions and say, well, this looks good, but I don't really like this part or that part or I got a better proposal, I got a better idea for this. So we got the common display framework dash T which stands for Tommy Volcano from TI. The common display framework dash TF for Tomas Figue from Samsung. And then a couple of other patches that's part of the actual display drivers and panel drivers and encoded drivers to the common display framework to show that it worked. So that was quite positive. At the same time there's also negative feedback but I'll go to that later. So I got feedback and it worked on the third version of that. So it was keeping the same name still the common display framework. And the third version would, instead of modeling the hardware, just a linear pipeline because we realized that we actually had hardware that wasn't linear. Well, use a model that's pretty similar to the media controller model. So it's modeling the hardware as entities, building blocks connected to each other. So it's exactly what I showed you earlier about the media controller is the same key concepts except that people didn't like the name of pad. They preferred port for some reason. It's just a naming issue, just backshedding as usual but really it's exactly the same model that we have. So the display entity, if you look at and the struct display entity, it's actually ended a media entity in there. So it's really an extension of the media entity object. And while it has a couple of properties like an owner driver, it's reference counted, there's a name and there's a couple of operations that implemented dimension, things like controlling the video buses, there's a state and there's also an important point it's that at the end, there's what I call the display entity notifier. And that aims at solving the advisory problem I mentioned before and the fact that we're actually using asynchronous probing. So in the CDF model, when your display driver is registered, it will build a list of all the panels, of all the encoders, all the pieces it needs. And with that list, it will call a CDF API, the CDF notifier API, giving the list and say, I want to be notified when all those devices will be available. As I mentioned, they probe asynchronously, you can't know when they will be available, so it's asked to be notified. When the drivers that are associated with the panels, with the encoders, with whatever chip you have, probe the device, then they will register themself with a CDF call and when all of them are available, then the display driver will be called back. By the way, if you want to interrupt with a question that's totally fine, but I'm going to answer the question I haven't received yet, which is why don't I use deferred probing? That's a mechanism we have in the kernel. When the driver probes a device, if the resources it needs are not ready yet, like the panel is not there yet, I could just, the driver can just request to be re-probed, to re-probe the device later. The reason why we can do that is that we can actually have circular dependencies. You can have your display controller providing a clock that is going to be used by the encoder. With other clocks, you can't access the encoder device, like it's needed to access the I2C bus in which the encoder device sits. And the display driver, the display controller needs the panel, or it needs the encoder. So there's loop in there. We can't use deferred probing on both sides. Otherwise, the display controller will say, well, I will try again later when the panel will be there. And the panel will say, well, I will try again later when the display controller will be there. And you're left with nothing. So in the CDF model, all the entities use deferred probing and the display controller uses the notifier. And we express, in DT, in the device stream, the topology of the hardware. So the topology that is modeled by the media controller, that's expressed in the device stream. So we have in the tree, which we express all the links between the devices. So in this example, I got an NGMI encoder that has two parts. There's an input and there's an output. It's a pretty simple chip. And there's a property in the device stream that says, oh, this part, this input is connected to the output of the display. And you get properties in the other nodes as well saying my output is connected to this or connected to that. So all the connections are expressed in some kind of overlay to the device tree because the device tree is based under the representation of the control buses on where the device sits from a control point of view. And we overlay on top of that the representation of all the links between the devices. And we get code in CDF that the driver can use to say, here's my device node in the device tree. Please go through all the links and find all the devices that I will need. And that's how you build a list of the devices that you need and then register the notify. There was still positive feedback but it's a bit less than before. With someone working in a MEP-DSI bus implementation. So I mentioned that MEP-DSI, MEP-DBI were problems I needed to solve but they actually completely separate from the CDF concept. It's just adding a new control bus to the kernel to be able to control the panels but it's not tied to the model that we have in CDF. So I've posted that as part of the CDF patches because I needed it for the hardware I was working on and people thought that it was part of CDF but it's totally separate. I'm fine with pretty much any solution for that. What I'm really concerned about is the device model and the device tree bindings and the probing model and everything that's in CDF. So MEP-DSI, MEP-DBI, what can be considered as out of the equation at the moment. Then the couple of patches that I've posted to the list that actually solved part of the problem that I had. That's the Deer and Bridge infrastructure that creates support for a component that will sit on a pipeline between a CRTC and encoder more or less. So instead of, if you have more than just one encoder you can use the Deer and Bridge to model that. So it solves just part of the problem. There's also a display panel support RFC or patches that got posted and that got merged if I'm not mistaken with a proposal to just support a panel in DRM. At first I wanted to have an API that could work with DRM or KMS and FBDF, FBDF is out of the equation so DRM model is fine. Fourth, RFC of CDF that's to be done. Not there yet, I'm going to work on that. So I'm going to take all the feedback I've received, a complete implementation that I've started and see how it flies or doesn't. It's going to be based on a different configuration model. So instead of having the Russian adults model with all entities forwarding the calls and knowing about each other, there will be a central piece of code that will know about the whole pipeline. It's a linear pipeline in this case, but it can be tree-based. And that piece of code will handle the configuration. It can be a pretty complex process but it's going to be outside of the entity drivers because one of my goals is to keep the entity drivers as simple as possible. They just need to care about themselves and not about the connections between themselves. So that will be an external piece of code. To control the video stream, same as the previous model, so we go at some point to the entity at the end of the pipeline and we just ask for the video bus to be enabled or disabled. So that doesn't change much and that will not change in the fourth version. There's, well, running a bit out of time and another thing that's that interesting except for questions later, but there's a set of operations that are implemented by the entity drivers, controlling video operations. And finally, I got quite a lot of pushback. People told me, well, this is great. Except that you know you're trying to solve too many problems at the same time. So can't you just cut that in small steps and like solve the first step and push that to mainline and then go to the second step and do that until you reach your goal? Well, that's a bit of personal story. I'm going skiing next winter. So I live in Belgium, right above there, and I want to go all the way to the arts in France. And what I would like to do is take my car and drive just straight ahead. That's a shorter path, shorter sparse. There we go. I'd like to have that thrown in front of me and would like to do that. And that's impossible and understand that. People will ask me to cut that in steps and take a couple of side steps and well, that's fine. I mean, we're going to a bit more windy road. Well, why not? I mean, the scenery looks nice. It's going to take a bit longer, but if it can get me there, well, that's fine. But the thing is, all the people I've talked to about the various steps, they told me, you know, for that step actually, well, that's an occasion ID, but you know, for just that you should do it this way. Which is actually not a step in that direction but in the other direction. And they got points. I mean, for that particular steps, it's really valid. I mean, I think my solution is good, but they think the solution is better and the solution, definitely not bad. So what happens is that if you take all those steps and you add them up in the way people would like me to take, well, I'm going to end up skiing in the Caribbean and that's not going to work. So that's my problem at the moment, right? I got a big picture problem I need to solve that's made of several problems. There are different people who care about different parts or people who do not care at all. And they want me to solve the part I care about and they want me to solve it in a way that's not really compatible with the big problem. Contact information, the same as usual, we'll get to the questions, but if you want to contact me, there's my email address and the mailing list and I'm still here for the rest of the evening and tomorrow.  There's a microphone in the front. You hear me okay? I guess. My question is normally what I deal with in long term is bring up a new silicon and new displays with new hardware and one of the major issues I've had with doing that with KMS and related without frame buff, FBDF is that it can be very, very difficult to find out which aspects of the chain of events has not been working properly and it's very difficult to inject debug data in there. For instance, I simply just want to, I read Pixel on the first coordinate of 00 so I can look at it under an O-Scope. That has been a major problem in order to do these types of diagnostics. Based on what I was seeing here, it should be a much easier solution in order to do that. Has anything been accounted for in trying to do that type of diagnostics early on in the development? Okay, there are two parts to that. The first one is that if you want to actually get a pixel on the screen, you have to have support for the whole chain, right? So that's not something that's going to change. You will still need drivers for all the companies in the system and you will still have to have them working properly. That also, two parts of your problem to diagnose this problem. If you want to say, I want this red pixel on that part of the screen so that I can check. Well, you need a user space component to actually configure the hardware to do that. So we don't have that many test tools for KMS. We got a couple of them and the situation is improving, but that's definitely something we could address. It's not really, well, it's not related to CDF itself because it's more of a user space API problem and having the proper test tools to help you because you need to spend a week understanding the API and writing your own test tool and then not knowing if it's working properly and that's definitely an issue. So that's something that we can definitely work on on the KMS side. Then on the kernel side, as I mentioned, you still have to have support for your whole chain. One thing that's modularizing the drivers and the way we support the hardware would bring is that if you reuse one component between different systems, or if you use one component that's already supported in the mainline for a different system, then, well, the driver might not be bug-free, obviously, but at least you will have a starting point that you will not have to hack on and that could be, hopefully, trusted, or at least that wouldn't be the first candidate when you check for problems. Well, my concern here is that each one of the chains that you're talking about I'd like to see the ability to inject or get debug data on each one of those levels to make sure that I can identify at which point the issue is failing. That we're, you know, I can say at this point, everything beyond that chain is working properly. Now I can go to the next step and see if it's working properly. I mean, is that a reasonable? That's a bit difficult because the pipeline I showed you are harder pipelines, right? So you inject the pixel, on the memory side, you create a frame buffer with your red pixel and then it will go through the hardware. There's no software way to, in the middle, try to inject something or to read it back because it goes on video buses that you don't have access to.  So I think that's... The entities that you modelled are controlling entities. Yeah, so on the software side, all the entities that you see in the graphs, they just control the corresponding hardware and the graph that shows the video streams, the video stream is going on the hardware from chip to chip or from IP card to IP card. If you're talking about like, for instance, a bridge chip on the outside, you can pull that and actually see it. One of the problems that we have with a lot of the HDMI bridges going from parallel to HDMI is when you set up the driver, you're sending one data and it thinks it's grabbing another set of data and creating something totally different. Yeah, I have to have some sort of point to work with it. And in the past, the only real way to do that has been to use FB Dev because of such simple aspects of working for the driver. Well, the thing is it's not true. I don't think it's really an FB Dev issue. I mean, from FB Dev came that just use space API problem. If you have bugs on the driver side and you don't configure like your HDMI transmitter properly, it doesn't matter whether you use the FB Dev or the KMS API and use space, right? Agreed in that aspect, but the difference is because KMS and using based on what I'm seeing here, you have much more items in the chain, much more places for the failure to occur. Well, you don't have to. I mean, both model the hardware. So if you get a simple hardware, then you have a simple chain. If you get really complex hardware, like chain encoders, for instance, then you have to model that because it needs to be controlled. But if you get a simple chain, we don't really add complexity under software side. The model can model complex chains and complex hardware, but it doesn't make it more complex if the hardware is simple. So you're saying early on in the sequence like, for instance, if I wanted to model something that was as simple as going directly out of the DPI to the HDMI with no other encoders involved, that's possible and easy to do based on what you're saying. Yeah, in the KMS or the CDF model, that's, we don't want to make that more complex than necessary. We just need a model that can express complex hardware, but that doesn't create a complex model of the hardware simple. Next one. Yeah, I'll give you the microphone. If you can just pass it around. Just wanted to know how does this will integrate with the existing KMS API? So the important point I actually haven't mentioned that is that CDF does not change the kernel to use a space API. So it's just an internal model that can model you hardware and that can allow you to have a modularized support with different drivers and have all the information in the kernel. It might expose that information to use a space through the media control API, but that's not even required. That would just be something on the side that you can use to have fun, but it's definitely not required. So the kernel to use space API will not be modified at this point, it's really important. It will, the KMS API will need to be extended in the future because we're getting more complex hardware that at some point we won't be able to support properly. It will be harder features that have no support in the kernel to use space API and it will have to extend KMS for that, but that's totally orthogonal to the CDF development. I don't want to change the kernel to use space API otherwise there's no way it's going to be accepted. So basically KMS will call CDF? Yes, so it's not that it's a layer underneath that KMS will call, it's just the KMS driver will use the CDF helper functions to create and to control a complex piece of hardware that's made of different entities and different chips. And it's not required. I mean we will still be able to create a KMS driver that doesn't use CDF. It's, you can think of it as a helper that can help you support something that's complex, especially in the embedded space when you have lots of companies that handle by different drivers. Yes, we have maybe time for one last question. Okay, so I mentioned quickly go through that. So this control model, right? Okay, so the idea is that I want to move the control code out of the entity drivers to something called a pipeline controller and there's no way we'll be able to create a pipeline controller that works with every hardware that exists. So the idea is to first support linear pipelines and have a generic pipeline controller code for that that will more or less forward the, propagate the configuration from entities to entities and from pad to pad. So it will like set the video mode on this pad then get the corresponding video mode from DTE or the other pad and propagate that on the next entity and do that until the other pipelines. That's more or less the idea. It's pretty similar to what we do with video for Linux except that we don't have a pipeline controller in the kernel but it's in user space in that case. So controlling all the parameters of all the entities that's available to use space in video for Linux nowadays, but this pipeline controller code will be in the kernel. Then if you have a more complex pipeline that's really specific to your system then you can create your own pipeline controller code. If you have a more complex pipeline that might have like a branch but that is still pretty generic then you can extend the pipeline controller and create a different one because you have different pipeline model. So I want that to be pretty dynamic because there's no way I'm going to get it right in the first try. So I want to create one that's pretty simple that just supports linear pipelines because that's the majority of the hardware nowadays and something that we can extend later. But the idea is that I don't want to have the complexity of the configuration so I don't want to have code inside all entities that will need to care about the other entities around because otherwise every entity driver needs to be more complex. I want to isolate the complexity in a single place. But we can definitely discuss that afterwards. I think we're running a bit out of time. Yeah, it's 25 and I think that bus is leaving in like five minutes. So thank you.


Good morning vlog. I didn't sleep last night again and I'm three days of no sleep. Hello Daisy. Hello Dolly. It's base, five meter base. What do you want me to do? I'm going to be switching up next week. She'll get tired. It's what they miss, isn't it? When they don't burn. They do sleep, but I don't, then they aren't okay. That's because of the sea. Yeah. But they're all right. They have more exercise. They're just going to do the same in the long walk during the week now. Oh yeah. Do you have something to tell us tonight? I'm here. This is Talford Central. The next station is Shiffnall. So I'm back home. I haven't filmed much today. Part of because I fell asleep on the train. Twice. I thought I'd show you what I've got for my birthday. Starve put my mom on the bus. I'm looking for some converse. She also got me some make-up. And then my sister got me some candle holders. And some candles. And my grandparents got me a new vinyl. And they got me a coloring book. My uncle got me a coloring book, some crayons. And this. That's what I got for my birthday. Also my step-mother-in-law gave me £25. Which was nice. See, that's what I got for my birthday. Thanks for watching this vlog. I know it's not been that exciting. Yeah, thanks for watching. And I'll see you guys in tomorrow's vlog. Peace.


tart producing milk again. I've picked that up correctly, Rosheen, and you can do that. Is that what you're saying? Okay, perfect. Okay. Exactly. Yeah. So as I say, you know, we read earlier on about how bad strep A can be. And I think maybe an awful lot of people might associate it with younger people, you know, kids and all, which are vulnerable and can be exposed to it. But it's a reminder to all of us to, again, trust our guts. And if we're not feeling right to just rule it out or get it ruled out as best as possible. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Don't, don't take any chances because, you know, they, there's a lot of things going around since COVID since just everybody's been, this was re reintroduced back into the community and a lot of infections seem to have got worse. Yeah. So, yeah, yeah. All right, I'm delighted to hear that you're back in good form and the family's happy and healthy. And as I say, Rosheen, it's really useful to help us get that info across. I really appreciate your time and best wishes to everybody. Thank you. And thanks for taking the call, Greg. Thank you. Bye bye. So really just to give that a little bit further context, the Health Protection Surveillance Centre warned of a surge in strep A cases. Cases of the variant of strep known as eye gas are four to five times higher than expected. So in some instances, obviously, as we heard it could be deadly and can be deadly. And we heard Rosheen's close shave with it there. 12 childhood and 18 adult deaths linked to eye gas here in the last 12 months. And between January and June of this year, 350 cases were recorded across the country. And that compares to an average of around 78 cases before the pandemic. So certainly good advice and thanks to Rosheen there for sharing her story. It's time to play with our 100 Euro gift voucher to spend your way. When you choose full fibre 500 meg broadband for just 39 Euro a month for 12 months and no activation fee. So switch today at virginmedia.ie. Virgin media. It's playtime. Tee's and C's applies to virginmedia.ie subject to location and availability. New customers only 12 month contract, 500 meg broadband, 70 Euro thereafter, ends October 11th, 2023. Are you looking to diversify your sources of funding but just don't have the time to do the research? Please join us, the Will Ireland's National Association of Charities, Community Groups and Social Enterprises on Wednesday, 4th of October in the Central Library Letter, Kenny for our funding roadshow where we will answer all your funding questions. Learn about different types of funding opportunities available to your organisation at local, national and EU level. Find out where future funding will come from as well as tips for addressing challenges that will arise. This is a free event but registration is essential. For all the details visit will.ie. 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More information at hollyroothotel.com 19 minutes past 11 and we say good morning to Kathy Somers, CEO of the CX Company and author of Irish Customer Experience Report. Good morning to you, Kathy. Good morning. Good to be here. Thank you so much for your time. So, can you give us the... I think it's been in existence since 2015. So, what is the background to this report and how does one select which companies are surveyed, I suppose? So, we set up the report back in 2015 and the whole purpose really was to be able to benchmark companies in Ireland for the customer experience that they deliver. So, we looked at things like the Times Top 1000 report and looked at all the different sectors that we wanted to cover to put the key companies in there. So, we're at 150 companies. This year it varies slightly from year to year. And is it across sort of media, health and obviously other different types of companies? Yep. So, we cover 11 different sectors. So, we've got supermarket, retail, travel, financial, insurance, public sector, restaurants. So, we cover all the full range of any companies really that deal with customers. And how do you gather the information, Kathy? So, there's a survey that goes out. It's done once a year. We partner with a research company called Amorok and we go out to 2,500 consumers and select a panel of people and ask them to give us feedback on companies that they've interacted with as a customer. And we ask them about 17 different questions all based around their customer experience. Now, the companies or the sort of, I suppose the sector, the Irish Credit Union, there's a whole lot of them and they're independent and underabrela to some extent. They continue to top the poll in terms of customer satisfaction. They do indeed. We just have them in as the Credit Union. So, it's a sort of a catch all for all of them. And they have been number one starting survey back in 2015. So, that's nine years in a row. It's a fantastic achievement. And interestingly this year, they've actually increased their score and there's a bigger gap between them and the next best brand. So, I think they've really been able to adapt the experience they deliver and they've gone into the whole area of digital. So, I think they're very well placed to be able to compete with the banks and offer more complex products like mortgages for customers. How did supermarkets perform, I wonder, because there's been an awful lot of conversation about profit gouging and what have you increased costs and the cost of living and just interested to see how that might be reflected in a report like this. So, the supermarkets interestingly enough are actually the top sector and have been for the last four years. So, there is a large number of their brands in the top 20 and I think the prices definitely have gone up in our weekly shop. What the supermarkets have been really good at doing is that looking at how they deliver value to customers and value is not just what we pay but it's what we get and the experience is a part of that. So, being able to give instant value through their loyalty programme so the likes of Tesco, club card prices, the done stores, vouchers all of those aimed at offering value and you know that it is a highly competitive sector. So, where you'll have got similar products and similar prices it's the customer experience that really gives you the edge in terms of business performance. And our perception too I suppose really, that's what we're kind of going by as well if it's perceived that they're looking after us well it's going to be reflected high in fairness too. It is quite reflective of some of the controversies like the passport situation, we're not hearing as many complaints as we had in the past so faith in that service seems to have increased a little bit. NCT, a lot of controversy around NCT national car testing they fell down the rankings, unavailability of test, backlogs and long delays and of course the one that's gathering all the headlines is the basement club to use football terms and that's RTE and it has seen quite a collapse in terms of the customer experience. It has so its customer experience score has gone down by 17% which is the biggest drop we've seen in the last three years but most importantly is that we measure customer experience on a number of factors things like making it easy, how well each company understands the customer's needs but the key one is trust and RTE's trust score has dropped by 25% and trust is so important it's integral in every relationship we have it's built up slowly over time through every interaction but it's quite fragile and can be easily lost which is obviously what has happened in RTE's case and it can be very time-consuming and very costly to build that trust back up again so they've got a job ahead which I think they're acknowledging that so it will be interesting to see how they build that back up because it's not just the scandal and the Ryan Tuberty issue there were other comments came back from customers around things like poor programming the number of repeats the RTE player not being fit for purpose the number of issues that really need to be addressed from a customer perspective yeah since I sort of read the findings initially I tried and I was thinking in my head how they could rehabilitate themselves and it's a very difficult area because they're also in the business of disseminating news and covering politics and all that kind of stuff it could be really really difficult for them to bounce back from this but I'll probably look at the viewership and listenership figures and take comfort in those at this moment do you survey independent media and if you don't will you because I think that would be interesting the more people consume independent media than they do RTE for an example and there is a precedent there with the credit unions being under the one sort of category do you include independent media and if not why not we don't include independent media at the moment we include the main sort of content providers so the likes of Sky and Virgin so they're obviously providing other services yes but in Ireland they aren't the main content providers the main content providers in Ireland are independent media and news talk and Virgin media it would just be really interesting actually to see comparison and it might actually buck up media generally in this country if there were sort of a public versus sort of private comparison there yeah and is that every year we would review which brands and which sectors we put into the survey for example we added in logistics and delivery last year so you know looking at that and reviewing it and definitely something to think about how did air get on our air in there separately EIR? they are indeed last year they were bottom of the table and they've actually moved off the bottom they had the biggest increase in score of all the companies of 22% so again it's encouraging they've had a real focus on customer experience yes there are still a lot of challenges but you know it's one of those things that you've got to keep doing all the time you've got to be improving and moving forward and you know I think they're a good example of that so hopefully for their sake that continues it's all very interesting Kathy we look forward to see what happens next year have a lovely day take care of yourself thanks for your time bye bye have a lovely day Kathy Somers there CEO of the CX company an author of Irish customer experience report it comes out as credit unions are rated the most trusted organization in Ireland and we have the wonderful letter Kenny credit union on board great supporters of this program as well so that ties in nicely will be by a pleasant coincidence an RTE rock bottom of the pile as I say I would not like trying to be trying to rehabilitate RTE because of the area in which they work in right okay should we do some comments before the break my father lost his arm at the age of 36 when he recovered he worked every day of his life until he passed away at the age of 76 RIP and indeed the example I was trying to give is it's actually something that came up from a study I was watching in England where someone was effectively told well you can use your other hand even though it wasn't just a missing arm that was the issue if you get where I'm coming from Greg when the when are the rules coming into force on e-scooters they're everywhere and so dangerous to pass me on the footpath on Main Street in Bunkran and no bell to let me know they were at your heels and no helmet scary things November I think oh no I think that's actually I'm confusing it with the quads I'm not sure there's actual timeline at this point I thought an increase for those unable to work was a good idea I know some people with a disability who work they could not work full time so the 220 is a great help but even those who have not found work are far better off than those whose disability removes any chance of work Hi Greg how did a proposal to increase disability payments for some categories become a decrease currently 220 proposed minimum 220 mid-range 240 worst level 260 this is not the UK system but we're starting with a new system I didn't call it a deduction I did compare it a reduction from the top rate downwards but I wasn't comparing it to the current price the current payment structures but I appreciate you offering some balance there fantastic work by the Guardian Navy and the Army Rangers we don't praise them often enough for the dangerous job that they do and on it goes ok we are going to be talking about we're going to be speaking to a volunteer support officer with a loan they're looking to recruit they're having a number of open days as well all that's coming up but first let us take a quick break Shop Evolve Clothing Napa Peary Cajart Diesel Jack and Jones and many more casual and street wear brands Men's Wear Superstore Letty Kenny Retail Park or online at EvolveClothing.com Two floors of fashion open seven days Toast your Christmas party this year at Century Complex with delicious food a superb atmosphere an excellent service we have something to suit everyone make your night extra special by adding a premium cinema experience to book call<PHONE_NUMBER> or visit CenturyCinema's dot-a-e for more information on Century Complex this Christmas BingoClub.com or download our app for more info Imagine Faster Broadband Faster Subject to location and availability Now you're very welcome back to the program Helen Helina Madden is a volunteer support officer with a loan good morning to you Helina sorry I haven't even got your fader good morning to you Helina great to have you on the show talk to us about a loan just to remind people I think people will be familiar with the work but always good to start off with a brief outline of what these do so it works primarily to help older people remain living in their own homes for as long and safely as they possibly can and so we provide integrated systems of support coordination to link older people in with the services will allow them to remain staying at home in their own communities where they've always looked for their entire lives to stay connected to that community so if an older person engages with a loan what kind of interaction do they have with your group like how do you support them or empower them I suppose to stay in their own homes yes we have a load of different I suppose areas that we can help them with so we do I suppose there is supports around befriendings well a lot of older people come to us and say they're lonely or they're feeling isolated and they're not getting out a lot so we can provide them with our program we have to do visitation support and befriending in which we place a volunteer with an older person for one hour per week volunteer calls into the older person to have a cup of tea in a chat and that's it just a bit of friendship it doesn't have to be set days and set times it can be different days and different times weekly depending on the volunteer schedule we have a telephone befriending service as well for older people that might be a bit more shy and that might want somebody to call to their home and we have volunteers that work on our telephone lines and older people sign up for the service they can have one call up to five calls per week Monday to Friday they specify the time and the day that they want to call and we have volunteers that phone up to see how they're doing they just would call them friendly calls they call up and they say hello how are you doing today and the conversation goes from there there's a load of reasons as to why someone might end up being isolated maybe their partner passed away maybe they're not as mobilized they were maybe the local post office closed or maybe they used to go out for a pint or something and they no longer do maybe they've withdrawn a little into themselves since Covid because I think there's an awful lot of that as well and still nervous to step out and I wish we could do more to try and encourage people to do that but as I say those are just some of the many examples as to why people from one end of the week to the other might not have contact and that has a horrible impact on people that absolute isolation it does it has a huge effect in studies have shown that it increases cognitive decline dementia Alzheimer's blood pressure heart disease in older people that are being isolated and feeling lonely so I suppose we're in there then to make them not feel like that anymore with a service that we offer for them whether it be through getting them a befriender or a telephone call or whether it be linking them in with the care teams or the social prescribers locally to get them a plan where they're able to get about and join society and become part of society again like you said a lot of older people over Covid sat in because that was the advice and they followed the advice to the letter like and they were everybody was so good and it's not even that they're scared to come out anymore they've just gotten to such a habit of sitting in but they kind of have forgot what it's like to get out and about and we in fact when we place the volunteers in or we place them with a social prescriber or the support coordinator goes in and helps them with whatever it is that they need to help with whether it be access and healthcare occupational therapy or getting supports in if they need walk-in aids or that that it gives them a new lease of life and then they're able to get up and become part of society and get out and they get the confidence back to get out and do it. Yeah indeed. So we've talked about the benefit of the service users or whatever way you might describe them the older people that you work with and we're going to be talking about recruitment in the moment so I just want sort of maybe the anecdotal experience you have or the feedback you get from your volunteers what do they get from it? What does it mean to them? Yeah we have the best volunteers in Donegal and in CH01 they just get so much back from it they say not only do they get the joy in knowing that they're helping somebody to not be lonely but the wisdom then that they get from the people that they're visiting and the stories and just the history in itself that the people that bring to them to know that the pure enjoyment that becomes friendships in a lot of cases like we have volunteers alone alone just started I suppose in Donegal about two years ago before that it was smaller groups that all came into the one band of alone and it was the good morning service before that and we have volunteers that have been with us for 10 years or more like I was chatting to one lady yesterday and she's been a volunteer with us since 2017 visiting the same older person since then do you know so it really becomes a friendship do you know between the older person? Do you support people in that you know this isn't a counselling service but it's a listening ear and I suppose maybe there are you know little flags that maybe you want to keep an eye out for during conversation or what have you do you trust people's sort of own intuition or are there some guidance given there to Helena? Yeah no 100% so all the volunteers that come in to us they get an interview so they come in they get a short video about what alone does it's about 20 minutes they get interviewed by me then they get a training session whether it be by Zoom or in person and we support them we do all this for two hour long training session and we support them through that and the volunteers know that there are eyes and ears there are loans representatives on the ground to those older people they're visiting that if they know little changes or maybe they think that God do you know what this is different than it was last month or I think this person could use this or could use that they can contact us and we link them in with the older person again so we very very much rely on our volunteers to be our eyes and ears on the ground because they'll be seeing the older people that they're matched with as regular as anybody else the people is connected to yeah and of course that's motivation in and of itself to have a positive impact on someone's life but look at at the same time too we are a country with 100% unemployment effectively and you know this is a lovely thing to have on your CV if you're looking to explore job opportunities so move around a lot of employers like volunteer work and it's a great sign of someone's character and say that would never be someone's motivation but hey if it's a nice bonus along with it too all well and good as I say volunteering is always looked on really favorably so what kind of a and I think it varies there's the phone interactions and then there is the sort of visiting what kind of a commitment before we talk about where people can get more information face to face what kind of commitment normally or do people sort of really do you want from people effectively yeah so it's actually really easy and I think it's a lot less than what people think so the telephone service we look for a two hour commitment for a week and it's a Rota schedule so to make the calls to the older people and they might they're not going to be on the phone for a solid two hours you know like they'll get there will be so many calls that come up that they make and then and that's six months for two hours per week and then the visitation be friending it's just one hour on one day per week that suits you to call out to an older person and we look for a commitment of a year with that but within those roles it's very very flexible like we realize I realize people's volunteers they have lots going on their work and they have kids they have groups here involved with you know they go on holidays you know and that's fine and I think the bottom line is that's fine if you're busy we can still make it work for you you know it's just it's the one hour and we're very flexible in our approach towards that and most people are really really caring and giving but not everyone necessarily has the resources to donate for to charity or the time to fully commit to something or other this allows people that want to have a genuine really really important positive impact on another person's life particularly as the age it's an amazing it's an amazing thing to be part of you know what I mean and as I say it doesn't really cost the person anything other than a little bit of their their time in the week but how rewarding it must be to know that you're having this impact on another human's life it is and a lot of the older people that are in Donegal that are waiting for volunteers is waiting six months to a year and if you're somebody who doesn't see a lot of people from one week to the next a year is a huge amount of time and a lot of the people that are in our service are very the older of the older people so they're the 70s and 80s plus so I mean those people wait and sit in a year on their own like you know it's not fair and all it takes is maybe somebody in your community has an hour per week for you to call it and have that cup of tea in a chat that you're calling into do you have an idea of how many older people are waiting on I have an exact idea so across Donegal we have 183 older people currently waiting for a visit so there's 61 in the Finn Valley area 37 in Anishoan 33 in North Central Donegal so that's from Lederkenny Remeltson, Milford, Fannard, Cresla Dunfenike Direction 31 in South Donegal and 21 in the Glenties Ardra so these are older people that have engaged with the service and said I'd love to have a befriending service and they're waiting and they're waiting and they're deemed necessary of the service so I suppose we make sure that the people that they're getting befrienders really need that support that they're just not thrown into I suppose somebody that has heaps of support and lots going on that these people these 183 people are in need of somebody to visit them for that hour per week all right okay so there's a couple of open days volunteer recruitment days you could call them in early October which we're in right now on Friday the central library letter Kenny between 10.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. and that's dropping now you're not expecting people to come in at 10.30 and leave at 5.30 you're open no no it's dropping all the open days that we're doing is dropping open days for people to get information whether it be about them wanting to volunteer with us or get more information about that or even about the services of core coordinators and on the day as well about the services that the Lord has to offer all right central library letter Kenny this Friday 10.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. dropping any time between those hours Saturday the 7th of October in the Finn Valley Centre in Balaba Faye from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in case that suits you better just give me that number again 137 did you say 183 older people 183 I beg your pardon 183 older people have been engaged with alone have been assessed that they are needing of a befriending stroke telephone support service so a lot of volunteers well it's not a lot considering there's 163 odd thousand of us in this county but it should be doable I hope you have a huge well I hope if anyone's actually listening now can they and you know they may be listening in Killy Beggs for an example or Dunlowe or Mallon and they would like to but they can't get along to letter Kenny or Balaba Faye can they speak they can indeed they can get me from Monday to Friday from 9 to 5 I have an email address they can get me on Helena dot Madden as alone dot IE and Greg you have my phone number details I can leave those with you as well or they can go on to our alone's website and www.alone.ie and there's a wee box that they can take for volunteering and ask them to put in their details so their address and their telephone number and their email address and then they'll come through to me and I will get them whatever information they need to make their decision to get started with us OK I hope you get a wee run on it now after this it would be great would be so great for them people waiting you know that you could tell them just the joy when you tell somebody who's been waiting six months or a year that we found them somebody that's going to visit them the joy that it brings them like and the look on their face and I always say to the volunteers in the training sessions the look when they meet that older person for the first time and the work and why we do what we do just to get that end result to see that older person happy and content feeling safe and that they're connected to the community I just have a cup of tea and a chat or glass of milk and a cup of tea and a chat bit of fun bit of love it's not caring or anything like that just so people are clear I just want to make sure so I really hope you get a wee run after the back of this conversation your enthusiasm and your love of what you do Helena almost not far off 200 older people who are waiting for a friend effectively you get it okay thanks so much it's been lovely speaking to you really has thanks so very much indeed okay there you are let us know if you're gonna get in contact with them or attend the open days I'll wait 60, 25,000 and very inspiring Helena there The Nintel Noon Show is brought to you by Letter Kenny Credit Union digital loans now available apply online or via our app today and get your loan transferred directly to your current account at Shannon Airport we know what makes a dream holiday it's not just a huge choice of destinations like Lanzarote Malaga Edinburgh Paris and Boston it's the unique features that make getting through our airport a dream like affordable easy access parking just steps away from your departure gate so whatever dream holiday you're packing for head for ShannonAirport.ie with more quality airport experience we'll get your holiday off to a dream start Shannon Airport making it easy well Grace how are you today I'm good I've just been down to the mid to measure fireplaces Shorin and Chrysler they have an incredible selection of over 40 colours for kitchen work tops and guess what for a limited time they're offering a 40% discount on any electric fire when you purchase a work top there 40% they're a huge selection of fireplaces stoves wood pellet burners beams and stone cladding certainly well contact me to measure fireplaces Chrysler on 0749138 365 on Facebook Instagram and on mtm fireplaces.ie here's to the good stuff the dip in the sea the run after work the cat up with friends the come back to ours the carry gold butter that spreads straight from the fridge for hot butter toast or a build your own sandwich the chat around the table the sharing of plates of news and of tales and the taste that means everything carry gold spreadable butter straight from the fridge carry gold may your table always be full New York and more so breezy today with sunny spells scattered showers some will be on the heavier side winds moderate but they'll continue fresh and gusty near the coast throughout the day temperatures ranging 13 to 15 degrees celsius Paul Paul Dunleavy joins us on the show now good morning Paul good morning great how are you I'm doing good it's good to have you on the program and it's an interesting I haven't done something like this before you've an idea you've an idea for a show it's called chasing the deal and you're looking for a documentary maker a producer a TV crew who will turn this idea into a reality you also have a already got a sort of a pilot of it which viewers to the program can sort of watch as we talk so talk to me about the concept of chasing the deal okay Greg well basically I suppose that's really all stemmed up from we were living in dairy and we had a house this was sort of a Georgian styled house and we were looking to redecorate it and we wanted furniture for it but this was the kind of furniture that we couldn't buy in any shop in Europe we couldn't get anywhere so Josephine my long suffering other half as it goes Josephine was very good on the computer so she was always scouring for sort of auction sites and cardboard sales and places like that that might be able to sort of supply us with the type of stuff that we wanted so we basically started travelling around all of Ireland from cabin to Dublin to Newry everywhere and we bought period style furniture not necessarily antiques maybe French Renaissance Chesterfield buttoned leather suites hand carved furniture stuff like that but stuff that really worked well in the house and I mean when we finished furnishing it we stood back and we said wow that's incredible and we were buying switch of furniture that time but probably would have cost maybe four or five thousand euro and new we were buying them maybe for four or five hundred so the effect was incredible we had saved a fortune of mine but more important than that we really enjoyed what we'd done so after we had done that Greg we were sitting in the house at the weekend thinking you know what are we going to do now we've no fun anymore so we kept going to these places we kept doing what we'd done now we were filling the house because now we were almost filling the house so we couldn't get into our house then what I'd actually walk on sideways and pass the front hall we had statues of Mike Tyson we had electric guitars everywhere it was just a mess so we were left then Greg was the only one option that was to sell the stuff that we didn't need which we started doing and we found out that because we liked it other people also liked it so therein lies the whole concept of what we were doing can I say from what I've seen so far and this is a compliment not an insult it seems to be very similar is it to the salvage not similar but the concept to the salvage hunters TV show in Britain is it where you acquire some beautiful stuff and we need a version of that show ourselves with Irish characters people from here it seems like a no-brainer it seems handy to make too and that's easy for me to say says you but you know what I mean you're ready to go you've got a team you've got a concept Greg we have we have it sitting on a plate for somebody to take us on normally on a TV producer would want a show like that they've got to go and look for people like us go and look for people that can restore the furniture go and look for all this infrastructure we have it we've got the team we're ready to go so basically all someone has to do is say like let's go maybe if they want to make a few changes or a few different sort of cash changes or whatever that's okay but just a particular show that you're talking about let me give you an example that particular show was in Belfast recently and called into two separate shops in Belfast that sells antiques after they shot the show when they had left and went back the turnover of those two shops increased 40% because of the exposure that they got on the TV show so this show has the potential I think to put Donegal on the map to show I suggest the country and the world what we can do in Donegal all right can I somebody else can do it can I play a little click here I think you're negotiating with a man in Bunkrana is it let's just have a listen here we came down here today not really knowing what to expect and we come around the corner and I saw these two teacups very nice John very unusual very unusual as soon as I saw them I thought wow these are very different of course I couldn't show my enthusiasm because then I would have give the game away how much are they John for the pair for a pair I don't know for a pair it's having about it's having about 300 euros I don't know the two there for me man I don't reason with that they're not too bad for me to have a go yeah and sort of people start getting the experience and as I say we'll play the footage out so these are two really unique sort of teacups and you're bidding with the person that owns them you have to sort of make sure there's a bit of margin in there for you you have to see what you need to do to them who you might sell them on to so he gets a few quid gets them out of his back yard and then obviously you can you can try and find out where to market those or who gets them and we follow you through that journey as I say it's not a brand new concept but it's just lovely to see it well produced and with an Irish feel to it you know well yes there is that Greg but also a lot of the shows out there don't show the shows that you're mentioning they show from sort of conception you know from conception to birth yes we show the actual buying of it the restoration of it and finally the most important part of selling it is well you have somebody tangible coming down well that's the critical thing for me in these shows I need to know not what the estimated value is is what it's sold for because I want to know you got those cups off him for 200 quid I don't know how much you're going to have to spend doing them up but I want to know did you make a loss or did you make 600 quid do you know what I mean that's the critical part of the program that I need I need to know what happens you know if you get it sold correct and we were I'm fatigued about that because the other shows and most of them don't show that because it takes more time and more effort and everything else we want to really basically show that yes sometimes Greg and I mind you we must queue and we get it wrong but more times then we will get it right and again we have like Jerry Jerry Brett who's in Bridgend and there's a company called Save Our Sofrants they're fantastic it's a family run business we've taken so fast to him and bits Greg I mean and if you'd seen them you'd say go to the skip a week later we go back Jerry has it all done there's a masterpiece sitting on top okay and that's the magic as I say you've done all the hard work you have you have it all done there and people love this kind of stuff what's the house discussions going with the likes of RTE maybe TJ Carr they seem to actually see the thing is Paul we were talking a little earlier on about RTE their bottom of the list in terms of customer satisfaction some of the complaints were repeats and what have you this and this is then what happens with RTE and I'm not dragging you into this conversation but they then throw money at some minor celebrity to go out far and do something or whatever it is look at someone's teeth or whatever we don't make homegrown shows like this and they don't commission enough of them I don't know why they don't but they can actually sell a show like this to Discovery or to one of the streaming platforms as well they really need to look at what they commission and how they commission it because I would have argued that this is this is an old brainer rather than sending someone who used to be in a boy band to Turkey correct but you know we were in discussions with an Irish broadcaster I can't name the broadcaster and they have a shortlisted but they have a shortlisted now for quite a while and apparently it's very hard to get shortlisted it's just getting them to pass the line that's the problem Greg I feel I'm standing sometimes in front of a door and I have no key to open it and if someone gives me the key we'll open it and we will show them and we will put Doug all on the map we'll show them what these local people can do and we will make it entertaining and fun and there's an appetite for this because it's all to do the circular economy stuff's reused I mean there's some of them if you look at even letter Kenny there's some fantastic charity shops there so somebody can go buy something in their charity shop take it home take it up or clean it or do whatever and sell it you're actually helping your local charity but you're also helping yourself I'm not being parochal here as I say I think it's actually a great idea and this is the type of programming that maybe could start rehabilitating RT or even maybe one of the independent broadcasters you've done all the hard work you've got a pilot together and as I say we watch an awful lot of this stuff on UK satellite channels why don't we have a home grown version of it I hope I hope it gets in front of the right set of eyes that can see the potential here because I do wonder sometimes who actually commissions these shows and if they're blinded by celebrity or something but anyway the best it's a trick you and Greg it's getting in front of the person sometimes you can't they've gone they have to send emails they may or may not answer if we can get in front of somebody give me five minutes in front of somebody and if I don't sell if I'm not good I'll do it if I get in front of someone we can also do an Irish version because so that option is also there you've got it all okay brilliant stuff Greg thank you very much for giving us this opportunity we really appreciate the help you talk about how quickly you can sell it there's a bit of restoration in there there's characters in there there's banter in there you know it has all the ingredients you just need someone to see the potential in it and I'm not just saying that because I have watched I have watched the I have watched the pilot and I would watch the show and I mean that from the bottom of my heart not just because it's a it's a done a goal show but genuinely I would we need to be supporting this have a lovely day best wishes to everyone alright take care thank you very much bye bye bye bye bye bye okay okay right check out that we'll link it on our we'll link it on our this book and our other social media at some point okay that's where we have to leave it I want to thank Neve Shields who departs the show today it's been lovely working with Neve a lovely person and we will miss her although we'll probably paths will cross again into the future the old reliability though we'll never go on you we're always going to be here Caroline or Greg Hughes here 9-12 every day we're back with you tomorrow stay tuned John Bresson