Using Openmoko in Japan
Hi all, I just subscribed the Openmoko mail list and find that it is an active community. I am more and more confident that the first open-source cellular phone will become the mainstream in the near future. I am a long-time Linux hacker working as a network engineer. I am a Chinese and is transferred to Tokyo this June. Is there any Openmoko enthusiasm in Japan? Probably we can have a meeting sometime in Tokyo to get familiar each other and study the potential to introduce the Neo1973 to Japan market. In my superficial understanding, Japan mobile phone market is a very different market than other countries. The cellular phone and the service in Japan are quite unfriendly to the non-Japanese users. There are many expats as me in Tokyo, who can't speak Japanese. Neo 1973 may be a gadget for them to drive into an open world. My email address is Jerry AT fusionsystems.org. email to me if you are also interested in Openmoko for japan. Regards, Jerry Huang ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: dev mess
Is dropbear broken for other people updating their OM dev env? There are thousands of recipes in OE and occasionally a change does break things. However, I rebuild my environment most days and haven't had the problems you describe. Thanks. I've to install the dev env on a second laptop anyhow, so I'll just move it higher on my prio list. Done. Has dropbear symlinks. ttf-fonts/ttf-liberation had very funky problems, though. It tried to download some fonts from https://www.angstrom-distribution.org/unstable/sources/liberation-fonts-ttf-3.tar.gz but it says in the bitbake file (SRC_URI): https://www.redhat.com/f/fonts/liberation-fonts-ttf-3.tar.gz yet if I replace that by http://www.redhat.com/f/fonts/liberation-fonts-ttf-3.tar.gz (without S, thanks ScaredyCat) it successfully downloads http://downloads.openmoko.org/sources/liberation-fonts-ttf-3.tar.gz Needless to say, I'm baffled. When I had problems with gsmd it would lock the entire phone but it wouldn't print anything out as far as I know. The following bug report might be of some help: http://bugzilla.openmoko.org/cgi-bin/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=788 You bet! Some of these things sound familiar. Good enough to try to fix my problems. Taking the console=ttySAC0 out of the bootargs allows me to restart gsmd. Especially the symptom of halting after a few seconds was recognizable. The real solution seems close, too, from what I read in the follow-up on bug 788 from yesterday :) Also, for the first time the openmoko image asked me about my PIN. (either doesn't restart gsmd a handful of times on boot, or can do so safely now) So now I can start complaining about small problems, like: - gsmd does not hang up when I tell the Dialer to (at least when the other side hasn't picked up, yet) this can easily be seen with libgsmd-tool - when there's no SIM, gsm applet keeps telling me that the phone is connected to the network. Every ten seconds or so. - when there is a SIM, no applets whatsoever. Bye, Kero. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Using Openmoko in Japan
You'll need to find some hardware to run it on, the Neo1973 won't function in Japan. It's a GSM phone, and Japan's system is pretty much completely WCDMA... -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jerry Huang Sent: Saturday, October 13, 2007 11:10 PM To: community@lists.openmoko.org Subject: Using Openmoko in Japan Hi all, I just subscribed the Openmoko mail list and find that it is an active community. I am more and more confident that the first open-source cellular phone will become the mainstream in the near future. I am a long-time Linux hacker working as a network engineer. I am a Chinese and is transferred to Tokyo this June. Is there any Openmoko enthusiasm in Japan? Probably we can have a meeting sometime in Tokyo to get familiar each other and study the potential to introduce the Neo1973 to Japan market. In my superficial understanding, Japan mobile phone market is a very different market than other countries. The cellular phone and the service in Japan are quite unfriendly to the non-Japanese users. There are many expats as me in Tokyo, who can't speak Japanese. Neo 1973 may be a gadget for them to drive into an open world. My email address is Jerry AT fusionsystems.org. email to me if you are also interested in Openmoko for japan. Regards, Jerry Huang ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Python bindings for libgsmd
Greetings all, We have been working on binding libgsmd in python and we must say, we have been successful in wrapping up the voicecall routines upto now. It would be wonderful to have your comments and constructive criticism. Please do note that zecke also has done some python bindings, The main difference lies in the use of gobjects in the latter case. We have created a sort of raw interface to the underlying libgsmd code. The code is really noobish though, but atleast it works http://projects.openmoko.org/plugins/scmsvn/viewcvs.php/?root=python-openmoko Screenshots here http://sudharsh.files.wordpress.com/2007/10/screenshot.png Oh, and please be gentle with the flames... -- -- Sudharshan S http://www.sudharsh.wordpress.com ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Bi-weekly OpenMoko community update
On Sat, 2007-10-13 at 12:02 +0200, Pedro Aguilar wrote: Hi, It would be nice that the software development your're doing at the moment would be backwards compatible with GTA01 (at least the parts that are not hw dependent and are different between GTA01 and GTA02), otherwise the users of GTA01 would risk to remain without support for upgrades. This would be important for all the doc too. BTW, will the debug board and wires of GTA01 be compatible with GTA02? I would like to buy GTA02 and use the debug board and wires that I already have for GTA01. Yes, the debug board is generic. I have used my v2 debug board with GTA01 and GTA02. Regards, Thomas -- OpenedHand Ltd. Unit R Homesdale Business Center / 216-218 Homesdale Road / Bromley / BR1 2QZ / UK Tel: +44 (0)20 8819 6559 Expert Open Source For Consumer Devices - http://o-hand.com/ ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Bi-weekly OpenMoko community update
On Sat, 2007-10-13 at 18:17 +0200, Jan Dittmer wrote: Hello Michael, it would be nice to have some info about this white screen of death plus vibrator which is affecting some people. Especially if that is a hardware or software problem. It's pretty annoying and generally happens if you want to show someone the phone :-( I cannot remember any official statement on this issue - which is kind of sad I believe a white screen at boot normally means that the CPU is on, but the boot loader has not run. Where have other people mentioned this problem? Regards, Thomas -- OpenedHand Ltd. Unit R Homesdale Business Center / 216-218 Homesdale Road / Bromley / BR1 2QZ / UK Tel: +44 (0)20 8819 6559 Expert Open Source For Consumer Devices - http://o-hand.com/ ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Bi-weekly OpenMoko community update
On 10/13/07, Shawn Rutledge [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 10/12/07, Michael Shiloh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We're very happy with the u-blox/Atmel ATR0635 GPS Receiver, and thus have made the decision to use this chip. That sounds like good news. It's not open-source but sounds like it should be easier to interface with. However, FIC still needs to get us the gllin binaries for our GTA01's! I hope this isn't being forgotten just because you chose a new chip. It was advertised as a GPS phone and that was probably a big factor for many of us to purchase it. Personally I was looking forward very much to having this working, and the last update I remember seeing was a couple months ago when Sean said the license would all be worked out in a few more days! What's up with that? How many hundreds of phones are sitting around with idle GPS chips, hampering the development because of this licensing red tape! It's ridiculous that it has taken this long. Absolutely agrree. GPS was one of my main points for buying the phone. I dont really care about the source for the driver as long as I can get the co-ordinates. -- Pranav If the chip co. wants to charge a small fee I'd even pay it. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community -- -- http://pd.dnsalias.org ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: application idea -- anti theft system
Stroller wrote: On 13 Oct 2007, at 00:09, Derek Pressnall wrote: I have an idea for a simple alarm application. The idea is that if you leave your phone sitting at your desk plugged in charging, then you can activate an app that will play an alrarm sound as soon as the devices is unplugged (with a popup keypad to enter a disarm code). A variant would use the gps to determine if the phone has moved more than a few feet from where you left it. I can think of lots of other ways to implement anti-theft measures in this phone. IMO if I'm too far away from the phone to notice someone nicking it then I'm unlikely to hear it making an alarm sound. I would have it instead check http://mywebsite.com/theft.txt and if it doesn't get a 404 (i.e. you only put the file there when the phone has been stolen) then have it email you its GPS position. [...] You may want to do the opposite. Your phone may think it's being stolen if you happen to get on something like a wireless connection with NoCatSplash. (Which hijacks the first attempt to grab a web page in order to show you a welcome page.) I'd be tempted to have PGP signed stolen/not stolen pages to alleviate any ambiguity. Failure to retrieve either would just be ignored. -Steve ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: application idea -- anti theft system
On 14 Oct 2007, at 19:52, Steve wrote: Stroller wrote: ... IMO if I'm too far away from the phone to notice someone nicking it then I'm unlikely to hear it making an alarm sound. I would have it instead check http://mywebsite.com/theft.txt and if it doesn't get a 404 (i.e. you only put the file there when the phone has been stolen) then have it email you its GPS position. [...] You may want to do the opposite. Your phone may think it's being stolen if you happen to get on something like a wireless connection with NoCatSplash. (Which hijacks the first attempt to grab a web page in order to show you a welcome page.) Oooh, I see. (It took me a couple of tries, thinking about it - I'm glad I got it without sending those replies ;) I'd be tempted to have PGP signed stolen/not stolen pages to alleviate any ambiguity. Failure to retrieve either would just be ignored. This is probably the best way, although it probably places the bar beyond my programming skills. Stroller. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Some ideas for the accelerometer
This doesn't work well because the screen moves with the phone. So if you want to scroll right fast, you'll have trouble to see what's going on on the screen. Scrolling should rather be done on the touchscreen because that works really well. However, dragging the map/website as if it was physical is too slow in most cases. Increasing scrolling velocity by the distance from the initial touchpoint would probably be a good idea but adjustable scrolling speed would be great already. Instead of scrolling one screen far when I move my finger once across the screen, I want to scroll four screens so that I get where I want quicker. Someone else might only want to scroll one screen. Kinetic scrolling can extend this and look/feel awesome but also be very annoying so it should probably be optional. Now what do we do with the accelerometer? I like the zooming idea. It shouldn't require a hardware button press because those are kind of hard to press. Touching the screen should be enough and it would mean that you can zoom and scroll at the same time and pretty intuitively. About the initial idea: Judging from my DS accelerometer (which is different hardware but should be relatively similar), the sampling frequency will probably be pretty high. I still doubt that you can reliably differentiate between walking and hitting the phone. However, it might be possible to shake it two or three times with a frequency faster than any form of running and it should be possible to detect this. This probably won't help you if the phone is hidden in a huge backpack. It's also important to remember that the motion of picking up your phone should not lead to denial of the call... ;) Ortwin On 10/12/07, David Pottage [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Friday 12 October 2007, Oliver wrote: I've had similar ideas, but haven't posted them yet. Here's one: Imagine you're surfing the internet, or checking a map, or something like that. We don't have a multi-touch screen, so we can't zoom out with our fingers like iPhone users. Zooming out, though, is something we really should be able to do. So just hold a hardware button and bring the phone closer to your face! The site/image should be shrunk in such a way that you'll think it is stationary behind the phone, and the phone screen is a window through which you can view this image/site! When you've spotted something you want to focus on, somewhere else on the page, don't scroll, just keep holding the button bringing the phone/window down to that place. If you stop holding the button, the image can either stay where it is, or go to it's original zoom-level. Just imagine, if you think of the screen as a window, what incredibly fun games you could develop for the phone! I think a better idea would be to think of the screen as a mirror that you are using to view a much larger page behind you. That way you can intuitively scroll both vertically and horizontally a large page or map by tilting the screen, and without using the touchscreen. (Which can be reserved for other functions). A lot of UI ideas here are coppied from other touch screen devices. That's fine where appropriate, but the Neo 1973 is the only phone with built in accelerometers, and I think we should make use of them where we can. We should not just copy the iPhone or whatever, that only uses it's accelerometer as a tilt sensor to make the display image the right way up. -- David Pottage ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: List formatting request
On Sat, 13 Oct 2007, Doug Parker wrote: Yes, thank you! ...in the digest, and I assume all the individual messages that get forwarded from the list. I think I can illustrate it easily below. The answer is the same, the problem is on your end. Community digests aggregate messages in 'Message/RFC822' MIME parts so they are formatted as email messages and header structure rules apply. A few of the other openmoko lists *don't* do digests in this way which is both peculiar and annoying. m -- Monty Brandenberg ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Bi-weekly OpenMoko community update
On 15/10/2007, Pranav Desai [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Absolutely agrree. GPS was one of my main points for buying the phone. I dont really care about the source for the driver as long as I can get the co-ordinates. hmm. this an open phone with open hardware and (where legal) open drivers. not having the source code to something would defeat the whole purpose of what sean et al are doing, and not attract any of the community that's here - the neo would be just another smartphone/pda and we'd be back to square one. so no, we do want and require the source code to everything ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: application idea -- anti theft system
Steve wrote: You may want to do the opposite. Your phone may think it's being stolen if you happen to get on something like a wireless connection with NoCatSplash. (Which hijacks the first attempt to grab a web page in order to show you a welcome page.) I'd be tempted to have PGP signed stolen/not stolen pages to alleviate any ambiguity. Failure to retrieve either would just be ignored. Better yet, have the phone activate a Servlet or CGI that saves the IP address from the request (and pass the GPS info if the device has a fix) every so often? On a Laptop you'd do this at bootup time + 15m (to give the thief time to get past the NoCatSplash or its equivalents. On a Phone, maybe once an hour out of cron? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Some feedback from using the neo as a phone for a day
Yesterday (and today) I used the neo as a phone for the first time, after gsm started mostly working out of the box. I'm really excited about this development and I think that it marks a huge milestone for the project. So congratulations to everyone who worked so hard on this project! I've got a lot of feedback about my usage of the phone. Both minor points as well as bigger design issues. I'm going to post them here for discussion, in no particular order. But if there are better places where specific points should be redirected, I'll be happy to do that. A lot of the issues I'm going to raise are negative, but it's just constructive criticism from a user's point of view. :-) Voice/Talking: - There is a very strong amplification of background noise when in a voice call. If you are in a quiet room the sound is pretty good (and the volume is nice and loud). But when there is even mild background noise in your location it gets amplified, and both you and the other party barely hear anything. - I tried playing with sidetone in alsamixer but that didn't help, so I don't think that that's the problem. - I'm not sure in which component of the software stack this happens, but it seems to me that we might need to investigate some noise cancellation algorithms and apply those to the incoming sound when in a voice call. Does anyone have any experience with this, or does anyone at least know whether this is a common thing to do with cell phones? UI: - The current keyboard is highly unusable. I know it's intended to be used with a stylus, and it's fine for that, but it's completely unreasonable to expect a user to have a stylus for activities like SMS, or entering a new contact. And even with pretty small fingers it's pretty hard for me to type on the keyboard. - In the Contacts application, it's impossible to enter a phone number (and maybe an email address) for a contact when the phone is not connected to the GSM network. - In the dialer application there's apparently a 'cursor' that you can move by clicking somewhere on the textfield displaying the current phone number. But there is no visual feedback for the cursor so if you accidentally place it in the middle of a number you're left thinking you will be very confused. - The scrolling is very cool, but it's often difficult to scroll when the items you're scrolling are clickable, because it incorrectly gets recognized as a click. - The dialer does not always pop up on an incoming call. So when the phone starts ringing you need to open the dialer application and then answer the call. - The dialer application has the hangup button on the top right of the screen when in a call. When you actually talk on the phone it's _really_ easy to touch that part of the screen with your face, which results in 3-4 accidental hangups per call. Oops. :-) - The status icons on the top tend to disappear once in a while. Sometimes a reboot gets them back. Sometimes it doesn't. But usually two or three reboots get them back. Very perplexing. :) I'm going to continue using the phone for the next few days and try to identify more issues. I think that the only major issue here is the background noise problem. If that is resolved we would be well on our way to having a phone ready to be tested by some real consumers. Igor ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: application idea -- anti theft system
you prolly want to lock down the uboot screen, etc. to prevent the phone from just being re-imaged. It would prolly require the debug board if you forgot the password. -Kyle On 10/14/07, Ian Darwin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Steve wrote: You may want to do the opposite. Your phone may think it's being stolen if you happen to get on something like a wireless connection with NoCatSplash. (Which hijacks the first attempt to grab a web page in order to show you a welcome page.) I'd be tempted to have PGP signed stolen/not stolen pages to alleviate any ambiguity. Failure to retrieve either would just be ignored. Better yet, have the phone activate a Servlet or CGI that saves the IP address from the request (and pass the GPS info if the device has a fix) every so often? On a Laptop you'd do this at bootup time + 15m (to give the thief time to get past the NoCatSplash or its equivalents. On a Phone, maybe once an hour out of cron? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Some feedback from using the neo as a phone for a day
Also spracht Igor Foox (Sun, 14 Oct 2007 22:38:34 -0400): - The dialer application has the hangup button on the top right of the screen when in a call. When you actually talk on the phone it's _really_ easy to touch that part of the screen with your face, which results in 3-4 accidental hangups per call. Oops. :-) - The status icons on the top tend to disappear once in a while. Sometimes a reboot gets them back. Sometimes it doesn't. But usually two or three reboots get them back. Very perplexing. :) I noticed that too. Maybe the panel applets process needs to run under a supervisor that will restart it? best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. - personal:http://lalo.hystericalraisins.net/ technical:http://www.hystericalraisins.net/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
