Hello FreeCalypso community, I am still alive and kickin'! The first update I have is a new release of FC host tools:
ftp://ftp.freecalypso.org/pub/GSM/FreeCalypso/fc-host-tools-r17.tar.bz2 ftp://ftp.freecalypso.org/pub/GSM/FreeCalypso/fc-host-tools-latest.tar.bz2 The bulk of changes from the previous r16 release consists of new tools for working with PWT ringtone melodies for buzzer platforms. What are buzzer platforms? They are Calypso phones and development boards that feature a traditional magnetic buzzer that is driven with Calypso BU/PWT output; these buzzer-equipped phones and devboards are: * Motorola C11x/12x and C139/140 * TI D-Sample board (ceremonial support only) * Our planned FC Venus development board My project scoping decision for FreeCalypso is to support two types of ringing noise generation: my long-term goal is to move toward loudspeaker-based ringing, playing E1 (Calypso DSP) melodies in the voice audio path going to the same loudspeaker that will be used for hands-free calls, but this goal is currently far away. Instead the first phase of FC Tourmaline fw development on our still-desired Venus board will use the old-fashioned buzzer as the ringing noise generator, continuing this aspect from the starting-poing fw we got from TI. My previous plan was to keep buzzer ringing support in our FreeCalypso fw to a minimum, keeping the crappy implementation contained in the Condat audio driver layer, but I have now revised that plan. Out of the large firmware code base which we've inherited from TI, different parts were written by different people/teams at TI (some of which were actually Condat prior to being bought out by TI), and different code layers exhibit very different levels of design and coding quality. Layer1, the code that drives TI's DSP, is the most solid; the GSM protocol protocol stack (G23M) culminating in ACI is also pretty good, and so are most of the "application support" pieces implemented in TI's RiViera land. However, those code layers that sit at the very top of the stack, the handset UI, are the very worst, and this part of the fw is where the need for cleanup is most acute. The layer of "Condat drivers", a sort of glue layer between Condat's UI implementation (MFW+BMI) and underlying platform drivers and services, is part of the "bad" fw division in need of cleanup, and the "audio driver" layer is one part that is majorly in need of spring cleaning. The mess we got from TI/Condat has buzzer ringing and simple audio tones (keyclick, call waiting, busy etc) entangled together in a really gnarly way, and we need to cut that Gordian knot so that the audio tones subsystem can be cleaned up properly while the ringer implementation becomes its own separate entity. The actual transition from using the legacy Condat audio driver layer to ring the buzzer on incoming calls and SMS to ringing via our new BUZM (buzzer melody) service implemented in RiViera land won't happen until we have our Venus development board, but I have made some preliminary steps: BUZM service itself has already been implemented, and in the absence of handset UI hook-up, it can be exercised via AT@BUZ test command. PWT ringtone melodies for this new buzzer ringing service are compiled using the new tools introduced with the just-out fc-host-tools-r17 release, and the whole mechanism works very nicely on Mot C139, using FC Tourmaline fw built in the developer-only vpm configuration in which there is no UI. One side benefit we shall get from this upcoming transition from the legacy Condat audio ringer to BUZM is that we'll get a selection of nice ringtones to choose from, rather than just the one basic ringing sound we've had since 2016 (alternating 800 Hz and 900 Hz tones), and we shall have these nice ringtones while staying with the buzzer, long before the much much later transition to Melody E1. Here is the set of monophonic buzzer ringtone melodies which I proudly stole from Motorola: ftp://ftp.freecalypso.org/pub/GSM/ringtone/Motorola-buzzer-melodies.tar.gz The linked tarball contains 18 ringing tone melodies (intended for continuous ring-until-answer) plus 2 message alert tone melodies (short, non-repeating), and all 20 melodies are of Motorola's professional quality - the quality contrast with various IMY melodies I've been able to find on the Internet is huge. These melodies have been extracted out of that one special C11x fw version for which we got a linker map file with symbols - the process I used is explained in the README file inside the tarball - but they can be played on any Calypso device that has a buzzer. Zooming out to the bigger picture, I've been doing this ringtone work and other minor FC developments while I'm waiting for my new Cox business Internet connection to be installed - hopefully only another couple of weeks of waiting left. I recently got a new Slackware x86 server machine put together, and once the new business Internet connection arrives, I will be installing Osmocom CNI software on that server. I already have two NanoBTS units, one for 1900 MHz and one for 850 MHz - I have had them for a while now - and I've been meaning to set up my own GSM network for a while, but now is the time to actually do it. Using the live network of a regular commercial GSM operator for FC development would not be a problem if I lived in a more 2G-friendly country - the kind of tests I need to do at my current stage of development are very high-level, dealing with handset UI functions rather than radio or protocol stacks, hence I am NOT putting any kind of experimental or dangerous or unapproved (radio-wise) devices on the network - but T-Mobile USA are so hostile to 2G users these days that any act of moving one of those legacy "grandfathered" SIMs (no longer available new) from one device to another is like Russian roulette. Thus the time has come for me to set up my own GSM network - I got the BTS hardware, I got the server machine for running Osmocom CNI software, just waiting for the business Internet connection for backhaul. Hasta la Victoria, Siempre, Mychaela aka The Mother _______________________________________________ Community mailing list Community@freecalypso.org https://www.freecalypso.org/mailman/listinfo/community