Re: GPS bluetooth receiver
Can I use the GTA01B_v4 as a bluetooth gps receiver? And will it be easy to do. I was going to wait for the GTA02 in October, but in the meantime I'm about to buy a gps bluetooth receiver to use with maemo-mapper on my N770. If I can use the GTA01_v4 as a gps receiver instead, I'd rather buy it and then get the GTA02 as well. I would expect bluetooth GPS is in the roadmap, and it will be very easy to implement. If you connect a normal GPS to the serial port of your computer (9600 baud, 8N1 usually), and view the output you will see a series of messages in NEMA format. Once a second the GPS reports your current location. It can optionally report other parameters such as how good the reception is and your current speed heading. A bluetooth GPS just creates a BT serial connection, and sends the same data over that. Once the bluetooth and GPS drivers are working, it should be very easy to write the necessary demon, it might even be possible with a few pipes in shell. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GPS can work stand-alone (Re: Advertising/hype)
On Tue, July 3, 2007 2:33 pm, Niels L. Ellegaard wrote: On a related note I think that Slashdot once had a story about a (bluetooth based??) Japanese dating gadget that worked in a similar fashion. They had to buy the gadget, encode their preferences, and then wait for the unexpected buzz of finding a perfect match. They must have used some kind of encoding to prevent abuse, but I am not sure how it worked. Nokia have software to do that with their S60 smartphones. I don't think it has a large enough user base to be useful. (even though there are ~100 million compatible phones out there). http://europe.nokia.com/A4144923 On an even less related note it could be fun to keep a log-file of the wifi phones that stay in your vicinity for more than an hour (ignoring public transport). Then your phone can tell you whether or not you have met a given person before. Perhaps you can use data from the log file to query friends for further information or a vcard. This idea might require a lot of storage and a way to filter out routers, but it could lead to some fun. I think if you are going to do that, you would be better off doing it with Bluetooth, as there are many more BT devices out there, and most people leave BT switched on, as it does not drain the battery much. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Linux
On Saturday 07 July 2007, Vicente Alcañiz Buceta wrote: I just want to have a Linux mobile phone but maybe is not going to be release in Japan??? As Jason Elwell says, the Linux mobile phone is released today, so you can buy at the unsubsidised price. Unfortunately you won't be able to use it in Japan (or Korea) as it is GSM only. I guess if you are realy keen, you could buy one as a Linux PDA, or to develop software, but otherwise, you will have to wait and hope that FIC produce a 3G model with W-CDMA support some time next year, that you will be able to use on the Softbank (formerly Vodaphone) network. -- David Pottage ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Store info - shipping costs to Germany
On Mon, July 9, 2007 11:37 am, Al Johnson wrote: On Monday 09 July 2007 10:39, Sven Neuhaus wrote: FYI, shipping to Germany: Neo BaseNeo Advance 1x 2x 3x 4x1x 2x WORLDWIDE_EXPEDITED $71.85 $83.14 $94.15 $114.52 $104.99 $134.16 SAVER $75.19 $88.25 $100.73 $118.89 $112.08 $139.04 WORLDWIDE_EXPRESS $77.46 $90.23 $103.00 $121.73 $114.35 $142.16 WORLDWIDE_EXPRESS_PLUS $122.86 $135.63 $148.40 $167.13 $159.75 $187.56 Looks like shipping from within the EU (as promised) didn't happen yet. Will it be in place by October? Similar prices for shipping to UK. I was going to get the Advance now and the GTA02 in October, but with these shipping prices and maybe import duties on top I'll have to rethink. Agreed, those shipping prices are a tad high. I think we should try to organise some order sharing via the Wiki, Perhaps someone with enough edit rights could create a new page sorted by country, and then people could add their name city. It should then be fairly easy to see if there are any other Open Moko buyers nearby who you could share an order with. It would also create an opportunity to meet fellow hackers. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: OK, the forum is coming..
On Saturday 21 July 2007, Valerio Bruno wrote: i'm tired to read discussion about forum is good or bad. i think is good: - can be a central point for new users (users NOT developers) - following a thread in a forum it's a lot simpler - it can have email notification for reply - could be a central point for developers too! - other motivations said by other people.. So i'm going to create a forum. Three cheers for that man. I definitely think a forum is a good idea. I have been a list subscriber for the past 6 months or so, and just recently the traffic has got rather high. I shudder to think what it would be like in November with thousands of newbies out there asking questions. I don't think we should close the list or the Wiki, just divert some of the newbee questions, and discussons of soft issues like advertising away from the list. Forums are also good because you can easily add links embedded images. Rather than having lots of stickys in each sub forum, I think it would be better to move HOW-TOs, FAQs etc to the Wiki, and then just have one sticky with links to them. Now, i can set up the forum but i'd need people who want to moderate, and some graphics suggestions. I don't mind being a moderator. I won't have time to moderate all the time though. Do you prefer phpBB or Invision ? personally i prefer the former. Personally I am familiar with phpBB, but not Invision, so that would be my preference. -- David Pottage ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: another linux platform platform
On Thu, July 26, 2007 4:23 pm, Tim Newsom wrote: I just noticed this: http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS5539544742.html They claim to have many of the features we have talked about on the list... however, I am wondering about the pending patent related to placing security in the bootloader for signature checking of a boot image. Does anyone know if this is available GPL or if they have somehow managed to get around all of that? I doubt they can get a patent on on bootloader signature checking. Nokia have had that feature on their phones for a few years now. That is why they are so hard to unlock compared with other brands. Also, GPL3 forbids that kind of thing unless you give the end user a way to sign their own boot images. In a year or two it will be quite hard to build a Linux phone that does not include any GPL3 software, so this will not be useful in preventing unauthorized firmware. (Though it will still be helpful for virus protection and the like). -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: power management
On Friday 27 July 2007, Nelson Castillo wrote: On 7/27/07, Mark Eichin [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On an 850mAh nokia battery... maybe 3 hours mostly idle (not sure, I came back to find it dead.) Haven't timed it with the 1200mAh real battery, but basically, power management isn't really there yet. Is it hard to do it? Would using NO_HZ in the kernel help? If you mean a tickless kernel, then probably if it where available. Last I heard it was only available for 32bit x86, not even x86_64 is supported. In any case, I suspect the power saving stuff is more fundamental than that. From reading the Wiki, the Neo 1973 has a low power mode in which it goes to sleep, and turns of the screen, untill it receves and interupt from a device such as the GSM module or the touchscreen. The unfinished power management will be the necessary code to make the phone go to sleep after a minute or so of inactivity. A tickless kernel might save a few more percent on top of that, but it is sleep mode you need to get from 3 hours battery life to 5 days. -- David Pottage ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Buying Openmoko GTA02 from Europe
Jean-Eric Cuendet (ML) wrote: Hi, It seems that a big problem we have here in Europe to get Openmoko devices is that the shiping costs are quite high: around 80-100USD !! I've opened a website that will sell GTA02 devices when they are available, to other Europe countries. I'll buy quantities of devices from FIC and resell them from here, in Switzerland, middle of Europe. I am interested, but I am concerned about VAT and import duty issues, as Switzerland is outside the European Union. I would feel much happier ordering from an importer inside the EU, as that way the importer would be responsible for sorting out and paying any import duties and taxes. The price I pay would include VAT at the prevailing rate in the importer's country. (So it would be better to ship from Belgium where it is low, rather than France where it is high). Unfortunately I don't get any of those advantages if buy from a retailer ouside the EU. I may save a small amount on shipping, but I would still have the headache of paying those taxes myself, and the posibily of paying a lot more than I expect if the customs officers misclassify the Neo 1973, or disagree with me on it's value. Payment will be possible through Paypal or direct postal payment in Switzerland. Shiping costs will be around 20-25EUR for countries in Europe. I *HATE* paypal, so in any case, if you can find another way of receiving payments that would be good. Regards -- David Pottage ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [-SPAM-] Re: application idea
On Wed, September 19, 2007 12:00 pm, Ian Stirling wrote: ian douglas wrote: Tilman Baumann wrote: The biggest challenge would be a mapping from gps coordinates to regions/postcodes or such. If you have this information, you could do all sorts of crazy stuff. But i doubt these data would be very easy to get. I've seen it at another contract I worked a year ago, but not sure if the GPS-to-US-zip-code data was freely available or a paid service. The database I used for my job there had the entire US postal code regions mapped out based on latitude/longitude so the data IS out there. Just a matter of seeing if it's free to download from somewhere. The database was gigantic though, I'm not sure it's something you'd want to store on the device itself. Going to the 5 digit zips is easy - it's well under a meg. 5 digit + 4 is a whole different matter. But is the data freely available, or is it constrained by copyright or the like. In the UK, postcode (zipcode) data is restricted by copyright, and the post office makes money selling licenses to users. Even if we could get the data, we could not freely distribute it. In the UK there is a project [1] to build a post code database using user contributed information. Basicaly users are asked to type in the postocode and location of their homes, busneses, and any other site they can find. We many have to use similar database for other countries. [1] http://www.freethepostcode.org/ -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
On Tue, September 25, 2007 3:14 pm, Dani Anon wrote: It's either one of the following: 1) Application asks to draw a line and waits. X sees that request and uses a driver to draw the line, then sends confirmation. Now the application waits and when the confirmation is received it's ready for the next operation. 2) Application uses a driver to print the line. I think you are misrepresenting the difference. I would write that as: 1. Application asks X to draw a line, then gets on with other stuff, or makes other calls while it waits. X calls the device driver which talks to the hardware GPU (using around 20 bytes of API call) which uses accelerated hardware to draw the line in the screen buffer. A few microseconds later X informs the application that the line has been drawn. 2. Application (via compiled in or dynamically linked libraries) talks directly to the memory mapped frame buffer. It does it's own geometry, area fill and transparency calculations, (wasting the perfectly good GPU that the hardware has) then directly updates several thousand memory locations to make the line appear on the screen. (flushing the CPU's cache in the process) While it is doing that it cannot do any other useful work. Which one would you choose for performance? Apparently most of the phones are using the second. The mind boggles... Interesting point. The advantage of the first (via X) is that it uses a standard API, and if the GPU device drivers are well written then most of the hard work can be offloaded, making screen updates very fast, even if the screen is very big (=lots of memory buffer to move around). The advantage of the second (direct frame buffer) is that it is much quicker to implement on new hardware, and uses slightly less memory. The way I see it, using a direct frame buffer system such as Qtopia is sensible in an early version before the GPU device drivers are working, but after that there is little benefit. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Some ideas for the accelerometer
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
Re: What to use while waiting of v2?
Ben wrote: I can't hold out any longer. I need a PDA that will work as reliably as possble, have a few options for easy automatic sync (with Mac or Linux) or at least automatic backup. I will be using it to implement GTD (Getting Things Done). Phone not essential. I don't need it to be open, non-evil, etc. I just need it's shortcomings to be outweighed by the ease of backup and sync it has over a Hipster PDA (Notebook and Pen). Nokia N800 or N810? Both are Linux PDA web tablet like devices, running linux, (and I think GTK), so depending on your view of Nokia, they are fairly open and non-evil. They don't have a Cellular interface though, so the only way they can be used for phone calls is via Skype or another VoIP service when you are near a Wi-Fi hotspot. The N810, which was announced recently and may not be available yet, has a slide out keyboard and a GPS, otherwise it is similar to the N800. They are remarkably small, more like a large smartphone than a PDA. I work for Nokia, (but not in device development) BTW, so you may wish to take my views with some salt. -- David Pottage ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Videos and pictures of Neo FreeRunner at CES:
Ted Lemon wrote: On Jan 12, 2008, at 9:34 AM, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote: Well I guess you just can't please everyone :/ Sure you can - put a switch in the phone's advanced preferences! :') Anyway, I have always felt that with a little dress-up, the verbose startup could become reassuring rather than alarming. The reason it's alarming is mostly that it just sits there saying nothing intelligible to the end-user. If it said things like probing for Atheros ethernet device... found. or configuring network... then the end user might be less alarmed. If you don't know any better though I think it looks too much like a Windows crash, to which old-timers are too painfully accustomed. On the non verbose startup screen, Can we have a progress bar with a percent complete, Where certain percentage steps, have defined meanings, so if I see a device that gets as far as 27% I can search online and find out that it found the Atheros Ethernet, but did not get as far a probing the GSM interface. In my day job I spend some of my time supporting a database application, it does not have verbose startup, but I know that 30% is when it sees the license server, 35% for the backed database etc, which is almost as good, once you know which steps mean what. Obviously to be useful, the steps and their meanings should be as fixed as possible, so we would have to leave gaps in the numbering scheme, a bit like leaving gaps in the line numbers a program in an early dialect of the basic language. -- David Pottage ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GTA02 Battery Capacity (Was: Re: More about the GTA02)
On Saturday 09 February 2008, Shawn Rutledge wrote: At least the 1973-compatible Nokia batteries will probably be available for a long time (as I'm hoping the Nokia 770 batteries will be), but there is still the problem with charging them (the phone cannot do it). The rule of thumb is that no LiIon battery will last longer than 3 years or so. I think we are probably safe on that. The Nokia BL5C is used in quite a lot of different Nokia phones, including a number of very low cost models for developing countries. Those phones will get manufactured in huge numbers (perhaps 100 million), and will be around for a long time. Due to their huge numbers, and the fact that some of the owners won't have the money to upgrade for a long time, I doubt spare parts availability will be a problem. You might consider buying one of these cheap phones, both as a backup to use if a software update renders you Neo 1973 temporally unusable, and to charge the spare battery. I have a Nokia 1100, as a spare, and I use it's battery interchangeably with other devices. -- David Pottage ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Community update: Regarding Neo FreeRunner pre-orders
On Monday 25 February 2008, Michael Shiloh wrote: Ivo Anjo wrote: 3. When the phones reach the distribution centers in Europe and USA, we will open the web store and begin taking orders. Does this mean that it will be possible to purchase openmoko from inside the EU, so there are no random customs taxes? That would be great! Hi Ivo, That is certainly our intention, which is why we have been trying to set up distributors in as many places as possible. The only one I know of so far is in Germany. Since that's in the EU, that should work for you, right? It would work, but the rate of sales tax is fairly high in Germany. Under EU rules, Europeans can buy stuff from anywhere in the EU, and pay the sales tax rate prevalent in the country where the shop operates instead of the rate in their home country. If FIC setup a web shop in a European country with a low sales tax rate such as Belgum, Europeans buying Freerunner phones could save around 10% compared with buying from a German web shop. Having said that, it is not a huge cost, and having a web shop any where in Europe is a great improvement over importing from the Far East. -- David Pottage ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Application idea: Bicycle computer
On Thu, March 6, 2008 12:11 pm, Schmidt András wrote: Joseph Reeves wrote: Dear all, Please excuse my blatant blog-promotion, but here's a short entry on my use of the Neo1973 and tangoGPS as a bicycle computer: http://blogs.thehumanjourney.net/finds/entry/20080306 In PDA shops you can buy a bicycle mount for PDA's. I hope it will be compatible with the Neo. More of a problem is the fact that the Neo is not waterproof, and if you put it in a waterproof case, the touch screen can't be used. Perhaps it would be possible to attach a waterproof external keyboard via USB, and control the Neo using that. The keyboard cable would pass via a well sealed hole in a waterproof case. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Using Wi-fi on Neo FreeRunner
On Tue, March 11, 2008 9:31 pm, Robin Paulson wrote: is there anything underway to allow nokia n-series software to run on the neo? is it just a matter of installing hildon and some other dependencies? if it's possible, there is always skype That is like asking if there is anything available to run windows software under Linux, and asking that question about 10 years ago. Nokia smartphones run a completely different OS known as Symbian Series 60. In theory someone could start a project similar to Wine that would provide an API layer to allow Series 60 applications to run under ARM linux. (Both the Neo 1973, and Nokia phones use ARM CPUs), but in practice it would be a huge project, so is unlikely to happen any time soon. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Loosing your moko
, especially anyone based in a country with weak privacy laws or oppressive law enforcement. I think Germany might be a good choice for that. The third issue is about the owner of the phone tracking the person who is currently in possession of it. In this discussion people are talking about having their phone stolen, loosing up its location, and then forwarding that location to the police. Or perhaps loosing their phone, and using the database to find out where they left it. However we also need to consider the privacy implications of employers tracking their staff, spouses tracking each other if they suspect infidelity, and parents tracking their children, or elderly relatives. An openmoko owner could easily turn on tracking, and then give the phone to someone they wish to track without telling them that they will be tracked. This would be illegal in a lot of places. Obviously there is nothing to stop someone writing their own program to do that, but I think openmoko should be careful to ensure that the out of the box tracking software is legal and has appropriate safeguards. Unfortunately, I dont think that there is one global solution to this, as individual privacy laws vary a lot from country to country. Perhaps the best solution is to gather the data (if the user registers), but only to allow the owner access to it if the phone is in a country where such tracking is allowed. Even if tracking is not allowed we would still allow police access in case of theft. To avoid tracking people without their knowledge, there should be a pop up at random intervals (every few days), reminding users that they are being tracked. That way it would be hard for someone to covertly track another person. The popup could be disabled if a stolen flag is set in the central DB. (via a request from the police). That is my view. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re:Synchronization
On Fri, April 11, 2008 3:57 pm, Joe Pfeiffer wrote: ramsesoriginal writes: [snip] ... I am speaking about the synchronization between the phone and other devise, could it be PC, a MAC, another phone, or even just Google calendar. Which way of synchronization has been chose? Which standards? Are there some branded or at least recommended clients? _What_ can be synchronized: contacts? calendar? rss feeds? GPS data? files? I've synced anything I've wanted to (going to/from a linux box) using 'rsync -auv' I don't think ramsesoriginal was asking about syncing the filesystem which you would sync with rsync, but about synchronizing his address book (contacts) calendar etc. In general the solution is to use SyncML, which is an open standard for synchronization between phones, desktop computers, and internet sync servers. It can use a variety of transports including bluetooth and TCP/IP, and works by exchanging vCard files, for contacts, and similar vCal etc files for calendar events and the like. It should be fairly easy to port a sync client or server to Open Moko. I have done some experimenting with syncing my Nokia phone with my Linux desktop. The syncing part went fairly well, the problem was that Kontact would not play nice as a sync target, so I was only able to sync the contacts DB on my phone with a directory full of vCard files on my Linux box, rather than with my groupware client which is what I was really trying to achieve. Proper sync support is on the roadmap for the next version of Kontact, so everything should work properly fairly soon. I am eagerly awaiting the next Ubuntu release in order to give that a try. Another exciting possibly is that seeing as the OpenMoko phone is a full Linux computer it could be used as a Sync server, making it possible to sync with another cellphone without the need for a normal computer. If we could have that as a standard feature on the consumer version of the Freerunner it would be very cool. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Freerunner AC adaptor
On Tue, April 22, 2008 5:19 am, Jeremy List wrote: I would be very surprised if there was any law in New Zealand against importing things with foreign power plugs as a few years ago I bought a palm treo which required an adaptor. Adaptors for devices which have the wrong shape of plug but don't mind 240V AC @ 50Hz are much cheaper and more efficient than ones which actually convert the electricity to whatever voltage is standard in the U.S. When I finally get a freerunner, would I fry the charger and/or the phone by using that kind of power supply? I doubt this will be a problem. If you look at the photograph of the charger and it's adapters. You can see that the charger has flat prongs for American sockets, and that two adapters are supplied. On the top right is an adapter with two round pins suitable for most parts of western Europe. On the bottom right is one with three rectangular prongs for the UK and some former British colonies such as India. These days most wall wart adapters are switch mode power supplies and can handle a large range of voltages, so I would be quite surprised if the Freerunner one can't, though obviously I will check the rating printed on it before I plug it into the mains for the first time. http://quickstart.openmoko.org/photographs/usbChargerAdapters1.jpg -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
RE: Newbee ..- encrypted calls/SMS
On Fri, April 25, 2008 2:18 pm, Crane, Matthew wrote: Yes, I understand that, that is why I'm thinking of this approach. My idea was to use analog voice transforms and their inverse with properties that would preserve most of the codec performance. But it would be awfully difficult to sync up the inverse on the other end without a data connection, I expect that with voice calls that delay can be added and removed without warning. I don't think this is a practical idea, even if it would work (which I doubt). The problem is that unlike cyphers like PGP, analogue audio cyphers are fairly easy to break with modern computers, and anyone attempting to eavesdrop on your voice call will quite well resourced. Analogue audio scramblers are probably helpful for wired phone calls where you might be worried about a low tech attack such as a Hotel telephonist recording your phone call to your mistress, and then using it to blackmail you, but for GSM calls, the air interface between your handset and the base station is usually encrypted using the A5 cypher. So the only way someone can listen to your call is by having access to the telephone company switch. This could be via hacking, a corrupt employee, or lawful intercept. Either way the eavesdropper is likely to have access to all the equipment he needs to decrypt a simple voice scrambled call. The way I see it, the only way you can get encrypted voice calls is either to wait until both you and the other party are near WiFi access points, and do it over VOIP, or to do VOIP over GSM, and put up with the huge latency, which will give you a walke-talkie like connection. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: research project topic
On Friday 25 April 2008, simarillion wrote: Hi community, I'm studying electrical engineering at Karlsruhe University in Germany and I nearly finished. Now I have to do a student research project and because I'm a big fan of the openmoko/freerunner project I want to combine this. I've got an offer from an Institude to do something like that. I must give them a topic that must contain research and the GPS. Now is the question, what research with the freerunner and it's GPS device can I do that would help the openmoko community and seems to be something that institute would support. It should not be only writing a gui or something like that. I have got to improve, develop, add or optimize something. This project should last between 3 and 6 months. I'am also trying hard to be allowed to give my research solution back to the community, as kind of code or information. How about some software to turn GPS locations (lat/long) into place descriptions that more people will understand. Lat/Long format is not very usefull for most people unless they are navigating by sea or air, as most maps are not ruled with lat/long grids. It would be much better to convert to the grids used on the maps people commonly have. In most places that will be road and atlases that may not use a national grid, but will probably use the same basemap and projection. I am thinking of giving the user their current location in a format like: Michlen Road atlas of France, 2008 Ed, Page 53, square D2, top left corner The user would tell the software which maps and atlases they own, and would then be able to convert opaque lat/long locations to a format that is more easy to find on the map they have. This could be used for their current location, the location of other people (via Stroller's SMS idea), and with the help of OpenStreetmap as a gazetteer of other places. Converting between nationally recognised grids should be simply a question of feeding in the correct parameters into a conversion formula. In principle converting to the proprietary grids used by road atlases should not be any harder once you find out what projection, scale etc the atlas uses. This should be fairly easy to calculate if you can feed in the map reference of a number of landmarks, and corelate those places with their locations on OpenStreetmap. The complication is the mult page format of atlases, and the fact on most the grid does not contine from one page to the next. (eg page one might have squares 1-6, but turn the page and they start again at 1 instead of continuing to 7). What I suggest is that you come up with a helper application that community members can use to feed in the parameters for the atlases they own. The information can then be uploaded to a central database and shared by all users. The parameter entry application would ask the user to look at the index page of their atlas, and say how many pages wide and high the overall mapped area is, how the page numbering works (eg are successive rows north or south of each other), If there are any sections of a different scale, or projection, and what grid format is used on each page. The application would then ask the page number and grid reference of a sucesson of places taken from OpenStreetmap, until it had deduced the map projection, scale etc to sufficient precisson. -- David Pottage ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: questions for steve regarding group purchases
On Thu, May 8, 2008 7:17 am, Robin Paulson wrote: it's not just the trust thing; it's for when things go wrong. there are many possible slip-ups between california and my house, and i would prefer knowing that if the unpredictable happens, we're all covered, and know where we stand. and US$4000 is a lot of money, for people i don't know; i'm just not that trusting. nor do i expect the others in my group to hand over that sort of cash with no cast-iron assurances I think that the worry of things going wrong can be reduced if you form a local group (or join an existing LUG) and hand over phones and cash in person. Personally, I would be quite wary about sending full or part payment for a phone to someone I had never met in person, but I would be quite happy to drive for a couple of hours to meet them at their house, give them cash for a phone, and then come back a week later to collect the phone that had been ordered, because I would know that they where a real person, and I would know their street address in case they turned out to be a frudster. If there was an arrangement to pay half before ordering and half on collection and the group organizer wanted to take a copy of my photo ID to protect themselves against me not turning up with the second payment, then that would also be fine. Conversely, if I was a group organizer, I would want everyone in the group to visit me in person at least once to devlever money. If anyone who wanted to conduct the whole transaction via post and email, I would want the whole cost of the phone up front, and I would use a fully insured, signature on delivery courier to deliver the phone, which would cost the buyer more. I realize that meeting up in person would not suit everyone, but I think it is the best solution to resolve trust issues, even if you spend more on fuel driving to the meet than you save on postage. -- David Pottage ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: 2.5mm or 3.5mm
On Fri, May 30, 2008 7:18 am, Joerg Reisenweber wrote: Prefer B - Classic 3.5 mm connector. If I want a headset to make calls on, I will buy a BT one. There are loads to chose from these days from cheap chinese things up to high end High, but for listening to music I want to be able to plug in a 'normal' set of headphones. (Bluetooth A2DP headphones are expensive) I also like the Idea of copying the iPhone standard of a 3.5mm headset with an extra ring for the Microphone. I have also seen that in the past on some Motorola phones. Hi community! A short poll: on a future GTA0x (2), would you prefer to have A) standard 2.5mm headset (mic+phones) connector, where you have to buy a cheap adapter if you want to use your old headphones, (the way like it's for GTA01/02) or B) classic 3.5mm headphones Walkman(R) connector, where you have to DIY an adapter for any standard cellphone headset? (or does anybody know of 3.5mm headSET standards or adapters?) -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: using the openmoko neo101 in mass storage mode
On Fri, May 30, 2008 10:09 am, Andy Green wrote: ~ But not mass storage: this operates in block mode and requires complete ownership of the storage by the host then (since if we have it mounted too, we will write conflicting things to directory structures, etc). Could we emulate a block device, so that Windows thinks it has sole ownership of a USB block device with a FAT32 FS on it, but for every block access call it makes we intercept the call, figure out what file windows is trying to read or write to, make the corresponding change to our local files (on and ext3 volume), and return emulated results back to windows. I dare say windows would get confused if I file it had cached got changed by Linux, but the user could probably put up with that. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Font type and size was (QVGA V/s VGA for GTA03)
On Wed, June 11, 2008 2:59 am, Dale Schumacher wrote: If your current display is around 150dpi, you can see what QVGA would be like with something like this: xterm -fn '*-clean-*--6-*-c-40*' This will give you a terminal window with a 4x6 font cell (3x5 for characters + 1px spacing). Note that the automatic smear bold make this font unreadable, but the non-bold works. However, I would much prefer to use a larger font on a VGA-size display with 285dpi, like this: xterm -fn '*-clean-med*--16-*-c-80-*' -fb '*-clean-bold*--16-*-c-80-*' Thank you for that. You have added some useful light to the discussion on graphics resolution compared with all the heat. It is a simple test that anyone running Linux, or most other X servers (even cygwin) can run. Having tried the test myself I would say the difference is like night and day. At QVGA you can just about log into your box to reboot your web server if you need to, but the whole experence is quite painfull. At full VGA you can examine log files and the like and actualy figure out the root cause of any problems and fix them. This is the difference between windows sysadmins (reboot at the first sign of trouble), and unix sysadmins who actually find and fix the root cause. For myself I already have a QVGA Nokia phone with PuTTy, so I can log in remotely in an emergency, but VGA is so nice that with a Freerunner I probably would log in in other situations as well. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Dual SIM?
On Thu, June 12, 2008 3:21 pm, Bumbl wrote: would it, in theory, be possible to emulate a 2nd sim-card which was inserted and saved on the flash memory before and switch between it and the inserted one? In theory this is possible if you can extract the 128 bit crypto key inside the SIM which is used to authenticate the SIM card to the network. Because of weaknesses in the crypto algorithms used by GSM it is possible to extract that secret from a SIM card using about 60 000 chosen challenges, which can be done in about 12 hours. (assuming the SIM card does not have a retry counter) If you manage to do all of that, then yes you could have as software copy of one or more SIM cards and switch between them, thought the GSM module will only ever be able to use one at a time. You should also bear in mind, that some people may consider cloning SIM cards to be illegal computer hacking or circumvention technology, especially networks who might object to you using cloned SIM cards to do least cost routing. See http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/Papers/SE-17.pdf -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Possible Camera
On Wed, June 18, 2008 12:40 pm, christopher bradski wrote: Good Morning Community, I was browsing around the other day and found a cmos camera at http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8668. Its a 1.3 mega pixel camera and doesn't have much current draw and under $10. I'm not an electrical engineer but was wondering how feasible(with some soldering skills and a basic electronic understanding) it would be to attach this the the freerunner? The data sheet is included on the site. Thank you all in advance for your help. I assume you are thinking of building a small daughter board with the camera on, connecting that board to the freerunner mainboard somehow, and mounting the camera in a modded case? I would say your chances of adding one to an existing freerunner is quite slim. The freerunner has an I2C bus to control it so that part would be easy, but it looks like it needs an 8 bit I/O port to get the picture data out, and I don't think the freerunner has an accessable one you could tap into. Also the whole camera is surface mount, which would make it fairly tricky to mount on your daughter board. None of these things would prevent a camera like this being included in a future OpenMoko design, but don't think it would be possible for anyone to add a camera like this to an existing phone. If you want a working camera on your freerunner, then I suggest you look for one that connects via USB, as that is a much easer bus to connect to. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Accelerometer(s), Camera, and Memory
On Saturday 19 July 2008 19:47:38 Dee Ayy wrote: Is there no camera? After tracking my stolen phone with 2 accelerometers and GPS, my app will like a nice candid snapshot/video of the culprit. There is no camera. Also you can't use the accelerometers to do ineral navigation for more than a short time because there are no gyroscopes, or high precisson. The accelerometers are more usefull for gestures, detecting which way is down, and detecting free fall (ie dropping your phone). You could for example configure your phone to reject calls if it is face down, or sound a loud alarm if you drop it more than 60cm. My head is spinning. Somewhere I think I came across an 8GB maximum SD size. Can I not use the largest SD size I can find? I have never heard of a limit, it is just that 8Gb is the largest size currently available. I dare say you will be able to use larger size cards when they become available. Where can I find documentation or APIs? The above thread mentions /dev/input/event3 Is it mentioned somewhere at http://downloads.openmoko.org/ ? The phone runs linux, and most of the APIs are the same as linux, so you can look for docs in the usual places. For phone specific stuff, check the Wiki, openembedded or the mailing list archive. Is the DBoard like a physical simulator for the closedPhone? In other words, can I do development with only a Neo FreeRunner? There is a simulator you can run on linux. It runs ARM binaries and emulates some of the phone hardware. You can also develop some types of X applications for the phone on your linux desktop, and then re-compile for the phone when you are ready, however now that hardware is available you are probably better off buying a phone, rather than relying exclusively on a simulator. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Rules based policy engine
On Sun, July 20, 2008 3:28 pm, arne anka wrote: a gsm cell is usually much bigger than most restaurants -- and gps might not be available inhouse. True, but you can still use the GSM cell to determine that you are not in the restaurants, because you are in a different cell on the other side of town. The rule interpreter could check he GSM cell ID to determine if you might be near enough to a significant point before starting the GPS to determine your exact location. Alternatively, the user might decide that for most rules, the approximate location from the GSM cell is good enough. For example, my local cinema is in a fairly isolated spot out of town. If I am within a couple of miles of it, the chances are I will be going to the cinema shortly, or I have just left, so a rule switching the phone to silent mode if I am in the same GSM cell as the cinema would be good enough. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: device only powers up on its own
Dimitri wrote: Thanks guys for responding so quickly. I didn't realize that I had to hold down the power button for 5 seconds; I was only holding it down for maybe 3 seconds. Alternatively, you can hold down the AUX button while you press the power button to bring up the boot menu. That way you only have to hold down the power button for a much shorter time. *** This email has been stamped using Penny Post. Stamping email helps combat spam. Find out more about stamping your email at: http://pennypost.sourceforge.net *** This email has been stamped using Penny Post. Stamping email helps combat spam. Find out more about stamping your email at: http://pennypost.sourceforge.net *** This email has been stamped using Penny Post. Stamping email helps combat spam. Find out more about stamping your email at: http://pennypost.sourceforge.net ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: SMS
On Saturday 26 July 2008 07:53:01 stef wrote: hello, i've got my freerunner since thursday and it works quite fine except the SMS applet. At first I could open the applet and send messages but now it fails. When I try to start the applet it seems to be loading but it stops after a while. Is there any way to fix it or to reinstall the applet?? The SMS applet on my phone is doing the same. If I try to start it from the command line. I get 4 coppies of the error message: Gtk-WARNING **:gtk_widget_size_allocate(): attempt to allocate widget with width -11 and height -11 and a Segmentation fault. I imported about 400 contacts using the one of the scripts on the Wiki page about VCF contacts (1), and considering the number it is likely that some are null, so I deleted them all using another script on that page and the SMS applet started working again. (1): http://www.smurfy.de/files/neo/remove_all_contacts ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: SMS
On Saturday 26 July 2008 22:15:54 David Pottage wrote: The SMS applet on my phone is doing the same. If I try to start it from the command line. I get 4 coppies of the error message: Gtk-WARNING **:gtk_widget_size_allocate(): attempt to allocate widget with width -11 and height -11 I have just started messages again with the address book fixed, and I still get those warnings. I guess they have nothing to do with this bug, they are just random unfixed warnings. Grrr! ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: SMS
On Saturday 26 July 2008 22:15:54 David Pottage wrote: The SMS applet on my phone is doing the same. If I try to start it from the command line. I get 4 coppies of the error message: Gtk-WARNING **:gtk_widget_size_allocate(): attempt to allocate widget with width -11 and height -11 and a Segmentation fault. I have just reproduced the bug again gdb I now get: Program received signal SIGSEGV ... 0x40c3786c in g_utf8_casefold() from /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0 And that is as far as I can get. It is a fatal bug in a fundamental bit of phone software, that no one is attempting to fix. I know that everything about the freerunner is alpha quality and that I should not expect anything to work properly, but I would expect an environment where bugs like this are easy to fix. Instead no one is interested. Thanks to the confusion over distros, I am not willing to look at this any further, because I have no idea if the GTK based messaging application will be in use in 3 months time, so any effort I put into further isolating or fixing this bug could be wasted. /rant On a separate note, does anyone know where in the filing system the received messages are stored, as I would like to write a script to parse them. Grepping the entire filing system for likely words has not found anything. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Request for help: Would like community applications to show anddiscuss at LinuxWorld
On Wed, July 30, 2008 9:07 am, Sean Moss-Pultz wrote: I will not reply to comments like these in detail. You would not understand. Sean: Ad homen attacks aside, you need to respond in public to Marcus's substantive points. He is an important community developer, and he is expressing real issues that are widely felt. Tango GPS is a killer application for OpenMoko, and if we loose it, then we substantially weaken the platform, you should think very carefully before burning that bridge. I dont think it was helpful for him to insult you, I guess he was angry, but regardless his points about getting a working platform now are important. You want to build up a community around OpenMoko, from which you hope will flow lots of useful applications. You where very successful in doing that before the hardware was released, but now that it has, and thousands of enthusiast have put down a months rent on a unit of hardware there is widespread frustration. None of us expected an iPhone like polished and fully integrated software stack, but we did expect a developer friendly platform with some basic functionality that would mostly work. Instead the software distributions are forked 5 ways, and none of them work. I am sure I am not the only person who is disinclined to put any effort into finding or fixing the many bugs because I have no idea which distributions will emerge from the mess. You hope that the community to come up with lots of useful applets and full applications, to run on the first open cell phone. For that to happen most people will be 'scratching an itch' The problem is that they will not chose to use an OpenMoko to scratch that itch unless they are carrying it with them, which won't happen until basic phone functionality is working, and most enthusiasts are carrying their OpenMoko as their personal phone. The Wiki and Mailing lists are absolutely brimming with ideas, many of which would be quick to code in a scripting language, but none of this will happen until the basics are there. As Marcus says, the staff a OpenMoko need to put FSO/ASU aside for a while at least and refocus on getting working phone functionality from OM2007.2 as soon as possible. All the design docs are already there on the Wiki and have been for 18 months, it just needs implementing. Once the ecosystem has been started properly you can spend time if you must on your blue sky projects with their clever design. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Removing SMS Messages from OM
John Whitmore wrote: Sorry can't find answer to problem. Hello all, Well my OpenMoko has arrived and I'm very happy with it. Thanks to all the people who've made this happen. I do hope that in the future I can join the contributors. Before that I've got two minor problems which somebody might be able to direct me to the solutions on the wiki. I can't seem to find them. Firstly my Irish Vodafone SIM card don't work so I'll have to get a new one tomorrow. In the mean time I plugged in a friend's SIM just to see if that worked. It did, so that I know it's a SIM issue, but now I've got a load of my friend's SMS messages in my OM phone :-( Never thought that would happen. OK what was I thinking, but could somebody tell me where the OM stores it's SMS's and can I delete them? They are in: ~/.evolution/memos/local/system/journal.ics Hope this helps ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Hardware buttons not working in 2007.2 build
Hello I have a freerunner, which I have updated to the latest 2007.2 build using opkg update, and I have found that it is now ignoring the hardware buttons. I know that the buttons themselves work, and that there is not a hardware fault because the work normally in uboot, and Qtopia. Has anyone else seen this. Can you suggest a solution? Or should I just put up with it until ASU is released at the end of the week. Thanks ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: InvibleShield at ZAGG : swindling ?!?
On Mon, August 11, 2008 6:09 pm, Ilja O. wrote: I've got confirmation @ Jul 24 Your item has been shipped message @ Jul 28 And received it today (11 Aug). That's in Europe. Quite slow, but you'll eventually get it. I got mine yesterday, about a month after I ordered, so yes, very slow. I orderd the full body protector, but now that I have it, I don't think it is worth having. All I received was a screen protector, and a series of cut out section, which are meant to be molded around the case. It would probably work well for something with a flat face like an iPod, but I don't think it would work for the freerunner. I would suggest that anyone else buys just the screen protector. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qualcomm Snapdragon? (Re: Intel Atom )
On Thu, August 14, 2008 4:25 am, Urivan Saaib wrote: What about the QC Snapdragon? snip Qualcomm have a history of being a very litigious company. Just look at their ongoing litigation with Nokia over CDMA patents. I would be worried that if we got on the wrong side of them, they would sue OpenMoko faster than you can say software patent. With someone like Qualcomm, I would want all the drivers and all the docs under a GPL license before I would consider them, preferably GPL-3 with it's even stronger protections against software patents and similar tactics. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Krells!
On Saturday 23 August 2008 08:25:08 Dale Maggee wrote: If you're like me, you're a big fan of gkrellm, and you always have it running so you can keep an eye on what your system is doing. I wanted to have a remote display of my FR CPU usage on my host, for the same reason - to be able to see at a glance what's going on. Looking at gkrellm's man page, I discovered that it can monitor a remote host which is running gkrellmd - the gkrellm daemon. [snip] You can do the a similar thing with ksysguard. I have debian running on my freerunner, so it was simple to install it, and monitor my freerunner's process table, cpu and memory consumption remotely You need to install ksysguardd which is the demon that ksysguard connects to. I also found that I could not directly connect to the demon, instead I needed to use an SSH tunnel. To do that, I added my ssh key as authorised in /root/.ssh, and started an ssh agent on my desktop PC, with my key loaded. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Cincinnati Bell Wireless
On Friday 22 August 2008 02:47:00 Nick Matteo wrote: Hello, I intend to buy a FreeRunner. This will be my first time owning a cell phone, though. My service plan is offered through my university by Cincinnati Bell Wireless, and includes a free phone. Can I expect that removing the SIM card from the free phone and placing it in the FreeRunner will work? (IE, allow calls and SMS. I'd do any data over wifi.) Probably. A quick google search shows that Cincinnati Bell Wireless operate a GSM network, which is compatible with the freerunner. You should get a 850MHz model. It is possible that your network may use nasty tricks to prevent you from using the SIM card from the free phone in your freerunner. It is possible to lock SIM cards to a particular handset for example, however this is fairly unlikey. Welcome to the freerunner club. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Nokia wired headsets compatibility
On Mon, August 25, 2008 10:52 pm, Alberto Morales wrote: Hi, In this page at the wiki [1] describes the pinout of the headset connector. It also says that the four-ring 2.5mm stereo jack is used by motorola smartphones and the v-360. Both motorola smartphones and v-360 are very difficult to get in stores because v-360 is more than three years old. I've spend today three hours in a dozen stores in my city and i only found one, new but in very bad state, and very expensive (~25 eur). [1] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Headset Some new nokia mobiles have the same kind of connector. This wiki page [2] says that the nokia 3.5-2.5 adapters doesn't work, but says nothing about nokia headsets. Some nokia headset model numbers with the same plug are: HS-45/AD-54, WH-700, HS-44/AD-44, HS-47, HS-40. Have you tried any of these on the Neo? I have one of those Nokia headsets (Came with my E51). It does not work properly. When connected to the Neo, I only get sound it one ear, and it is not very loud. I have not tested the microphone support. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Is it possible to netboot a FreeRunner?
On Sunday 31 August 2008 16:34:35 Jeff Sadowski wrote: You would probably need a driver built into uboot to recognize a usb network device or maybe a way in uboot to setup wifi. I know my avaya wireless phones look for new images on my tftp server when they boot. Maybe if there was a way to replace a live kernel that might work for you? I think that would be the way to achieve a net boot, by faking it via the standard kernel. To do this we have a menu entry for netboot, but what it actually does is starts the normal kernel in flash, passing a netboot command line option. The kernel boots and once it has loaded the usb-net drivers and suchlike, but before it starts userspace, it downloads the requested kernel over the usb network and runs it via kexec. If that first stage boot to get the usb-net drivers is fast, then it will create the illusion of having netboot support, without the need to add support for usb-networking and all sorts of other tricky features to U-boot. Of course it would be necessary to add this netboot support to the kernel, but I would imagine that it would be much easier, as it is only one feature into a system with plenty of support functions for memory, I/O etc, rather than many into a system without. In order for that feature to work universally, it would have to be in every kernel that is likely to be flashed into a freerunner, and the only way that will happen is if the developer is able to persuade Linus and the rest of the kernel people that it is a feature worthy of Linux. (They may take the view that it is an ugly hack and that sort of thing ought to be in the BIOS/U-Boot etc). ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Chancing SIM card without reboot
Fredrik Wendt wrote: Hi. Just wanted to know if I'd damage the hardware by doing: 0. Connect FR to computer using USB cable. 1. Turn on FR (FSO-testing), fire up zhone. 2. Open FR, remove battery, open SIM pocket, change SIM card, replace battery, replace back cover - all while the FR is running off power from USB In Sweden we have three GSM network operators (those with licenses to actually put GSM equipment to use) and having to wait 3-4 minutes after each SIM change really kills productivity and flow ... There is a risk that you will damage the SIM card doing that, as it may receive power on the data pads before ground and power are connected. On consumer phones where the sim card is not under the battery there is normally some sort of switch on the SIM card compartment so that the phone, or at least the GSM module gets powered down if you attempt to remove the SIM card. On the Freerunner, it would be best if you powered down the GSM module before you remove the SIM card. Perhaps in future we can add an applet to do that. You might consider testing if the power gets removed from the SIM card pads when the GSM module is off, by probing it with a multimeter, though do so at your own risk, as there is a slight chance of damaging your freerunner. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Screen shot failure?
Iain B. Findleton wrote: Aborts with some message about not being able to convert the png CREATOR field to an ISO charset. Anybody know the solution to this one? I have just taken a screenshot (for a bug report), using the methods described on the Wiki page. The only snag is that fb2png is not avalable for Ubuntu, but you can download the rpm and extract the binary with alien Steps are: cat /dev/fb0 myscreenshot_001.raw copy to your desktop b2png myscreenshot_001.raw myscreenshot_001.png 9 480 640 16 -- David Pottage ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Suspend vs. Lock vs. Screen Off
Jason Cawood wrote: I'm using the latest FDOM, I believe it's based on 2008.09. My question is what is the fundamental difference between pressing the power button to cause the phone to suspend, pressing the aux button to make the phone lock the screen and not pressing any buttons and letting the software timeout. Mainly, I'm interested in battery life and how each action reduces power consumption. When the device suspends Linux gets suspended to RAM in the same way as you can suspend most laptops. In this state the CPU and memory use very little power. The GSM module and parts of the chipset remain powered, so you should will still receive incoming calls and SMS messages. The idea is that the Main CPU will wake up if it receves and interupt from the GSM module, the power key or from varous other sources, but the rest of the time it will be suspended and use little power. This creates the illusion of being always on, but in fact only being on when the user is trying to use the device. Most modern GSM handsets work in the same way. If you leave the device without pressing any buttons the screen backlight will go out. This saves a substantial amount of power but not as much as suspending. Depending on your settings, your freerunner may suspend after a time with the backlight out. Pressing the Aux key to lock the screen does just that. The phone will turn out the back light or suspend according to it's settings. -- David Pottage ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: rescue my freerunner
On Fri, October 3, 2008 9:20 am, Sergey Alembekov wrote: On Fri, Oct 03, 2008 at 03:41:08PM +1000, nickd wrote: Worst case scenario, you might be able to create a backup of your rootfs (dfu-util -a rootfs -R -U backup_rootfs.jffs) and mount the image on loopback [1] and transfer your home directory back onto your Freerunner. Thank you for help, but unfortunately thereis known bug in dfu-util and becouse of it i can not do a backup. How about preparing a MicoSD card with fresh copy of your preferred distro on it. (ASU/Debian/etc), boot from that and then mount the rootfs and either fix the offending files or take a copy of your data. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GSM Firmware crash
On Sunday 14 September 2008 16:10:12 Andreas Fischer wrote: Hi all, Yesterday I experienced a crash of the GSM firmware - my Freerunner started to vibrate and there was a message on-screen that stated that the GSM Firmware had crashed and that I would be unable to use phone functionality. I have just had the same crash. I am using FDOM 20080927 firmware, and I had just made a call that was not answered. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Making sound work (was Re: New Rasterman Image...)
On Mon, October 6, 2008 12:11 am, Richy wrote: I somehow managed to get it to work to some extend. The phone isn' ringin, just vibrating, but I can talk and hear during a call.. make sure you have gstreamer installed, also I added a lot of packages, with alsa, gst, openmoko-state, etc. Didn't work until reboot. (And due to the Neos booting-time I don't want to reboot after each package just to check...) Now, some PIM-software and this is near perfect :-) I am also having trouble with sound. I can hear the other party during calls, but apart from the The phone loudspeaker appears not to work. I don't get any ring tones, and I can't hear music from media plays such as pythm. I have installed pymixer, and have maxed out all the sliders but still nothing. I have also tried installing the snd_pcm_oss kernel module out of FSO, but it will not load due to undefined symbols. Any ideas. I am running the latest FDOM (Based on ASU 2008.9). -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GTA03 - buttons or touchscreen
On Saturday 25 October 2008 17:39:18 JW wrote: vote and tell OM what you want for the next phone 1) touchscreen (no qwerty buttons) - freerunner, HTC Orbit, iphone 2) qwerty keyboard and tracker ball - blackberry curve 3) combination touchscreen plus qwerty - G1 As others have said, lets not complicate the situation for software authors by radically changing the input methods. For this reason, I think the touch screen has to stay. Having said that I think input would be a lot easier if we had a few extra hardware buttons. In order of preference Option 1: Touchscreen. It would be nice though if we had a few extra buttons though. I suggest a joystick or mini trackball below the screen and a couple of soft keys on either side. Option 3: Touchscreen + Mini qwerty. The problem with this idea is that a small query is very hard to type on, and a big one will take a lot of screen real estate. The way I see it the only way a query keyboard can be incorporated into a future Openmoko device without compromising the screen is to make it slide out from the back like the Nokia N810. The problem with that is it will increase the bulk and cost by to much. Perhaps a better solution would be to have a small numeric keypad that won't take much room. Option 2: Mini Qwerty, no Touchscreen I HATE this idea, because it will make all existing Openmoko software incompatible. Please don't take this route. -- David Pottage ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Receiving empty sms after registration
On Friday 31 October 2008 12:03:33 Alexandre Girard wrote: Hi, I receive an empty sms each time I register with my phone provider (Bouygues in France, Simio in Spain), with an origin address like _@. Has anybody got the same behavior? Is it coming from the phone or from the provider? I think that is a message from your operator to say that you have a new voicemail message. When the phone gets that message it should give you a new voicemail popup or other indicator instead of putting the message in your SMS inbox. Could you phone your voicemail mailbox to see if this is the case? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: The forbidden topic: Glamo OpenGL
On Friday 14 November 2008 15:46:34 Yorick Moko wrote: somebody (leinir) on irc suggested you could maybe hire http://www.tungstengraphics.com (leinir Tungsten Graphics being the people behind gallium3d of course) although I don't know how much openmoko is willing to spend on it Unless we want a closed source driver, I don't think that would work. Reading between the lines on the Tungsten Graphics website. it looks to me that they have one core graphics driver, that they keep porting to whatever chip they are asked to write a driver for, so in each case the core engine stays the same and only the hardware specific stuff gets changed. If this is the case, I doubt they would be willing to produce a GPL driver, as that would require them either to publish the source of their entire engine, or to write a new one. -- David Pottage. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [OT]Software patents end? ??:) light at the end of tunnel
On Thu, November 27, 2008 7:06 am, Denis Johnson wrote: ... Preferably using something like http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ (if someone knows a Linux equivalent please chime in) The linux equivalent is cdparanoia. Like EAC it will produce bit perfect rips of audio CDs. It is a command line program If you want a GUI, then you can use Grip. It is a GTK based program that automates the whole process of ripping, track listing lookups, and transcoding to your prefered compressed format. If you have a big stack of CDs to rip, then you can easily sit there using your computer for other things, and feed in a new CD every few minutes. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: auxlaunch ver 0.6
On Sunday 30 November 2008 23:24:07 Al Iasid wrote: Here's info on an update to auxlaunch, (finger-friendly app launcher and window switcher). Download at [1] and wiki page at [2]. Version 0.6 changes include: [...] Sounds interesting, would you care to mention which distro it is for? From the screen shots it looks like ASU, but it would be nice to know for sure. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: MD5 checksums for images
On Mon, January 12, 2009 9:13 pm, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote: On Mon, Jan 12, 2009 at 06:46:35PM +0100, Fernando Martins wrote: I've downloaded images for om2008.12, FSO and SHR and something that puzzles me is the lack of MD5 checksums on these repositories. The sums would just take a couple of minutes to put there, so I'm wondering if there is some other check going on by dfu before flashing?? Whoever cares about MD5 checksums, nowadays, is putting up a farse, at least demand SHA256 ;) The point of MD5 checksums is to check for download errors, truncated files or the repository maintainer uploading the wrong file somehow. It is not to protect us from black hats who might somehow replace a correct image with a malware infected one. (If they are able to do that, they can replace the md5sums file a the same time). Anyway, MD5 sum checking is done automaticaly in many tools, and most people are familiar with the commands to check MD5 sums, so if the images come with MD5 sums they will be checked easily. If they come with another sort of checksum, it will be harder to check, for no real benefit. -- David Pottage Error compiling committee.c To many arguments to function. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: HELP: sim card not registering...
Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote: On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 09:25:50PM +, Rui Miguel Silva Seabra wrote: Hi, I'm switching operator and today I got m y new sim card. The current one will stop working in a few work days, so I'm desperate (YES, I use the Freerunner as my main day to day phone): it's not registering. I followed these instructions and they worked flawlessly: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/GSM/Flashing Where this not enough? Where this not correct even though it worked? Please help... Well, a Nokia and an Ericcsson phone don't load it either so maybe the SIM card is borked. Ah well... I had a similar situation where a prevously working SIM card stopped working in any phone, after being left in a Freerunner for about a month. Is it possible that the Freerunner is somehow destroying SIM cards (heat, over voltage etc?) The SIM card had previously worked fine in three different Nokia phones, then I put it in my Freerunner, and used it successfully for some calls and text messages. I then got busy with other things so I left my Freerunner on charge but not in use for about a month. After this period I found that the SIM card no longer worked in any phone. In my case, my operator (Orange UK) was happy to send me a replacement. -- David Pottage ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: FS Freerunner
On 05/09/10 17:13, xChris wrote: I know about it. I had no luck, the FR does not 'see' my 3G SIM (three mobile UK). But the WTF is that a 2005 mobile (Nokia 6320i) CAN use that SIM and the FR can't! Is it that the FR can't read the SIM, or can't register with the network. Three are well known for blocking all 2G phones on their network, though the details of how they do it are fairly vague. One story is that they disconnect SIMs that get used in 2G devices, another theory is that they have a whitelist of approved devices, and only allow them to register. I suggest you try another network. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Recommendations for a data-only GSM/UMTS device in USB stick ff
On 15/11/11 01:24, Michael Sokolov wrote: Hello Om community, Given that the GTA04 contains an off-the-shelf UMTS module and, if my understanding is correct, truly off-the-shelf GSM/GPRS/UMTS modems in the consumer USB stick form factor have been used during the BeagleBoard prototyping phase for the GTA04, I've figured that someone here might have some experience with / knowledge of these USB sticks, hence me asking here... [snip] * I need this device to be capable of placing old-fashioned data calls, not just Internet access. By old-fashioned data calls I mean the arrangement where one dials a number from the mobile device with ATDnumber (no semicolon at the end, making it a data rather than voice call), and the number being dialed is a POTS land line with a plain old analog modem answering the call. I want to be able to connect to my personal data center from remote locations bypassing the Internet. I think you will find that it is imposible to make data calls to an analoge modem. The reason is that GSM and it's sucessor standards are inherently digital, and are derived from ISDN telephone standards, so nothing in your phone or in the phone network will create tones that will be understood by an analogue modem. Having said that, there should be no problem making data calls to another GSM device or a digital trancever on the end of an ISDN phone line. Given your other requirements for off the shelf hardware, I think your simplest solution would be to buy a mobile phone with a data port, and learn how to use that port as a GSM modem. For example I used to work for Nokia, and I know that with their phones, if you put them into PC Suite mode they will respond to AT commands on their serial/usb ports and let you do dial up internet to your ISP, or any other phone number. You may find that your current phone does what you need. -- David Pottage ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: [OT] Raspberry Pi
On 02/01/12 18:11, Ed Kapitein wrote: Hi All, Probably Off Topic, but for the ARM hackers among us, this [1] looks very promising. Not entirely off topic. I suspect one reason that GTA04 is getting releatively little interest is because everyone is excited about raspberry Pi. From speaking to other programers at my workplace, most are interested in raspberry Pi, and many people have told me about it as new exciting news, in a similar way to how I heard about Open Moko three years ago. -- David Pottage ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
