Re: Take a look at these stupid people...
On 3 April 2013 13:01, Sebastian Reinhardt s...@lmv-hartmannsdorf.de wrote: If You have to buy an new smart-phone every two years to get new software, I think this is not fair, too. And this is not good for nature..to throw away an working phone. I agree that an artificial withholding of software updates is a ridiculous reason to buy a new phone. Fortunately iPhones and android phones have typically had a few years of software updates available, and with the android mods there's no reason that some older phones can't continue to get new features past the time that Google or the manufacturer want to stop supporting them. But there are other reasons: physical wear and tear, batteries don't work so well after a couple of years, and it's amazing how fast new features continue to be added even though we can start to expect smartphones to be a maturing category of device. Every year there have been more cores, faster clock speed, more memory, more storage, better GPU, better accelerometers, better touch, wacom stylus, better GPS, other types of sensors, NFC, maybe zigbee will come soon? At this point the smartphone is not mature because there's no end in sight. Next we can imagine using an eyetap and some new types of input devices to avoid having to carry the phone in one hand and touch with the other, which ties up both hands and requires you to look down and be out of touch with reality. Every generation of device, there's at least one new feature that you really want. So while I wish technology could have a longer life, it would have to mean a kind of stagnation too, or else such extreme leapfrogging that there is nothing else that you could want for several years while the competitors catch up (like Apple managed to do for a while). A small indie project has a vanishingly small chance of leapfrogging like that. The Neo phones were obsolete almost from the beginning because they didn't support multi-touch and full-screen GPU rendering, just at the time when you would really begin to want both; and on top of that it's bulky, has relatively poor industrial design and the price is too high. But there is room for open source efforts to add features and extend the life of existing devices, I think. New software features are easier to create than new innovative hardware, and revolutionary features are still relatively rare in software. It's just that the same type of person who wants to be a developer is probably also the one who always wants the latest hardware. (Except when that person is too poor to buy it, or when the category is actually mature, as has just about happened to PC's.) The nanotech refinement of 3d printing should eventually make it possible to homebrew custom devices, and upgrade them a piece at a time, but then we will be living in a scarier world with its own set of problems. And it's still a big piece of engineering; remains to be seen if volunteers can ever out-innovate the big guys. So I hope fairphone succeeds, but they will need shoulders of giants to stand on in both the hardware and software areas, otherwise it will be too little too late for too high a price again. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Microtouch
With an Atmel it sounds like a dancing bear to me; it has so little memory that you basically have to use it only for fixed purposes, like the games they show. No dynamic languages or possibility of downloading much content. And also no GPU. On 8 February 2012 14:29, Gay, John (GE Energy Services, Non-GE) john@ge.com wrote: On 02/07/2012 10:13 AM, Gay, John (GE Energy Services, Non-GE) wrote: Subject: Microtouch Just spotted on: http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Microtouch - The ultimate AVR-based iPhone killer! http://www.ladyada.net/products/microtouch/ SNIP Does anyone know how old this is? I've got ~$100 ready to buy it they get more in stock. The page says 3-5 days, but not when it was last updated. I hope the first batch wasn't the only batch. I'd really like to play with a$100 tablet. It looks like it was originally announced a little over a year ago (Jan 27, 2011.) http://www.adafruit.com/blog?s=microtouch is the blog search for posts related to the microtouch. Now I'm confused as to whether to get to $90 microtouch with it's cute touch screen and pocket size on an 8-bit microcontroller, or wait and get a raspberryPI for $35 and full Linux, but needs a TV for display??? ___ 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 ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: New $200 tablet?
It's just Plasma Active on top of a meego-derived distro, right? http://community.kde.org/Plasma/Active/Development You can boot a USB live image on some other touchscreen device to play around; I did that on my s10-3t last night. On 31 January 2012 14:31, Patryk Benderz patryk.bend...@esp.pl wrote: [cut] Also, there is NO SOURCE CODE available publicly (maybe with the exception of one github repository which seems to have at least some code) which means that all companies currently selling this device are violating the GPL. If you are sure above is true, it might be worth notifying [1],[2] and kernel guys. [1] http://www.softwarefreedom.org/ [2] http://gpl-violations.org/ -- Patryk LeadMan Benderz Linux Registered User #377521 () ascii ribbon campaign - against html e-mail /\ www.asciiribbon.org - against proprietary attachments ___ 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: Openmoko Beagle Hybrid
On Tue, May 11, 2010 at 12:56 AM, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller h...@computer.org wrote: has fixed dimensions) and we can't afford to build plastic injection moulds (if someone has an idea how to reduce cost this is very welcome). So the easiest solution was to combine what we have: a given Beagleboard and the Freerunner case. Personally I don't see what the big deal is with mold-making. Anybody could start a business doing that if it's so lucrative: get a Harbor Freight or other cheap milling machine and some blocks of aluminum, and develop the skill to do sufficiently accurate machining. (I have tried a little milling but my skill level definitely needs a lot of improvement; maybe it will if I ever get around to doing enough of it.) Of course CNC would be nice, but again, what's the big deal...3 steppers or servo motors and a controller... As someone else mentioned the Chinese obviously aren't having too much trouble with mold-making. It's also within the realm of possibility to make your own injection molding machine. There is a book (Gingery) about how to do that, but there is nothing too exotic in that book either... it's just a heated cylinder and piston arrangement with a lever to apply the pressure. Hot plastic comes squirting out, and you have your mold clamped in place to receive it. Alternatives include building a RepRap, making the plastic parts directly, and putting up with rough, inaccurate results; buying a better rapid prototyping machine (FDM type or laser sintering or the type that builds up parts from thin laminates); or directly CNC-milling the cases (you could even use wood then). As a DIY/hacker type thing rather than commercial, it might fly. Maybe try to get a story in Make Magazine because there seems to be a trendy new crowd of DIY/hacker types nowadays, who weren't around a couple years ago. Or get it made at one of the rapid-prototyping shops. For every type of RP technology there are multiple shops doing on-demand prototypes. In any event, the case design could be posted on http://www.thingiverse.com/ and maybe someone who has a RepRap or similar can try to make a prototype. There was a design contest going on but I guess the time has passed: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/04/makerbot_giveaway.html ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: OM future
On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 2:05 AM, Mike Crash m...@mikecrash.com wrote: Actually, I don't know, why everybody needs a phone. The community should aim at simple PDA with GPS, WiFi, BT and camera. This all is without any license Personally I don't talk on the phone a lot, but it's nice to have an always-on wireless network rather than having to find WiFi access points (which use encryption or require some kind of sign-in way too often anyway). I use my iPhone to google stuff a lot, even though it's only edge (pretty slow). Most of the time when I'm away from home I'd rather put up with the slow edge network than mess around with connecting to an AP, figuring out why it doesn't work, and then having it go away when I'm out of range. Of course it depends on how much you pay for your GSM and whether the limits are reasonable. But it's easy to imagine the future, that say 10 years from now the internet is mostly wireless and your devices are nearly always connected, with transparent roaming... no need to manually scan and connect to networks. That's how it needs to be for the best usability. So these comments that a PDA is good enough sound luddite to me, although they do follow the pattern than the open-source world is usually behind the curve, repeating what has been done rather than innovating. Personally I don't like carrying multiple devices either. I use an iPhone because it just works, does everything that can be done on either a PDA or a phone so far (except multitasking), and I can develop for it too. (Too bad it's so darn closed though.) Maybe the next OM device ought to be on one of the next-gen networks like WiMax or LTE. I have no idea what kind of hardware is required for that, but early on I didn't get the impression that WiMax was any more of a closed architecture than usual (e.g. there would be multiple radio suppliers, and the spec is obtainable). Or even invent a new, open network. That would be far-out (in both senses: very cool, and quite the project). GnuRadio provides a starting point. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: how to port a scheme interpreter to om?
On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 8:57 AM, Shawn cit...@gmail.com wrote: hi guys, does anybody has try to port the scheme interpreter(guile,etc) to openMOKO? I have used Chicken on OM. You can even compile scheme to machine code right on the phone if you have gcc etc. installed. And I wrote an OE recipe for it too (which might mean there are packages being built... I haven't checked lately). http://chicken.wiki.br/cross-compilation-on-open-moko I think Chicken is way faster than Guile, and has a lot of libraries/extensions (called eggs) available. http://chicken.wiki.br/chicken-projects/egg-index-4.html ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: It Ain't funny [Was: Ain't it funny..]
On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 9:12 AM, Dale Maggee anti...@internode.on.net wrote: Generally when I hear the word nazi used, it means totalitarian, not monster or mass murderer - think of the soup nazi in Seinfeld. That's what I meant. Not the other. *At All*. Sorry. That just goes to show the meaning has gotten diluted from overuse, doesn't it. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: 'dead' neo
On Mon, Apr 13, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Maksim 'max_posedon' Melnikau maxpose...@gmail.com wrote: Neo can be booted without battery at all, http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Freerunner_Hardware_Issues Can't boot with discharged or missing battery 5 In short: 1. remove battery 2. press AUX 3. insert usb-cable 4. release AUX (yes, only now) 5. press AUX+POWER to boot in nor menu 6. boot your neo 7. insert battery - begin charging it No that's for the freerunner, doesn't work with the Neo AFAIK, which will make nasty noises and probably fry something if you connect USB without a battery installed. You should be able to install the battery, then without touching any buttons plug it into USB, and let it charge overnight at the 100mA rate. Next day (or maybe just in a couple hours) there will be enough charge to boot and then charge some more in fast mode. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Slashdotted
On Tue, Apr 7, 2009 at 5:34 AM, ri...@happyleptic.org wrote: Make a useable phone with inovative apps is what is needed to get new customers, not a fancy 3d chip nor a better screen or camera or whatever. For the hardware is already way much better than the software, IMHO. I agree. If the GTA03 was going to be less capable anyway, we can live without it. It's too bad having to put up with the Glamo, but oh well. How much longer can GTA02's remain in production? Any impending part obsolescence to worry about? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: 2.6.28 kernel and modutils
On 2/6/09, Al Johnson openm...@mazikeen.demon.co.uk wrote: On recent SHR and probably FSO (haven't got MS5 going yet) connman is taking control of usb0 and trying o use dhcp to get an address. Since I have a bridged configuration on the machine I plug it into this actually succeeds, but for most people it will fail to get an address. In either case ifdown usb0 then ifup usb0 gives it the configuration found in /etc/network/interfaces which is what people are used to seeing. I think that's a good idea in case you plug in multiple phones. I was just going to ask whether it would be considered to use DHCP over USB, so I'm glad to find your mail about it. :-) ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qt Software discontinues Qt Extended
On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 11:42 AM, Lorn Potter lpot...@trolltech.com wrote: http://www.qtsoftware.com/about/news/qt-software-discontinues-qt-extended It says some features will be migrated into Qt itself. I assume that means Nokia doesn't see a need for some of the low-level open-source phone-specific stuff (daemons etc), because they want to keep using their pre-existing versions instead? What about the applications? Is there a list of stuff that will be migrated and stuff that will disappear? It's good that it was at least GPLd prior to this, so whatever is worth saving can be merged into other projects. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Qt Software discontinues Qt Extended
On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 4:36 PM, Lorn Potter lpot...@trolltech.com wrote: No public list available, but probably none of the applications in Qt Extended will go into Qt. Just backend/classes kind of thing. What about the ability to run Qt on a framebuffer as opposed to X? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GTA03 - buttons or touchscreen
On Sat, Oct 25, 2008 at 9:39 AM, JW [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 1) touchscreen (no qwerty buttons) - freerunner, HTC Orbit, iphone 2) qwerty keyboard and tracker ball - blackberry curve 3) combination touchscreen plus qwerty - G1 Would prefer 3, touchscreen plus KB, but only if it doesn't make the phone bulky. Otherwise touchscreen only is good enough. Should plan on switching to multi-touch rather than resistive as soon as chips to do that become available. It's important to keep the high-res touchscreen. And it would be nice to also have more buttons, e.g. green and red buttons (hangup/esc and answer/dial). ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Openmoko Om 2008.8 Release
On Fri, Aug 8, 2008 at 4:48 AM, Wolfgang Spraul [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: For GTA01, we have no big plan yet but we will look at it next. The biggest problem that stops us is that we are extremely low on GTA01 phones :-) I am only aware of 1 (ONE) functioning GTA01 in the Taipei office. A bit hard to do development and testing that way. Next week we will look at the Om 2008.8 on GTA01 situation: There must have been many of them at one time; did you sell or otherwise get rid of all of those? Don't any of the developers have their own? As someone else suggested maybe some people in the community would be able to return them if you need more for development. Not having bought a Freerunner yet, yes I'm very interested in being able to run the latest stuff on my GTA01. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Intel Atom
On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 8:55 PM, Brad Midgley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've heard the support chips for atom have not been optimized for saving power yet, so it may be another generation before atom + chipset + solid state drive will be within any kind of reasonable power budget for a handheld. Yeah no kidding... http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=597type=expertpid=8 See how the entire system power is 60 watts max, and doesn't vary much with the load? and here: http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=597type=expertpid=2 funny how the chipset has a big heatsink with a fan, while the processor has a small heatsink and no fan. :-) At least they are competing favorably with VIA for the mini-ITX boards though. If they haven't already, they also need to engineer an instant wakeup (acpi suspend/resume is abysmal) ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Intel Atom
On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 5:00 PM, Jeffery Davis [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Is there any possibility a future model could incorporate the Intel Atom? They're launching dual-core models soon at around $43. Battery life would probably be somewhat less than it would continuing with ARM, though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_atom They take from 0.65-4 W depending on which generation, and speed. I don't really see the point, why you'd want an x86 architecture on a phone. (It's basically the original Pentium, miniaturized and incorporating their latest manufacturing process innovations to make it low-power.) Just that there are a lot of x86 binaries (and OSes) you could run unmodified, but compiling for ARM isn't so bad, and ARM has better performance-per-watt and lower-power sleep modes, right? I imagine if we see these in phones, they will be large, loaded with features (like some of the larger Symbian models), either with lousy battery life or giant batteries, and maybe the point will be to run a PC-like version of Windows on them rather than just Windows Mobile. (Traveling execs think they gotta have their Excel spreadsheets on the go) I would like to be pleasantly surprised though, of course. A monopoly across most forms of computing would be really bad for the market, so I wouldn't want to help Intel achieve that. But maybe they will spur the competition to take ARM to the next level. (multi-core, smaller, and faster) $43 is not cheap either. Probably several times what the Freerunner's processor costs. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Some commentary on the new Openmoko direction, and a review of FSO
Thanks to both of you for clearing up the roadmap. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Yummy new CPU/GPU combo
On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 7:20 AM, Ken Young [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Please, please, please, please, please don't drop to a QVGA LCD on future OM phones. The beautiful full VGA screens on the neo and Freerunner are just about the only piece of hardware they have which is better than what you find on a typical smart phone. I agree, it's one of the main reasons I was interested. 480x800 is also a good idea if the displays become available in small quantities. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
gpsd vs. gypsy (was Re: GPS application)
On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 7:47 AM, Tilman Baumann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And if gpsd is so great, ever wondered why tangoGPS has a button to restart and reconnect gpsd? Personally I have not noticed gpsd crashing. I have noticed that the gllin package's double-logging feature fills up the flash after a day or so, and then it crashes. There is both /home/root/gps.gz and /home/root/gllin/logs/. But this should be easy to fix. I have tested gpsd on my Linux PC with normal serial-interfaced GPS devices for days at a time (and xgps connected to it) with no problem. And why i (gta01 user) have to launch gllin via tangoGPS? I have it starting up automatically on my phone. But it would save some power not to run it when you don't need it. And here a sack full of my 2 cents: gypsy - yes gpsd - no (at least not as it is, maybe as compat interface) I don't understand why there is not more cooperation between these two. gpsd is very old, well-established and with a lot of experience with various GPS devices, which I think gypsy probably cannot hope to achieve very soon, without combining forces. The home page explains that nearly every device has its quirks and bugs, which all have to be worked around. How could all that experience be of no value? Granted on these phones we only have to worry about 2 devices, not dozens, but I think the bug-workarounds are the reason why gpsd has been used a lot. http://folks.o-hand.com/iain/gypsy/why-not-gpsd.html I still think gpsd could have a dbus interface added, and it would solve the problems that are mentioned. And I think that the socket interface is a positive, and is a good thing to retain for backwards-compatibility, rather than requiring a rewrite of existing applications to use dbus rather than libgps. It's analogous to the X window system: most use cases don't require network transparency, but it sure is nice to have it available in case you ever need it. There are faster alternative communication mechanisms (such as shared memory) that can be used when possible. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GPS application (was: Request for help: Would like community applications to show anddiscuss at LinuxWorld)
On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 11:06 AM, Jay Vaughan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: So I hope you come up with good data for India. I always wanted to have a map of the entire world available in my pocket, so maybe we get closer and closer to that .. ;) planet.osm.bz2 is 4.2 gigs now, but that's why there are 8 gig microSD cards I guess. :-) Of course being unindexed XML you don't have time to parse and render that much data. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/index.php/Planet.osm ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: WIKI still a POS
On Mon, Jul 28, 2008 at 6:23 AM, Mike Baroukh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: May I suggest to replace the internal search with a search on google ? (something like site:wiki.openmoko.org what-i-search). I once configured a MediaWiki we were using for internal documentation at a place I worked to use Swish++ as its internal search engine, so as to be able to find words within page text, as well as uploaded files (PDFs, Word docs etc.). I don't remember all the details now, but it's a possible route for a wiki to actually have a good search engine. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Reason for GPS problems found!
On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 9:01 AM, Edward A. Falk [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You do NOT get tech support like this anywhere else. Those of you pounding your virtual fists on the table and demanding a fix *right now* are out of line. The OpenMoko team is obviously working on it; give them a little time. Nevertheless the fact that this problem existed, was identified months ago by early testers, and it took this long to find the root cause. I'm really quite surprised it managed to ship in this condition, when the fix is fundamentally a hardware one. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Why is Qtopia much faster?
On Mon, Jul 21, 2008 at 4:38 PM, Tilman Baumann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I might do qtopia more wrong than is fair. But they modelling just a regular smart phone like you can get from most vendors. With a very closed (but opensource) framework wich you can develop for. You can not port your garden variety x11 app to qtopia. Which you can (almost) do with the other frameworks. This bias makes no sense. QT is a toolkit. So is GTK. It's OK if you prefer the APIs of one to the other, or prefer plain old C to C++. But what does closed mean? It's been getting more and more open for years now. Finally even QTopia is GPL... I think that's the last piece isn't it? Is it because it already emerged fully-formed, and was not depending on community help for its very existence, that you think it's more closed? What does garden variety mean? I don't think there's any such thing as a garden variety X11 app unless you are using xlib itself, which very few people bother with. Or maybe you are thinking about older toolkits like Motif and Athena Widgets? With QT, apps tend to be smaller because the toolkit is so complete, that you have less code to write. You pay a cost in having a larger library to load, but then all the apps benefit from it. So having a simpler, more spartan toolkit can cut both ways. But whatever, it's just Gnome/KDE all over again, I shouldn't expect a logical argument I guess. And of course the fact that it does not use x11, i expected you to know that. ;-) But the plan is that it will, right? And then we will see, which is really faster. It would be an option in either case to do some optimization: kdrive could accelerate some graphics operations, and QTopia-on-framebuffer could do the same. All else being equal, the one with fewer layers ought to be faster. But kdrive is likely to get more community attention, so maybe we will realistically see some hardware acceleration eventually. It really depends, many people like the simple qtopia stack. But i did not buy my Neo to have a phone that does essentially what any better Motorola or Nokia could do too. Anyone can write new QT apps. It's even fun, and fairly rapid development compared to typical C/C++. The Motorola phones unfortunately made it difficult to install them though, used a very old version of QT, and customized it too, so garden-variety QT apps aren't too well integrated even if you can get them to run. I think Nokia smartphones were mostly running Symbian until recently; I don't have experience with their QT models (if they have some already). It would look great on a motorla razr (or however these things are called today) But i did not find it to fit very well on the extremely large screen resolution and touchpad only input. The RAZR used a completely proprietary OS and toolkit. The high-end touchscreen phones are exactly the ones that are mostly running QT or Symbian, in the commercial world. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: SanDisk micro SDHC 8GB card under testing
On Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 12:41 PM, Jay Vaughan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Got my 8GB SanDisk 8GB micro SDHC card [1] in a few minutes ago, popped it into my GTA02v5 (beta tester model) Freerunner and running a few tests on it. So far, so good. What about on the GTA01? The biggest I have tried so far is 2 gig because I wasn't sure if SDHC was working. I've got one of these ready to pop into my Freerunner when it arrives as well, and if it works, the big question is going to be: how do I use it best? Option a: UNIONFS That sounds like a good idea. Is anybody doing that successfully? What I do is mount it at /usr. So when upgrading the phone image I first have to cp -a /usr/* /media/card/ then change fstab to mount the card on /usr at the next boot. (Of course I formatted it ext3, not to have the FAT limitations.) But to have only the files that you actually modified would save some space. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Re: USB keyboard (was Re: Posible Bluetooth Keyboard)
On Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 6:48 PM, Jeremy List [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm think a one-handed keyboard on the back of a freerunner would be a great thing. Frogpad has the disadvantage that it needs a different model depending on what hand you plan to use to type on it: I'm pretty sure I could design something similar that doesn't have that limitation. Several buttons along the edges would be enough - one for each finger and 2 or 3 thumb-buttons, or a rocker for the thumb. You can still come up with enough chords to type, or, just use them as menu-buttons to select word ranges, kindof analogous to Dasher. A long time ago I read about a research project along these lines at Xerox Parc (which actually occurred even longer ago). They were using big round infrared blasters on the ceiling as uplinks into a network, and people were carrying around these pager-sized devices with buttons along the edge (and simple 2-line LCD displays), and you could do 2-way messaging anywhere on campus when one of the IR gateways was within range. But I thought the text input method was the most interesting aspect of it. You only need several buttons to do it, so it can be ergonomic if the buttons are shaped nicely and are kindof firm (your fingers stay on the same buttons all the time, you just press them in different patterns). And it would be very cheap to implement. The thumb buttons could be used for something else in the word-entry mode, but there could also be an alphanumeric chording mode (like the Bat keyboard). I think this was done long enough ago that if there were any patents, they probably expired by now. If there were a keyboard on the back, how could you hold the phone and at the same time press keys on the back? But you could hold it by the edges and push buttons along the edges at the same time. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Re: USB keyboard (was Re: Posible Bluetooth Keyboard)
On Tue, Jul 8, 2008 at 7:38 PM, Shawn Rutledge [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: A long time ago I read about a research project along these lines at Xerox Parc Here we go: http://www.ubiq.com/parctab/ http://www.ubiq.com/parctab/csl9501/node4.html#SECTION0004 The 3 buttons were for interacting with a menu. 4 plus thumbs must've been my idea the last time I read that paper. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Anyone attending Foo Camp?
On Fri, Jul 4, 2008 at 12:35 PM, Michael Shiloh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://wiki.oreillynet.com/foocamp08/index.cgi It's by invitation only I'm afraid. I thought that some people on this list may have been invited. Well if anyone is going, maybe he/she can recommend invitations for some of the rest of us. But the total is only 250 people, so I suppose they are pretty choosy. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: My word on GPRS (was: How Slow Is Fast?)
This is all the same on both the original Neo1973 and the Freerunner, right? Is the FSO image OK for doing GPRS? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: not being able to use Skype is a big problem
It's often been wished for an Asterisk-to-Skype gateway. It would be an elegant solution: run the gateway at home or on a hosted server, and use any ordinary SIP or IAX client on the Neo. Well last time I checked into that was a couple years ago, but now it appears such a thing exists: http://www.mhspot.com/mhspot/sippyskype.htm https://extras.skype.com/categories/all/good/asterisk http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/skype/sip-to-skype-gateway-breaks-skypes-great-wall-of-voip.asp http://www.asteriskvoipnews.com/asterisk_development/skypetoasterisksip_progress_part_1.html And asterisk of course can make good use of third-party PSTN (real telephone line) termination services, or you can use a Winmodem to connect Asterisk to your own home phone line. Then use the Neo as a client. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: not being able to use Skype is a big problem
On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 3:19 PM, Alexey Feldgendler [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Those I've seen work by running the actual Skype binary inside a virtual machine or some kind of a sandbox and routing audio to and from it. This probably wastes ten times more resources than it should. It's unfortunate, but I'd rather waste some cycles on a server to get a clean, open interface on the phone. The problem is so many people think of Skype first when they think of VoIP. Why? Probably because it just works - does a lot of sneaky stuff to get through various kinds of firewalls, etc. Anyway there is native Skype for Linux now, so maybe some of these are using the published APIs, if that's possible... not sure. http://zhink.com/site/main/?p=5 (claims to be all-software, running on Linux, but is not free) Some of them just have to be run on Windows though. (and use the published APIs) A tougher alternative is to reverse-engineer it. There is still an unclaimed bounty being offered for a proper free Asterisk-Skype gateway that runs on Linux. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Community Initiative GTK
So just to be clear, FSO stands for FreeSmartphone.Org? And that stuff is working so well that it can replace gsmd and neod already? On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 9:53 AM, Joachim Steiger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Marcus Bauer wrote: Hello, I'm wondering if there is any interest in maintaining the GTK software stack? would be nice. e.g. take the last gtk-based ui apps, rip out all libgsmd and neod dependencies and start communicating with the new middleware from FSO. this would basically solve all 'call stability' problems from gsmd times and give you the same, maintained middleware which in the future hopefully all openmoko devices will use. kind regards -- Joachim Steiger Openmoko Central Services ___ 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: 2.5mm or 3.5mm
On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 11:18 PM, Joerg Reisenweber [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 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?) I vote for the 3.5. Supporting standard headphones is more important than being able to use a wired headset. However, some phones (at least the ROKR E2, maybe others) have had a 3.5 jack with an extra ring, which I think is for the microphone. If you follow this standard, the wired headsets designed for those can work. You can plug in standard stereo headphones (in which case the sleeve shorts out the microphone input) or the special wired headset with an extra ring. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Why not use forum?
On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 2:33 PM, Ben Burdette [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - far less distracting, with no emails coming in every 5 secs for every topic. The distraction is a feature, for any project which you intend to take up a significant part of your spare time, and to contribute rather than just reading occasionally: it keeps you engaged. If I had to go to a separate place just to keep up on OpenMoko stuff, I would probably not get around to it very often. Whereas for me, reading email almost continuously is a very old habit (started in about 1994). Emails from my favorite project lists remind me very often of what I intend to be working on after I go home from work. Although, the signal/noise ratio on this list is quite bad, so it's not a very good use of time to actually read most of the stuff. (And it's even less worthwhile for me to add to the noise, of which this thread is a good example, but here I am doing just that. :-) ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GTA03: New case? Bigger screen!
On Tue, Jun 10, 2008 at 9:02 AM, Ortwin Regel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There has been all this fruitless talk about resolution. Well, what is really limiting the Neo's screen right now is not resolution (obviously), not speed (at least not on the GTA01, no idea how messed up the 02 situation is. I'd guess it's faster most of the time.) but size! If the GTA03 get's a new case design, please consider making the screen twice as big! Then we are finally at a size were two-thumb-typing starts to make sense and even people with bad eye sight can benefit from the high resolution (although I'm not convinced that second point is a positive one... _). The device wouldn't even have to be bigger for this because so much space was wasted in the original Neo design. The only handheld I have owned where the screen I agree. Maybe it could use the same screen as the Nokia tablets (800x480). Thin is good though. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Common Lisp for OM (Was: Programming OM)
On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 7:32 AM, Oliver Uvman [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jesus! I thought I was the only one wanting to program CL on the OM. I've had lots of interesting ideas on how to use a gesture-based interface for writing CL, which could work only thanks to the sparse syntax, and plan to make that some of the first things I program for my OM. Hooray! A couple of us Chicken Scheme people have run it on OpenMoko. Somebody needs to write the BitBake recipe for building Chicken and its eggs (extensions). (Maybe I will get around to that, but it's my first time, and I imagine enough things will go wrong that it will become frustrating, like BitBake often is.) The latest version I actually cross-compiled using the OpenMoko toolchain, so it's not hard. Then provided I have installed gcc and the other development stuff (headers, binutils, etc.) I can actually compile Scheme code right on the phone (slowly). I wrote (laid?) an egg to support DBus, and next I'm writing one to support gpsd. Likewise there will need to be another to support GSM functions, when that becomes stable enough (ideally it will only need the DBus interface, which would make it pretty trivial since the DBus egg provides the means). Those are components I needed for Display Scheme, which will be an alternative framebuffer-based GUI. DS will be a display server (like an X server) which (being a Scheme interpreter rather than an X-protocol interpreter) will allow you write client-server applications where the client code runs within the display server itself. (Or you can write client-only applications, but there are limitations, the big one being that Chicken does not support native threads, only lightweight threads. I'm thinking that message-passing between processes is the future on many-core systems anyway. So each app should be its own process.) It is the same model that was used for NeWS except Scheme replaces Postscript. I have a couple of very basic widgets working, and next need to work on IPC techniques so that it's possible to write client-server apps. Then when I have GSM and GPS apps working, maybe there could be some sort of early release (installable packages), but that's still fairly far out. Then after that I need to work on making the application-programming process as high-level and terse as possible. The main purpose of this project is to pursue my ideas about metawidgets (describe what the application should do, rather than exactly how to lay it out on the screen, because then it can be more portable). And apps can run on network-connected servers, of course, so using Scheme rather than HTML/Javascript/Flash will provide a solution to many of the problems the web-application folks are working on now, and much more efficiently. The client will be able to connect to the server via various transports like HTTP, SSH, plain sockets, maybe DBus, etc. Depending how much code the server exports to be run on the client (which may ultimately be a dynamic tradeoff, taking into account the available bandwidth and the processing power and memory on both ends), client-server apps could work offline too. Common Lisp isn't to my taste. But I imagine you can write a compiler that generates Scheme for the UI portions of your application, and then you'd be able to write applications in Common Lisp. Likewise in the distant future there should be some bindings for other languages like Python and C++. Chicken has the advantage that the apps can be compiled too, so not very much code is going to end up being interpreted: just the glue that is actually communicated across the connection between the server and client. Eventually maybe I could find a way for the client to ask the server to cross-compile code on its behalf, so that nothing would need to be interpreted. Now if only I had enough time to do all this stuff. :-) http://sourceforge.net/projects/dscm/ http://callcc.org/ http://chicken.wiki.br/cross-compilation ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: USB oscilloscope
On Sun, May 4, 2008 at 7:41 PM, Lally Singh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Not my cup of tea, but maybe someone else on this list cares? http://www.hobbylab.us/default.aspx It's a usb Oscilliscope, $170. I sent an email asking about getting Sample rate up to 200KHz for the scope (8MHz for logic analyzer). USB scopes always seem to be lousy that way. If they'd just put a lot of memory onboard and use the USB for viewing rather than real-time recording, it could be a lot better. specs for a port. It'd make a cool little field tool for those who worry about such things. While I have the hardware people's attention, what uses does the debug board have? I figure it'll test pin connections, etc., but is there any use for it for those who don't plan to directly modify the board? I might add something onto the I2C bus later, but that's a separate device. http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973_Debug_Board_v2 ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Re: Stylus Recommendation
On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 7:56 AM, Hans L [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am not an electrical engineer, but I think that the voltage/current produced from such a magnet would be negligible. But, even assuming that it would not be harmful, isn't the case made of plastic? Is Well you could take apart the phone and try to find a place to stash a small, really strong neodymium magnet. Then use a thin steel stylus (with a soft plastic tip), shaped to fit against whatever surface has the magnet. It could even fit against the side of the phone, if it had a slightly concave shape. Or mod the case to have a shallow groove for the stylus to fit into, then the stylus could just be a thin steel bar, or rounded on one side as suggested. Since the magnet doesn't move, it shouldn't cause any inductive pulses (although it might cause electrons that are trying to move in a straight line to go off in a curve instead. Not sure if that would affect anything...) ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Freerunner will be GTA02v5 or GTA02v6? (was: Fwd: Future Button and LED software spec)
On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 7:41 AM, Tim Coggins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Steve kindly emailed me on this issue and said: The A5 boards have been reworked to remove the [LED] issue. So WRT LEDs a5 and a6 have the same power consumption. The transistors were replaced with the internal-resistor variety? Well it's very good that it is fixed. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: .Mac like service
On Tue, Apr 29, 2008 at 4:46 PM, Kosa [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I wonder if there's any chance Openmoko could (or is going to) offer a service like apple's .Mac for the Openmoko users. I have some ideas (and I'm sure you have a lot more) that could make this service very useful. What kind of features do you want to see? What are the use cases? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Engineering Driven vs. Community Driven (was Re: Ugliness)
I was just hoping that if not a lot of phones get sold (mere thousands or tens of thousands) OpenMoko still makes enough money to keep going, and to design a sexy phone next time around, when there can be an optimized case design rather than a leftover one, and when the software is polished enough that it has a chance of mass-market appeal. (If the software was best-in-class, the case could maybe even be overlooked by a decent fraction of people.) It's good if we have marketing people interested in how to make it sell better, but I agree the GTA02 is probably not the phone that's going to take the world by storm, yet. Maybe there isn't much harm in talking about what to improve next time even though next time isn't really upon us yet. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Video of Qt 4.4 on Neo1973: brings iPhone like graphics
On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 6:07 AM, Marco Trevisan (Treviño) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Just a question: the widgets shown are they running on X? I would say not, because you can see the blinking text-console cursor in the upper-left corner. I have run into the same thing when doing framebuffer graphics: wasn't sure how to turn it off. Cool demos though! ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: DLP Pico Projector
On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 9:01 AM, Bastian Muck [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'd love to have this chio in gta03, but i guess, that it will be too expensive to integrate it, also in 2 years. :-( It can be an external accessory for now. (A linked video there was showing a separate projector hooked up to an ipod, showing a movie.) But the phone needs a video output. I would hope it could be digital video, although for the ipod I imagine they are using the composite video pin. IMO the future OM phones ought to at least have the LCD signals available on a connector. (It can be a tiny one, like the Hirose type that the Gumstix boards are using.) Then it should be possible for us to make a daughterboard for driving external displays. (One daughterboard to convert to HDMI, and/or another for composite, depending on what types of projectors become available.) There could be a sled for the back of the phone that contains the daughterboard. But if even more signals are available on the expansion connector, other types of sleds would be possible: extra memory (CF or SD slots), extended battery, wireless battery charger, NFC, Zigbee, etc. Later the sled could include the whole projector, when it becomes available. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: DLP Pico Projector
On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 12:40 PM, Flemming Richter Mikkelsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I discovered this a few years ago: http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/336/C9601/ Yeah sounds familiar. I think a mirror with single-axis rotation would be rather like the technology used in the Private Eye HMD, which was incorporated into the Nintendo Virtual Boy: they would only need to project one row of pixels, then rotate the mirror to expand the one row into a whole frame (and update the row of pixels as it rotates). But the whole-frame DMD is likely to be the better choice in the long term, just as the Private Eye gave way to much better HMDs. I have one of the original ones for the PC at home. It connects to an ISA card which emulates CGA in monochrome mode, 640x200. It vibrates noticeably in use. And an all-red monochrome display is not pleasant to look at for long. I ran across one in 2000 and picked it up because I remembered the article announcing it in Radio-Electronics or wherever it was, when I was much younger. :-) http://ecloud.org/journal/private-eye.html Another way which has shown a lot of promise is a combination of lasers and holographic optics, which I don't understand very well. (How to make the laser scan the frame, preferably without moving parts, or only microscopic/nanotech ones?) ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Do we REALLY need a phone?
On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 3:10 AM, Stefano Cavallari [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Then you just provide some module to access the chosen network, like a SDIO card (probably with a big external part like most wifi ones). I was thinking of a beast like a bluetooth UMTS dongle. There are already USB I used to think like that too. Maybe it's a good idea. It would certainly be way better for the environment. However, it costs more in several ways (engineering, components and space) to make it modular, and for the idea to make sense you are relying on a couple of things: that the handheld will satisfy you for such a long time (10 years maybe), and that it will make sense to continue to build modules with whatever interface you chose at the beginning (considering that the minimum-sized module you can build at the beginning will be looking excessively big in a few years). But technology moves faster than you expect. I think especially now, LCDs may be replaced with OLEDs and EInk displays (both of which are less fragile, and each of which has other advantages), and multitouch is becoming popular, and embedded projectors may be the next must-have phone feature in a couple more years, and graphene-based processors will eventually be orders of magnitude faster than current silicon ones (if we are looking far enough into the future). Developers especially will tend to want to write software for the newest devices. However the Newton has had one of the longest lives, and the best upgradeability too, because of the PCMCIA slot, and the software that was so far ahead of its time. Some people reportedly still use them now, and have been able to to add various wireless networking technologies to them. So there's a device that really did have a 10+ year life. But most people think they are too bulky. Still if the device does more, bulk can be tolerated, especially in exchange for a really high-res screen. The next thing I would really like to see standardized is batteries. There are so many approximately the same size, but purposely incompatible. We've had names for standard cylindrical batteries for longer than most people can remember, so why not a rectangular 1Ah LiIon battery with just a letter name, like maybe R for rectangular? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Charging Neo Freerunner via USB port
On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 11:22 AM, Andy Powell [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On the GTA01 you can press AUX as you power up to get the boot menu. On mine I have added an option to start fast (500ma) charging and power off the backlight. This means I don't need to have enough power to do a full boot to get the device charging. Perhaps an option for slow (100ma) charging that turns the backlight off would be useful - although it would probably need to have a few tests run to see if it was actually helping any. In my testing, the current draw from the battery while I'm sitting at the boot menu is not very low. Maybe this menu hack needs to set the CPU into a very low-power mode, turn off the radios, etc. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Charging Neo Freerunner via USB port
On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 12:06 PM, Michael Shiloh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * for hacking purposes it would be good to document what other mfrs chargers use and how easy they are to hack into moko fastchargers. This should be a wiki page and community driven, of course, but you could get it jump-started with whatever info you have on this issue. I, for one, have a small pile of motorola chargers with mini USB on them that I'm more than willing to hack into moko fastchargers given some basic instructions. Since I feel the utility of this isn't tremendous, I think my time is better spent elsewhere. However, if others want to do this, I would suggest you start your search at lady ada's forum where they discuss getting the minty-boost charger to work with different models of iPod. That seems to be one of the most comprehensive discussions of USB charger identifications I have ever found. (If anyone knows of a similar, or better one, I would love to hear about it.) I would like to see the Motorola chargers working too, without having to modify the charger. It seems that it's some other resistance, maybe 200k. What is the tolerance? Does the Freerunner actually measure the resistance? If we modify the code to be more tolerant (any resistance between 20K and 500K means a charger is being detected, and 500mA should be OK, whereas if it's 47K we can charge at 1A) could the phone be distributed with this modification? Where is this code which does the measuring, is it the PMU firmware or it runs on the main CPU? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Freerunner will be GTA02v5 or GTA02v6? (was: Fwd: Future Button and LED software spec)
On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 11:21 AM, Flemming Richter Mikkelsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It sounds to me as the problem is easy for those of us that knows a little electronics. If I get one that leaks current, I will start soldering! Does anybody know if the fix Werner is talking about, will be done for all GTA02v5 PCB's? If it really will be a fix for it, it will not be any problem at all. Yes maybe it can be fixed. But is the fix documented yet? Another way to look at it: if the fix can be done without a PCB change, then why not get the factory to do the rework (swapping transistors or whatever) before they are shipped? How much would it cost to get that done in China? ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Charging Neo Freerunner via USB port
On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 1:44 PM, Flemming Richter Mikkelsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If you make this kind of modification, there is no use in the autodetection. What do you mean? Autodetecting that a computer is the host depends on some digital communications rather than measuring a resistor. There is no resistor between pin X and ground in that case, right? It is more safe to check for the 47k and the other values. It would be safer but not as universal. Somebody will have to figure out the tests for Samsung chargers etc. But probably every mini-USB charger can supply at least 500mA, or if not, it would limit the current itself. So I don't think there's anything very unsafe about making that assumption. But we could show the actual battery charge current on the mini-control panel which can be popped up by clicking on the status bar, so if you need to know whether the phone is really charging (rather than trying and not getting enough juice) you can easily find out. Anyway you are assuming no other charger in the world uses 47k, or that if it does, it would be capable of supplying 1A, right? But, if the phone tries to draw 1A and the dumb fast-charger cannot supply it, then the current would probably be limited by the charger anyway. I have a powered hub from which the Neo cannot even draw a full 500mA. (Lousy hub, I guess, or lousy power supply that is powering it.) Nothing gets damaged, but I was wondering why the phone wasn't getting fully charged when plugged into that hub for days or weeks. Now I have to use an actual motherboard USB port instead. Moto also has some USB accessories like a headset, and a headset-adapter. It will be interesting to see what happens when one of those is plugged in; I suspect they used more resistor/transistor tricks to detect those, too. Maybe they even abused the USB pins in other ways to enable those accessories. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Any compliant headset? (Re: was FreeRunner Pricing and PVT update)
On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 2:54 PM, Richard Reichenbacher [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I noticed only one headphone getting sound when I was using a 3.5-2.5 adapter with a motorola phone a while ago. I would just jiggle the connection or reinsert the 3.5 slowly and it would work. Maybe you're experiencing the same thing from a similar crappy adapter. I have also had this happen with an adapter I got from Fry's. It worked as badly with my Zaurus as it did with phones (and I haven't tried on the Neo). The actual Motorola adapter (a short cable with a 2.5mm right-angle plug on one end and 3.5mm jack on the other end) works much better with the devices I have tried. I would like to see future devices using a 3.5mm jack. IMO the important thing is high-quality music, whereas if you just want to talk on the phone, Bluetooth headsets are more popular these days. (And BT is not as good for music because of the lossy compression.) It's very nice to be able to directly plug in ordinary good-quality headphones for music. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: FreeRunner Pricing and PVT update
On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 9:44 AM, steve [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The STANDARD box contents will be a Phone and Battery. I expect to add some other goodies, but only for the first few thousand buyers. If the phone can be charged with a Motorola charger, I'm personally fine with saving some money and you leaving it out of the box. (And the chargers can be had cheaply on ebay etc.) But if it requires a special one then I would want to see the charger included. And a car charger must be made available, too. A desktop charger would be nice to have but I guess the Nokia one will work, right? Requiring the phone to be charged only from a PC is not practical when you expect this phone to be for (advanced) users too, not just developers, right? Likewise if the connector is to be something other than mini-usb, including a USB cable might be a good idea. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Openmoko strives for openness (smedia glamo)
Could also put an FPGA between the processor and the display, and maybe some developers will figure out how to accelerate the most frequently used drawing functions. Just an idea... I know it's a long shot and probably takes too much power too... but for a while there was an open PCI video card project which was taking that approach. ___ Openmoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Openmoko strives for openness
On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 9:17 AM, Michael Shiloh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There is a constant trend of moving these discussions from internal lists to public lists. Many Openmoko employees do this, but I'd particularly like to publicly thank Wolfgang Spraul for championing this and for setting up a culture that encourages everyone to think in these terms. I for one noticed, and I think it's pretty cool. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Open source / Open Standard CAD development?
On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 2:36 PM, Mats Eriksson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: * Does there exist any usable open source CAD systems? (Is perhaps Open CASCAE a viable semi-open http://www.opencascade.org/ option?) The previous suggestions that IMO had some relevance were Blender and BRLCAD. I hadn't heard of OpenCascade but it looks interesting. There are other open-source CAD packages with not enough features (2D-only, specialized for PCB layout, 3D rendering systems that don't have the to-scale accuracy features of a CAD system, etc.) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Open source / Open Standard CAD development?
On Wed, Mar 5, 2008 at 2:36 PM, Mats Eriksson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am seeing the OpenMoko project as the first serious project to develop hardware in bazaar-style fashion. A personal dream would like to build a OpenCar in bazaar-style fashion in the future. Other open car projects have been pointed out, and there is also evproduction.org which is sortof a community design effort but not 100% open (mostly because one guy is doing most of the work, he was hoping to make a profit on the production, and the community has not done very much). A car is just such a big project... While code can be copied at nearly zero cost, cars are neither cheap nor easy to replicate, and by the time it's driveable, a great deal of the work must be done; the pieces are not useful by themselves. There are regulatory issues and liability issues. If you spend thousands to replicate a car from that design, and then see that the design is marginal, you feel disappointed about having spent so much money and/or fabrication time, and not having gotten something useful. Every improvement takes more money. But past the threshold of usefulness, maybe the community would participate more in smaller incremental improvements. (Just like Linus did not post to Usenet until he had something working and useful, and then people got excited and started helping very quickly. And just like OpenMoko did not release a phone a piece-at-a-time; the hardware had to be workable before it could be sold.) The guy who started that one has run into some financial and logistical problems and is willing to sell the project as a ready-to-go business: there is a allegedly a first-pass driveable design, and it's just a matter of starting production. If you have a little money to invest and are serious about doing that, you can take over that project, release every aspect of the design as fully open-source, and make money by selling parts, kits and/or complete cars. (Disclaimer: I'm one of the community that hasn't contributed much; I do not know any of the others very well, have not seen any physical results of the project in-person, and do not stand to profit from any of the operations, but I agree with you that this sort of thing ought to be done.) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Multi-touch: Many questions to one desire....
On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 8:42 AM, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The ubiquitous zooming and rotating examples are not convincing me at all. They seem pretty cool to me. So... where are those usecases that apply to a phone? How do you right-click on a touchscreen? The old way has been to hold down the stylus for some timeout period. But with multitouch there are other alternatives. One will probably emerge as the standard. You might even be able to detect different fingers by the shape of the contact patch, so different fingers have different actions. I'd like to play with it, but right now my choices are: buy an iphone and hack it; or build my own FTIR table. Without even thinking about specific use cases though, isn't it clear that multitouch is the superior technology? If you add a new capability and allow developers to play with it, new uses will emerge which nobody has yet thought of. Besides it's more durable: it won't mechanically wear out like resistive touchscreens do, and the screen can be glass instead of scratchable plastic. Maybe even could be a mineral crystal like a good watch. Maybe you are just making excuses based on the fact that you think multitouch is unobtanium at this point? It has been discovered that the necessary chip is made by Broadcom, with the model number BCM5974. Funny thing is, when you google that you just find a zillion copies of the same blog by someone who disassembled the iPhone (and the Air) and discovered that; I haven't found anything on Broadcom's site. So I don't understand if Apple was able to coerce them into making it exclusive. I mean, Apple bought Fingerworks and thereby got the technology, right? Then what... they said well we don't have a fab, do we? so they made an agreement with Broadcom to manufacture the chips on the condition that they are not allowed to sell them to anyone else? (Just guessing) Well how long do you think that will last? Maybe the exclusivity expires after some period of time; and Broadcom knows that either they will find a way to sell to everyone, or the competition will catch up and do it for them. Soon we will see another supplier, because it's too hot to be ignored. (It's also a good question, who made the chips for Fingerworks.) In a couple years there will probably be chintzy LCD multi-touch wristwatches or something. By that point it will be uninteresting. But FIC ought to try to feel their way around this situation: chat up the sales guys and FAE's at Broadcom and find out if there's any way to buy this chip. It reputedly costs a mere $3. I agree, the next Neo needs this capability. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: iPhone Acquired!
On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 2:24 PM, Kyle Bassett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am still debating lending the phone out to those who want to play with it, depending on the interest of the community, we'll see where it goes. Sounds like Mickey needs to play with it so he can see what all the fuss is about. :-) After that, uh hack it? port Linux to it? :-) (but naturally that's in the works already) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Multi-touch: Many questions to one desire....
On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 5:25 PM, Marco Trevisan (Treviño) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Also using a touch-only screen they don't loose their usability: the resize, mostly, could be done simply with a scroll, while the rotation This is kindof like saying what do you need a mouse for, your keyboard has arrow keys doesn't it? (or a control key... you could just move the cursor with control-k, control-l, etc.) The whole point is you don't need to use up any real estate with scroll bars: an image can fill the whole screen and yet you can still interact with it. Dragging/panning seems more intuitive, too... it's just that with such long experience with computers, we've gotten used to the status quo. As for pinching to zoom, the only thing which makes me uncertain is the alleged existence of a patent on it... either it will be licensed cheaply, or stricken down in court, or Apple will just let it go unchallenged (maybe at least in the case of open-source software), or non-Apple devices can be sold with gesture programmability, and it's up to the end user to define what it is that the pinch gesture will do. Or if Apple really succeeds in keeping that gesture for themselves, then it cannot be a standard, because other gestures will have to be invented. But the existence of the original Mac did not prevent GEM or AmigaOS or Windows from being developed, either, despite Apple's attempts to claim ownership of some ideas. They have no hope of preventing multi-touch itself from becoming the accepted mainstream, and then resistive touchscreens are probably going to be seen as obsolete. using the gimp-way (put a placeholder on the rotating fulcrum tapping, then use a finger dragging the image...). That requires at least two steps, and involves more screen clutter (at least a separate fulcrum object). Gimp takes a bit of time to learn, even if you are already familiar with Photoshop or (gods forbid) PC Paint, like I was on my first PC, without a mouse, back in 1988. :-) (yes I could draw decent monochrome pictures with only the keyboard. I sure was glad when that guy whose lawn I was mowing finally gave me a surplus optical mouse, though.) Interaction design always has room for improvement, and major new technologies like this really open up the possibilities. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Idea of a voice mail application
I was using vgetty for land-line voicemail a few years ago, and even wrote some PHP to present the messages, and if you select one it would send back an .au file, which the Audrey (3Com Ergo web appliance) could play inside its web browser. So when the iPhone came out, I thought visual voicemail looked kindof familiar. :-) But I didn't bother with any voice menus, it was just like an answering machine. The next problem was how to detect empty messages (the caller didn't say anything and hung up); it's not quite silent because you hear the click when the caller hung up. I was just using recording time to decide, so if a message was too short it would think it was empty; but often it would think an empty message was a real one, because there was a delay of a couple seconds between the click and the time that the modem reported that the call was hung up. vgetty is picky about the type of modem, BTW: it has to be the kind that can digitize the audio and stream it over the ISA bus, or over the serial port. (Otherwise you would need a way to get the analog audio into your sound card's line input, and a way to get the line output back onto the phone line. Most modems don't have line-level inputs/outputs.) A few smart modems have AT command extensions which make audio streaming possible. So if the GSM radio cannot stream audio digitally, but can only output an analog signal, then let's hope the Neo has a connection from the analog audio to the line input internally, which would make it possible to record conversations, build answering machine applications, use BlueZ to stream SCO audio to a Bluetooth headset, etc. Apparently it would be all about configuring the Wolfson to digitize the audio coming in on RXN/RXP: http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo1973_audio_subsystem#Voice_Calls it looks like recording should be possible, because RXN/RXP go both to the output mixer and to the ADCs as long as the switches on the input side of the ADCs are set correctly. Anybody know for sure? The usual low-end Asterisk approach is to use a Winmodem with a certain chip, which is basically a sound card (DSP chip) with a phone-line interface rather than line-in/line-out. (Not the same thing as you need for vgetty.) That means they rely less on hardware (the way vgetty relied on the modem to report incoming calls, the line being on-hook/off-hook, etc.) and more signal-processing is done in software. They also have an Alsa interface already, so that you can use local audio devices on the server (use your soundcard as a speaker phone, or plug in a USB handset or whatever). So if you can configure the Wolfson to act as a 2-way gateway between Alsa-based software and the GSM's analog input and output, then it should be possible to use Asterisk, assuming it's not too stressful for our poor little ARM. :-) Or maybe it will be necessary to fork Asterisk to make something lighter-weight, and more GSM-specific. But I don't have the time to invest in that. (After I started playing with asterisk I gave up on doing voicemail with vgetty, and I'm trying to avoid the need to turn on my 10.5-year-old dual-PII machine which has ISA bus, because it's noisy and takes too much power relative to its computing capacity. :-) ___ 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 Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 6:22 PM, Uncle Kridley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: joerg wrote: - charge from any host (incl simplistic chargers): 100mA (6-12h) - charge from intelligent host: 500mA (1-2h) - charge from quickcharger with magic R: 1500mA (1h) Ahh, ok, that makes a lot more sense. I generally charge overnight, so when I'm traveling, the difference between 100mA 500mA won't be an issue. It will be a big difference unless you plan to turn your phone off while you charge it, because it will probably consume quite a bit of current in the case that GSM is on but the rest of the phone is semi-sleeping. Maybe even more than 100mA. As long as the Neo will support at least 500mA charging from a dumb charger with a magic resistor value (or some shorted pins), including existing chargers of this kind (like the Motorola ones), that should be good for charging on-the-go. Having it take only 100mA from such chargers is unacceptable. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Populated IrDA?
On Thu, Feb 28, 2008 at 10:33 AM, Alan Ide [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: if it is or is not populated / usable?? I really want to be able to use my FreeRunner as my universal remote using LIRC. Thank you. IrDA and CIR (consumer IR) are usually not the same thing. If you start looking for the actual components you'll see there are several wavelengths of light in use. OTOH the phototransistors used in the IR receivers are sensitive to a range of wavelengths (sensitivity vs. wavelength is a bell curve), so they don't always have to match exactly. The Agenda (an early Linux PDA back in 1999 or 2000) had a CIR emitter for just that purpose. It was also possible to use the Palm's IrDA port for remote-controlling your TV etc. but the range was very short, like 3 feet or less. Another company was selling a CIR emitter you could plug into the HotSync port to get longer range. Of course if you install an IrDA transceiver in your PC, you could use an IrDA handheld as a remote for it. But then why not use Bluetooth or WiFi? IR is too directional. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: bye bye wifi hello gifi
On Wed, Feb 27, 2008 at 6:17 AM, Sean Moss-Pultz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We don't have any immediate plans. Truly mobile WiMax is still some time away. Sprint Xohm is still supposed to launch soon, if it doesn't get postponed any more. http://informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/02/best_buy_spills.html ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: FAX2PDF with OpenMoko?
On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 10:53 AM, kenneth marken [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I seem to recall having seen a scanner that does the much-more-useful other direction: scan a document and it sends it in (some format I don't remember) as an email. heh, i would hazard a guess that it was as a jpg contained in a pdf or something similar... At my job we have a multifunction printer/copier/scanner/fax which does that. It's quite useful. But the output formats are limited: PDF is about the best but it uses JPG compression for images. TIFF is possible but only for black-and-white scans, not color ones. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: How Alice and Bob got telephone/SMS spam on their Moko.
On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 2:18 PM, Heikki Sørum [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: from Matilda in Canned Meat Marketing. Matilda has created an software system that automates calling and displays a unknown caller ID, then ... 3rd party ruggedized Moko Case!) he tags the calling ID with Deceptive Marketing tag. Unfortunately Matilda in Canned Meat Marketing Well if it's unknown caller ID then Bob can't do that. Besides it might be counter-productive to blacklist big blocks of numbers which might later belong to somebody else when the telemarketing co. shuts down. I would propose sending unknown callers into a menu system: recorded message Your caller ID is blocked or turned off. If you are a telemarketer, please be warned that we are registered with the national Do-Not-Call list and do not wish to receive marketing messages of any kind. Otherwise please press 1 to leave a voice message, or enter your friend code. Then if some friend who calls from work complains that he always gets this because the phones at work have blocked caller ID, you give him a friend code which he can enter to authenticate and actually ring your phone. Otherwise you don't even know any of this is going on until you get a voicemail notification, and the friend codes are only needed in the special cases. Plus you can still blacklist small quantities of known-bad phone numbers. This sort of thing can probably be done with Asterisk. You could even do that with calls which do have caller ID but which are not on your whitelist. Or do that only during certain hours (when you are usually sleeping). Or make everyone enter a friend code when you are sleeping. :-) I think I would probably do that; as it is, I keep my cell turned off much more than I should, just in case. (Hate being woken up in the morning before my usual time to get up - one distraction like that can make me tired for a day or two if I don't get back to sleep.) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: How Alice and Bob got telephone/SMS spam on their Moko.
On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 3:27 PM, Joseph Booker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Cell phones can be placed on the do-not-call list? It's already illegal for telemarketers to call you on one (since you would be paying for unsolicited advertising). Well if they are calling, you still need your own defense because they obviously are getting away with it, for a while at least; or they don't know that it's a cell. But in practice I don't really get telemarketing calls on my cell, and nowadays seldom get them at home. I have gotten SMS spam though. I guess there is less that you can do about that; just blacklist or whitelist, and decide which ones to ring vs. which ones to just silently preserve in the inbox (or spam folder). Obviously if you want a custom voice menu it has to be implemented on the phone, so people who access that are causing you to pay for some minutes and are not using your provider's voicemail service. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Force shutdown
On Wed, Feb 20, 2008 at 12:20 PM, Tilman Baumann [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If your phone is not entirely dead, holding power vor 10! sec would shut off the device. (not tactile feedback. You don't knwo whrn it shut down (10 factorial) seconds is exactly 42 days, heh heh. (Google calculator was handy.) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Act as HIDD and more
On Feb 18, 2008 10:31 AM, Christopher Earl [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I want my Neo to act as HIDD, I *think* the command is hidd --server but i get an error: Address in use, any ideas. I haven't tried it on the phone yet, but last night I bought the Apple BT keyboard and got it working for my MythTV box. hcitool scan to discover the keyboard and get its BT address; then hidd --connect BTADDR at which point pairing begins. You make up a PIN, type it on the keyboard (e.g. enter) then you should see the BT PIN prompt pop up on your computer (or phone) and you type the same PIN there. It's a little clumsy, I wish BlueZ would auto-pair in the case that the PIN is . At least it's only necessary once. But if I want to use the same keyboard with multiple devices then I suppose it will have to be re-done each time. Also you should configure in /etc/bluetooth/hcid.conf to require a role-switch, so that the keyboard is always the slave (change accept to master). https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BluetoothSetup Also I have been testing Playstation 3 hardware, I bought the $10 Recharging dock for the controllers, works with GTA01 Charges well(its just a mini-USB dock) but hides the power button. You are using that to charge the phone? Sounds useful. Like this? http://www.ecrater.com/product.php?pid=1751517 I'd like to find a smart charger for the car eventually. (I seldom take the Neo out of the house anyway, but that day is coming when the power management stuff gets better.) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Patents and OpenMoko
On Feb 11, 2008 12:20 PM, Steven Kurylo [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From what I know especially in the US patent system you are *forced* to actively defend your patent, i.e. if you get to know that someone uses your patent and is not paying you roayalties (or you get an alternative commercial advantage like cross licensing) you have to sue him. If you do not do so the patent can be revoked. No. Would you explain? because this is very commonly believed: if you don't defend the patent you will lose it. Just depends how this phrase defend the patent is defined I guess... But as always: IANAL. Indeed :-) Are you a lawyer? Speaking as community guy I would say that with the software patents you would have to sign and publish a non-revocable community contract that sais quite explicitely for which use you would accept royaltee free use and of which patents. Only then the community would be safe. Else, at some later point in time, someone at OpenMoko/FIC might change their mind and try to make money from the patents. Definitely and thats what the patent commons are for. What kind of protection is offered by the patent commons? How can a mere agreement among the parties involved (if there were any lawsuit about a breach thereof, it would be a civil suit) be stronger than the patent law itself, which specifies the rights of the patent owner to license the patent and collect royalties, or to sue for infringement? I trust that some lawyers have thought this through pretty thoroughly by now, but it hasn't been tested, right? But please do not consider software patents at any time! You will instantly loose your credibility in the open source world. Not at all. If they don't patent it, someone else will; then you're in real trouble. Its a broken system, but its one they have to work with. Sure you can point to prior art if someone else patents it - but challenging a patent costs money. Usually more than the cost of the patent in the first place. I suspect you are right about this, but there really are credibility problems with software patents in general... they clearly suck, and many developers are in denial, and waiting for them to be finally disallowed by the gov't. But then again, that might never happen; and even if it did, would the existing software patents be thrown out, or grandfathered? It is hard to predict the future, especially ahead of time. Probably the large corporate special interests will get whatever they want, in the end. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Patents and OpenMoko
On Feb 7, 2008 1:00 PM, Sean Moss-Pultz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What I want is for a our company's patents to be freely available, for anyone, but for defensive purposes only. This sounds like a great idea. I think what you mean is that if a competitor sues OpenMoko for allegedly infringing its patent, then OpenMoko can counter-sue saying BTW you are infringing this one of ours too and then it gets settled out-of-court by cross-licensing, right? But I can't think of a way to legally bind the patent to be used for defensive purposes only. Whatever method you come up with would have to work in multiple countries, right? One technique I know of for the US is the provisional patent. My understanding is that you pay a small fee to file a sort of pre-patent which will be accepted immediately without review. Then you have one year in which to finish the real patent application, but the date will be set to that of the earlier provisional patent; so the intent is that if the competition is in hot pursuit, you can make sure your patent date is earlier than theirs, even if the patent application is not yet finished. But, if you fail to complete the full patent application within one year, the ideas contained in the provisional patent become unpatentable! because the USPTO (supposedly, if they aren't too lazy) always review prior patents before granting a new one... and that includes provisional patents. So ever since I heard of it, this has always seemed to me a good low-budget way (within reach of individual free software developers, even) to protect an idea from being patented by someone else later on. But I haven't personally tried to do that (although one company where I worked did) and I would sure like to see an opinion of an actual IP lawyer on how strong the protection is when you do that. It's basically just a form of prior art which is highly accessible to the USPTO, and less likely to be ignored than just publishing the prior art somehow. (Then you'd typically have to go to court to show the prior art and get the new patent overturned, right? Whereas with a provisional patent you have the chance to prevent competing patents from being granted.) If that technique does not protect us enough, then maybe real patents are better. But what is to stop OpenMoko, or some future company that buys OM, or some company to which the patents are cross-licensed, from using them in non-defensive ways? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Patents and OpenMoko
On Feb 7, 2008 3:35 PM, Steven Milburn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As a first step, get anything you think is patent worthy documented and dated. In the US, a common practice is to write up your concept and mail it to yourself in a sealed envelope. You don't open the envelope until you Or get the document itself notarized. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Patents and OpenMoko
On Feb 7, 2008 4:45 PM, Arthur Britto [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What prevents you from mailing yourself an unsealed envelope? Why would you want to do that? The point is to get a reliable date stamp associated with the material inside the envelope. And as the other link pointed out, it doesn't hold up well in court, and could also be used against you to say that this idea was not being implemented... was just sitting on a shelf until you got around to filing the patent or defending against one. I think the notary method would be better because the stamp is right on the invention diagram/description; and not being sealed, they can't say it was necessarily sitting on a shelf. Some companies take lab notebooks seriously for the same reason - if you have a practice of dating and signing every page, and the book is a hardcover bound one, and it stands up to reasonable scrutiny that the notebook could not have been constructed and bound later on, then maybe some courts would be convinced that the idea struck you on that date... because it fits into the timeline of the other writings in that book, some of which could probably be corroborated via other sources. (Since I don't like the process of writing on paper though, that's one habit I haven't taken up very much.) More about the notary method here http://robertplattbell.blogspot.com/2007/10/poor-mans-patent.html and here http://books.google.com/books?id=7G5A2pyvCQUCpg=PA137lpg=PA137dq=notary+establish+date+of+inventionsource=webots=dEnJJyMR-msig=piJSbDkPsCkKJOmMd_XtzcwISmQ but I'm not proposing it's anywhere near as good protection as an actual patent... just for a prior art defense. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: More about the GTA02
1700 would be hard to believe. It's too small. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: tangoGPS, a new gps mapping software for the Neo
On Feb 4, 2008 2:35 AM, Marcus Bauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I wrote tangoGPS, a small but fast gps and mapping software for Openmoko/Neo. It uses openstreetmap.org maps, downloading them on demand and caching them. You can drag the map, zoom in and out and see your current position and track if a gps signal is available. That's really good for an 0.1 version! It is indeed small and fast. I like it! Now if we just had GPRS working so as to download maps on the go... On Feb 4, 2008 6:08 AM, Christopher Earl [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: May i suggest a button to A) stop trails and b) always auto center/follow. Good work though Auto-center could be a checkbox or toggle-button. Sometimes you want to explore the map; other times you want to see where you are continuously, without having to interact with it at all. If you drag the map too far, it should automatically toggle into the off state, so you can explore the map without interference; then you just have to toggle it back on again to jump instantly back to the current position. I also notice a smearing effect that is probably caused by rapidly repainting the same tile during dragging (the tile gets painted into its new position, but the previous position was not erased, nor covered up by another tile, so you see the edges of it, still there). It is distracting and takes a second to be repainted correctly again after the dragging stops. But I'm impressed that the dragging itself is otherwise so smooth. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Pocket Supercomputing?
On Jan 31, 2008 3:31 PM, joerg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: *) So it seems you're talking about X. Don't you? (Well terse is relative) something like X is rather low-level. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Pocket Supercomputing?
On Jan 31, 2008 7:54 AM, Jeffrey Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: http://it.slashdot.org/it/08/01/31/130245.shtml Basically, using a mobile phone as a thin client. This would be great if one could enter a specific Basically that project appears to be about image recognition, for non-Asians to identify stuff at the Asian market. :-) Personally I could use that feature sometimes but we don't have a camera on the phone... But more seriously Accenture appears to be a consulting company so the solution is not likely to be very universal; they would tend to look for specific business customers with specific narrow needs right? But yes the broader idea of using a phone as a thin client is interesting. Nowadays people tend to think the browser is the ultimate platform for that (it has JavaScript and the ability to send and receive chunks of XML over HTTP, and maybe even Flash... whoohoo!) so there you go... thin client. (Google and Apple think that's a satisfying answer.) There is Rebol; if only it were more free it might have had a chance, but then again it's another language so that raises the barrier to entry. I wrote a generic Java thin-client applet at one job a few years ago, but it's not free software unfortunately (again, specific customer with specific needs and they didn't let me release the code, despite its broader applicability) and anyway it was a Java/XML thing... not as optimized as it can be. My goal is to have applications written in arbitrary languages, running on app servers, using a terse UI meta-language to transfer the user-interaction parts of the apps to the thin client (more or less, depending on the processing power/bandwidth tradeoffs on the client side). ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Power Management on Neo1973
On Jan 31, 2008 2:18 PM, Tore Dalaker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: WARNING: Developers only! Please note that the OpenMoko products are not meant for the end user and explicitly marked as Developer preview at this time. Read this wiki article to find more technical details of what you can and cannot expect of these devices. I have been warned! I see that warning as being about the current state of the software mostly. My expectation is that if this sort of show-stopper issue can be fixed in software, then it will be, ASAP (and hopefully before the hardware becomes too outdated). So far it's still just a software problem, right? so I still have some hope that it will be fixed. I hope the official team does too, and I would like to see a priority placed on this power-management stuff. The remaining flaws can mostly be worked around (except for that unfortunate GSM 850 problem, for some people), but not this one. If it can't survive even one or two days on one battery, it's not useful as a phone, and consequently not too many are going to be carrying it around and using it, and consequently the apps being developed will suffer. Are we depending on the internal team to fix it? Is anybody in the community making progress on power management? Is it within reach to do so? Should I try to help? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: OpenMoko, statifier Ermi
On Jan 24, 2008 10:19 PM, Valery Reznic [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Can it be used to fix gllin then? Yes. I packed gllin on my OABI system and Alessando tested it on his EABI. Does it still need some extra libs that are not included with the OM images, or were the extra libs in the gllin package only because of the ABI issue? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: OpenMoko, statifier Ermin
On Jan 24, 2008 4:50 AM, Valery Reznic [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Currently ermine able to pack OABI little endian ARM executables. After packaging those executables can be copied to the EABI (little endian) system and run here. No dependencies. Can it be used to fix gllin then? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: R: CAD files for the case of the Neo will be made available
On Jan 18, 2008 2:47 AM, Michele Manzato [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Having used it for some time, my impression is that Blender is a 3d modeler which is very much focussed on rendering, while other aspects of 3d design are weak (e.g. keeping control over measurement - no quotation lines). The user interface is unconventional, it is based on a coordinated use of keyboard + mouse takes some time to get used to - actually, I was never able to master it properly. If one wants to do serious CAM then one is better off with something else. Or perhaps export from blender e.g. to autocad. But it is perfectly ok to test conceptual designs. That was my impression of blender too; I figured a real CAD package would be better, but there were no good options last time I looked. BRLCAD wasn't completely free - you had to send a physical letter to whatever gov't department that was, to state that you are a US citizen, and promise not to export the software, or something like that. It's good if one can just download and use it now. I will have to try it. I have some experience with Autocad but it was a long time ago (version 10 mostly), and it's so expensive to get a modern version. I'd like to try SolidWorks too, but that's even worse - it's not affordable at all unless you make your living with it. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: CAD files for the case of the Neo will be made available
On Jan 14, 2008 11:14 AM, Jeremiah Flerchinger [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yes, you did say they were going to try and make CAD files available. I'm happy to hear further confirmation back so soon. Hopefully it won't take too much longer to get the files. DXF files should also be fine. I know of several free editors that can import these natively or with a plugin (although not all of them export dxf files). What is your favorite Linux CAD tool for actual 3D work? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: CAD files for the case of the Neo will be made available
On Jan 14, 2008 12:52 PM, Michael Shiloh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I personally look forward to non-traditional materials. I have an obsession with concrete, which I'm trying to figure out how to apply in this situation. A concrete phone? You can't make it anywhere near as thin as plastic can you? I guess you could make a concrete docking station. Anyone have access to useful manufacturing tools? I have friends with CNC mills and lathes, and one with a water jet cutter. I have indirect access to 3D printers. Anything else interesting out there? I've got a CNC micro-mill (Sherline based) but it's not very reliable... it's kindof worn (I got it used) and the screws tend to stick sometimes in some positions, it's slow (more likely to stick if I get the step rate up too fast), and it's not easy to do any significant metal cutting. I run it from a DOS machine because real-time Linux so far has been more trouble to get going, and requires a faster machine to get the same results. I also have it booting from a CF card for reliability, and it can mount Samba shares, so it's easy enough to generate files on Linux and then mill them on DOS. I was just hoping to mill PC boards, but I mostly have not been able to get acceptable results; it's so hard to find small-enough cutters, and the ones that are small enough break too easily. I got a simple pyramid-shaped engraving bit, and it tears the edges of the copper too much, so that fine traces tend not to have continuity when it's done. So fine-pitch surface-mount stuff is not an option right now (but I did make one good board with a 6-pin SOIC on it). Plus my wife won't let me use it when she's at home because it's so loud. All in all it's much less trouble to just send designs somewhere to be made (like Olimex if you're not in a hurry - they are cheap). And what am I going to spend my spare time on anyway? My software projects take a lot of time and aren't getting done fast enough, and I don't have time to read as many books as I'd like because I'm always hacking on something. Also have a decent-sized non-CNC Harbor Freight milling machine. I don't have enough experience yet to be any good with either one. Didn't get around to getting a lathe yet. Can you generate CAM paths with Blender? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Power Management on Neo1973
Now it's about 14 hours later and I'm seeing the same kind of numbers from /sys/devices/platform/s3c2410-i2c/i2c-adapter/i2c-0/0-0008/chgcur: 800-1700. I guess that means the battery is still not fully charged. OK I'll reboot with the current probe installed and take some more measurements: Initial poweron current is 280-290 mA, while the kernel messages are scrolling by. Then it goes up to 300-380 during the splash screen period. Near the end of the boot process it's 420 mA. It didn't finish booting because I need to do it through the boot menu, so I power off. It's now drawing 40mA while being turned off! Disconnect the battery, reconnect, and it's back to negligible current (0.12 mA and falling) but now I cannot power it back on. Plug in the USB and it charges at 40mA. Disconnect USB, I still cannot power it on. OK my Fluke has a resistance of 40 ohms in current mode, so that's why; previous numbers are probably a bit low, because of the resistance, and I will have to use an old analog meter. With that one, on the 500mA range the total resistance across the current probe is 0.6 ohms, that's more like it. 350mA at the boot prompt. 280-400mA while booting (fluctuates) with a couple spikes to 500mA. After booting it stays around 400mA mostly, but I'm not running the UI yet and GSM should be off by default, right? I have to plug in USB so I can start up the UI, then unplug it again... it goes to 500mA (and occasionally pegs the meter) then drops back to 400mA after reaching steady state. Battery meter applet shows about 2/3 or so. I select on the UI to power up GSM, and it doesn't change the current much. Select auto-register... OK it's going to 500mA more often. Try to call the Neo from a land line... it's not ringing or vibrating but current stays around 500mA until I hang up the land line. I verified using libgsmd-tool -m shell that GSM is really on and connected and can receive calls. Looks like the worst case is 500mA but it doesn't stay there all the time. Power off GSM... it goes to maybe 360mA with some spikes to 400-something. Try to connect USB to turn off the backlight... it's misbehaving again. UI is still up but not responding. Current is steady at 420mA when I disconnect USB. I have not checked this old meter for how accurate it is. It's a Simpson 373. Guess I'd better... OK Simpson in series with the Fluke, plug in USB to make it boot, then remove USB, and because the boot failed this time I got to a nice steady state of about 420mA discharge current on the Simpson which reads 406mA on the Fluke. Close enough. I uploaded pictures of my measurement setup here: http://ecloud.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=199 and a video of the process here: http://www.youtube.com/v/HzqzlA8NE2Y but at the moment it's still being processed by YouTube. It is 20 megs and 4.5 minutes, and this is my first time using YouTube so we'll see how long that takes. On Jan 11, 2008 10:47 PM, Shawn Rutledge [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Jan 10, 2008 2:57 PM, Shawn Rutledge [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yeah. I wonder if the battery has deteriorated somehow (from the phone running and being plugged in to USB for days or weeks at a time, and being overcharged? but the power management chip should not overcharge it, right?), or maybe it is not being fully charged. I consider it fully charged when it has been running, and plugged in to USB, overnight. I'm also wondering if my hub may be limiting it to less than 500 mA though. I need to measure the currents... both battery current and USB current, in various states. Well I made a sort of current probe by gluing two pieces of very thin single-sided PCB material back-to-back (the result is thinner than any double-sided stuff I have at home). I see -375mA (current coming out of the battery) as the usual load. But when USB is plugged in, I see between -60 and -80 mA - current is still coming out of the battery. So it's not getting charged; my hub must be limiting the current. Let me plug in directly to my PC... OK now it's +25-+45mA, still fluctuating all over but charging the battery slowly. I checked and it is in fast_cccv mode. So I guess that means the USB current is probably 400mA or less... we have a load of 375mA plus some charge current is going into the battery, but the charge happens at a different voltage, but there is some loss in the charge circuit too. Now I unplug USB for a second and it goes to 450mA load current (coming out of the battery to run the phone). OK 375 was lower than normal for some reason... So far that was running gllin, and logging data points, with the LCD and backlight on and showing the splash screen, but not running the UI. Not sure if GSM is on in that state or not. OK I will try it with a SIM installed, and running the UI... BTW current discharge is about 8-12 mA with the phone turned off. It's dropping a little over time. While the UI starts up the battery
Re: Videos and pictures of Neo FreeRunner at CES: (was: Re: community update, Thursday, January 10, 2008)
On Jan 11, 2008 2:17 PM, Nick Guenther [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The comments are.. not so happy. :/ Yeah it didn't make a good impression to show the boot messages, and a buggy crashing version of the UI. It really doesn't make sense, in that the rest of us are getting better results with the software releases. Oh well. We probably have a year to prove this thing to the world before it gets crushed and forgotten. I would hope there is a sexier follow-on product with even more features. But I imagine there will be increasing amounts of competition too. It's just that at this time, there is no other readily-available Linux phone which has a touchscreen, 640x480 resolution, and GPS. Those are the features which got me interested. (Besides being fully open, of course.) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Power Management on Neo1973
On Jan 10, 2008 2:57 PM, Shawn Rutledge [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Yeah. I wonder if the battery has deteriorated somehow (from the phone running and being plugged in to USB for days or weeks at a time, and being overcharged? but the power management chip should not overcharge it, right?), or maybe it is not being fully charged. I consider it fully charged when it has been running, and plugged in to USB, overnight. I'm also wondering if my hub may be limiting it to less than 500 mA though. I need to measure the currents... both battery current and USB current, in various states. Well I made a sort of current probe by gluing two pieces of very thin single-sided PCB material back-to-back (the result is thinner than any double-sided stuff I have at home). I see -375mA (current coming out of the battery) as the usual load. But when USB is plugged in, I see between -60 and -80 mA - current is still coming out of the battery. So it's not getting charged; my hub must be limiting the current. Let me plug in directly to my PC... OK now it's +25-+45mA, still fluctuating all over but charging the battery slowly. I checked and it is in fast_cccv mode. So I guess that means the USB current is probably 400mA or less... we have a load of 375mA plus some charge current is going into the battery, but the charge happens at a different voltage, but there is some loss in the charge circuit too. Now I unplug USB for a second and it goes to 450mA load current (coming out of the battery to run the phone). OK 375 was lower than normal for some reason... So far that was running gllin, and logging data points, with the LCD and backlight on and showing the splash screen, but not running the UI. Not sure if GSM is on in that state or not. OK I will try it with a SIM installed, and running the UI... BTW current discharge is about 8-12 mA with the phone turned off. It's dropping a little over time. While the UI starts up the battery is still discharging. Now that it's sitting at the main screen the current is about +35-+40mA, charging the battery. Well it's not receiving a call. /sys/devices/platform/s3c2410-i2c/i2c-adapter/i2c-0/0-0008/chgcur fluctuates a lot too, from 693-2026 as I checked several times. Tried unplugging USB again to see the load current (coming out of the battery when it's not charging); that is still 450mA. But when I plug it back in, USB is misbehaving: usb 2-1.1: khubd timed out on ep0in len=0/64 usb 2-1.1: khubd timed out on ep0in len=0/64 usb 2-1.1: device descriptor read/64, error -110 usb 2-1.1: khubd timed out on ep0in len=0/64 and the battery current is -350mA (because it's taking 100mA from USB by default, right). ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Power Management on Neo1973
Well what's the best uptime on battery that has been seen so far, with unmodified phones and with an existing software image? I see less than 20 minutes when I'm trying to just use it as a GPS (logging track points). GSM talk time ought to even be longer than that, but this is without being connected - just sitting there idle. And as others have observed, if it is in more of a standby state, you still get mere hours at best, right? 5 days seems wildly optimistic to me, but if it's achieved it would be better than the average smart phone (all OS's included). ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Power Management on Neo1973
On Jan 10, 2008 2:40 PM, Tim Niemeyer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: with actual battery you need to minimize the power consumption to 10mA for 5h lifetime! It's supposed to be a 1200mAH battery, so 1200/5 is 240mA, to get a 5 hour lifetime, right? When i was GPS logging for OSM (Navit with map input from it's own output, was very nice), neo runs easily several hours! That's more like it. For me something is definitely wrong then. Today, i played a bit with power measurement and standby. What is your method of measuring the current? I was thinking of cutting a strip of thin, double-sided PC board material and sticking it between one battery contact and the corresponding phone contact, then connect a current meter between the two planes of that strip. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Case Schematics
On Dec 31, 2007 1:02 PM, Michael Shiloh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: We have been discussing this internally, and so far I have met no objection to the principle of releasing this information. There is a That's good news. question of what form it should take, and of course there is always the issue of having to take the time to do this, while delaying something else. I'm not sure what form our 3D CAD files are in. In the worst case, I suppose I could get the printouts as PDF documents. I think it would be best to just release whatever CAD format they happen to be in (the originals). The community can probably find a way to convert them. Otherwise if the CAD package has DXF export maybe that would also not take much time. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: What to use while waiting of v2?
On Dec 17, 2007 1:09 AM, Ben Burdette [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What about a Palm III? I just looked on ebay and saw one for 5$. They are dead reliable and sync issues should be no problem on mac or linux. If you just need something to get by with until moko comes out, you could do worse. If you get beyond just contacts, notes, to do, and calendar, there are tons of applications out there to choose from. I agree. Palm III really set the standard for ease of use in many ways - instant-on, hardly ever crashes, one pair of AAA's last for weeks. And the sync software for Linux works well. Personally I don't carry one anymore, ever since I started carrying a cell phone, and I have had Linux phones for a while now. But you could get a Treo, or one of those old Kyocera Palm phones on ebay, if you also want phone functionality. But I don't have experience with them. The Motorola A1200 isn't bad, it's what I use now, but there's hardly any add-on software for it, and for Palm there is a lot. But the A1200 will probably be running an open Linux distro eventually (a few people have already put OpenMoko on it). ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
startup scripts for GPS was Re: GPS driver for GTA01 available
I modified /home/root/gllin/gllin like this: lib/ld-linux.so.2 --library-path /home/root/gllin/lib:/home/root/gllin/usr/lib /home/root/gllin/gllin.real -periodic 1 echo $! /var/run/gllin.pid then it's possible to use start-stop-daemon to stop it. Could this change be applied to the ipkg? I'll attach my modified /etc/init.d/gpsd which starts up gllin, then gpsd, then gpxlogger (to capture a track), and shuts them down too. But they'd have to be separate scripts because of the separate ipkg's of course. gpsd Description: Binary data ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: SMS is required + fix for battery drained isse (was: 2007.11 snapshot available)
On Dec 5, 2007 2:25 AM, Thomas Wood [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The latest snapshot includes the first alpha version of the Messages application which allows you to send and receive SMS messages. That's good news! I can confirm that GTA02 fixes this - you do not even need a battery in the device to use it if the USB cable is connected. Also good news! I've heard that the Nokia DT-14 charges the Neo battery about 75%, which should be enough to revive them. Maybe one of these would also work? http://cgi.ebay.com/BL-4C-Desktop-Battery-Charger-Nokia-6300-6101-6131-6136_W0QQitemZ320185839242QQihZ011QQcategoryZ20365QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: SMS is required + fix for battery drained isse
On Dec 5, 2007 12:18 AM, flexd [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Richard Reichenbacher wrote: Shawn Rutledge wrote: On Dec 4, 2007 5:45 PM, Bernhard Kaindl [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Maybe it is enough for the US, but if you define the average European mobile phone user a part of mass, then you are wrong and yes, text text messaging (SMS) is an absolute requirement for European mobile Plenty of people use SMS in the US too, especially teenagers. More would use it if certain GSM carriers didn't charge extra for each individual message, both sending and receiving (shame on you TMobile in this regard). I have T-Mobile and I pay $10 a month for unlimited text and mms. Not all that expensive. I pay less than 0.12478098 U.S. dollars per SMS message. And that's with a crappy expensive one here in norway (Cash caller card thingy, pay $45 use it all to call/send, but sort of pricey calling). What are T-mobiles prices per sms? $0.10 to send and $0.01 to receive. The point is, SMS costs them next to nothing - it's so little data. A voice call is much more data-intensive and requires real-time performance. Yet they give us hundreds of minutes of voice usage (which my wife and I never use even half of) for one price and then charge extra for tiny little SMS packets. If you are a teenager sending dozens of SMS's per day it adds up. And unlimited GPRS (aka TZones) is $5.95, so with the Neo (someday) I'd rather use jabber. There could be a jabber server which acts as an SMS gateway, in case you try to send a message to someone who's not connected to jabber. Then at least you don't pay the fee to send the message, and the recipient phone doesn't pay to receive either as long as it is also connected. But I wonder how they would react if some phones started staying connected to GPRS all the time (but not necessarily using much bandwidth). I remember reading once that somebody had implemented TCP over SMS, in case you have the opposite problem. :-) (unlimited SMS and expensive GPRS) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Development env *on* the neo?
On Dec 4, 2007 2:56 PM, Lars Hallberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But You don't want to build more than necessary. I have seen gcc, g++, make and stuff available for ipkg - but are there any dev versions of the libs available? And would it be possible to have stripped libs on the neo and install dev libs (and dev env) on the memory card? Yes all the ipkg's you need exist, but there isn't enough flash to install them all. What I did is reformat a MicroSD card to ext2, cp -a /usr to the card, then modify /etc/fstab to automatically mount the card on /usr at boot. Then install task-base-dev and whatever else you need. The regular image is not modified much (since nearly all the new files are installed under /usr), so you can still run without that card, but if you have it mounted you have all the tools. (I suppose it could also be done with unionfs, that would save some space.) And if you reflash your phone you just need to recopy /usr to the card (some stuff will be overwritten, but no need to re-install all the dev packages if they have not changed) and make the modification to fstab again. I also have /usr/root as a second home directory so there is some space for source trees. I was able to compile Chicken Scheme that way, right on the phone (it took hours), and am working (slowly) on my Display Scheme GUI. Chicken has a Scheme-to-C compiler, so you need gcc to get compiled binaries, and doing that with a cross compiler is even more trouble than cross-compiling usually is; which is why I wanted to do it on the phone. But somebody else managed to cross-compile Chicken plus some extensions... someday if nobody else gets around to it, I will try to generate the bitbake recipes for that. I managed to compile nvi (because the busybox vi kinda sucks and vim is kinda big). I guess in theory you could try emacs if you're into that. :-) I tried to get an svn client on the phone but did not succeed. That would be really useful... ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: SMS is required + fix for battery drained isse (was: 2007.11 snapshot available)
On Dec 4, 2007 5:45 PM, Bernhard Kaindl [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Maybe it is enough for the US, but if you define the average European mobile phone user a part of mass, then you are wrong and yes, text text messaging (SMS) is an absolute requirement for European mobile Plenty of people use SMS in the US too, especially teenagers. More would use it if certain GSM carriers didn't charge extra for each individual message, both sending and receiving (shame on you TMobile in this regard). Besides, the SD card is not very practical to use if you do not have a way to exchange from the outide without hasse (means: whithout having to remove the back cover, battery, sim card and have both SIM and SD mounted in this fragile way). So I agree: Mass Storage mode for the I agree wholeheartedly but if we're talking about hardware mods, I could come up with quite a laundry list: - slide-in SIM slot (like A1200) rather than any of the kind with flip-over covers; or one that's accessible from outside, like an SD card - SD slot accessible from outside is mandatory (maybe even full-size SD if there could be space - like E680i) - make it as slim as possible (half as thick? well I'm dreaming) but a little wider is OK if necessary (bigger screen is fine too) - get rid of that hanger hole - make the touchscreen flush with the front, not recessed - stylus storage - multi-touch - quad-band - two buttons on the front for call/answer (green) and hangup/back-to-main-menu (red), backlit - NFC radio (near-field communications) - wifi (but that's planned) - sane GPS chip (but that's planned) - antenna jacks for the radios (WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS) - work with existing USB charger cables (detect the resistors in them and go to 500mA) The Motorola A780 has the best slot for a MicroSD that I've ever seen on any device. It acts just like a regular full-size SD slot - push the card in to install, and push again to make it pop back out. It pops out far enough that you can easily grab it. And the slot is accessible without removing the back cover (although there is a little rubber cover over that area, to keep it clean presumably). The SIM slot could potentially be built like that too. I guess the goal hasn't been sexy hardware, just hacker-friendly, right? But before being sexy it could at least have really excellent usability. Either the 500mA charging has to be available at all times (also when the battery is is completely empty), or a charger which is able to instatanously power-on the Neo so that there is no interruption in phone use when the battery is completely drained must be provided. At least, if everyone insists that it's dangerous to draw 500mA without asking (even though so many devices do just that), we could at least have an easily accessible menu to turn on the 500mA charging (but it's a pain to do that every time you plug in to charge). Or detect the resistors embedded in USB charger cables. Or FIC could sell chargers which are smart enough to answer when the Neo tries to ask for 500mA (both AC kind and 12V kind). A desktop charger would be nice (but I assume some existing Nokia ones from ebay will work? I haven't tried yet) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Development env *on* the neo?
On Dec 4, 2007 7:13 PM, Lars Hallberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks, exactly what I was hoping for. Is all in the default repository's or did You have to hunt it down? Just do ipkg install like usual (assuming you have set things up so that the phone has 'net access, like via NAT over USB) My plan was to mount the sd card as /dev and use 'ipkg -d /dev' to install all dev related. /dev has a reserved meaning (device nodes). But I'm not sure about all needed to tie it all up (PATH, lsconfig etc). Maybe ipkg -d takes care of some of the work for you, but I haven't tried lately (seems like something was not quite right when I tried it on the zaurus a while back). ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: need someone to develop this....
On Dec 3, 2007 10:51 AM, Ortwin Regel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: An interesting (though probably not as useful and secure) variation could be to stack the phones on top of each other and have one phone send a vibration pattern to the other. One could even exchange data that way at very very low speeds... B) Via Morse code it could exchange data with the user that way, too. :-) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Near-field comms (was Re: need someone to develop this....)
On Nov 30, 2007 1:34 PM, Michael Shiloh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: If Bob (or Alice) hands his (or her) phone to the other, then if both phones are shaken in the same hand, the acceleration pattern might provide an extremely unique yet similar signature, not unlike exchanging an encryption key. So if you want to establish a trusted relationship with another Neo user, the two phones are shaken together until the software indicates that you have generated a complex enough pattern that has been recognized on the other. This is the sort of thing that NFC (near-field communication) was supposed to make possible, except without the shaking... you just bring the phones near enough, or touching, so that the range-limited RF conversation can occur, and you could have instant pairing. And from what I've read, the radio is the same for NFC as for RFID. So a phone equipped with such a radio can be useful for other things too: - the privacy nuts worried about having RFID tags in everything can scan products and detect them - read RFID sensors (some day when such things exist) - scan something in the store and look up the reviews and price comparisons (since they will replace barcodes soon) - use an RFID token (such as a smart card) for security authorization (such as for a web site you are browsing on the phone, or an SSH session) - the phone could emulate an RFID tag (e.g. the phone could act as a security token in lieu of some other smart card) - small-value money transactions. In Japan, I read that NFC phones can already be used to purchase a soda, or pay for subway fare right at the turnstile. Just touch the phone to the active spot on the turnstile and walk through. Maybe the SIM's hardware could be used to execute a secure challenge/response sequence to authenticate the user, and the rest of the transaction is a service to be provided somewhere else. It would be awesome if FIC could include an NFC/RFID radio in some future generation of phone. In the meantime the shake is cool to implement authentication with the existing Neo, but it depends on making the idea popular enough so that pairing with other devices becomes possible. BT headsets probably don't have acceleration sensors so far... but at least for phone-to-phone pairing it sounds like something Nokia might do. Somebody could present the idea at a conference or two and see who else adopts it. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GPS driver for GTA01 available
On Nov 29, 2007 4:58 PM, Shawn Rutledge [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've already tested it, and (subject to my limited ability to read raw NMEA) it works. Tonight I will probably spend some more time testing with some sort of GUI app. It does seem to stop working sometimes, after running for a while. The processes (gllin and gpsd) are still running but no more NMEA data comes out (which I check by running gpspipe -r). Late last night after I got pyroute working I went for a walk down the street to see if the red dot would move, and it went a little nuts for a while (had me traveling very fast to a point several blocks away) then stopped. When I got back home I reconnected via ssh and did gpspipe -r and it was not emitting any more data. The same thing happened this morning; I powered up the phone (but did not start pyroute), watched it get a fix, had breakfast, came back and gpspipe -r was not emitting any more data. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GPS driver for GTA01 available
On Nov 29, 2007 1:25 PM, Michael Shiloh [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thanks to a tremendous amount of hard work by many people, we have ready a release of gllin, the GPS drives. Here is how you can get it: This is really great news! Thanks to everyone who helped to make it possible. I've already tested it, and (subject to my limited ability to read raw NMEA) it works. Tonight I will probably spend some more time testing with some sort of GUI app. Next it would be nice to have a version with the new ABI, so that not so much stuff has to be packaged with it (and loaded into RAM too). Hopefully the legal negotiations will be continued to make that possible as well (I'm assuming that's still the holdup?) ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: GPS driver for GTA01 available
On Nov 29, 2007 5:18 PM, Michael 'Mickey' Lauer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think I could release that, but be aware that it doesn't work. (otherwise we would never had to release the wrapper-oabi one). If you're into low-level debugging arbitrary binaries, you could help us getting it fixed. So the problem is they won't give you the source code to build a new one, even under NDA? Or build it for you using the current compiler/libs/etc? What if you give them a ready-to-go Linux image with a precompiled OE tree so they can compile it for you? ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Sean's impact being felt...
I was wondering if Apple negotiated something... they have an exclusive with Cingular for the current iPhone but maybe it doesn't prevent them from also selling a different phone for CDMA. And maybe they just don't like being exclusive, and wanted to have control of their own marketing/branding, so they insisted on the CDMA phone being unlocked. Not that that would require Verizon to be an open network necessarily, but it could be related somehow... Oh and the Amazon Kindle is on the CDMA network too. Hmmm. Apparently CDMA can be very low-power, somehow. Anyway it seems to be a big change; always GSM has been the more open network just because you can put your SIM in any compliant phone without asking first, whereas to switch a different phone onto your Verizon account, you have to go through an activation process. Even still, how could that change? They might just be less picky about which phones they will activate, but activation would still have to occur. The talk about virtualizing SIMs is kindof ironic in that the existence of the SIM card, and the fact that GSM is a global standard, has been a force pushing towards openness of phones. If every network required activation, it would be very hard for the OpenMoko project to exist. Personally I switched a couple years ago after I realized what a mistake it was to be on Verizon, because GSM is where the action is. Now that may change, and EVDO is so attractive after all... Anybody working on porting Linux to any existing CDMA phones? Like the Moto Q maybe? Speaking of the Kindle, another fun project would be to create a combination phone/ebook reader, with a large (roll-up?) eInk display. But there is such a huge price gap between the eInk developer kits and the actual devices; they don't make it very easy to get started. It would be much cheaper to hack an ebook than to build a new one. On Nov 28, 2007 10:22 AM, William Weinberg [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That's terrific news, but short term, OpenMoko and most other open efforts have limited access to the Verizon network, which is 100% CDMA. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: SIM Card Copy
On Nov 26, 2007 10:49 AM, Cailan Halliday [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I just had an idea that I got from a couple of devices, how about a virtual SIM card? Is it possible to make an ISO of a SIM card and store it in the Neo to be, for lack of a better word, booted from? I've seen devices like these: http://www.thetravelinsider.com/phones/simsaver.htm http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/cellphone/9ca8/ There are also cheap USB SIM readers, and I got the impression that they could write to the card as well. So I got one on ebay. The software that came with it (only for Windows) could only read the card. I wish there was a Linux alternative, especially one that can also write the contacts to the SIM. (But since the Neo itself could do that, I guess it's no longer necessary.) Anyway the problem is not just the ability to copy some info from one SIM to another, but the fact that the SIM has an uncopyable unique serial number and maybe a hardware crypto engine (?). And the code for the GSM radio is not open-source. So there is no way to fake the SIM card. (This was meant to be a feature.) But it might be possible to emulate a SIM card in hardware, in such a way that different images could be used at different times; I don't know of any attempts to do that, but it seems like it should be possible. Then again, maybe there is a truly private key that cannot be read at all, but can only decrypt data that has been encrypted with the corresponding public key. Or you could try one of the SIM card duplexers that are sold (I never did... not sure how well they work). Those are meant for people who travel a lot, to be able to switch to a different SIM without physically swapping it out each time. If the point is to clone a SIM card, I'm sure that would be considered fraudulent, and might play havoc with the network too if they see the same phone signing on to a couple different cell sites. ___ OpenMoko community mailing list community@lists.openmoko.org http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
