Re: GSoC Interest

[Mark Schneider]

On Tue, Mar 18, 2008 at 12:44 PM, Mark Schneider [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Dear Openmoko Community,
snip

  Since most of my experience is in hardware and low level software
  (device drivers and kernel hacking), I think my skills would be best
  used there, however, I would not be apposed to working in higher level
  middleware.

  Initially, I had wanted to write an open source device driver for the
  GPS device in the Neo1973 that would provide a standard NMEA output
  which gpsd could interpret.  However, I see that the Freerunner will
  be getting a new GPS device, so this may no longer be necessary.

  Other ideas that I saw on the GSoC wiki page that I thought might be
  of interest:
  Ad hoc communication via Bluetooth/WLAN
  Cooperative Differential GPS
  Accelerometer Gestures

  My willingness to work on the project is not conditional on whether my
  application gets accepted.  I would like to work regardless of Google
  supporting me.

  If there are any other projects that you think would be good, please
  let me know.  I would like to discuss this more before I submit my
  application.  Email works well, or you can occasionally find me on
  #openmoko under the handle 'queueRAM'.

  Regards,
  Mark Schneider

Dear Openmoko Community,

Thank you to those who have responded to my questions.  After some
more thought, I would like to propose another idea for a project.  I
have seen that the Neo1973 takes a while to boot (~1.5-2 minutes).  I
would like to see if there are opportunities to speed up the boot
process.  I have noticed that there has been some previous work done
by Alessandro to profiling the boot process with bootcharts [1].  My
idea is to start with the kernel, to see where in the kernel there
might be room for improvement and then continue into the boot process
by using Alessandro's bootcharts work as a reference and coming up
with other ways to measure the processes that consume the most time
and try to work with them to improve their speed.  Before submitting
this in a GSoC application, i wanted to throw this idea out there in
case anyone had any thoughts on the matter and to make sure this work
hadn't already been done.

Thanks,
Mark

[1] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Bootcharts

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GSoC Interest

[Mark Schneider]

Dear Openmoko Community,

On Monday, I saw that the Openmoko mentoring application was accepted
by the Google Summer of Code program.  I am considering applying as a
student for the 2008 Google Summer of Code to work on the Openmoko
project.  I have read over the mailing lists and looked at the wiki
page for GSoC [1], and feel that I would make a good candidate for
working on some of the projects.  The question I would like to throw
out there, is which project does the community think is most
desirable, and that someone would be willing to mentor me on?

First, I would like to formally introduce myself and tell you a little
bit about my background.  My name is Mark Schneider and I live in
Iowa, USA.  I have been interested in the project for some time now,
and was finally able to save up enough money to buy a Neo1973 this
past winter.  I have been using desktop Linux for about 7 years, and
embedded (Denx [2], not OpenEmbedded) Linux and U-Boot for 2 years.  I
have a BS in Computer Engineering from the University of
Wisconsin-Madison and am currently attending Iowa State University
pursuing my masters.  I have worked in embedded field for 2 years,
which is where I have gained most of my experience with embedded Linux
and U-Boot on the PPC platform.  I would like to leverage my past
experience and current schooling to help the Openmoko platform
stabilize.

Since most of my experience is in hardware and low level software
(device drivers and kernel hacking), I think my skills would be best
used there, however, I would not be apposed to working in higher level
middleware.

Initially, I had wanted to write an open source device driver for the
GPS device in the Neo1973 that would provide a standard NMEA output
which gpsd could interpret.  However, I see that the Freerunner will
be getting a new GPS device, so this may no longer be necessary.

Other ideas that I saw on the GSoC wiki page that I thought might be
of interest:
Ad hoc communication via Bluetooth/WLAN
Cooperative Differential GPS
Accelerometer Gestures

My willingness to work on the project is not conditional on whether my
application gets accepted.  I would like to work regardless of Google
supporting me.

If there are any other projects that you think would be good, please
let me know.  I would like to discuss this more before I submit my
application.  Email works well, or you can occasionally find me on
#openmoko under the handle 'queueRAM'.

Regards,
Mark Schneider

[1] http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2008
[2] http://www.denx.de/wiki/DULG/ELDK

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