On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 9:06 AM, nick luigi eusebio <[email protected]> wrote: > This seems to be more complicated than expected but please make this happen. > This is one of the things I considered when I bought my bq E5 instead of > MX4.
Patches are very welcome :) I'm happy to shepherd all changes through. Cheers, Thomas > Too bad for me, FM Radio still isn't working and Podbird development seems > to be stagnant right now and > the bug on the podcast I'm listening to isn't fixed yet :( > > ________________________________ > From: Thomas Voß <[email protected]> > To: sturmflut <[email protected]> > Cc: ubuntu-phone <[email protected]> > Sent: Thursday, December 3, 2015 8:32 AM > Subject: Re: [Ubuntu-phone] FM Radio info collection > > On Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 1:36 AM, sturmflut <[email protected]> wrote: >> Dear list, >> >> I've been looking at the necessary pieces for FM radio support, and I >> hope somebody can correct me, but it looks more complicated than I >> expected. >> > > We discussed this topic lengthily on the list some time ago :) It's > not like we don't want to > support FM radio, but the lack of a common Android HAL for FM radio > access would force us to > maintain an FM radio abstraction ourselves (more on that below). In > addition, most of the device-specific > radio apps require elevated privileges to run as they directly access > the FM radio HW (not multiplexed by a system service). > >> For some reason Android doesn't have an FM radio API and leaves it up to >> the manufacturers to come up with something. I've looked at several >> devices, among them the bq Aquaris E4.5, and every SoC manufacturer >> seems to have a different opinion on how to do it. >> >> Some ship no FM radio at all. >> >> Some seem to ship drivers for the Linux V4L subsystem. >> >> MediaTek (Aquaris E4.5 and E5) decided to implement custom kernel >> drivers with a custom character device (/dev/fm) and custom ioctl >> commands. There seem to be userspace libraries (libfm*) including a JNI >> wrapper in /system/lib of the Android container on our Ubuntu phones. >> >> Because there is no standard API, there are no generic FM radio apps for >> Android, and pretty much every manufacturer ships a custom app for his >> own SoC(s) and/or device(s). >> >> >> I'll try to come up with a piece of C code for the command line that can >> at least initialize and tune the FM radio on the Aquaris E4.5 and E5. >> The long-term goal could be to turn this into plugins for an extended >> media-hub. >> > > If you are interested in helping to enable the functionality, the > correct chain for integrating the feature would be: > > [1.] Add a (potentially limited) API to lp:platform-api, that exposes > a simple common C interface to the Ubuntu side. > [2.] Provide an implementation of the API in platform-api/android (see > http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~phablet-team/platform-api/trunk/files/head:/android/) > [2.1] Provide a dummy fallback implementation for devices that do not > support FM radio of any kind. > [3.] Expose the respective hardware functionality to media-hub. > Multiple ways are possible, but we would need to significantly adjust > the interfaces > to support fm radio semantics (switching stations, rds, automatic scans > etc.) > [4.] Adjust Qt's radio abstraction and come up with a Ubuntu Touch > specific backend implementation, that either: > [4.1] Leverages the API in [1.] directly (would require any app to > have special privileges in accessing the system). > [4.2] Leverages the API in [3.] (which is the clean way of > integration FM radio support). > > For starters, [1.], [2.], [2.1] and [4.1] should be good enough to get > started. > > Cheers, > > Thomas > > >> >> cheers, >> Simon >> >> -- >> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-phone >> Post to : [email protected] >> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-phone >> More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > > -- > Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-phone > Post to : [email protected] > Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-phone > More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp > > -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-phone Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-phone More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
