David wrote regarding the Pirelli phone: > But then M says that the undocumented wifi chip will be a show stopper > - what a pity!
Actually the undocumented camera chip (SPCA552E) is an even bigger problem than the undocumented WLAN chips. So far I haven't run into any total show-stoppers: we *can* run our own fw currently on the Pirelli without the UI, with control via AT commands over RVTMUX over USB-serial, and if someone were to add an LCD driver based on OsmocomBB's reverse eng and implement a 128x128 pixel UI, it will probably work as an untethered phone. But: 1) We don't know if all of those undocumented chips which we leave untouched will cause a problem or not - who knows, maybe they are going to draw power and kill the battery unless the fw does the right magic to put them into sleep or powered-off mode, magic which we lack. 2) We don't know how to control the loudspeaker driver and ringtone generator chip: we do have some docs and driver code for the W56940 chip itself, but its circuit connections on the Pirelli have not been fully reversed. I stopped my investigation in that direction when I traced its reset line and found that it is driven by the undocumented camera chip. Someone else could try ignoring the reset line, trace out the rest of W56940's control signal connections to figure out how to address it, try talking to this chip ignoring the reset issue and see if it works, but it is not something that I am personally willing to invest my time and energy into. In our current state with no ability to control that W56940 chip, we cannot make the phone ring or turn on the hands-free loudspeaker. We can make the phone vibrate (I accidentally found that their vibrator is hooked up in the place of the piezo buzzer), but would you want a vibrate-only phone with no ringing ability? And if we are unable to turn on the hands-free loudspeaker, that destroys the primary value of this phone over the competition in my view. > Glad to hear that the dev board has been so successful. For those who desire a FreeCalypso end user phone (that includes me), the right approach is to build on this success and take further steps toward our own Libre Dumbphone hardware product. The remaining FCDEV3B bring-up steps which I am still working on (finishing the automated calibration software, debugging the minor miscellaneous hardware problems we are having, and exercising the analog audio circuits) are needed not only for the FCDEV3B itself, but also for any future FC hardware products derived from it, hence these steps are necessary for the end user phone product as well. As I wrote earlier, I already have a plan in mind for the next development board after the FCDEV3B, which will be a handset motherboard prototype (HSMBP). Add a 176x220 pixel color LCD (even bigger than Pirelli's, and will allow us to use TI's 176x220 pixel prototype UI as our starting point), a keypad and a few minor tweaks, and we'll have a dumbphone motherboard no worse than the Pirelli in terms of features, but fully libre without those undocumented chips. And I have already proven that we can generate pleasant-sounding ringtone melodies using the Calypso DSP alone, with just a dumb loudspeaker amplifier like on the FCDEV3B, without using a MIDI player chip like in the Pirelli or in Mot C155/156 - see my doc/Melody_E1 article in the freecalypso-tools repository. Hasta la Victoria, Siempre, Mychaela aka The Mother _______________________________________________ Community mailing list Community@freecalypso.org https://www.freecalypso.org/mailman/listinfo/community