Re: Complexity of emergency-only baseband firmware development
>Our community contributor David Matthews can probably help you with Freerunner issues, including firmware flashing, but I can absolutely assure you that you WILL NOT be able to see any observable differences between Openmoko's official firmware and FreeCalypso Magnetite: if someone were to give you a used Freerunner without telling you what firmware version it runs, you won't be able to determine it behaviorally, only by looking at the ID strings returned by the modem. I'll jump in here and confirm that the magnetite release works exactly as the last baseband version from open moko (OM 11 I think) I'd certainly help with flashing issues if any - probably not as in my experience the freecalypso tools just work and I already wrote some howtos which I think are at least tolerably clear. The real problem with the freerunner as a libre phone is as Mychaela says, it is neither fish nor meat - way more complex and power hungry than a dumb phone and way behind the capabilities of even a 5 year old Samsung with a replacement firmware. If you did want to pick up the baton with developing the linux side (or baseband!) of the freerunner, I'd would be interested, but I doubt that I'd be able to help much apart from testing. For the linux side, the last releases of Qtmoko would probably be the best starting point, but even these suffered from what I understand to be a faulty kernel - expect to find your phone has crashed at least once a day, even if you reboot it regularly. This distribution was pretty much a one man effort, by a very helpful guy - you might be able to stimulate him to take an interest again. -- David Matthews da...@matthews.pm ___ Community mailing list Community@freecalypso.org https://www.freecalypso.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Complexity of emergency-only baseband firmware development
Hi Denver, > It would be great if I could find some existing hardware instead of building > my own. The Neo FreeRunner seems like a good candidate given what you said > later (more on that below). > [...] > I realize that building a phone is a substantial undertaking so I'd like to > avoid that if possible. Yes, building your own phone hw of any kind is very very hard, not only in the actual manufacturing phase, but also in creating the design to be manufactured. The process can be somewhat simplified by skipping the design and making a 100% verbatim clone of a hw product that was made by someone else in the past - see below for my thoughts on doing just this with Openmoko's Neo. > I do have a Neo FreeRunner so perhaps that should be my first goal: to run > FC Magnetite and see how well it works for me. Our community contributor David Matthews can probably help you with Freerunner issues, including firmware flashing, but I can absolutely assure you that you WILL NOT be able to see any observable differences between Openmoko's official firmware and FreeCalypso Magnetite: if someone were to give you a used Freerunner without telling you what firmware version it runs, you won't be able to determine it behaviorally, only by looking at the ID strings returned by the modem. > > Our Magnetite firmware has not been fully deblobbed yet, but: > > > > * We have a clear roadmap toward a fully deblobbed version; > > Does it seem like a substantial amount of work? > Or is there not much left now? The latter - not much work left, but I need newly made FreeCalypso hardware with an active manufacturing and marketing company behind it in order to make the work meaningful. > Would it not still offer wifi support? If so, then it seems to be a good > candidate for my use case. If you understand WiFi and know how to use it, then yes, for your use case the Freerunner does offer a practical advantage over a dumbphone. My analysis of the FR having no advantage over a dumbphone is from the perspective of someone who has no use for WiFi on a phone. > And I would be unlikely to find a dumbphone that would do wifi anyway. Actually the Pirelli DP-L10 (which I currently use as my everyday personal phone with the WiFi disabled) does just this, but its WiFi VoIP hardware is completely undocumented, hence it's a no-go for FOSS. > Of course, as you said, the community is mostly gone at this point. Bringing > that back would be a challenge, but if I was able to work on the FreeRunner > software full-time for a while, perhaps I could make that happen. Yes, the effectively-dissolved status of the community is one of the two killer problems with the Freerunner. The other killer problem is the no-longer-made status of the hardware, reduced to an extremely scarce set of second-hand units. The two problems feed each other - I don't see how the community can be rebuilt without a new company that actively manufactures *and markets* new Freerunner units that are verbatim-identical to Openmoko-made ones, but it is a two-way street: anyone who steps up into the role of the new Freerunner manufacturer will need the help of an active software developer and user community in order to succeed. Now here is something I need to emphasize: restarting new production of GTA02 (Neo Freerunner) units verbatim-identical to Openmoko-made ones *is possible*, and if someone were to fund it, *I can do it*. The complete design files for the GTA02 are published, and all of the essential components that would be needed for a Freerunner clone including the original LCD+touchscreen module can still be obtained in volume. However, such a venture would involve a quite substantial cost: * If I were to do it, I would need about 10 kUSD upfront to start phase 1: to start acquiring all of the components needed for making a new GTA02 motherboard, and once all of these components have been acquired, produce the first experimental batch of these new GTA02 motherboards in exactly the same manner as what we are currently doing for the FCDEV3B. * The WiFi add-on, the Bluetooth add-on and the plastic case will be separate steps with separate unknown costs after we have recreated the base motherboard. * My guesstimate for the total cost when it's all said and done is somewhere between 50 and 100 kUSD. Now if anyone would like to actually pursue what I just outlined, let's wait another couple of weeks first to see how our FCDEV3B pans out. Everything we are doing on the FCDEV3B will also be required for a Freerunner clone or for a SIM900-like packaged modem module or for any other kind of end product we can come up with, and since the FCDEV3B is now only 2-3 weeks away from the moment of truth, I believe that we should prove it working first before we start thinking about what we should do next. To the funding people who are reading this list: once we get our current FCDEV3B built and working, we shall come to a crossroads, and we'll have a
Re: Complexity of emergency-only baseband firmware development
On Fri, Mar 10, 2017 at 11:49:53AM -0800, Mychaela Falconia wrote: > > Eventually > > I would like to be able to bundle these tools with a phone that runs only > > free software. > > A phone that runs only free software? What kind of phone would it be > hardware-wise: do you plan on building your own hw, or are you trying > to repurpose/reprogram some existing phone hw units? It would be great if I could find some existing hardware instead of building my own. The Neo FreeRunner seems like a good candidate given what you said later (more on that below). > Not just to Denver but to everyone: please remember that with *ANY* > libre or FOSS phone goal, the software is the easy part; the hard part > is the hardware. I've created (rather unsophisticated) hardware in the past (see http://ossguy.com/ss_usb/ ). I realize that building a phone is a substantial undertaking so I'd like to avoid that if possible. > The *only* hardware feature which can be omitted if you wish to limit > cell functionality to emergency calls only is the SIM socket. The SIM > socket I use on the FCDEV3B costs $2.12 in quantity 1 at Digi-Key (or > down to $1.38 per piece when buying 1000-piece reels), and my opinion > is that if you omit the SIM socket on your phone in order to > *artificially* restrict its cellular capabilities to emergency calls > only, you are being antisocial by artificially hobbling your product > to suit your particular prejudices. I would be fine with retaining the SIM socket in whichever solution I eventually end up using. > > My understanding from being on the list for a while is that the current > > baseband firmware works for some basic use cases on existing phones, > > Not just for "some basic use cases", but 100% of standard commercial > GSM+GPRS modem functionality: My apologies. > if you have a Neo Freerunner made by > Openmoko, the Calypso GSM+GPRS modem included in that product provided > full commercial quality implementation of all standard GSM and GPRS > functionality with the official firmware those units shipped with, and > this full functionality is retained without any degradation if you > replace their original proprietary firmware with FC Magnetite. I do have a Neo FreeRunner so perhaps that should be my first goal: to run FC Magnetite and see how well it works for me. > Our Magnetite firmware has not been fully deblobbed yet, but: > > * We have a clear roadmap toward a fully deblobbed version; Does it seem like a substantial amount of work? Or is there not much left now? > 1: Neo Freerunner by Openmoko. This hw is where the original >FreeCalypso project started, and has the best support. But the >Freerunner is not a bare modem or a dumbphone, it also has a Linux >application processor that requires very complex software to make >it usable as a phone, and the community that once maintained this >complex sw is now gone. Without an active community of developers >to maintain that Linux AP software, the Freerunner makes a very >poor choice of phone: it is too complex and too power-hungry to >serve as a dumbphone substitute, yet it does not really offer >anything of practical value that a proper dumbphone can't do, thus >it is neither here nor there - "neither fish not meat" as the >Russian saying goes. Would it not still offer wifi support? If so, then it seems to be a good candidate for my use case. And I would be unlikely to find a dumbphone that would do wifi anyway. Of course, as you said, the community is mostly gone at this point. Bringing that back would be a challenge, but if I was able to work on the FreeRunner software full-time for a while, perhaps I could make that happen. > if the people who have funded > the current FCDEV3B effort wish to continue further in this direction, > we can produce a FreeCalypso modem in a packaged form factor similar > to SIM900 etc, and the liberated firmware for this mode of operation > is already here and 100% functional. That would be an excellent way forward if for some reason the FreeRunner is not suitable. > > So I'd be curious to know if the emergency-only use case is substantially > > easier to develop for, or if it's roughly the same complexity as developing > > for the all-purpose use case, or somewhere in between. [...] > In terms of software, the emergency-only use case is more complex > because you would have to do extra work to remove perfectly good and > working code for non-emergency functionality. Thanks for clarifying that. I have no intention of spending time removing such functionality - it seems fine to leave it in and retain the SIM card slot as discussed. > I hope my answers clarify things for you a little. They certainly do! Thank-you very much. Denver http://soprani.ca/ ___ Community mailing list Community@freecalypso.org https://www.freecalypso.org/mailman/listinfo/community
Re: Complexity of emergency-only baseband firmware development
Hi Denver, > I'm building some FOSS tools that let people send/receive calls/SMS without > a cell plan (mainly using VoIP carriers that also offer SMS/MMS). Eventually > I would like to be able to bundle these tools with a phone that runs only > free software. A phone that runs only free software? What kind of phone would it be hardware-wise: do you plan on building your own hw, or are you trying to repurpose/reprogram some existing phone hw units? Not just to Denver but to everyone: please remember that with *ANY* libre or FOSS phone goal, the software is the easy part; the hard part is the hardware. > In order to still provide standard emergency calling features (112/999/911 > calling/SMS), the phone would require a free baseband (like FreeCalypso), but > it would not need to offer any non-emergency phone features, since those > would be handled by the aforementioned FOSS tools primarily on wifi. In terms of the required hardware, there is no difference between emergency-only and fully functional cellular capability. Even if all you seek to do on cellular networks is to have emergency call capability, you still need a GSM (or other cellular) antenna, RF tract (RF transceiver, power amplifier, antenna switch, SAW filters, impedance matching networks etc), GSM (or other cellular) baseband processing circuits like radio signal modulation and demodulation, speech codec and so forth. The FreeCalypso modem we are currently building is one example of the required set of hardware circuits; the various mainstream commercial implementations are alternative examples. The *only* hardware feature which can be omitted if you wish to limit cell functionality to emergency calls only is the SIM socket. The SIM socket I use on the FCDEV3B costs $2.12 in quantity 1 at Digi-Key (or down to $1.38 per piece when buying 1000-piece reels), and my opinion is that if you omit the SIM socket on your phone in order to *artificially* restrict its cellular capabilities to emergency calls only, you are being antisocial by artificially hobbling your product to suit your particular prejudices. Even if you do omit the SIM socket, you won't be able to remove all circuits for talking to the SIM as those circuits reside in the same silicon as other essential functionality - instead you will just artifically render those circuits non-functional by leaving the chipset's SIM interface pins unconnected. > My understanding from being on the list for a while is that the current > baseband firmware works for some basic use cases on existing phones, Not just for "some basic use cases", but 100% of standard commercial GSM+GPRS modem functionality: if you have a Neo Freerunner made by Openmoko, the Calypso GSM+GPRS modem included in that product provided full commercial quality implementation of all standard GSM and GPRS functionality with the official firmware those units shipped with, and this full functionality is retained without any degradation if you replace their original proprietary firmware with FC Magnetite. Our Magnetite firmware has not been fully deblobbed yet, but: * We have a clear roadmap toward a fully deblobbed version; * I am not currently doing this deblobbed work but am focusing on hardware building instead because I see no point in improving software when there is no practically useful hardware to run it on. > but the end goal of FreeCalypso will require building a phone (or at least > the main board of one). As I said at the beginning of this reply, with ANY libre or FOSS phone goal the real challenge is in the hardware, not software. Right now there are only two pre-existing phone hw units whose hardware is documented well enough to allow running 100% free software including the baseband while retaining the full functionality: 1: Neo Freerunner by Openmoko. This hw is where the original FreeCalypso project started, and has the best support. But the Freerunner is not a bare modem or a dumbphone, it also has a Linux application processor that requires very complex software to make it usable as a phone, and the community that once maintained this complex sw is now gone. Without an active community of developers to maintain that Linux AP software, the Freerunner makes a very poor choice of phone: it is too complex and too power-hungry to serve as a dumbphone substitute, yet it does not really offer anything of practical value that a proper dumbphone can't do, thus it is neither here nor there - "neither fish not meat" as the Russian saying goes. 2: Lower-end members of Motorola C1xx family, including C139. There are no technical obstacles to turning Mot C139 into a 100% FOSS phone by way of FreeCalypso firmware, but the hardware is so feeble that I am not able to justify the required effort. I personally like dumbphones (phones in which the baseband is the sole processor and there is no separate AP or UI processor), and I desire to build a FreeCalypso
