Re: accuracy gps-chip?

2008-05-07 Thread Nils Faerber
Peter Kraker schrieb:
 GPS in in freerunner is made by u-blox, antaris 4 I beleive. A bit less
 sensitive than Sirf III or u-blox LEA-5H (which is excellent) but still
 a very good GPS receiver. I think you won't need a data logger with
 Freerunner in your pocket.

Just from my experience: I would at any time exchange any SIRF
(includeing III) based receiver against a uBlox one - their algorithms
an technology is by far superior to SIRF.
I used SIRF III and directly compared to Antaris-4 (and 5) - basically
every aspect is better: Higher acuracy, less error, faster TTF, etc.
Especially SIRF-III is horrible at low speeds - not so Antaris 4 or 5.
And comparing to SIRF II is almost like comparing apples with oranges,
completely different class.

So don't worry...

 As for GPS receiver over bluetooth, it's perfectly doable without much
 programming work involved I would think. It won't be supported
 out-of-the box though.
 
 Best regards
 Peter Kraker
Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: Price of the Freerunner spare parts

2008-03-27 Thread Nils Faerber
steve schrieb:
 Maybe I just create a spares product?
 
 with 3 batteries, and some other goodies thrown in?
 
 What goodies would go in that bag?

Well, if would have to decide I would like to see a spare LCD/touch kit.
The LCD is the most (mechanically) sensitive part and thus the easiest
to break. If you look at ebay the best selling spare parts for other
mobile phones are the LCDs - put it in your trouser's back pocket and
sit on it - crack.
Next after that is probably the battery cover - after some open/close
cycles it might not close firmly anymore or the ears might simply
break off accidentially.

Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: OpenMoko on the Navigo GPS?

2008-03-10 Thread Nils Faerber
The idea of porting Linux and whatever GUI on top of it to non-Linux
devices is as old as Linux for non-x86, i.e. around 10 and more years.

And it is every time the same problem: No hardware specs of the device
(i.e. schematics and chip documentation) it is either impossible or
tremendously hard to do a full featured port.

I worked on some of those several times and every time you are almost
done the device goes out of production. This is frustrating and
basically you are doing the job of the manufacturer. In fact you even
donate them your hard work for free - the job they normally would have
had to pay some engineers for is then done for free and they can sell
even more devices without any investment.

This is not my idea of working or supporting open source software. So I
stopped working on such projects. If a manufacturer wants Linux for
their devices they should at least actively support the effort - if not
even paying engineers to do it. I will no longer do it for them for free
without any specs.

My 0.05€ ;)

Cheers
  nils


Joseph Reeves schrieb:
 My previous fun and games have proven to me that the FreeRunner is
 going to be the ultimate GPS device:
 
 http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/community/2008-March/013855.html
 
 But I couldn't help think about the possibilities of running OpenMoko
 on something as cheap as this:
 
 http://www.ebuyer.com/product/131342#
 
 No, the specs aren't a fully featured as the FreeRunner, but it's got
 a 400mhz CPU and a large (-ish) screen. And at £50 it can happily sit
 in my car, especially if it's going to give me OpenStreetMap images to
 drive along to.
 
 I'm sure someone will have a better idea about this than me; would it
 be possible to ditch the Windows CE from it and replace it with
 OpenMoko?
 
 Cheers, Joseph

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Re: Community update: Regarding Neo FreeRunner pre-orders

2008-02-26 Thread Nils Faerber
Marc Verwerft schrieb:
 Well, I live in Belgium and I can assure you that sales tax here is 21
 % as opposed to Germany's 16 % ...

It is 19% in Germany since 2007 ;(

 A lot of people are just crossing the border to Aachen/Koln to find
 'cheaper' computer hardware (pc, pda, phone, digital camera's, ...)

If all works out well you will be able to buy the devices from germany
then, either from us or others who offer them. If you have a valid
European VAT ID you can even buy without VAT.

 Is there any other sales tax you are referring to then?

Well, there is of course customs that will add on the sales price - the
customs due from Taiwan into the EU of course, there is none within the EU.
The only major issue I still have is EAR (German term but also valid
for other European countries as far as I know), i.e. the electronic
waste regulation. For Germany it means that I as a reseller have to
register (which is expensive!) at a piblic service center, tell them how
many kilograms of electronic waste I am going to bring into public
circulation (i.e. sell) and will then have to pay the waste dump cost
for this. Since the Neo is not that heavy it should not be that much but
the whole process is redicously complicated (and you have to deposit the
expected cost at the *beginning* of the year!). This process is valid
for all electronic devices you see nowadays with the crossed out
dust-bin symbol on them.
So this will also add to the sales price.


 Regards,
 Marc
Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: Community update: Regarding Neo FreeRunner pre-orders

2008-02-26 Thread Nils Faerber
Tilman Baumann schrieb:
 Marc Verwerft wrote:
 Well, I live in Belgium and I can assure you that sales tax here is 21
 % as opposed to Germany's 16 % ...
 
 16% Not anymore... :(
 
 But as afar as i know, you can sell inside the EU to other EU countries
 and tax where they buyer lives.
 Don't ask me how, but i think there is something like that.

That is not that easy.
The other party has to have a valid EU VAT ID which usually only
businesses have. If you sell to private people without VAT you will get
into trouble with your own VAT declaration.
This was once possible before the EU VAT ID was implemented but also
caused a lot of trouble - since it reqiured that the customers then has
to VAT tax it in his country afterwards.
What is usually done for private customers is that the invoice will
state that the place of change of ownership (formal: place of change
of risk) is the originating country. Everything after that is the
responsibility of the customer.

Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: Unbutu mobile

2008-02-26 Thread Nils Faerber
Dean Collins schrieb:
 http://www.ubuntu.com/products/mobile
 Any thoughts?

Different target:
Leveraging the MID

MIDs typically have the following features and attributes:

* Small size/form factor
* 4 to 7 inch touch screen
* Physical and/or virtual keyboard
* Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth, GPS, WiMAX
* 2GB to 8GB Flash or disk storage, 256MB+ memory/512MB+ recommended
* OpenGL 3D
* USB, camera, head phone jack, speakers, microphone


Ubuntu mobile is targetting UMPC class devices, not mobile phones or PDAs.

 Regards,
 Dean Collins
Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: FAX2PDF with OpenMoko?

2008-02-26 Thread Nils Faerber
Ricky Fitz schrieb:
 Hi,
 
 I just had the idea that it would be nice, to make OpenMoko to act as a
 fax-receiver, convert the fax to PDF and do somethin' with it.
 
 Is this possible, already implemented, or is software out there which
 can be used on the Neo/Freerunner to do that?

Depends largely on the modem, i.e. if it can handle analog incoming fax
transmissions. The rest should be quite easy. There are a lot of
utilities around to receive a G3 fax from a modem (like mgetty-sendfax)
and to convert the resulting G3 into something more useful, like PNG or
even PDF.

 Best regards,
 Ricky.
Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: Unbutu mobile

2008-02-26 Thread Nils Faerber
Ortwin Regel wrote:
 Where do you draw the line? The Freerunner should be at least at the
 lower end of that spectrum.

Well, yes and no.
OpenGL 3D is by far not the standard in mobile devices these days and
will probably not be any time soon. 2GB and more of internal storage
(harddisk equivalent) is also quite uncommon. 256MB RAM could be argued
for but anything more seems unlikely - for the near future. Devices like
this IMHO suck too much power for being really mobile. If you can
recharge them every few hours of usage, maybe.
Well, this is my view on this - maybe I am a littel conservative.

But as long as manufacturers are looking into single core solutions for
mobile phones to save $10 for the second modem CPU core, 64MB of flash
already being unusual and 128MB of RAM almost luxury, I think that those
MID devices can not be considered targets for something like a general
purpose mobile phone Linux platform.
The GTA devices are *very* well equipped...

Cheers
  nils

 On 2/26/08, Nils Faerber [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 Dean Collins schrieb:
 http://www.ubuntu.com/products/mobile
 Any thoughts?
 Different target:
 Leveraging the MID

 MIDs typically have the following features and attributes:

 * Small size/form factor
 * 4 to 7 inch touch screen
 * Physical and/or virtual keyboard
 * Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth, GPS, WiMAX
 * 2GB to 8GB Flash or disk storage, 256MB+ memory/512MB+ recommended
 * OpenGL 3D
 * USB, camera, head phone jack, speakers, microphone
 

 Ubuntu mobile is targetting UMPC class devices, not mobile phones or PDAs.

 Regards,
 Dean Collins
 Cheers
   nils faerber


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Re: Act as HIDD and more

2008-02-19 Thread Nils Faerber
Christopher Earl schrieb:
 I want my Neo to act as HIDD, I *think* the command is  hidd --server 

Nope, sorry, there is no HIDD server for Linux, as far as I know.

The --server hidd option just tells the hidd to silently go into
background and wait for incoming connections from devices, like a
reconnect from a mouse or keyboard.

 but i get an error: Address in use, any ideas.
 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. As stated before the PS3 wireless KB works 
 great, even the mouse pad, next to test is the controller, I dont actually 
 have a PS3 so it may take a while, hoping to use the PS3 controller with a 
 port of Gfceu (nes emulator). If this passes the test, i will locate a PS3 
 and try to use my device as a new controller. This is why I need Hidd-server 
 mode for the Neo.

Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: Patents and OpenMoko

2008-02-13 Thread Nils Faerber
 have today that everybody
tries to patent *something* only to have one more patent and the result
is devastating, just look at
http://webshop.ffii.org/

(an example for rediculous patents that a typical webshop would infringe
- only a very primitive example)

 --Jon Radel
Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: Access Linux Platform SDK released

2008-02-12 Thread Nils Faerber
Sébastien Lorquet schrieb:
 This one is based on GTK
 
 http://www.palminfocenter.com/news/9619/access-linux-platform-sdk-released/
 
 What do you think of this?
 
 I'm worried about interoperability. There are a number of different
 Linux platforms now, but nothing guarantees applications will be easily
 portable across them. So I feel everyone is reinventing the wheel for
 every application! Is this really the case?

Looks like it and the signs are that it is not really getting better...
LiMo gets more and more traction which is also rumored to use GTK+ but
is so far the worst commercial player concerning open source
relationship - or did anyone here see LiMo members around?
Then there is Android - not exactly GTK+ but aiming at Linux mobile
phones. Then there is LiPS. And now there is Nokia buying Trolltech and
additionally having Maemo on their side. And a little off from the
complete platform/GUI there are all those standardisation bodies that
want to push their standards for various reasons.

So far the fragmentation is growing and currently I do not see any signs
that those competing commercial entities have any will to overcome their
business competition and sit together for a second.

I think the biggest problem currently is that all the players that want
to set their mark in this territory want as well to set their claims
with the technology or standard they are proposing. The Linux mobile
market is still open, in contrast to the Linux desktop. And it is less
complex than a desktop so even moderate companies can define their own
standard, which they did. And now they want to make it the standard
so that everyone in the future will have to buy their stuff or at least
have to use their standard.

This is not very productive, leads to fragmentation and does not help
many - only the shareholders of the lucky winner of that fight (and luck
is meant literally, this is a game of luck or have you seen the better
one win in recent years? I just way Win :)

 seb
Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: Patents and OpenMoko

2008-02-11 Thread Nils Faerber
Sander van Grieken schrieb:
[...]
 I really hope that OpenMoko will not be covered by any patents. (but I'm
 sure that there's a patent for a device allowing wireless communication
 somewhere)
 I totally agree with Lionel here. It will be bad PR wise and it's very 
 difficult to
 enforce. Openmoko hardware and software are already covered by copyright, and 
 I think a
 patent doesn't add any protection. Even if parts will be covered by a patent, 
 chances
 are that some smart company can circumvent it by making small 
 changes/improvements.
 
 Besides, what's there to patent? If I understand correctly, anything that's 
 published
 (or available publicly) before the patent cannot be patented anymore, so that 
 would
 include all openmoko software up to today, the CAD design for the casing, 
 ideas on the
 wiki etc.

Oh, and it just occurred to me...
AFAIK GPL V3 explicitely forbids software patents on GPLed code, does it?

Will that mean that OpenMoko code will stick with a modified GPL V2 (V2
usually has the clause or any later version which would include V3 and
thus also the non-patent clause) or change license altogether?


Software patents are evil - there is no way to argue for it.
The only way to defend against patent issues is to have a nice and
provable prior art collection. A public SVN, public WiKi and public
web-pages are IMHO the best way for that. Web bots mirror the whole
stuff on hundreds of independant servers and it can easily be researched
by everyone.
More should not be needed.

The assurance you might feel by having a stack of patents is more like
self-deception. Do you really think you can compete with your patent
portfolio with a company like Nokia? Motorola? Samsung? NEC? Qualcom? No
way. So why trying?

Wouldn't it better to head a new development without patent fear?
To show to other companies that patents are not the only source of
whisdom, cash-flow and money making? I think the IP issue is largely
exagerated these days. Yes, there are IP infringements in countries like
China. But how do patents help there? They don't. They only handicap us,
the people from exactly the countries that made the original invention.

I had the impression that OpenMoko was already heading a revolutionary
new way of creating a product, i.e. working together with a community,
in the open and to work *together*.  A company that first time has
proven that making a mobile phone is no rocket science and not an area
covered with legal trapdoors - up to now it worked!
If you want to patent anything, well, do it with the hardware. The
hardware patenting process is well defined and a patent in some hardware
areas of the NEO phones will not hurt anybody.

But please do not consider software patents at any time! You will
instantly loose your credibility in the open source world.

Or to make it more concrete: If OpenMoko should file *any* software
patents I would have to stop to work with OpenMoko, as sorry as I would be.

 grtz,
 Sander
Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: Patents and OpenMoko

2008-02-11 Thread Nils Faerber
Sean Moss-Pultz schrieb:
 Dear Community,
Hello Sean,
and others...

 Most of you know that OpenMoko is a fully independent company at this
 point. With this great opportunity comes many challenges. Today I would
 like to share one with you all and ask for some advice.
 
 We need to file patents for our hardware as well as software designs.
 While my personal views on software patents are inline with people like
 Eben Moglen, as a company, we are forced to play by the rules of the game.

Who did cast those rules in stone?

The degree of how far you want to bend is defines by your own.
The felt pressure is just felt and does not need to be real.
There are hundreds of companies, big and small, who by now have stated
that they will not apply for software patents. This tells me that those
rules are not so hard.

 What I want is for a our company's patents to be freely available, for
 anyone, but for defensive purposes only.

Isn't this already a problem?
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.

And you have to collect royalties since the patent system only cares
about businesses, i.e. the sole purpose of patents is to make money from
it. Not using it to make money by either sublicensing or self-use of the
IP will constitue non active use of the patent and is also a reason for
revocation.

So even if you have the intend of not sueing you might be forced to
either sue others and/or collect license fees.
The expressed intend not to make money from the patent could already be
a reason for not accepting it.

So imagine someone else using the OpenMoko software on another device
with some of your patented parts in it. You would be forced to sue this
person/company/whatever.
This is not what we you/we want.

But as always: IANAL.


Another problem is that software patents are still not possible at all
in the European Community, which is IMHO very good.

And apart from that software patents are a bad idea in itself. Software
is way too flexible to be described accurate enough to write a patent.
So what happens is that all software patent claims are way too broad -
they cover not only a specific invention but one patent already covers a
vast area of inventions and thus preventing further invention by others
in the whole area.

Sorry, but software patents *must* be avoided by any means!

There are for sure cases where a software patent might be well defined
and could be argued for. But as long as the legislation allows such
broad and undefined claims I am completely against it. And frankly I do
not see a way to make the patent rules specific enough for that.

For more information against software patents please have a thorough look at
http://www.ffii.org/
and
http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/

Starting to collect software patents would contradict your own claim of
openness and support of free software.

 Are there any existing options available to us now? Does anyone know of
 existing companies or organizations with a similar strategy that we can
 seek guidance or partnership.
 
 Again, I want to emphasize that we only want our patents to be used in
 defense. And what constitutes defense is something that we want to be
 able to define (and potentially even redefine when new threats arise).

This is a noble aim but very very difficult to reach.

Speaking as a free software acitvist especially software patents are a
complete no-go.
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.

 Thanks in advance for the help.

My very quick advice: Don't get your hands dirty with patents,
especially with software.
You will loose a lot of credibility in the free software world and the
benefit is questionable.

 Sean
Cheers
  nils

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Re: More about the GTA02

2008-02-05 Thread Nils Faerber
Christopher Earl schrieb:
 the specs have changed (very slightly)
 
 * Atheros 802.11 b/g WiFi
 * Samsung S3C2442 B54 SoC @ 400Mhz
 * SMedia Glamo3362 Graphics Accelerator
 * 2x ST 3D Accelerometers
 * 256MB Flash
 * 128MB SDRAM
 * 2MB NOR Flash
 * 1200mAh Battery
 * 2 LEDs illuminating the two buttons. 
 * u-blox/Atmel ATR0635 GPS

ah, ublox GPS, very nice!
Which one is that, Antaris 4 or Antaris5?

 * Bluetooth
 * 850/1800/1900 Mhz or 900/1800/1900 Mhz for GSM/GPRS 
 * USB Host function with power
 
 So anyone in NorthAmerica (mainly the states) needs to add that they want the 
 850/1800/1900 GSM bands, I dont have a clue about how thats going to work
Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: Brief Community Update, January 24, 2008

2008-01-25 Thread Nils Faerber
What about the status of open issues like:
- in the field firmware update for GSM on GTA01 V3 and V4?
- standby power management of GSM in new GSM firmware?

Cheers
  nils

Michael Shiloh schrieb:
 A brief update:
 
 1. Evaluation of GTA02A5 is taking place. There is some excellent
 discussion on the kernel list, e.g.:
 
 http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/openmoko-kernel/2008-January/000606.html
 
 http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/openmoko-kernel/2008-January/000538.html
 
 
 I believe no hardware flaws have been found yet, but there is still much
 to inspect.
 
 As usual, we will not predict how long this will take, nor when we will
 start shipping GTA02.
 
 
 2. We've made available the CAD files for the GTA01 case. We're still
 learning how best to deal with making available to FOSS users files
 originally in ProE format. We now have available IGES and STEP formats
 as well. I will continue to work on ways to make this available in a
 useful fashion with as little loss of information as possible.
 
 http://downloads.openmoko.org/CAD/
 
 Sincerely,
 Michael
 

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Re: digital compass modules

2008-01-23 Thread Nils Faerber
joerg schrieb:
 Am Mi  23. Januar 2008 schrieb Schmidt András:
 Hi!

 A compass module would be very nice with many applications!
 I have no hardware related experince. Is it possible to integrate a chip
 like this into the phone? How would you do that?
 True drop-in solution
 Simple I2C interface 
 2.7 to 5.2V supply range
 Supply current : 1mA @ 3V
 
 I2C is a bus, what means you should be able to simply tap the 2 wires of the 
 existing I2C and connect to the chip(pin 7, 10). Another 2 wires for power 
 (pin 5, 14) - 1 mA is pretty low consumption - and some birds food (Ca, Cb) 
 and a drop of cyanide glue to stick the chip somewhere well away from 
 magnetic interference (metal and high electric current). That's it. Some 
 driver to read out the chip for the ones who like it the pretty way.. ;-)

I doubt that such a device would work in the phone, sorry.
The GTA01 contains three loadspeakers with magnets, AFAIK GTA02 will
still contain at least two. Then there is massive EM radiation from the
GSM antenna which will interfere and finally there is the Bluetooth
module also emitting EM when used.
Earth's magnetic field is very weak so almost *any* EM radiation near to
the measuring device (the chip) will interfere.

Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: Status of resellers (Was: GTA02 preorder please?)

2008-01-22 Thread Nils Faerber
Pietro m0nt0 Montorfano schrieb:
 Gilles Casse ha scritto:
 Hello Michael,

 So direct pre-orders to OpenMoko.com are unlikely but in fact, I guess
 that some of us (in Europe for example) would prefer local resellers.

 Btw, what is the status of local resellers for France?
   
 Some time ago someone told the possibility to open a German base to
 phisically send the phone to the european people, how is the status of
 this thing too?

We are in contact with the OpenMoko team to do this for Germany too.

If there is anythin decided I am sure it will become visible here ;)

 Thank you!
 
 Pietro
Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: Power Management on Neo1973

2008-01-14 Thread Nils Faerber
Michael Shiloh schrieb:
 Nicolas Linkert wrote:
 On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:41:09 +0100, Nils Faerber
 [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
 snip
 So buttomline is I would not see it *that* black. Let's hope for the new
 modem firmware since the modem is currently the biggest standby current
 eater.

 I was under the impression that the last modem update occured because
 some SIM cards were not recognized. 
 
 That is correct.
 
 Is there a new update of the modem
 planned that is going to deal with power management?
 
 No. I've never heard of anything even remotely like this.

Well, there were discussions, I would have to go back in the
mailinglist, that the earlier GSM firmware version (up to the latest
shipped firmware) were not able to do low-power standby, which means
still being connected to the GSM and being able to receive calls/SMS but
be in a lower power state than full operation. This is/was supposed to
be the standby mode of the modem. And since this did not work, and
current measurements prove this to be quite likely, it was my assumption
that a later firmware would also address this problem.
If it does not then this would really be pityful. With only the GSM
sucking 20-40mA we will never reach any sane standby time.

 Michael
Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: Power Management on Neo1973

2008-01-14 Thread Nils Faerber
Tim Niemeyer schrieb:
 Hallo Nils,
Hi!

 i searched on this, but didn't found what i though about...
 found something else:
 http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/buglog/2007-September/005155.html

Good catch, thanks!
And there was some explanation in that or close thread as well.
Puh, so it was not only my imagination ;)

So in this light we have to assume that both fixes will be in the new
firmware?

Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: Power Management on Neo1973

2008-01-11 Thread Nils Faerber
Tim Niemeyer schrieb:
 Hallo Shawn,
Hi!

 * Shawn Rutledge [EMAIL PROTECTED] [10-01-08 14:19]:
 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).
 with actual battery you need to minimize the power consumption to 10mA for 5h 
 lifetime!
 
 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 seems realistic, yes.

 Today, i played a bit with power measurement and standby.
 It was very surprising, and the actual power was very different from time
 to time. Sometimes neo booted and did draw about 400mA in idle. Sometimes only
 280mA.

Yes, the runtime power is comparable dramatic - and about 50% of it is
caused by the LCD backlight. When reducing backlight brightness this can
dramatcally be decreased.

 In Standby mode it was exacly the same, but most the time it tooks
 ~80-95mA. Sometimes only 65mA!
 One time the neo did draw only about 20mA! Don't know what was
 different: booted - standby - 20mA! I think this 20mA was drawn by the
 GSM.

Right. If all other devices are properly switched off, only CPU is in
standby and SDRAM is in self-refresh then the device should not draw
more than ~4mA. A constant drain of 18mA or more from the GSM really
kills the battery life - 20mA means roughly 60 hours of standby, which
is acceptable but still not good.

In standby really every single mA makes a huge difference...

 Tim Niemeyer
Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: Unified PIM

2007-09-27 Thread Nils Faerber
Joshua Layne schrieb:
 On Wed, 26 Sep 2007 18:49:43 +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 I guess my only comment is that while I don't really care which
 interface people use on their phones, it seems like the data interfaces
 should be the same... If I open up qtopia phone edition and look at my
 contacts or maybe even edit them and then close it down and open up my
 OM interface and look at them, they should be the same.  All edit are
 visible.. No double entry.
 Agreed, but I'd take it one step further. Given the neo has an internet
 connection, why can't PIM data be stored on a web server and just cached
 locally. Couldn't you then integrate that into desktop PIM applications
 too?
 I would prefer to not have a network dependency on PIM data.  It might be a
 nice extra feature, but I would like to see the core data held on the phone
 supported by the different front-ends.  I may want to switch frontends
 without resyncing all my data.
 
 It seems like LiPS might be a good start for this shared architecture.

As one being involved in LiPS I feel obliged to reply here ;)

Yes, with the LiPS approach both sides could be satisfied... the LiPS
PIM API is devided into an upper layer service API for applications to
use and a lower layer Enabler API for connecting backends.

So what an application would do is to use the service API and then you
can use any application that conforms to that API without resyncing your
data.
Also for the backend, the application does not need to know where the
data comes from, be it a network remote calendar or a local EDS contacts
database.

So for me it would make perfect sense to use the LiPS APIs and bring
some flexibility to the applications.

 In the event of a non-compliant implementation, perhaps
 wrapper/abstraction scripts could be built to make it transparent to the
 end user?

I would prefer to use a standardised API... make things a lot easier.

 Regards,
 j.
Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: How snappy can the Openmoko GUI get using GTK?

2007-09-04 Thread Nils Faerber
polz schrieb:
 On Monday 03 September 2007 20:24:38 Michael 'Mickey' Lauer wrote:
 Guys,
 
 I wish to have time doing some benchmarks of e.g. GtkFB vs.
 GtkDirectFB vs. Gtk/X11 -- likewise EFL/X11 vs. EFL/Fb. Delivering
 factual numbers for things like that would be very interesting for us.
 While this might not be a benchmark, I've noticed that mplayer works better 
 with -vo dbdev than with -vo x11.

You mean -fbdev ?

That would be quite natural since then you directly write to the
framebuffer instead of going through X11. But you will get troubles when
playing in a window but not fullscreen.

 noslices=true also improves performance.

That's a good hint.

Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: [SVHMPC] linux phone standard

2007-06-19 Thread Nils Faerber
 far, LiPS is something good for all of us. Let's see what
happens whan first commercial adopters hit the scene.

Thanks!
Cheers
  nils


Matthew S. Hamrick schrieb:
 Well... I used to work for PalmSource, one of the LiPS founding members.
 I've been trying to find something nice to say about LiPS for the last
 24 hours and the best I can come up with is, It's not Microsoft.
 
 But yeah... my impression has always been that some of the companies
 involved (PalmSource) always believed that the value of their offering
 was based in the software. I would argue that the value of PalmOS is not
 in PalmOS itself, but in the community of users and developers that
 surrounded it. Motorola is used to dealing with proprietary mobile OSes
 and is only slowly coming to internalize some of the benefits of open
 source. So... my take on this is... the guys involved have a mental
 model of how successful products are built, and it involves dealing with
 the software group. These businesses have processes based on a risk
 model that puts the software group in a distant location from the
 hardware group.
 
 In my experience, companies that pay dogmatic attention to API standards
 outside of customer requirements don't last long (Posix and Win32 being
 possible exceptions.) Companies that pay close attention to customer
 requirements spend more of their time solving their customer's problems
 than going to meetings to discuss which options of which API calls will
 be supported.
 
 LiPS was formed by a group of software companies who, when given a
 kernel, a process model, a framebuffer device driver or two, and GTK,
 couldn't figure out how to make a compelling product, much less a
 platform. The LiPS guys will tell you that in order to create a
 development community, you've got to have a consistent API for
 developers to work with. I've always argued that given a compiler, an
 emulator, prototype hardware, a JTAG connector and enough stock options
 and coffee, skilled engineers can make anything work. What is difficult
 is for small, innovative companies to release their products in a market
 dominated by a few powerful players with long buying cycles.
 
 This is not to say that LiPS is irrelevant, just that as an ISV, I just
 don't see why it's that interesting.
 
 -Just my $0.02
 -Cheers!
 -Matt H.
 
 On Jun 12, 2007, at 8:22 AM, Paul A. Lambert wrote:
 


 On Jun 12, 2007, at 6:53 AM, mtd wrote:

 hello,

 it seems that LiPS group tries to make linux phone specifications.

 http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070611-linux-phone-standards-
 group-to-publish-specifications.html

 Yes .. the specifications  are now available:  http://
 www.lipsforum.org/index.php?option=contenttask=viewid=54

 These are largely overviews, some doxygen output, and some header
 files.  No code.  You need to be a member to get the code :-(

 API standards are difficult to enforce, but could be useful to help
 align some of the most basic services for a phone (like the phone
 book).  These specifications will be used for industry developed
 'closed' phones.   The 'open' community will need to produce similar
 parallel work not as APIs, but as code :-)  The LiPS documents
 could server as an interesting starting point for some designs.

 Paul
  nils faerber

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Re: GPRS while ringing?

2007-05-07 Thread Nils Faerber
Joel Newkirk schrieb:
 Is it possible and feasible to establish a brief (3-5 seconds?) GPRS
 connection when ringing an incoming call?
 
 I've been thinking about callerid name lookups.

I guess not.
First of all GPRS connection setup can take longer than this - basically
the GPRS data connection is done using PPP.
Second, though not being a GSM expert, I think that voice call is not
possible during GPRS sessions. This would for me also mean that during
call signalling GPRS cannot be established - either the GPRS or teh
voice call will fail then.

 j
Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: Flash Player 9 on OpenMoko?

2007-03-22 Thread Nils Faerber
Christian F.K. Schaller schrieb:
 Gnash would probably be of no interest to any shipping a commercial
 product as the GPL license of it will conflict with enabling mp3 and
 flash video support. swfdec is LGPL though so as long as the mp3 and
 flash video support comes from external libraries it will be fine.

Hmm... I do not see any problem here.
You could use GStreamer for that which can have commercially licensed
codecs and which in itself is LGPL and can be linked to the application
without any licensing problem.

And even if you would implement the codecs in the player then you still
have no problem e.g. with MP3 and many others. The problem is not the
sourcecode but the license for usage. There are free codecs for MP3 and
other around, in terms of sourcecode. But you may, due to darn sotware
patents, not be allowed to actually use them - especially not in a
commercial product.
You would just have to buy a license which will only allow you to use
the technology. This has nothing to do with the concrete implementation,
which is actually up to you.

For GStreamer, Fluendo sells license packs for the most common audio and
video codecs - thanks to Fluendo!

 Christian
Cheers
  nils faerber

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AGPS - protocol specs?

2007-03-08 Thread Nils Faerber
Hi!
I am interested in doing a little research on the AGPS part. As far as I
understood the used Hammerhead chip will dump out the more or less raw
GPS data into userland which will then need to be post-processed in
order to get the usual NMEA or whatever messages.

Well the post processing can be very interesting and probably there can
be done more than just spitting out NMEA - there way more information in
teh GPS data stream than that.

There are also several open source projects wrting their own GPS
firmware doing exactly this post processing.

But for this tas one needs at least a quite minimum knoeledge about the
data format and contents of the raw data that is output from the
Hammerhead chip. I visited their site but was unable to find any useful
information.

So, can OpenMoko provide at least somemore information about that chip
and especially its output?
That would be really great!

Thanks!

Cheers
  nils faerber

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Phase 0 devices just running @100MHz?

2007-03-08 Thread Nils Faerber
Hi!
I just had a first quick run on a phase-0 Neo and found that
/proc/cpuinfo only shows ~100 bogomips. On other ARM based platforms
using 2.6.xx kernels I know the bogomips are usually about the same as
the CPU core clock MHz...
Well this might be different here so I just wanted to make sure that
experienced slowness is not simply caused by an underclocked CPU ;)

Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: AGPS - protocol specs?

2007-03-08 Thread Nils Faerber
Ian Stirling schrieb:
 Nils Faerber wrote:
 Hi!
 I am interested in doing a little research on the AGPS part. As far as I
 understood the used Hammerhead chip will dump out the more or less raw
 GPS data into userland which will then need to be post-processed in
 order to get the usual NMEA or whatever messages.
 So, can OpenMoko provide at least somemore information about that chip
 and especially its output?
 No, the chip is under NDA.

Darn.
I do not care aout most of the chip, just the output format ;)

 http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Hardware:AGPS has the current state of play.
 Basically, the satellite format is known, and not especially hard to
 decode especially if we also get NMEA (or whatever) output out of the
 supplied daemon at the same time to decode it.

You mean some kind of reverse engeneering trying to match the NMEA
output to the raw input?

 There is all sorts of wacky stuff - for example, peer-peer DGPS that can
 be done, where all stationary neos on charge with a GPS signal and a
 free internet connection contribute to a global ionospheric model.
 Then any Neo can connect to this model, download 200 bytes or so, and
 get +-0.3m (or better) position for a short while.

Exactly.
Also relative positioning can be made much more precise using the raw
data (AFAIK in the range of cm not m).

Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: Bluetooth Headset - Voice Commands

2007-03-05 Thread Nils Faerber
Sorry for beeing late here ;)

Mike Hodson schrieb:
 On 2/28/07, Jonathon Suggs [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
[...]
 By being connected to the USB bus, this works exactly like every
 current Linux computer with bluetooth: as of now, the BlueZ stack can
 do SCO / headset, and they are working daily on properly working A2DP
 (advanced audio) stereo codec support both as alsa modules.  It would
 then be my guess, that all the OpenMoko software would have to do, is
 change the alsa input/output by responding handsfree button or avrcp
 commands (for stereo headsets).

SCO uses another transfer interface than A2DP - A2DP runs through the
normal data channel und SCO audio is routed through a synchronous
channel though also ending up somewhere else, namely the PCM interface
of the BT chipset.
The PCM interface can be routed either to HCI (the host controller
interface) or a dedicated PCM output of the chipset. This can be used on
dedicated hardware to channel the PCM data directly to some audio codec
and amplifier not wasting HCI bandwidth and making building headsets
easier ;)
Some chipsets can have this routing hardwired to PCM so that you will
never be able to get the SCO audio data into your software.

So buttomline here is that it largely depends on the BT chipset and its
firmware if or if not the SCO data can be routed to HCI.

Since AFAIK the NEO will use a CSR chipset the probability is high that
it can be rerouted if HCI is not yet default.

For A2DP the whole thing is easier since A2DP is always a normal data
connection sending out audio data packets through userspace.

 Furthermore, it is definitely plausible that the bluetooth controller
 in your pocketpc is somehow intertwined with the GSM chipset.  If this
 chip has no provision of routing audio into the software, and only
 considers bluetooth a voice service, then it would talk directly to
 the wireless interface and its GSM chip. The windows mobile/ppc
 software can't grab it.

In theory this could be possible, if the GSM chipset has a matching PCM
input.

[...]

 Mike
Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: Warranty on phase 1 phones

2007-02-20 Thread Nils Faerber
Ole Tange schrieb:
 On 2/20/07, Sean Moss-Pultz [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
 On Mon, 2007-02-19 at 17:32 -0800, Pranav Desai wrote:
  Is there any warranty on phase 1 phones ? If the screen is bad, some
  input ports don't work, etc. what will be the process then ?
 Of course we'll have a warranty ;-)

 I'm not sure of the exact terms at this point. Probably something
 standard like 1 year.
 Which in EU will translate to 2 years if sold in EU (as per EU
 legislation).

Well, in fact the warranty is not touched by EU legislation. It is more
a liability that is 24 months. But that is nearly worthless since after
6 months the customer has to proove that the failure is due to a
manufacturing fault, which is near to impossible for an end customer :(
This cries for debate and renders those 24 months useless - you can only
count on 6 months without hassle.

Warranty is an optional liability that a manufacturer may offer to you
and is not covered by any legislation. Any limiting terms the
manufacturer or dealer adds here will have effect (like having to send
in the device for repair on your cost e.g.).

But it is very good to hear that FIC is thinking about 1 year warranty!

 /Ole
Cheers
  nils faerber

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Re: Wifi option summary (Was: Re: OpenMoko Challenges)

2007-02-12 Thread Nils Faerber
Just as note: I just bought, for exact that purpose, a DLink Bluetooth
AP on ebay, used for 15EUR.

Maybe an option... for much purposes Bluetooth PAN will fully enough.

Cheers
  nils


Mikko J Rauhala schrieb:
 On ma, 2007-02-12 at 01:54 -1000, Joshua Hoblitt wrote:
 Quick thought: Shouldn't wifi be possible via the use of a USB dongle?
 
 Yes yes, if you get it power from somewhere other than the Neo (such as
 an internal battery, USB power injector, or a (battery) powered hub).
 It's been discussed before. Speeds won't be great (USB 1.1 limiting),
 but should be doable.
 
 To summarize for those who haven't noticed, another possible option, if
 you really need wifi, might be the (also previously mentioned) upcoming
 Seagate DAVE disks; they have both BT and Wifi connectivity, and are
 supposed to be open systems, so perhaps it will be possible to make
 one into a self-powered BT/Wifi gateway (in addition to portable
 storage), at least if they run Linux. However, no definite word on the
 extent of their openness and adaptability exists at this point, just a
 possibility.
 
 And, as also said, you can get wireless internet via BT too, just that
 the Wifi AP installed base is out of reach.
 

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Re: Get your own OpenMoko T-Shirt

2007-02-12 Thread Nils Faerber
Gabriel Ambuehl schrieb:
 On Monday 12 February 2007 17:18:35 Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
 I don't mind it a bit.  One way
 corporations have destroyed an incredible amount of good-will in the
 past has been by trying to retain a too-tight control over their
 trademarks 
 The problem with trademark law is that if you don't protect your trademarks, 
 you can lose them. So arguably companies are pressed to close down fan sites 
 using unauthorized logos...

Just for the records: This is only partially true. The law does not
force the trademark owners to force-close sites or otherwise deny the
use of the trademarks. They could as well allow the use under their
specific terms. But in most cases the owners simply do not want that.
The law just sais that they must not ignore unacknowledged use.

Cheers
  nils faerber

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