natowelch

MokoMaze is blowing my socks off.

It's the first application I've seen actually use the accelerometers on my Freerunner. You tilt the phone in order to move the steel marble around a maze, avoiding obstacles. A classic, of course.

But what really threw me was the strange, satisfying THUMP I felt the first time the marble hit one of the walls at high speed. I was like, "wait a minute... how did... wow!!!" It turns out the game actually taps the phone's vibrate motor on impact events, at different strengths depending on how big the impact is. It's totally wigging me out.

In other news, I have isolated the bluetooth problems I have been having. My roommate's laptop is running Ubuntu Hardy Heron, which has the older, 3.x bluez stack. Both Intrepid Ibex AND the SHR stack I had installed on the Freerunner are using bluez4, which is less mature. When I plugged the cheapo (I mean $6 on eBay, shipping included) bluetooth adapter into her laptop, I was zinging files back and forth between my Sony Ericsson in seconds, which is more than I could get ANY of my devices to do with the new stacks. Tellingly, bluez 4.x hasn't even been added to Debian's unstable branch, for crying out loud. What the hell is Ubuntu doing putting it into a stable release?

What is it with Ubuntu? First, they push this Network Manager thing which constantly interferes with my network settings (I finally had to turn it off) and provides NO SUPPORT FOR DIALUP, and now they break a perfectly good bluetooth stack?

UPDATE: You haven't enjoyed Mokomaze until you've played it on the big screen by remote X. Yeehah! =D

I'm sure the fact that this is a saga of no fewer than 3 weeks will not recommend the product to anyone, but it IS a development phone, with little in the way of warranties or customer support, and the fact that that open systems are by definition released before they're ready ("release early, release often") should serve to lower expectations relative to proprietary products.

Nonetheless, my Freerunner's GSM phone functions now work fully. I can receive and place calls, now. This makes me pretty damn happy.

I had contacted the vendor, Koolu, about getting an exchange after having tested it further. They suggested, instead that try Flashing the GSM firmware, per the instructions on the wiki.

And, well, that cleared it up. End of story. Or, shall I say, the story can now begin...

There are a number of smaller annoyances remaining, but these are all software issues, meaning I can either use different software, or even fix it myself.

SUCCESS! I win. ^_^

I can't wait to get all the little accessories I bought for it...

I stopped by a Rogers Wireless store today to test the Neo Freerunner with a Rogers SIM. I got the same result: it registered, and received a call. Then, when a call was placed, it got kicked off the network.

The final verdict may only be renderable if I can place a call successfully on another Freerunner. I'll see if I can track one down in the area...

Koolu released their Android images as promised today (They're two for two, now. Good.). Initially, it would not boot, in exactly the same way my first attempt did. This time, I was able to connect using the Sean McNeil's adb tool (Android Debug Bridge) and survey the log (after some strange false starts).

Amusing that, though the boot screen was hung, for 15 minutes, completely blank, save the backlight, scanning the usb0 network interface revealed that only the "freeciv" port was open. Given that I did not later find freeciv installed, I suspect this is actually the adb daemon's port.

Android is a bit finicky, and requires that the SD card you use contain a very specific configuration of partitions - the first partition must be (Windows) FAT, and the second Linux ext3. Otherwise, it won't boot. I prepared this according to instructions previously, but apparently something went wrong. I re-partitioned and reformatted them, and it came right up.

I am still experiencing roughly the same symptoms with GSM functions: I can receive calls, and send and receive SMS messages until I place a call, then I have to restart the phone before I can do anything. Worse, incoming calls ring, but drop as soon as I accept them (and the accept takes several seconds to actually register in the UI). At this point, I'm willing to write this off on Fido/Rogers, because it's the same problem I've been having with every distro.

Android is, at this point, so-so. Since it's not built with the Freerunner's hardware in mind, there's no software for the GPS. It's built like a handheld device, not a GNU/Linux hacker's system, like most of the Openmoko distros. No busybox, dropbear, or opkg. Never mind Dbus, mdbus, or mickeyterm - there's no python on this thing (cue organ vamp) (it uses java in a lot of places. Ew!).

There are numerous interface choices that are intersting, but, ultimately, annoying. The 'back' function and the onscreen keyboard require the pushing of buttons, which are uncomfortably positioned for my big hands. On the other hand, there are sliding widgets here and there that are sensitive to being 'thrown', based on how quickly you move them before releasing them. That's a nice touch.

I'm glad it seems to work okay - as far as what was promised for a beta release - but I think I will pass on Android for my everyday use and especially as a development platform.

I've been playing with the GPS in the Freerunner. TangoGPS and Viking appear to be well-done, simple applications for mapping, tracking, and examining GPS data. Though it seems to take a few minutes before TangoGPS can get a fix and start tracking, it seems pretty reliable once it kicks in. Viking takes the recorded log data (once converted from a log-file into a gpx xml format with a provided script) and allows you to overlay it over Google, Terraserver, or OpenStreetMap maps.

I'm getting a feel for how accurate (or not) GPS is supposed to be. A few times, I've left the tracker on for hours at home. The resulting tracks of relative stillness exhibit some rather whimsical loops outside the building and back, but never by more than a few dozen meters or so. I've recorded tracks home from a friend's place, and to the store and back, and, in places, it makes it look like I went over a fence and tramping through someone's yard. It seems to tend to drift most when I'm in one place for several seconds, like waiting for a crosswalk light. It clocked my average speed at 4.0km/hour, but my max was a blistering 16km/hour (wow! really?). It's not spot-on, but it's more than usable.

These new capabilities are doing interesting things to my brain. General, open digital tech like this gives me a feeling of potential, that I could do things I simply haven't thought of yet. Being able to look at manifestations of my past fuels my enjoyment of creating records of my life for later review. People have often been anxious about the implications of others gathering all this data. I feel better knowing that I can compile and record all this data about myself, by myself, for myself, and that I don't have to share it with anyone I don't wish to. I want to know as much about myself as I can, and being able to track my own movements and history gives me one more avenue to increase my own self-awareness.

There was a moment, walking home today, where I stopped to admire the sunset. I thought to myself, about how I would observe the pause in my own GPS tracks later, and think about what I was doing at that moment. And I remembered the beauty of the moment I was living in, and I lived in it again. These digital tracks are yet more ways to leave breadcrumbs back to places I love to be.

And then, there are the moments of sadness, like Last Sunday's. But I don't regret grief. It seems that when I cry, it's always because I really want to. And I revere those moments, because I still can't tell how the feeling of tears of grief really differ from the feeling of tears of joy. Weeping satisfies.

Someone from Koolu called me at buttfuck early this morning, as promised (I always sleep in, and he was in Ontario, so I don't hold it against him). He asked me to try testing it on their port of Android specifically for the Freerunner, which they would be releasing images for in a couple of days. I was not able to get Android running despite some very clear instructions posted recently with Sean McNeil's images. But further investigation today revealed that the initial boot of Android takes an unusually long time to boot (something like ten minutes?!), while it finishes setting up and installing. I may simply have not been patient enough. I'll find some time to try again.

In the meantime, I tried SHR, the "Stable Hybrid Release". This distro used to be an ugly-looking Frankenstein mash-up of the 2007 (gtk) and 2008 (Qtopia) software stacks, but I come to find out that it has now totally changed into what amounts to a community showcase distro for the FSO next-gen Python/Dbus middleware layer currently under development at freesmartphone.org. FSO is the distro that had the great debugging tools that told me what the hell was wrong with the thing in the first place. Well, SHR now simply wraps that in a more complete suite of applications, and a cleaner, faster, prettier interface. I was impressed. The fact that I didn't have to give up Mickeyterm and mdbus was even better.

( Why I love Dbus )

And because of these developing tools, I was able to test more thoroughly and discover some good news: the GSM/phone functionality actually seems to mostly work, and the parts that don't work may not be due to faulty hardware after all.

It turns out that whenever I boot up with the SIM in, the phone registers just fine with Fido. I can reliably recieve calls, and I can reliably send and receive SMS text messages. But as soon as I attempt to call out, It not only immediately kicks off that call, but I am unable to re-register with any carrier or send SMS messages. One thing I noticed was that, before placing an outbond, I was always registering with Fido, using Fido's carrier id number. But as soon as I tried to call out, the carrier ID on further registration attempts was the same, but the phone would somehow identify the carrier as "Rogers Wireless", not Fido. Rogers owns Fido, so it doesn't surprise me that they seem to have pretty merged their networks together. Fine with me, but apprently, it confuses the hell out of my new phone.

The Wifi is still patchy, but it works sometimes. My roommate's PC Wifi connects flawlessly through it, so I may have to live with that. But If I can get service through another GSM carrier that works that last mile with outgoing calls, I think I can appreciate and use the Freerunner just fine.

We'll see.

( Speaking of cheap Wifi... )

Well, not everything.

My roommate's laptop is the only other machine in the house that has wifi (besides my skizzy phone. She reported, however, that it had never worked on her Toshiba Satellite since she switched it over to Ubuntu. They used the restricted (ie, proprietary) drivers provided by Ubuntu, but they were old. A modest amount of digging rendered instructions to compile the madwifi drivers from a more recent source version.

That went perfectly. wget, untar, make, sudo make install, reboot. Done. Suddenly, there are no fewer than 11 APs in my neighborhood. I guess that's what I get for living in a cluster of apartment buildings.

With that accomplished, I went to get my FON AP registered and set up, something which I tore my hair out trying to accomplish last night through the Freerunner.

Flawless. No trouble whatsoever. I almost could have followed the instructions that came with the AP to the letter. The Kolofonium hack, did not, however, work as advertised once I plugged in the magic DNS server and rebooted the AP. It figures. Only one thing can possibly work per day, I guess. Fucksticks.

This just proves that far more funny business is going on with the Freerunner than just the GSM; the Wifi is also not working reliably. I'm a little suspicious of my own conclusions, but if this is something wrong with ALL models like this, I'm going to want to send it back anyway.

Having received no response from Koolu, the vendor of my troubled phone, I sent out another email requesting a warranty replacement return authorization, and I called their support line today. I was promised a callback today or tomorrow. We'll see.

The cheap mp3 player I bought also works less consistently than the one it replaced, with the wrenched headphone socket.

Good news & bad news.

I have received two SMS messages on my Freerunner I have also received two phone calls. But I have been unable to send anything, because the network registration and reception is flaky as all hell.

I really hope this changes in Portland, because I'm going to be pissed if this thing is everything but a phone.

I'm thinking of sending it back and exchanging it for an unlocked G1. It may be lower-res, and have far less in terms of software variety, but at least it's got a keyboard and a camera. I was not able to get Android to boot on it despite some really good instructions, but Google & co has satisfied me with fully opening the stack and making an unlocked phone available.

I might also see if I can cross-test this thing with a local developer and see if it might be faulty equipment (or a faulty provider). We'll see.

The Freerunner is working out alright. I'm in the middle of tinkering endlessly, and trying the rather large variety of software distributions it can be flashed with (Om2008.9, FDOM, QTextended, Android, Debian, FreeSmartPhone.Org... wow.)

I thought the inaccurate calibration on pecking the tiny qtextended keyboard was going to drive me bonkers, but a little training on the handwriting recognition controls (with predictive word input) made that much better. Nonetheless, I flashed in the FDOM stack today, to see what's currently supported in the development stack by the Openmoko folks directly.

The GPS works. I haven't tried the accelerometers on anything yet. The battery charges. I've surfed the web with it (using dillo, minimo, and some half-assed webkit-based browser in qtextended), logged in remotely via ssh, transferred files back and forth using sshfs, installed and updated packages, played games (Numpty Physics was fun), and scanned my local wifi APs. Mplayer plays mpeg movies and mp3 files (must install more codecs...).

Hell, the only thing I haven't done on it yet is actually make a call.

I tried, under qtextended, popping in the Fido SIM from my other phone with qtextended. After it didn't like that, I called Fido to insure their policy was okay with customers using unlocked phones. No problem, she said, but she was totally whiffed when she asked what phone I was using. No surprises there, heh. This was all before I dove into actually configuring my networks, which I knew I was going to have to do anyway.

Moving on...

My Christmas toy came today!

I am currently flashing it with a more up-to-date software image, as the kernel that came on it was compiled in April. The X server wouldn't even boot, although I dug the ASCII art! The Next step is to make sure I can properly charge the battery.

It kills hours of my time. Somehow, that is a feature, so long as, after plowing through in-progress wikis and documentation, I have something that works the way I want it to. It's looking good so far.

I have to say I was a bit chargrined to see the G1 (Google Android's premier phone offering) being offered, unlocked, to developers at the same price, mere days after I ordered this one. The G1 has a camera and a thumb-keyboard, but the Neo Freerunner has USB host functionality (meaning you can plug things like webcams and USB thumb drives into it) and twice the resolution on the display.

If you can't open it, you don't own it.

*fiddles*

They were right. The text entry on this is HORRID. I hope I can learn a better text entry method.