The pyneo Diary
This is kind of blog of pyneo's way on the mobile. Newest entries are on top.
Four buttons rule!
2009 11 09
Also the standard software on the Palm Pre introduces 4 simple buttons on the bottom to simplify the usage. Okay, i admit the standard view has 5 buttons. But what do you need more than "Yes", "No", "Maybe" and "All other options"?
Mind the GTA
2009 10 31
My batteries are dieing one after the other and not other hardware shows up at the horizont. Hopefully something comes around before the last GTA past away.
Ben
2009 09 12
I met Ben in Berlin at the "Club der Visionäre". It's a funny hardware with a keyboard just a little too small for my fingers but for short-messanging or dictionary reading fully sufficient. The display (that did only show a text-console at that moment) looked clear and bright. Here are some more pictures. We chatted alot about hard- and software and i made pyneo's / my standpoint clear: i start get interesting in the device if there is a stable running kernel avaiable that sufficient supports most of the hardware. That's the cause i stopped developing for / with the Neo1973 and the Freerunner because the current kernel doesn't do that.
Scrambled Display
2009 09 08
The kernel 2.6.30 begins to steel us time. Battery-runtime is now at 20-30min, the consoles dont work anymore, the bootup shows a scrambled colorful display. The integration of paroli with pyneo now will take place on my notebook.
Route to rootfs
2009 08 02
Josch worked hard to make all of us happy, now
both of my neos work! Here both show a map from OSM
positioned with the internal GPS. While GPS works for
GTA02 out of the box, GTA01 needs some help from
the closed binary which is not included for
license reasons.
If all small bugs are
squashed we will release this fine work for you to
play around with (remember: no GUI included, but
its easy to build your own). Thanks Josch!
Happyness is a warm gun
2009 07 29
As you might guess i'm socialized in a christian culture and so i am happy, if someone else makes his way, is able to fill his fridge and earn money for his living. As you probably read here you saw that the idea "pyneo" made it possible that OM put even more money in a seperate new project and now you can read here the story goes on. Good luck you guys...
126 Calls before flood protection
2009 05 11
Today we started a mass test. Every 40 seconds we started a phonecall from one Freerunner to a Neo1973, ended the call after 10 seconds and waited again for 40 seconds to loop... until the operator finally seemed to threw us out of the network. A re-registration worked fine immediatly so neither the gsm-modem nor pyneo was disturbed after this "load-test".
Wasted Resources, just Mutated
2009 05 11
After limo and all the others, why don't they just use pyneo?
Security
2009 05 05
We tested selinux recently and have a working rootfs for the neo which shows, that this slows down the neo noticeable. Another important goal is to run the gui-session not as root but as an ordinary user. This works fine now.
The secret pyneo project
2009 04 23
While testing the new, secret pyneo project on the road i saw this truck in front of me. Because using a mobile-cam during driving at night is not the base for sharp nice picture i have to tell you: This is really the original linux penguin on that truck there! No joke, no gimp in use!
Josch was here
2009 04 23
A week ago or so Josch visited me here in Düsseldorf. We fixed alot minor and major things in pyneo code and discussed many opportunities of the design. All in all: This was of big help for pyneo - Thanks, Josch!
See your privacy!
2009 02 04
While in germany one scandal is followed by another scandal around private data misuse, pyneo brings at least some light in bankaccount transactions. Transaction will be grabbed from your bank and displayed on the device immediatly if they happen. In the future you may choose to accept the transaction or deny in which case you may phone up you bank if a contact of you bank is saved. Because everything is open you can choose where to persist you privacy and know where its going and where not.
pyneo now supports realistic 3d features of the glamo!
2009 01 11
Due to several other projects i have to work on (to fill my fridge) the work on pygsmd (the call handling will be redesigned to fit better into the patterns used in pyneod's dbus usage) is a little bit stalled. But i managed to get quite amazingly realistic 3d output on glamos display. Wasn't that much work, btw...
25c3
2009 01 02
I had 3 minutes to talk about pyneo on the 25c3 and i can tell you 3 minutes are quite short. Klick the image if you really want to see the video or just read the documentation here to get a deeper view than some minutes can provide.
A new muxer released
2008 12 15
Today a new version (1.6) of the muxer was finalized and released. While the design of another wellknown phone makes its way through the world on the neo side the gui part has nothing new.
Layouter urgently needed
I wasnt able to find a layouter that has a simple description language able to do what i need. Automatic scaling of svg should be included and a way to respond on media chracteristics like landscape/portrait on the fly. So i started my own. See the video of its first incarnation doing scaled svg, portrait/landscape switching and layout by aspect ratio.
Don't challenge a zebra
2008 11 09
Today my zebra was hit by an idiotic bmw driver. Nobody was hurt and it looks as if the damage is repairable please "drückt die daumen".
First floor
2008 11 08
After the cellar seems to be quite finished pyneo advances to the next step... or floor. If someone wants to visualize all the nice stuff we have he needs some usefull functionality to control a display-layout. Shure the basis is still evas/ecore but edje did not reach the requirements anymore. Yesterday we sat together with a bottle of red wine and discussed heavily the requirements of an screen layouter (as you can see on the left).
A new Daemon was born
2008 10 22
Driving around with the neo shows that a traffic-jam monitor would be nice. pyneo now includes a daemon that loads maps with traffic jams marked in red.
Maps and riding
2008 10 09
One of my big goals has been reached yesterday: Using the neo to view Maps and satelite pictures while riding.
Free your maps!
2008 09 12
With pyneo you are not bound to one map provider. To proove that any provider will do pyneo has implemented several different map feeds, other than OSM. On the left you see satelite images, the right shows a hybrid map used to overlay on a sateliteimage for example. pyneo now supports 14 maps from 4 different providers out of the box. adding new providers is easy and applications that follow pyneo's api will immediatly benefit from the new maps.
Be bad!
2008 09 01
even microsoft seems to see the importance to scroll page by page if the user requests to do so. pyneo goes one step further and requests that a full line should stay on top after scrolling even if a line was cropped at the bottom of the window or screen before the scrolling.
pyneo isn't effected by the patent because it lacks PgUp and PgDown key support completly. so no need to be bad & evil this time.
Bicycles show stopper
2008 08 31
As written earlier I started to use the OSM Bicycle maps from a guy from UK. It turned out that the server is quite slow so for now it's a delay of tenth of seconds to get the few tiles needed for the neo. Hopefully someone speeds up this server soon, the maps are wonderful.
Outcome from froscon
Not only i saw one of the dinosaur of the software world convincing me that Minix 3 is worth trying out I met guys from the Open Street Map project that gave me an interesting hint. A crazy guy from uk renders another flavor of osm maps using colors for altitude reaching quite near to topographic maps which i need. it was easy to include in pyneo - see the screenshot on the left. The most amazing project by far was Open Bicycle Computer - one person, one year, one computer...
Delivered
while delivering new function of gsm with pyneod like call defering, call on hold and call forwarding i get a tool for another favorite hobbies of mine. a solid tool is always the base of a good job you can do. this tool is so solid that it works itself out of the paket it was delivered in. Hopefully pyneod is as stable as this tool.
Delivered
a developer version of pyneo was delivered to some developers for early testing.
I've been moved
- the project pyneo now has its own domain pyneo.org. because all d-bus names use that prefix this was really needed.
- all documentation moved from neo1973-germany.de here.
- its written in plain html now, wiki just sux.
the picture on the left shows my working place, weeks ago. i found that picture when collecting & sorting files for this site.
Capacitors
the capacitors arrived today ready to be put into 2 neos: gta01 mp and gta02 mp. the gta01 had excelent gps signal and got a fix in a minute after putting it in.
Nature, Closed Source
When visiting friends this weekend I discovered an old license agreement on their pinboard
The interesting part is at the end. Translated to english: "This breed [of strawberries] is protected, sharing plants with others is not allowed. You can obtain plants from our licensee Alois Spitzel..."
Is the Neo hot? Or not?
Because i like the service and just to prove how simple a random service can be integrated i gave pyneo a new plugin: Hot Or Not.
I encountered various problems in the moving mobile world with python's http and libc's dns functionality. I had to patch it a bit to work reliably under wireless conditions where you encounter dropping connections, timeouts and the like as normal cirumstances.
Dinge rox
Other phones get a dinge-like front also...
Pylgrim plugin for pyneo
Now pyneo can show you your location on an open street map. I have to admit, the pseudo advertising with the map below was gimp work. Now the first map really works and as always: it is split into two parts to be used by other guis also. There is a daemon in the background, a gui in front, talking to each other over a common interface. You may have different map daemons for open street map, google, msn, sat images or topo maps. The work is based and inspired by Pylgrim from josch which is described in pylgrim
Phonebook? Who Needs a SIM phonebook?
Another bug in the muxer or the modem was fixed: Channel allocation didn't work due to unknown circumstances and the muxer now sends a retry for such states. Testing shows that channels that don't accept data are gone. SMS sending, reading and deleting works also. Next step will be the phonebook on the SIM which could be one (data-)base for the PIM developed in GSoC this year.
Development cycle
Short develop-install-test cycles are essential. With python you reach a speed where the time for just grabbing the neo to see the effect of your efforts is too much. A stable stand for the neo is required.
Giving the testers what the testers is
These days i release the third edition of pygsmd included support for fic/ti specific informations, sms and (coming soon) phonebook access. The internal structure has changed to allow easier parsing. Now the pygsmd requires a muxer because it needs two lines to the modem. But another much more important thing comes also
starting fixing more bugs in the daemon the breakfast took a sunbath and melt away... it gets more & more important to get rid of the neo to start using it. outside! it comes with GPS!!
All about argumentation
Pyneo's architecture was used to get OM convinced to burn even more money in another project. It's more or less a fork of pyneo and to underpin a new standalone project any argument was good enough.
Community Member of the Month April and ...
While doing a third incarnation of the pygsmd i also worked on the promised t-shirt for the neo1973-germany community member of the month april. It arrived today, here is a picture.
Root cause
If you wonder why i want a robust mobile with gps & gsm included look here
that's the sports i do in my sparetime. i do endurance-riding where gps is a good training aid.
Thing rocks!
While i was fighting with power saving in muxer mode (see #1289) and the pygsmd I found a snippet in an old tv-show (The Addams Family) that proves that the thing-idea is simply right :-)
btw: I won the fight and muxer and pygsmd now work fine again - testers welcome!
Fun to see
While not able to work on the gui its nice to see that other people do (thanks alot, C7).
for testing i got a GTA02 with an imei and modem firmware version Moko7. Finally my tests succeeded and i could register to the network and issue phone calls.
Modem and PSC
The muxer's PSC (Power Saving Control) makes me headache. Mickey cheered me up with his talk on Open Expo here
http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-2115673181798091662
Also I did some photographie for a fictional advertising campaign Free running in the Moko Underground.
GSMd
While i am fighting with pygsmd and the modem someone showed me this video, showing pyneo on the open expo:
Muxer works again
With the gta02 a new modem firmware arrived that had some power managment capabilities. The muxer stopped to work with it and I need to do some fixes. 10 days later it works again.
The GTA02 arrived and needed a debug-board to get freed
I am a softworker and always was a little afraid doing hardware stuff. I never had to with my gta01 but the gta02 arrived in a state where i had to get a debug board to free it
Impressions of the animations with e* at fosdem
On the fosdem i met lots of people from OE and we took a video from my mockup
Cellular camera taken first video of numpad character entry
The most important part of the gui is the character entry. Here is my proposal:
It works as a standard num-pad entry where the number-buttons have associated characters (2 -> abc, 3 -> def,...). If you tap on a number you get the first character and if you then move your finger it cycles through the chararcters from that button. A word-prediction should be implemented to improve the entry speed.
First video of the scrolling with e*
My walk through the libraries finally found an end with the enlightment base libraries. While i tried those before i gave up with those because their bad behavior (no error handling, no usable logging, not enough documentation). But when i gave it another try i found out that the animations i wanted to achieve run fine on my gta01.
The muxer works!
Neo's modem need an advanced mode muxer. While i already did one for the greephone i had to work on it again because it could do base mode only.
You see the log of the muxer on the top right, the other windows are terminal programs to logical channels, each capable of standard gsm0707 commands or doing gprs.
It's eating the whole battery!
I made a rdd stat from neo battery, neo having a fix (yes also the GTA01 suffers from a antenna problem and OM/FIC didn't investigate when customers... community complained), response time from internet http request and other intersting values.
It's got a logo
This is the logo i intend to use to show that this is not the complete OM stack but participates from it (u-boot, kernel, bitbate, ...).
The neo replaced immediatly j2me, symbian and the greenphone as a development platform
I tried a lot of platforms for my project. The Neo was the fastest development platform i tried.
