Recently Written

• Kiosk Browser Grows Up, Goes Pro
• Android App: Simple Kiosk Browser
• Widget, it’s got a widget…
• LinkUSB(i) and 1-Wire setup
• I am an IAMS cat
• LG TV Serial Control
• Tivo Return to UK Via Virgin Media
• Another Android Security Update
• Pictures from Computex 2009
• Pull That Squidgy iPhone application
• Extra Cupcake, Still No Latitude
• G1 Assault on battery
• Everywhere you go, always take the weather with you
• Pachube dials without the heartache
• Dynamic Dials Disclosed
• Gratifying Graphic Gizmos
• Current Cost Capers
• One Wireduino made easy
• WordPress tweetbacking
• What the UK VAT Reduction really means

Categories

• 1-Wire
• android
• arduino
• computex
• freerunner
• hardware
• image builds
• iphone
• kiosk
• learning
• linux
• neo 1973
• openmoko
• opensource
• personal
• software
• VoIP

Archives

• November 2011
• July 2011
• May 2011
• January 2011
• October 2010
• November 2009
• July 2009
• June 2009
• May 2009
• April 2009
• March 2009
• February 2009
• January 2009
• December 2008
• November 2008
• October 2008
• September 2008
• August 2008
• July 2008
• June 2008
• April 2008
• March 2008
• February 2008
• January 2008
• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007

Admin

• Log in

Search

After getting a little frantic over my Neo battery life it appears that it has magically cured itself. I had decided that I’d try to eliminate the software side of thing as a cause for my charging issue. Rolling back to a 20071109 version of one of my own builds showed that the Neo was charging perfectly, rolling forward again and it was still happily charging.

Having left it running all night sampling the battery voltage once a second with no failure or reboot, I’m convinced that it was just a freak failure.

Hopefully other people monitoring their battery using the same method will report their findings so we can see if there is any sort of pattern in this.

Tagged with: hardware • neo 1973
November 16, 2007 10:55

I’m a little worried about my Neo 1973, or more precisely it’s battery. We all know that the Neo doesn’t last particularly long with its battery, even after powering down, unless you take the battery out for a few minutes first. The problem started a few days about when my Neo seemed to reboot itself for no apparent reason. I noticed it about three times and thought nothing of it. Until now that is. I’m wondering how many times and for how long the battery can take being plugged into my laptop, getting charged and discharged on an almost daily basis. I’m trying to work it out, my Neo arrived on July 31 2007, If I estimate 1 charge / discharge per day that comes out at only 107 recharges, which is surely well under the life of a battery?

Looking at the graph below it appears that my battery is not charging while the Neo is powered up, or at least, it’s only getting enough charge to keep it at a fairly static level – ie not actually charging over what it takes to run the device.

I’ve Updated the graph because the Neo lost its charge competely, the graph should show this clearly and seems to mirror the results from here

I used a simple bash script to check for the voltage from

/sys/devices/platform/s3c2410-i2c/i2c-adapter/i2c-0/0-0008/battvolt

every second and then dump it to a file on my laptop. The Neo was plugged in via usb. To me the graph, measured over an hour, looks like it’s falling.

So it looks like either my battery and/or the charging circuit is damaged or I’m reading the data wrongly. I’m going to run the battery monitor for a day or so, or at least until the neo reboots itself. Once that is done I’ll put the second battery that I got with the advanced kit and see how that does in the same tests.

Tagged with: hardware • neo 1973
November 15, 2007 13:51

My Fon hardware arrived today. It consists of a “La Fonera +” wifi router and a “La Fontenna” antenna. I have to say I haven’t bothered to open the boxes yet at all. My biggest concerns are with the company behind the whole idea and the lack of any real security on the devices.

A number of times various representatives of fon have claimed that fon is an opensource company and that anyone can reflash the hardware with additions etc if they want. Well neither of those is true. Fon is not an opensource company, they don’t know the meaning of the words. They might use opensource, but they don’t seem to understand that there is a difference. In terms of the software side, Fon are as opensource as Tivo. They have met their obligation to allow access to the source code, which they used from openwrt , but the hardware only allows images signed by them to be flashed. Incidentally, they didn’t really make any effort to publicize that you could download the source and were indeed in breach of the GPL prior to doing so.

So, I’m sitting here with my Fon hardware wondering if I should bother. I started out doing this because I wanted to be able to roam about and have internet access wherever I could find a Fon router – thinking about the GTA02 from FIC and being able to build nice client which would connect whenever it could and tunnel over ssh just to be sure of a little bit of security and privacy.

Tagged with: hardware • opensource
October 19, 2007 14:10

I work at LinITX.com and we sell the X2040 LCD display from Pertelian. LCDproc supports the LCD with no problems but there was no driver for lcd4linux so wrote I one. It has been submitted and accepted for inclusion in the lcd4linux project svn repo. I’ve documented it on the lcd4linux wiki.
As an addendum using multiple displays is possible with no real issues.

Tagged with: hardware • opensource • software
October 1, 2007 22:15