Month: September 2011

HP|Palm Pre – msmcomm

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As you may already know[1], I got a free HP|Palm Pre2 developer device some time ago.

The first project I started with this really nice piece of hardware is Bootr[2] – a multiboot solution for all HP|Palm Pre devices, which let’s you select an OS (SHR, WebOS, Android, …) at startup.

Msmcomm

I pledged that I’ll work on the SMS part of msmcomm[3] next, which is a free and open source utility to communicate with the Palm’s Qualcomm/MSM modem.

Now I’m happy to announce that I’ve finished quite some work on msmcomm’s SMS part and I’ve upstreamed all bytes of it. This starts at the (almost) lowest level of reverse engineering the structures used in the protocol to communicate with the modem and building useful data structures out of it. Then gathering suitable data to stuff into those structures and send them to – and receive them from – the modem.

FSO

To make my work usable to distributions like SHR[4], QtMoko[5] and Aurora[6], I integrated my work with a higher level layer – the FreeSmartphone.org middleware[7]. You can now use the usual FSO DBus commands as stated in FSO’s docs[8] to send SMS’ and listen for new, incoming SMS’.

As FSO is an abstraction layer between the low msmcomm/modem level and the higher userspace/distribution level, all my work can now be used by the abovementioned distributions automagically without any change needed – isn’t this awesome?!

Status

What’s working

  • sending/receiving SMS
  • works for SMS containing special chars like “äöüß”
  • works for multi part SMS (e.g. SMS > 160 chars)
  • acknowledging (single) incoming SMS
  • works using the FSO and the Msmcomm DBus APIs

What’s left

  • acknowledging multi part SMS
  • SMS status report
  • squeezing out bugs

Note: This only represents the SMS part of msmcomm. There is whole lot more working in the context of calls, 3g internet, sim, phonebook, …

Links

[1] HP|Palm developer device – blog.slyon.de
[2] Bootr – github.com
[3] Msmcomm – git.freesmartphone.org
[4] SHR project – shr-project.org
[5] QtMoko project – qtmoko.org
[6] Aurora project – wiki.freesmartphone.org
[7] FreeSmartphone.org – freesmartphone.org
[8] FSO API documentation – docs.freesmartphone.org

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Goldelico/Openmoko GTA04 at last production stage

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The replacement board for the Openmoko Neo Freerunner and Neo 1973 – called Goldelico GTA04 alias “Phoenux” – just arrived at it’s final production stage after another slight delay.

Goldelico GTA04

The Goldelico GTA04[1] is a state of the art hardware upgrade for your Openmoko Neo Freerunners and Neo 1973s. It has an ARM Cortex A8 800MHz processor, 512MB of RAM, a HSDPA 3G modem, an OpenGL ES 3D graphics chip, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and much more…
For a detailed overview of it’s technical specification and the story behind it, see my other post[2].

Testing

The first three “GTA04 Early-Adopter Boards” arrived at the labs of Golden Delicious Computers in Munich[3] and successfully went through the semi-automated hardware validation test. The remaining GTA04 EA boards are expected to arrive later this week.


Future

After those remaining boards passed the test, they are ready to ship to their new owners, who are already very excited about their new free smartphones and ready to develop free software for it.

It is expected that the FreeSmartphone.org[4] middleware will quickly support the GTA04, which makes it possible to run phone distributions like SHR[5], QtMoko[6] and Aurora[7] on it. And of course Debian GNU/Linux will run on the Goldelico GTA04 as well, as it is the default OS on the EA boards[8].

Support

If you want to know how you can support this project, which now needs to shoulder the production of the next batch of GTA04 boards, which will then be available to the public, you have serveral opportunities:

  • Make a donation to the project [9], so Golden Delicious Computers can stock the chips needed for new GTA04 boards.
  • Buy a cool Letux 400 [10] MIPS Minibook, so Golden Delicious Computers can clear their warehouse, to stock GTA04 parts.
  • Preorder a GTA04 replacement board [9] for your Neo 1973/Freerunner, after it became available again.
  • Spread the word about this [1] awsome project.

Links

[1] GTA04 project – gta04.org
[2] specs and story of the GTA04 – blog.slyon.de
[3] Golden Delicious Computers – goldelico.com
[4] FreeSmartphone.org project – freesmartphone.org
[5] SHR project – shr-project.org
[6] QtMoko project – qtmoko.org
[7] Aurora project – wiki.freesmartphone.org
[8] GTA04 Debian rootfs – projects.goldelico.com
[9] Preorder a GTA04/donate – handheld-linux.com
[10] Buy a Letux 400 Minibook – handheld-linux.com

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