Bring your Linux Laptop online using the Treo 650

This time I have a small How-To:

Bring your Linux laptop online using your Treo 650 and GPRS (using Simyo as provider)

What to do on the Treo 650:
 Switch on Bluetooth and enable “Netzwerk-Einwahl” (dial-up networking, DUN). Your might need firmware 1.12 on your Treo 650 to have this option in the Bluetooth preference panel.

What to do on your Linux (Ubuntu) laptop:
 Install the bluez-packets (bluez-utils). Next you use hcitool scan to find your Treo and get its hardware address. The address looks like 00:07:E0:07:E6:A3 and is unique for any Bluetooth device. You can connect to the device using:

rfcomm connect /dev/rfcomm0 00:07:E0:07:E6:A3

You should now have a serial connection between your laptop and your Treo.

Next we need to configure the scripts to dial in and hangup. In our example we use a German prepaid provider which has a quite cheap data plan, Simyo.

You create some files

1. at /etc/ppp/peers a file called simyo

/dev/rfcomm0
115200
crtscts
#debug
idle 300
lcp-echo-failure 0
lcp-echo-interval 0
local
lock
noauth
#nodetach
noipdefault
noproxyarp
defaultroute
usepeerdns
ipparam eplus
password eplus
remotename eplus
user ''
connect "/usr/sbin/chat -f /etc/chatscripts/simyo-connect"
disconnect "/usr/sbin/chat -f /etc/chatscripts/simyo-disconnect"

2. at /etc/chatscripts/ a file called simyo-connect

SAY 'Starting GPRS connect script\n'
TIMEOUT 10
ABORT 'NO DIAL TONE' ABORT 'NO ANSWER' ABORT DELAYED
'' ATZ
OK 'AT&F+CGDCONT=1,"IP","INTERNET.EPLUS.DE";+CGQREQ=1,0,0,0,5,1'
SAY 'Dialing...\n'
OK ATD*99***1#
CONNECT ' '

and a file called simyo-disconnect

SAY 'Starting GPRS disconnect script\n'
"" \K
"" +++ATH0

Now you enter a pon simyo and you are online. With poff you can bring the connection down and with plog you can see some log infos about the ppp0 connection.

One problem I had was the default route. After the connection was established, ifconfig did show me the ppp0 connection and the assigned IP address, plog told me also I was connected and even the Treo had the GPRS indication (2 green arrows on the signal reception gadget). I was using the ethernet connection (eth0) during the setup to look for help in the internet. After unplugging the network cable the laptop still had the old route (192.168.0.1) stored as default route. I had to manually enter route add default gw 10.121.30.0 to add a route to the new mobile connection.

[ Another link doing the same for Windows: http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2005/06/howto_legal_dun.html ]

Oktober 4, 2007 · admin · No Comments
Posted in: Allgemein, Palm

From traffic counter to PalmPDF

The next update for PalmPDF is still in progress but takes some more time. Reason 1: I’ve updated the freetype library and now I need to rework the font rendering in reflow mode. Reason 2: I’ve update to the last Xpdf version which brings some conflicts to resolve. Reason 3: I did some work on 2LaunchMe and enhanced the traffic/time counter:

Counting your online data traffic or the time you’re Palm is only might be not necessary if you have an unlimited data plan. At least in theory, having an iPhone it might be not a bad idea to check it from time to time when you’re going abroad or coming close to the country’s border: http://www.newsday.com/business/ny-bzappl0908,0,2929341.story?coll=ny_home_rail_headlines

Counting traffic on PalmOS has some real bad traps for you to hit: most of the time you can’t access the service name (that’s the name you give your network connection in the prefs) when you retrieve the traffic amount. This makes it hard to connect the internal connection ID (which is something like ppp_0, ppp_1 or wi_0) with a name you can present to the user. Another pitfall: from time to time the traffic amount isn’t reset to zero when the Palm opens the connection. Means the programmer has to check and store the initial traffic amount which was left from an older connection attempt.

Now it seems I managed most of these pitfalls, allowing the user to select a connection from its network prefs, adjusting minimal data black size and duration slices. The traffic is then counted when the connection is up and accumulated in a list when the connection goes down. Additional it can also display the current network in the upper right corner. Handy, if you have 2 SIM-cards for voice and data, like me. Now I only need to purchase a SIM-switch.

Be sure you download 2LaunchMe from here (prc) and test it on your device. It has a 14 days trial period and is still purchasable for around 5 € in a online shop near you. When released official with the traffic counter the price might raise a bit. Hurry up, don’t miss it.

Back to PalmPDF and its next update: It still needs some time to be finished, but I’m sure it will be worth it. and I will disclose some of the new features later on.

Stay tuned,

Henk

September 15, 2007 · admin · No Comments
Posted in: Developing, Palm

2 Player support for LJP

Tonight, I’ve added 2 player support for the NES module of LJP. I’ve tried it with Super Offroad and it worked. One player uses the device keys the other could use the BT gamepad. It worked quite well, but the small screen makes it more or less a technical demonstration 🙂 I don’t want to give you an example yet, there is something really bad inside making it impossible to exit it in a friendly way. I will try to fix this and also add the 2 player stuff to the other modules, be patient…

Henk

August 17, 2007 · admin · No Comments
Posted in: Allgemein

How I accidentally changed the overall volume of my Treo 680

Lately, I had to call my girlfriend to make some arrangement for dinner this evening. I was working, sitting in front of my laptop, writing some new code. I looked up the number in the received call list and dialed it. She was on a playground with the kids and I knew I have to wait some seconds until she will recognize my call. So, I put my Treo on the table, switched on the loudspeaker to hear when she picks up her phone and waited. The call tone was quite loud and a bit disturbed in the loudspeakers that’s why I used the volume buttons on the side to reduce the volume a bit. I reduced it quite far until the sound wasn’t disturbed anymore. I didn’t used the button below the volume buttons to store this volume setting.

The days after this day I recognized my overall volume of my phone was quite low. I have the ringer volume on 5 usually and it is quite loud, but now it was on 5 but it wasn’t very loud anymore. I opened the sound preference and played around with the volume settings for the different applications. No way, the maximum volume didn’t increased. I thought about some dust inside the loudspeakers or a software problem (maybe even with one of my own tools).

At the end, today, I had to make another call, switched on the loudspeaker and just by chance tried to adjust the volume: Well, I saw my old volume setting was still stored and as I increased the volume during this phone call, the overall volume was increased back to its former level. I don’t know if it is written in the manual, but I think it’s a very strange experience and can really confuse users.

August 4, 2007 · admin · No Comments
Posted in: Allgemein

PalmPDF 1.6 will come for sure

Lately, there was some news about a security hole in Xpdf which is the base of PalmPDF. Therefore I decided to bring PalmPDF back to the front page and not only include the fix for this security hole but also add some other things:

  • Update the font rendering engine, FreeType, to the latest version
  • Send an email to Apple, Inc., asking about the possibility to license their patented TrueType hinting algorithm (no answer yet)
  • Add an option to suppress the parsing of all pages at start (quite annoying in large PDFs).

The suppress of parsing all pages works but accessing a page which wasn’t parsed on the beginning will cost some time. I parse now some pages before and some after the current page and when PalmPDF needs to access other pages it will need to reparse them. At the moment this means a restart of the renderer. This is quite slow. Next thing has to be a speed up in restarting the renderer. Several things doesn’t need to be recreated. This will also speed up the color mode change during display. The best would be to just rescan the page tree when ever necessary, but this crashes at the moment and I don’t know why. The update to 1.6 will still need some more days, but it will come for sure.

Do you know about the last WintecTool update? Check our this nice German news article at www.handhirn.de

Have you added yourself to my frappr!-map?

August 4, 2007 · admin · 3 Comments
Posted in: Developing, Palm

Denn sie wissen nicht, was sie tun…

Gemeint sind unsere Politiker: Video und der SPON-Artikel dazu.

Juli 31, 2007 · admin · No Comments
Posted in: Allgemein

Foleo

Some weeks ago, Palm announced its next “big thing” the Foleo. A sub-notebook sized mobile companion. It’s based on a Linux OS and will enhance your mobile phone with a larger screen and a full size keyboard.

I’m not very sure if it will be a success but decided to provide my intelligent flash-card e-learning application “MeisterMerker” for it. The big screen and the better input capabilities will take the learning experience to a new level. You could use the Foleo to enter your stuff and your Treo to repeat the lessons in every free minute.

Also, I guess people might like to have a 5 minute break with a level of “FlugLotse“. Therefore you may expect a version of it for the Foleo when it comes to the shops.

Let’s see what the future brings and how the market will appreciate this new device. At least it looks sexy and for its around 500 US-$ and its instant-on feature it might be a good alternative to a standard laptop for a lot of people.

Juli 29, 2007 · admin · No Comments
Posted in: Allgemein

Traffic Counter in 2LaunchMe

Lately, I wrote here about the small realtime traffic counter I’ve added into 2LaunchMe (prc). It appears on the upper right corner of the display and is updated on every event which flows through the OS. I enhanced it now, added time, date, battery percent (all optional) and took care of changing widths and remaining parts on the screen.

Additional to this realtime traffic counter (only visible when the device is currently online and only displaying the traffic for the first active connection) 2LaunchMe tracks now also a summary about the traffic for up to 3 different connection profiles. You can reset this summary when ever you want and it will restart counting next time you go online. If you just need some basic stuff to track your connection traffic, give it a try and tell me what you think about.

CallerInfo (prc) got a small update: I’ve added an option to bypass the KeyLock after dismissing the AfterCall-dialog when you switch to another application instead of closing the dialog right away. B@tze, it’s for you.

Juli 27, 2007 · admin · 3 Comments
Posted in: Allgemein

LJP 1.0 rc8

LJP:

  • first try to enable a different IR-keyboard
  • make a short message (blue on black…) to indicate when LJP is loading a custom ini file
  • added Treo 755 support
  • maybe more, but then I’ve forgot about

Please give it a try (rc8: zip, tar.gz) and go to http://little-john.net/ for bug reports and forum. You can also download older versions from there.

BTW: Have you checked out the new PhoneDisconnect?

Juli 12, 2007 · admin · No Comments
Posted in: Developing, Palm

Traffic Counter

The Traffic Counter issue grabbed my intention: Wouldn’t it be cool if you have a counter always visible, when you’re online? I’m also always interested in the battery capacity of my Treo 680. I combined both, added it to 2LaunchMe and decided to release it in the next days as 2LaunchMe2. You can preview it, as always, from here. And don’t forget: 2LaunchMe is also a great hot-key launcher and can even sublaunch apps using the great Accessorizer.

Also, I want to say “thank you” to the two trackbacks I’ve got for the last entry:

palmclub.nl and palmaddicts

Take care, Henk

Juli 6, 2007 · admin · One Comment
Posted in: Developing, Palm