Hackable:1 seems to be the most interesting of other openmoko distributions. Here is a quick dekho of rev4 release. There is that old GSM registering bug which is fixed in newer release and also an unexplained blinking?. Perhaps I should go for more functional Hackable:1, rev5rc1 instead.
A quick question before I sign off What is your next phone going to use?
This weekend I travelled overnight for the first Open Street Map (OSM) mapping party in Calicut. The event was part of NIT Calicut's Tathva fest. When I reached Calicut I found Sajjad, Praveen and other geo hackers had been hacking late into night preparing for the party. Took a headdive by first fixing Sajjad's laptop and later helping out with few late minute tasks.
Getting the devices to work was a major pain. The Ubuntu Karmic laptop I had with me managed to detect the Openmoko Neo Freerunner and Android based G1, we could do upload GPS clients to the devices. But only one of OpenMoko's ending up being used at the party while others started rebooting whenever we launch GPS client. Bummer !
After a quick Kerala style breakfast we headed to NIT Calicut campus some 20 kms from the city. Dressed up in white mapping party tshirts with 'Our Streets, Our Map' printed in bold letters in the back. We found the FLOSS Hall inside the campus already setup, the overhead projector was running endless Linux Foundation videos. :) But there very few people around.
On the other side of the room, several laptops were setup showcasing several Linux applications. Found that laptops running Linux games were most engaged through out the day. We quickly hooked up our Wifi access point to the wired network so that we could get online for uploading out geo mapping data.
Sajjad, Praveen and others gave a quick introduction to Open Street Map project and the idea behind a mapping party. The tools needed for mapping are a GPS device or a phone with GPS feature, a computer running JOSM - OpenStreetMap editor and a account on OSM servers to upload the your geo mapping data.
Later we divided into different groups, each with a GPS device and a different area of campus to map. I managed to get a sector with ladies hotel :P but failed to get someone with mapping experience into my team. We heading out under the hot sun to start mapping.
Assigning different area's to teams
Tools for Mapping: Computer and GPS device
Walking and mapping with a GPS device
Garmin GPS Device
Download, edit and upload to OSM servers
Late Dinner
Give me a pillow, I'll sleep right here
Overall the event was a great learning experience for me. Later in the evening I interacted with team to see what worked and what didn't work at the party. I managed to share some ideas on creating a blueprint for such mapping parties or workshops around India before I left the city.
Day 3 :: Got a Openmoko Hack session underway in the media hall after the fsfs.in ended.
Watch out here the GPS pigtail doubles as the stylus !
Day 4 @ foss.in 2008
IndLinux Project BOF
Beacon Workout
Sharing ideas after Apertium talk
Sachin Joshi demo's his Hindi ASR system
Flashing the Neo FreeRunner
Connecting the FreeRunner with an USB cable and reseting it to boot from NOR
dfu-util in action
dfu-util writes the kernel and File system images to the device
Just Messing Around !
Few more OLPC XO's sighted
Lou Bébert brought it his ubuntu studio turntables hookup
XwaX UI
External USB sound card ( look at scheme diagram)
Ubuntu Studio PC
Aasim tries his hand at DJing
Ramki nails another victim
Don't wanna sing!
The other day shakthi mentioned (scrapped) that he ordered a Neo FreeRunner I am tempted to get one for myself, checked the openmoko site and found that Jaipur based IDA systems distribute this product in India. The cost of Neo FreeRunner is in India is Rs.20,000 .
IDA Systems Pvt Ltd
11 Uniara Garden
Jaipur 302004
+91 141 3243321
http://www.idasystems.net/freerunner
NB:The IDA Systems Neo FreeRunner product page has picture of Neo 1973 not FreeRunner !!
