Roland Tanglao's Weblog

(Part 2 of my Bug Adventures series, for more real time wiki action check out my Bug Adventures wiki where I flesh out my thoughts before posting them here!)

Why doesn't my GPS aka BUGgps seem to work? By "not working", I mean it doesn't get a GPS satellite lock which results in a Java exception for those using the high level API and void values e.g. "$GPGLL,,,,,022837.595,V*1D "for apps reading the RAW GPS sentences.  My guess is it's a low level software bug that will be fixed in the "real soon now" R1.4 software release. Note that I have attached the external antenna and put it on the window sill where my other GPSes (Nokia LD-4W, Nokia E71) have no problems obtaining a GPS lock!

Herewith my debugging notes:

1. http://bugcommunity.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=351 seems to be the definitive source of how to fix your GPS! the fix in the thread:
   
   1. "navigate the front-panel menu to the GPS module and you will be able to see fix: True/False and IOX, which is the value of the IOX register:"
      1. (front panel led sequence is: modules->GPS->IOX) I get 0x63 which means
         1. bit  0: 1 == no GPS fix, since fix is active low
         2. bit 1: 1 = no overcurrent condition
         3. bit 2: 0 = no wakeup from sleep
         4. bit 3: 0 = don't know what this is, guess is 0 means don't download firmware
         5. bit 4,5 unused
         6. bit 7,6 0,1 == external antenna
            
2. Other people's code I have tried
   
   1. GPSRawFeedExample always outputs "V*blah" which I think means void!
      1. e.g. $GPGLL,,,,,051302.397,V*10
   2. GPSLoggerSimpleGUI - the GUI doesn't work but at least the program doesn't crash :-)
   3. GPSLogger2 creates a zero length file in /tmp but does nothing else e.g. /tmp/GPSSun Jan 04 20:25:49 UTC 2009.log
   4. GpsLogger_1.1 java.lang.NullPointerException
      at com.buglabs.bug.module.gps.GPSModlet.getLatitudeLongitude(Unknown Source)
   5. My friend Simon's app has the same bug as GPS Logger 1.1 i.e. java.lang.NullPointerException
      at com.buglabs.bug.module.gps.GPSModlet.getLatitudeLongitude(Unknown Source)
      1. Simon's guess: the NMEA sentence they are getting from the underlying
         hardware isn't quite in the format they expect, so they end up trying
         to get a double out of the string  ","
      2. http://lists.buglabs.net/pipermail/bug-dev/2008-December/000167.html seems to be the same problem!
3. Evidence that this is a Bug that's being worked on:
   1. this fix went into  svn trunk (svn://svn.buglabs.net/bug/trunk  ) on December 14, 2008, http://svn.buglabs.net/svn/!revision/7632
      // default to passive (external) antenna, until
      // such time as we have confidence in the internal            
      // antenna's ability to obtain a fix          
      log.log(LogService.LOG_DEBUG, "GPSModlet defaulting to passive (external) antenna");              
      setPassiveAntenna();       

I have started a personal Google Wiki called "BUG Adventures" to track my adventures with my Bug Labs BUG. There's not much there for now other than some newbie eclipse questions and  the usual anti-Java whingeing :-)  (since I have only played with my BUG for about an hour), but if you are interested you can check it out at your leisure.

The question of the moment is: what is this ? (couldn't find it in the wiki and manuals but then again I only searched for about 15 minutes!)

Otherwise, I'll post highlights here.

 

Richard said I have until January 15 :-) so here goes some randomly ordered predictions which are worth what you paid for them!

1. Social Media microniching and microcontent-fication continues to grow rapidly. Twitter and Seesmic are just the beginning. Old skool bloggers like myself continue to blog and to write large pieces but even for us it's the exception rather than the rule.
2. Drupal fervent, creativity, acquisition and expansion continues because Drupal 6 will unleash the creativity of the world. Go Acquia go! Go Raincity go!
3. Apple introduces 3G iPhone not at Macworld but in the spring. Rogers finally brings the iPhone to Canada in time for Christmas 2008. They won't be onboard for the Apple Spring announcement because they still don't "get it" , but they will have no choice for Christmas 2008 since all of the 3G handsets Rogers sells s*ck and nobody will buy them since unlike the iPhone they are unusable and no better than non 3G sets feature wise. [Hope I am wrong about Rogers!]
4. Speaking of "get"-ting it. Translink (or whatever they are called now), start to get it. True feedback comes from BOTH their old very slow 20th century skool approach (e.g. Translink Listens is a farce for the Internet Generation because you a) never see the results or b) know anything about the people behind the very vague and not useful polls but ok for the old fogeys) AND from social media like an official blog, a flickr account and facebook (heck maybe even twitter and Seesmic: e.g. twitter-ing system outages and delays or facebook statusing them would be a lot better than their current very slow 20th century haphazard way of telling us the SkyTrain is down or buses are delayed). The unofficial Translink Attendance at Transit Camp was very encouraging; I'm predicting this type of stuff will become officially supported in 2008.
5. Apple sub MacBook. It won't be the return of the Newton and it won't be a big iPhone, it'll be cool (small, instant on and useful) and again it won't be introduced at MacWorld. [Again hope I am wrong here! Hope it comes sooner]
6. The era of dumb non presence aware "high ceremony" audio and video is over. Go SightSpeed, go Lypp, go Iotum! All three will prosper in 2008. Skype will too since they are ubiquitous for both.
7. Nokia will continue to have the best hardware for mobile devices but unfortunately not the best software. An awesome N93 video cameraphone successor will be introduced that again only early adopters will use and find usable.
8. No usable mobile interface that is nearly as usable as Apple's touch interface emerges in 2008. Fingers crossed for 2009 [hope i am wrong about this one too]
9. Truly Open Hardware combined with truly Open Software - the trend started by Open Moko, Chumby (I've bought a chumby and am mulling some fun but extremely bogus hacks for it :-) !) and Bug Labs continues. Hopefully someone will introduce something like The Bug that is less clunky and uses a more malleable dynamic language like Ruby or Python (I am sure somebody will hack The Bug to use Ruby or Python or some such but it's not the same as having something designed from the ground up to use Ruby or Python as its development environment rather than clunky, "strait-jacketed by typing" and verbose Java). [and yes even though it's "clunky" and Java, I am saving my pennies for my own Bug! ]
10. Canon introduces an ISO 25600 camera to compete with the Nikon D3 and a 5D replacement with sensor cleaning and clean, usable ISO 6400. I'm saving my pennies (coz I'll never like flash photography although I love the Strobist).
11. Nokia or somebody smart buys ShoZu. The rest of the world will start to see the advantage of a "straight to the web from the camera" workflow that ShoZu pioneered (Eye-Fi is inferior to ShoZu because it doesn't suspend/resume upon connectivity interruption/resumption but it's good enough and it works everywhere and I am getting one of their cards pronto! See my earlier Eye-Fi plug). Why not build ShoZu into micro SD cards ? Just a thought :-) !
12. 3G and WiFi are now mature enough for a "straight to the web from the camera" workflow for video too. Why should you have to wait? Why can't video be uploaded directly to the web from your camera like you can with photos with ShoZu and Eye-Fi? There really is no reason other than file size and early adopters will start doing that in 2008.

I've had many requests for the Hugin and Mugin source code (Java midlet to take pictures and upload them to flickr) written by my friend and super developer Simon and tested and evangelized by me  but unfortunately the links to the old code are broken. So download Hugin and Mugin here!

Don't usually play these tag games, but this will be the exception that proves the rule. My first Symbian device was the Nokia 7610 which I bought unlocked in August 2004 from a Vietnamese grey market vendor here (thanks Harry!) in Vancouver.

I bought the 7610 because of its 1 megapixel camera which was fab for its time and also because S60 was and is a platform where I knew I could get 3rd party apps and possibly develop my own. I bought the 7610 as a belated 40th birthday gift to myself (much better than a sports car :-) and much cheaper!). I was was smart enough to also buy an unlimited GPRS data plan for my phone which is no longer available in Canada and allows me to monthly use about 250 MB of data traffic photos and videos which is a lot over GPRS.

Took plenty of photos and uploaded many with HuginAndMugin (which my friend Simon wrote in Java; the Java mobile platform annoyed me back then because it couldn't take 1 megapixel photos and it annoys me now because there is a new JSR released seemingly every month and every phone has a different implementation of the Java mobile platform but I am still willing to be convinced that Java on mobile is actually a viable platform ) and via ShoZu.

Went to BloggerCon III where I spoke about HuginAndMugin at the mobile session and met Andy who later became the man behind Nokia Blogger Relations.

From there, the rest is history. N70 and then N91, N93 and N73 and many, many photos and videos taken with all of these phones. Hopefully N95 soon. Oh and I also had a Newton 2000 and one of the first Palm Pilots. I used the Newton alot and the Palm for about 3 or 4 months; never liked Palm; too simple, really ugly fonts compared to the Newton :-) and didn't meet my geeky needs!

Except for the memory problems and the user interface problems of S60v3 (both of which can be fixed or improved, more on that later in a future post), I am quite happy with Symbian and S60.

I truly believe that if the iPhone is 1/4 as usable as it appears and ships 1/2 of the units Apple expects to, then this will be great competition and cause S60's memory problems and usability to be fixed rapidly. Vive la competition!

FROM atmaspheric | endeavors » My Symbian History:

QUOTE

Ok - that was probably far too long and rambling, but I suppose that’s the point of this exercise. For the next round, I will tag people from my Twitter and Jaiku contact lists and ping Matthew Miller, Roland Tanglao and Ken Camp.

END QUOTE

Downloading EQO for Mac OS X now to my Mac and to my N70. About time! More later! Still don't understand why a desktop client is needed; hope that this requirement goes away in time. Looking forward to using Skype on my N70 via EQO.

Just re-posting this because the URLs have changed and people are looking for it. NOTE: that it may no longer work because flickr have changed their authentication APIs and this software is UNSUPPORTED!

Here are the files:

1. Hugin/Mugin binaries
2. Hugin/Mugin source

From Roland Tanglao's Weblog: Hugin/Mugin 1.0 - J2ME Flickr uploader for Series 60 Nokia cameraphones.:

QUOTE

LATER: I have added a Public Hugin/Mugin Flickr group. Please post your comments there.

After a prolonged testing and development period, Hugin/Mugin (Hugin and Mugin are Norse gods that Simon likes! This program was formally known as FlickrLive) is available for general release:

WHAT: Hugin/Mugin is a J2ME Flickr uploader for Series 60 cameraphone phones. It enables almost real time uploading (e.g. with a 30 second delay on the Canadian mobile carrier Fido's GPRS network) of photos from your phone directly to Flickr. No muss, no fuss, no chain of pain. It comes as two midlets: one to configure called Hugin/Mugin Settings (Flickr userid, password, tags, etc.) and one to actually upload called Hugin/Mugin

WHO IS THIS FOR: Power Users, techies and geeks. Sorry, but with the current cameraphone state of the art, I can't recommend this to normal people!

HOW TO INSTALL: download this Hugin/Mugin Zip file (60 K zip). Unzip it and transfer the .jar and the .jad files to your phone. Install it by opening the Jad.

HOW TO USE: Run the configuration midlet, Hugin/Mugin Settings, and put in your default tags, title, camera resolution and flickr id and password. Then when you want to take a photo, run Hugin/Mugin. Click to take a picture and upload!

LICENSE: Free, GPL

SUPPORT: none, ok, best effort :-) which means leave a comment here or on your blog and I'll do my best to answer any questions

TESTED ON: Nokia 7610 ONLY! I believe it should work on other Series 60 phones like the 6600 and 6630 but I don't know for sure.

REQUIREMENTS: Series 60 Nokia phone AND some kind of mobile data service like GPRS, EV-DO, 3G, 1X, etc.

SOURCE: will be available tomorrow when I have time to post it and it will be GPL'ed

AUTHOR: Simon Lewis, my programming maven (really! Simon can and has almost programmed everything from CORBA frameworks to apps from Lisp to C, C++, Java, Smalltalk etc.) friend in the UK; I didn't write one line of code. I'm just the product manager :-) which means I just did the testing and helped with the requirements.

PROBLEMS: More details in the release notes tomorrow with the source but J2ME on the 7610 doesn't appear to let you upload true 1 megapixel images. Instead you get pixelated 640x480. Sad but true! Still it's cool to have pixelated 640x480 images uploaded to Flickr in pseudo real-time. I hope that by releasing the source tomorrow that somebody will be able to work around this.

UNQUOTE

Not being a PHP Developer (but being an ex C/C++ developer for over 10 years), just a documenter/supporter/evangelist of Drupal which is a PHP website/webapp development framework whose core is very clean according to developers I respect, I can tell you that it's all about the apps!

Where is the flickr (flickr is mostly PHP with 10% Java and a bit of DHTML and flash) of Java? Where are the Drupal and Joomla and WordPress (just to cite content management) of Java? Java's great for enterprise apps developed in house which makes a lot of money for Java people now but in the areas I care about: web applications and applications that I run on my personal desktop, Java is dead.

It would have been impossible to (just to cite a few Vancouver based examples) for NowPublic, Project Opus, and Rental Monster to have been done in Java with the limited resources that they were started with. Java is just too heavyweight and hardware intensive and just not suited to incremental iterative development

Bold Prediction: key web apps and the next Microsoft, Google and Yahoo will continue to come out of PHP and its brethren of Python, Ruby, and Perl, not Java.

Bold assertion: flickrTime development is impossible in Java.

Finally, it's not a war or about vulnerability, it's about providing the coolest, most usable software to real people; and Java has failed miserably at that (maybe it'll happen on mobile phones but I am not holding my breath) and there is no sign of it starting to succeed.

From On PHP.:

QUOTE

Everyone agrees on PHP's upsides: it's written for the web, it's easy to deploy and get running, and it's pretty fast. Those are important advantages. And I'm sure that it's possible to write clean, comprehensible, maintainable, PHP; only apparently it's real easy not to. But PHP has competition, most obviously Rails; and don't write the Java EE crowd off, they're not stupid at all and they're trying to learn the lessons that PHP is trying to teach. So PHP has earned everyone's respect by getting where it is, and Sun should reach out to it more than we have. But in the big picture, it feels vulnerable to me.

UNQUOTE

I am pretty sure I know who these people are. I am pretty sure they are in Vancouver. I think they should "out" themselves and blog or at least identify the team before I do :-) ! 

From Movamail - Home.:

QUOTE

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Far faster than any other Mobile Email: Mobile Mail is up to ten times faster then most of the default email applications that are included in some of today’s mobile handsets. This dramatically reduces frustrating download times and increases usability.

UNQUOTE