What is going on here? An unboxing article on MyGNU.de? Well, this is the exception, since the Gemini is an exceptional device like Nokias N900 has been before and in the future hopefully the some day finished  Neo900 might be. Well, I do not want to stray away any further. About 13 month ago I have backed Planet Computers Gemini PDA Indiegogo campaign. Planet Computers has promised a device that is different from anything else, that is available for purchase. The Gemini is a PDA class clamp-shell device with a fully integrated keyboard and touchscreen that is designed for Android, but also capable of running Linux. No need to go through the specs here, everything interesting regarding these can be read on Planet Computers web page or on Wikipedia. Last week, after a long time of waiting, the parcel with the 4G version of the Gemini, the connectivity kit and the optional camera finally arrived. The order id has been in the 20XX range and the device is with a non UK keyboard, so the device is most probably from the third batch.

Parcel containing the Gemini PDA

After opening the parcel and removing some wrapping material one can see multiple smaller boxes containing the device and its accessories.

The opened parcel

The boxes shown in the photo below contain from left to right, the leather pouch, the special HDMI adapter (only this one allows connecting an external display), the Gemini, the USB type C hub, the external camera addon and an additional charger.

Boxes containing the Gemini PDA and accessories

The larger box welcomes us with “hello” printed in several languages and contains  a smaller black box containing the manual and the cover removal tool (needed to insert a SIM card and a SD card), the PDA itself and (still in the larger box) a charger and the Type C to Type A USB cable.

The opened PDA box

Below we have a closer look to the PDA well wrapped in foil.

Gemini wrapped in foil

After removing the foil we can see its full beauty.

The Gemini PDA

With the opened device we can see the the display and the German QWERTZ keyboard. The keyboard feels solid and has no wobbly keys like it has been reported by backers who have received devices from the first batch.

The opened Gemini PDA with display and keyboard

Phone manufacturers recommend to charge the devices a first time fully before using. Most probably this is a myth without any use than having a fully charged device, but anyway I did.

Charging the Gemini PDA for the first time

I am hoping you have enjoyed the photo series. Further articles regarding testing some aspects of the device, Linux on the Gemini, and hopefully some solutions will follow. Does it really contain a X27 CPU? We will find out later. Stay tuned for updates.

Jürgen

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Nokias N900 cellular phone is a location aware device. Usually it has been able to display your location in the  status message of instant messaging services like Jabber or Skype. This function has stopped working completely some time ago. This article describes the underlying problem and presents a fix to restore the function again.

Usually one can enable the N900 phone to display the current location in the status message by tapping the status bar and selecting “Availability”. Afterwards the availability window opens, where the button “my location” can be tapped. Then one can select the precision of the position from street level to town level. Afterwards the current location is being published to contacts. Currently enabling this function does not publish any location to ones contacts. After installing sysklogd, the syslog gives a first hint, where the problem is located:

Aug 31 18:37:33 Nokia-N900 nm-nav-provider[11138]: GLIB WARNING **
default – Could not connect to
http://loc.desktop.maps.svc.ovi.com/geocoder/rgc/1.0?total=1&lat=52.308704391494393&long=13.252864412963390&token=9b87b24dffafdfcb6dfc66eeba834caa
Aug 31 18:37:33 Nokia-N900 [1621]: GLIB WARNING ** rtcom-presence-ui –
null pointer passed to the navigation_provider_location_to_address callback

After killing the nm-nav-provider process and restarting /usr/lib/nokiamaps-navigation-provider/nm-nav-provider from an xterm  a more detailed error message can be seen:

^
http://loc.desktop.maps.svc.ovi.com/geocoder/rgc/1.0?total=1&lat=52.308704391494393&long=13.252864412963390&token=9b87b24dffafdfcb6dfc66eeba834caa:1: parser error : Document is empty
^
http://loc.desktop.maps.svc.ovi.com/geocoder/rgc/1.0?total=1&lat=52.308704391494393&long=13.252864412963390&token=9b87b24dffafdfcb6dfc66eeba834caa:1: parser error : Start tag expected, ‘<‘ not found

Thus there is a problem with the request sent to Nokias web service. Most probably Nokia has changed the web service in the meanwhile. However, using the same request without the token leads to the desired result. This can be easily tried out by entering the requests URL in a web browser. Unfortunately nm-nav-provider is closed source, so it cannot easily be modified. A hex editor can be used to search for the token string and then the request can be zero terminated in front of  it.

Figure: hexedit view of nm-nav-provider token location for webservice

There are two positions with a matching request in the 0.109-3+0m5 version of nm-nav-provider, one at position 0x73F7 and one at 0x7689. The latter is the relevant one for the problem. Replacing the byte at this address by a zero terminates the request string and leads to a request that can be understood by Nokias web service. One has to kill the nm-nav-provider process before being able to write to the file.

Unfortunately the modified binary cannot be published here, because of license restrictions, but an easy way to patch the file can be provided. First of all, enhanced busybox needs to be installed on the N900. Then execute the following line as root user  inside an xterm:

cd /usr/lib/nokiamaps-navigation-provider/; cp nm-nav-provider nm-nav-provider.bak; killall nm-nav-provider;dd conv=notrunc bs=1 count=1 seek=30345 if=/dev/zero of=nm-nav-provider

This line works for nokiamaps-navigation-provider-0.109-3+0m5. After execution, the location can be published to contacts again. The only problem remaining is up to you. Do you really want that all your contacts know your location?

best regards
Jürgen

(5 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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The MeeGo Project has released the version 1.1 for Intel Atom and ARMv7 for Download. MeeGo is the fusion of Intels Netbook OS Moblin and Nokias Maemo. The new Linux distribution is available with three different Desktops.

The Version User Experience (UX) for Netbooks uses the well known GTK Interface of the Moblin distribution. The variant  for In-Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) is optimized for in car use. The third variant Handset UX is designed for use with mobile phones and internet tablets. Handset UX should work on N900 Nokia mobile phones and is planned to be installed on the new N9 instead of Symbian-OS.

Jürgen

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Did you ever ask yourself how to make your internet tablet more powerful?

For a Linux based device like Nokias N810 this question is quite easy to answer.  You can easily increase overall performance and responsiveness by using a “better” kernel than the stock kernel on your internet tablet. A further advantage is that you can add features that are not available in the stock kernel. Below you will find instructions on how to build your own optimized preemptive kernel or how to install my prebuilt kernel.

In both cases the following features are covered:

1. preemtive kernel
2. high-speed sd-cards
3. screen rotation
4. more granular backlight sertting
5. easy-debian image

Read the rest of this entry »

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The Nokia N810 with its internal GPS is a device that should fit well for navigation purposes. Below you can see it running navit. In my opinion this is the best available navigation software for the N810. Navit is the main reason for me for wanting the GPS unit in the N810 to be reliable. Get the svn version from here: Gerrit’s Techie Stuff. Some hints on getting navit to run on the N810 can be found on wiki.navit-project.org.

Sadly the internal GPS unit of the N810 is known to be very problematic and occasionally hardly gets a fix. The suspect seems to be the gpsdriver. It writes i.e. the almanac data to /var/lib/gps/nvd_data. This file seems to be corrupt sometimes when the gpsdriver writes it. Probably the problem occurs when the GPS unit has no fix. The bug entry on this topic on bugs.maemo.org inspired me to write a small wrapper script for the gpsd that copies a backup to /var/lib/gps/nvd_data and watches the gps-daemon. When the GPS unit has a fix it creates a new backup copy of the nvd_data file for later use. Since I use the script, acquiring a GPS fix never took me more than five minutes anymore (without AGPS, with AGPS it is faster, of course).

If you also want to give my script a try, install bash via program manager and download my script from here: [download#23]

The most convenient way to get the script to the n810 and to perform the necessary changes is to log into the tablet using ssh. How to get ssh to run on your internet tablet is described here: internettabletblog

Log into your tablet using ssh and rename the original gpsd.

-sh-3.2# mv /usr/sbin/gpsd /usr/sbin/gpsd.orig

Then copy my script to the tablet (replace XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX with the ip of your tablet):

scp gpsd root@XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:/usr/sbin/

Afterwards fix the permissions of the script on the tablet:

-sh-3.2# chmod a+rx /usr/sbin/gpsd

That’s all, now you should have a much better working GPS unit in your N810. Since I only have one device to test this on, please leave a comment if this also worked for you.

regards

Jürgen

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