I guess I might be committed to Samsung (for now)

I finally got my tablet, maybe two weeks ago. It was off of eBay again. This time the experience was amazing. It showed up when promised, and with some extras. 

I got a Samsung 16GB Galaxy Note 10.1. It is WiFi only, and I am ok with that for now. Once in a while I would like it connected while I am away from WiFi connections, but mostly I get by. I have the NoteII, and can mostly do what I need to on that. The Note II can act as a hotspot, but I am on an old contract with T-Mobile, and they will charge an extra $20/month if I do that. I've asked about switching to their monthly plan, since that has hotspot included. The guy at the store was vague, about the savings, and I was in a hurry, so I went home, and wished I had more time.

Overall the tablet experience is great! The Samsung will allow running many apps in separate windows, and you can see them all. It is clunky, with the touch interface, and forces click to type, rather than hover (I am an old X windows user, I still rely on hover to type to be efficient). It is probably the most useful feature that Samsung added over the stock android. Touch wiz is fine, no specific complaints. 

Surprises in the software included Peel a TV controller, super easy to setup. PS Touch a fancy media editor. FlipBoard a news reader. When I first logged in, the apps all synced up with my phone! It was good and bad. My kids had a bunch of games so the games are mostly on both my phone and the tablet. I keep saying I'll clean them up, but so far I really havn't (I've had the angry birds making noises in meetings!).

I mostly won't setup a Samsung account. I see nothing for me compared to the Google version of the same services. When I got the phone, it came with a DropBox account, so I signed up, but I only use the Google Drive. 

The screen is readable in sunlight. Unless the sun is pointing right at the screen, you can see it all the time. It has enough bezel so holding the device, you aren't pressing buttons. 

It came without swype or any of the drag around keyboards. I thought that was going to be bad, but with the 10 in screen in landscape, the stock keyboard is mostly usable.  I did get a bluetooth keyboard for it. It makes a nice cover. The one I got is aluminium, and will snap to the front or back. Snapping it on the back is nice when it isn't needed in meeting and such. It is super lightweight, so light that you can't stand the 10in tablet in portrait mode, since the tablet will tip it over. It isn't as good as a laptop, since the screen will pop out if you wiggle around.

Battery life is pretty amazing. A couple days on a charge is really good. The proprietary connector is a pain. I did order an OTG dongle, but that hasn't arrived yet. It is kind of big, so I probably won't use it much.  

The UI is pretty standard. Nothing special there, other than the window controls. I am getting to like Google Now, so I am ok with letting Google read my mail and such.

I've also been Listening to +AndroidCentral, +AllAboutAndroid and +ThisWeekInGoogle podcasts from Google IO. Lots of good stuff coming making the whole Android experience richer. I see only good things coming up.

Write Soon 

EBay is Trustable

So much for that tablet. The one I ordered never showed up. The seller had pictures of the Blackberry Tablet on that auction, and when I sent questions to the seller, I got no response. After two weeks, I gave up, and filed a claim on ebay buyer protection program. After a week, they got me my money back.

So I started shopping again. Sunday there was a Galaxy Note 10.1 listed. The price was really good, not the same as the Galaxy Tab, but I thought what the heck. The Note is the tablet I really wanted, so I got it. It was a whole different experience. The seller contacted me after coming back from the post office telling me about their experience. It should show up tomorrow.

I've also started a new blog. The Flying and Technology blog will be more about education related to the technology and flying. Opinions will slip in, just like this blog.

I am not really keeping up on any building of this or any other projects. I've been fixing my pool, and working hard at my real job.

Life is good, lets  keep things that way

I Ordered a New Tablet.

I wasted a bunch of time shopping on eBay last week. I finally decided it is time to get a mainstream tablet. I mostly want it for work, but think it would be good for doing ADS-B in on the cheap!

I ordered a new Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1. I didn't get the note, it cost too much. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is still a dual code 1.6GHz device, and ought to be enough power for now, and is less than a year old. It has everything I want; bluetooth, GPS, WiFI and a big screen. I think I'll have to buy an OTG adapter since it uses a proprietary USB connector (just like the iPad).

How can I do ADS-B for under $100 with this? Well, the SDR folks have been working overtime. One guy at least, Martin. He has the RTL2832u dongle talking to the Android devices. It was only a matter of time, since both the Android stuff and the rtl2832 SDR software are all open sourced. It doesn't do ADS-B decoding out of the box, but what the heck, that is only a little more software.

The FAA while  threatening to charge for the charts, still gives them away. It doesn't really matter, for me using old charts on this, since it will probably be just a toy for now. If I were to ever fly with this relying on the tablet for navigation, then I would want the most current charts. If needed, I would pay for them.

I think I could do the development of the ADS-B decoding, and try to use someones mapping software to get the data to display on the screen. If nothing else, decode the TIS-B and FIS-B data.

Yea, I know Garmin and FreeFlight and everyone seems to think anything under $5000 is the a cheap price for ADS-B, but here I am suggesting a $300 tablet, and a $20 receiver it all I need for ADS-B (plus some cables, and software). Imagine if this would run on a $79 Android tablet, then the whole mess is under $100!. That ought to shock those other guys. Sure they are doing it the hard way, separate receivers and all the work to get "certified" ADS-B receivers, but trust me, you don't need to have a receiver "certified".

Since it is GA in the USA, I am convinced the UAT frequencies are the right ones. The FAA will put the same data out on both the 1090MHz ES, and the 974MHz
UAT frequencies. 


Can we make it happen? Want to help? Lets do it!!

Let me know if I forgot something...

Open Pilot has the Answer

I found some videos from the open pilot group who have their code ported to the STM Discovery F3 board. There is a Quad Copter flying using one. There is a demo showing stuff on the screen. Progress is happening.

I was thinking, if I just use the existing open pilot stuff, then I only have to get the code working on the Android, so I only have to do half the work. Then I don't have to come up with a communication protocol either, since open pilot already has one. Hack a Day of course came to the rescue yesterday also. There is a link to using App Inventor to connect an Android to an Arduino. It seems to make everything easier.

I was thinking, I don't have an Android SDK on Linux, but I mostly use Linux for surfing and developing, it might be time to get it. Yesterday the Android Central podcast suggested getting the SDK has gotten even easier recently. I'll give it a shot and let you know. It is also supposed to be easier to develop on. The Linux ADT bundle is about 400MB zipped, not too bad. The instructions seem reasonable, unzip and run. Maybe when I get done with this post, I try it.

Looks like I'll have some experiences that I've been through be broadcast on Airplane Geeks podcast this week.  That will be fun, talking about my mentors, and opportunities I have given other folks. It was a little more challenging than I thought, trying to stay coherent reading the text. It might be something I'll look into in the future.

Regrouping...

Last night, I tried to get the STM examples working using the Mentor CodeBench. It didn't work, or wasn't straightforward. I had make files pointing every direction, and finally got it to compile. It never linked, too many h files that didn't have matching libraries.

I want to re-do the whole example directory. I think I can, and still make it work. The CodeBench doesn't have discovery f3 header files, so the the 8 leds aren't quite mapped out. I may be able to copy one of the header files from the STM examples to the STM directory, and make it all work.

This guy recommends building my own linker script. I am thinking that would be a good idea. Maybe that will be the trick.

I've worked with BSP's before, but they were the whole tool chain for the board by the manufacturer. I wish people would give up on proprietary compilers and such. Unless they are building code that is orders of magnitude more efficient, there is no point. Just build for GCC and we all will be better off.


Stuff 
The CodeBench manual link

I went to a seminar on building presentations. It had a bunch of good ideas. I am going to try to engage all the readers to be more active in my project using those techniques. Prepare to be engaged!

Another Rant
I don't know what is going on. TimeWarner cable said they upgraded my speed over Christmas. Well, maybe, but it seems everything I do on this laptop is as slow as molasses! It used to be faster, and sometimes I can download movies well (ooo, if you haven't seen Speed and Angels, Hulu has it on their basic service for free. It is a pre-quel to top gun)

more stm discovery f3 links

STM has a repository of sample code for the discovery board. I need that for finding out how to make calls. I am more of a monkey see, monkey do kind of programmer. I'll use the manual if I have a question about a call, or can't find and example. I find it faster to find some code that mostly does what I need, and adapt it (reuse!). Most of the ST site is full of javascript pop ups that probably work on other browsers, but on Mandriva running Linux, the popups get lost, and make navigation complex (probably windows would be similar, but I am not going to try to find out. The manual is a PDF file, which is fine, I can download that and have a copy any time I need it. Some of the confusion too is all the devices that you can get data for.

The example code includes code for the on chip peripherals, not so much for the off chip items like the accelerometer, compass and gyro. I'll still have to dig for that.

Then of course, yesterday hack-a-day had a template for setting up discovery board projeccts.  I'll have to look at it now, since I have a link to it. He has something similar to code bench but for gcc-arm-embedded toolchain. That is good. I should be able to follow some of that work and get some ideas.

On my facebook post, I suggested I was building an autopilot. This can be the hub of various peripherals, including the autopilot. Unless one gets a direct route, the heading might not matter, but the IMU should allow guidance point to point, as good or better than the GPS. 


News on the JXD S5110 front...

My son has tuned in to the whole retro gaming with game pad buttons. He is probably playing the game as much, or more than he was before (that is good and bad). I spent some time with it also, when he wasn't around. The OTG port was just sitting there, and I finally got around to plugging a mouse into the port. It worked! so if he gets bored with the retro games, he can plug a mouse into it, and use it like a touch screen. The usability is going up! I won't show him the HDMI port, or he'll probably want to play all his games on the big screen.

More people are following, so tell your friends!

good luck

Discovery Board is Working

Last week, I got the compiler compiling code. This week I got the discovery board talking OpenOCD. Life is good, now I just gotta figure out a protocol for sending data back up the USB port.

The engine monitor is on the back burner again. I want to build an IMU, since I have this board. If I can build an IMU, I should be able to build a little glass cockpit type display, similar to the Dynon or other EFIS app for the Android. The discovery board doesn't have any pressure sensors, but has a 3 axis gyro, a compass, 3D accelerometer, and a bunch of LEDs.

Using the gyro's, compass and accelerometers I should be able to build an accurate atitude indicator, a turn coordinator, a directional gyro indicator. If I can add pressure sensors, I should be able to build the whole "6-pack" from a standard instrument panel.

The secret to OpenOCD was at this site. Don't build the ftdi stuff, unless you have the ftdi dongle. If you are talking to the Discovery board, all you need is "stlink" that has been in OpenOCD since version 6.1.

The open pilot site has some resources for the discovery f3. There is a quad copter built using one.

Life is funny sometimes. Telnet, something I rely on, it is just there on all systems, old DOS (with some network kit), windows, all the unix systems I've used, mac and linux. For some reason, it isn't part of the default installation of Mandriva linux. How does one do anything without telnet. A simple urpmi and I have it, but weird!!

Anyway, I don't know if I added a link to this page, but it has a very high level set of instructions for building and loading software on the board, including using OpenOCD. He does:

openocd -f /usr/local/share/openocd/scripts/board/stm32f3discovery.cfg &
telnet localhost 4444
reset halt

flash erase_sectors 0 0 127
flash write a.out 0x8000000

To make that work, you really need to use the '&' to put open OCD in the background or use another terminal to do the telnet. Then you need to use different commands (maybe he had another version):

openocd -f /usr/local/share/openocd/scripts/board/stm32f3discovery.cfg &
telnet localhost 4444
reset halt

flash erase_sector 0 0 127
flash write_image imu.elf 

I havn't figured out what offset to write the image yet. There is another version of write:

flash write_bank bank_id filename offset

        Write binary data from file to flash bank, starting at specified
        byte offset from the beginning of the bank.

I think that will be something to play with in the future. The test_image shows it at 0x0800000, which may have been a typo from the initial site.

test_image imu.elf
address 0x08000000 length 0x000004cc
address 0x080004cc length 0x00000028
verified 1268 bytes in 0.000318s (3893.966 KiB/s)

The darn GDB doesn't work though. It was built expecting libncurses.so.4, and I only have that version in /usr/lib64.  I'll probably have to build that too, now. The demo code only increments a value by 5. Probably keeps the CPU pretty busy! Good way to test the debugger once I get that running.




 
The JXD S5110...

Well, it lived a hard life. It isn't dead, but well on the way. Today it was dropped, and the screen broke. This seems to have rendered the touch screen completely useless. I cannot figure out how to make the touch screen usable. The emulated games to work though. They mostly relied on the buttons around the screen, and they still work! The buttons emulate certain screen inputs, so you can unlock the device, and navigate the icons to select the games. It is funny, you know it is android, and you want to touch it, but that doesn't work. The joystick on the side does most of the driving, and the select button selects things. If someone made a good bumper for it, I'd probably buy another one.

Keep building