Back from Fosdem 2008
Just returned from Brussels where FOSDEM 2008 took place. For the second time, the OpenEmbedded team had a booth where we presented embedded devices and talked about build systems and software for mobile and embedded devices. On show were some Zaurus models, an iRex Iliad, two Chumbies, and a Neuros OSD.
We also demoed some FIC Neo1973 models with OpenMoko which received lots of attention — the most frequently asked question was (of course) when the new hardware would be ready. I can’t really comment on that, however John and Will from OpenMoko Inc. just brought me a brand new FreeRunner prototype and apart from some minor issues, it is really looking very well. By the way, I will demo this prototype next month on the OpenExpo 2008 in Bern, so if you have a chance, just drop by and take a look.
Between talking to people, I managed to unbrick three devices. Unfortunately I forgot to reseat the TORX screws on one device, so if you want your screws back, come over next year. Luckily, the Neo1973 case fits very well even without the screws, so you will probably not miss them 
During a very remarkable meeting with a resident of the #neo1973-germany channel we improved the freesmartphone.org telephony API and also recorded a video of the moko underground software pyneo. Note: If you don’t have sound on the videos, you need to install h264/mp4a codecs. A recent gstreamer-faad with libfaad2 should be sufficient.
On Saturday evening, team OpenEmbedded had the constitutional session for the forthcoming OpenEmbedded e.V. There’s still some bureaucracy pending which I hope will be done around late April / early May. I’ll keep you posted.
By the way, this was the warmest FOSDEM ever! I’m very amazed that I managed to survive it without a cold — which is quite an achievement considering our booth was right opposite the main entrance resulting in a constant unpleasent flow of air. As for the general FOSDEM appearance I have to agree with Harald Welte’s assessment though, especially his comments about the beer event venue and the public transportation.
I want to thank all of the people who helped organizing our appearance — you really did a great job, guys!
Oliver wrote:
Hi!
The high quality video is broken. About halfway through, when typing “Neo1…” it stops working. Neither VLC nor Totem can handle it, so I assume it’s not a problem on my end.
The mid quality video was the same. I didn’t check the low-q one.
Posted on 27-Feb-08 at 1:02 am | Permalink
Eivind wrote:
The low-quality video works fine on my end (firefox 2.x + mplayer-plugin).
Posted on 27-Feb-08 at 2:28 am | Permalink
Alon wrote:
Is pyneo available anywhere? It looks easier to handle then the current software, I’d like to give it a try. And if it’s python+efl I’d like to see that.
Posted on 27-Feb-08 at 12:01 pm | Permalink
mickey wrote:
Please don’t expect a fully completed environment. At this stage, pyneo is more a proof-of-concept than anything else. However, I think we can bring this up to speed in a very few weeks. Right now, we are working on packaging this up.
One additional remark, even if you don’t like the idea of using Python below the dbus line, one of the major points of this is getting to a solid dbus API which we can build applications on. Eventually, we will be able to replace daemons and applications as necessary — as long as we stay with the dbus API.
Posted on 27-Feb-08 at 2:44 pm | Permalink
CCfly wrote:
Considering choice in C and C++ dbus wrappers, python dbus ain’t that bad.
Posted on 27-Feb-08 at 10:13 pm | Permalink
C7 wrote:
Alon:
You can find the pyneo code in the freesmartphone svn:
svn checkout svn://projects.linuxtogo.org/svn/smartphone
And hopefully there will be a moko-underground-image on buildhost.openmoko.org sometime in the near future
mickey?
Posted on 29-Feb-08 at 3:24 pm | Permalink