Marcin Juszkiewicz

2008 is ending. As before it was very good year. I have very nice daughter, our family has new flat. My company has clients with interesting projects.

January

• Bought Nokia N810 tablet. Had to do this in UK store because Nokia does not sell them in Poland.
• Released “Hrw Big blue” — my version of “Big blue” WordPress theme. No support any more for it as I stopped using it.

February

• My daughter Mira was born — she is cute ;)
• I bought car — Opel Astra combi 1997 is more then enough for us.
• Donated my old collie to Thomas Kunze to help improving Linux 2.6 support on this small beast.
• Created Polish regional settings package for Maemo OS2008. It also shown some bugs in Maemo itself.
• Wrote my palmtops story which require updating as I have few devices more now.
• Offered Zaurus c7x0 leather case for free. No one wanted it ;(
• Wrote few WordPress plugins: Recent Comments and Meta — I still use them.

March

• Poky Linux 3.1 (codename ‘pinky’) was released. I am providing support for systems based on it.
• IPKG finally died so we switched to maintained OPKG tool to manage packages.
• Cursed a bit during testing of Maemo media players. Recently I tried few more and still use default one.

April

• First April post about moving to London got amazing response. But it was only joke.
• Got N800 emulation working. Too bad that I was not allowed to distribute “config.mtd” file which made it possible. Later I discovered which flag needs to be reset and added N810 emulation infos.
• Created Polish keymap for QWERTY keyboard of N810 — thanks goes to Jiri Benc for his “ukeyboard” package. No thanks goes to Nokia Maemo team for not making it easy.
• Wrote what do I think about Maemo closed components which makes this nice device not so nice.
• Wrote how to make BitBake based builds faster — handy on multi-core systems.

May

• I was on LinuxTag 2008 in Berlin. It was great to meet friends again. Thanks go to Zecke as he provided me free tickets and sleeping place. I still have working liquid powered clock which I got there.
• Replaced my desktop with new one — it is nice to have more CPU power especially when lot of builds needs to be done.
• Defined myself as developer not programmer
• Tried to use N810 for car navigation and failed. Bought TomTom One few months later (works great).

June

• Played with connecting USB devices to N810 tablet — all thanks to USB gender changer adapter which I got from Keesj during LinuxTag.
• Started wondering which phone to choose as next cellphone — now I know that next will be Symbian (Nokia E71 looks very interesting as phone).
• Again was hit by crappiness of ATI RS48x graphics chipset — now this is not my problem as I added NVidia Geforce 6600GT inside and gave whole machine to my youngest brother (it replaced 5 years old AthlonXP desktop).

July

• I had 0x20 birthday — got awesome present from friend — puzzle with C code which rendered picture with greetings.
• GUADEC 2008 was great event. Istanbul is nice city worth spending more time. But at least I visited some places ;)
• Wrote a bit about using Poky SDK to build software — this apply also to any OpenEmbedded based SDK of course.
• Also wrote about packaged staging and what it gives — generally it can speed up repeating builds. I used it to make “build each recipe from scratch” builds of Poky — lot of dependencies were added into recipes as result.

August

• Intel acquired OpenedHand — I got job offer in UK but decided to not move. It was nice to visit London again, too bad that I lacked time to see anything (as usual). The whole trip was crazy (have you ever travelled on the night bus standing for 4 hours straight?)
• We visited my parents and I was asked (again) what exactly I do for living. So I answered and my mother understood.
• I resolved problem with Nokia N8x0 tablets emulation — one flag needs to be unset to make Maemo boot in QEMU.

September

• We moved to Szczecin, Poland — new flat == separate room for my work.
• Maemo Summit — nice event, lot of Maemo developers/users, met old friends, gave presentation about Maemo in QEMU emulation — people asked questions, I tried to answer.
• As my company ended second year I decided to drop “HaeRWu” part from it’s name (it was too hard to pronounce for people).

October

• End of my work for OpenedHand — it was good time and I miss atmosphere of that company.
• Started working as contractor for Bug Labs Inc. company - their device is interesting. They use Poky ‘pinky’ as base of their system.
• OpenEmbedded project migrated from Monotone to GIT so I started to merge interesting things from Poky (lot left still to merge).
• As one of good things in OpenedHand was buildbot I decided to start my own one on home machine.

November

• Unpacked Progear webpad to check how recent kernels work on it and update it’s configuration in OpenEmbedded a bit.

December

• Moved to juszkiewicz.com.pl domain — it was 2rd domain change since I started this blog. All old addresses redirect to proper one.
• Bought tickets and hotel reservation for FOSDEM 2009 event — I missed 2008 one due to birth of Mira.
• Got Koala MiniPC 2PCI case for Alix 1c board — need to buy proper PCI riser and it will be my new router.
• Got BUG device from Bug Labs Inc..
• My working space was invaded by Poky beavers.

On Thursday I got package from DHL courier (one note for future: if you need to send me something by courier service avoid Fedex). Inside was nice box with BugLabs logo.

After unpacking I got BUG, or to be more precise:

• BUGbase
• BUGview module
• BUGmotion module
• VonHippel module
• BUGlocate module
• external antenna for BUGlocate GPS
• power supply
• SD->microSD adapter
• 2GB microSD card

This is how modules look:

VonHippel is interesting module as it gives access to I²C, serial, I²S, DAC, ADC, GPIO, SPI, power signals. It is named after MIT professor Eric von Hippel (because he thought of it!) author of “Democratizing Innovation”. This module allows to connect just about anything electronic to the BUG. Interview with professor can be seen on BUG Blogger website.

Size is comparable with Nokia N810 tablet. Would be nice to get 800x480 screen for BUG (i.mx31 has OpenGL acceleration).

This is usual configuration when I work with device (just screen and VonHippel):

There is 64MB of flash in device but by default it boots from microSD card (2GB one was in package). This allows for easy rootfs tweaking/updating. Kernel flashing takes lot of time but we plan to work on other methods of booting kernel.

With all modules plugged in it starts to be thick… You can notice 4 function keys on left side, joystick and button on right and monochrome screen between. By default it shows clock and icons of plugged modules but with joystick some system menu can be used.

Whole device is powered by BUG Linux which is based on Poky ‘pinky’ release with some updates. Access to all modules is only from Java at that moment. But that not mean that it is closed device — everything in BUG and its modules is open and free. There is a WiFi module (not released yet) which uses chipset from “libertas” family (same family as the one in OLPC).

I am curious what will future bring for this tool.

Today my workplace was invaded by beavers. But they are not normal beavers but Poky Linux ones.

At the beginning there was just one of them — he came and checked clock to know which timezone is in use here:

Few minutes later his companies arrived and synchronized clocks:

After few minutes they invaded my working place…

Good that they are friendly and came to help me support Poky Linux based systems :)

Today I got case for Alix.1c mainboard. For reminding: this is PC Engines board in mini-ITX format, powered by AMD Geode LX800.

Package arrived from Koan Software and contained one of their products: MiniPC 2PCI case.

Package contents

There were many addons in the box:

• 60W 12V AC adapter
• 2.5” ATA -> Slim DVD/CD adapter
• PCI riser for 2 slots
• wall mounting elements
• 2.5” ATA 3.5” ATA adapters
• bracket for 3 DB9 connectors (additional serials anyone?)

AC adapter is added because case contains small PSU with few connectors. I do not use it because Alix.1c mainboard consists similar one already (and lack ATX power connector).

Inside view

Inside case there is a lot of space available:

There are mounting places for 3.5” HDD, 2.5” HDD and slim DVD/CD drive (signal adapter attached). There are also 2 fans (60mm each) but I left them not connected (Alix does not require cooling and lack sockets for fans).

Front panel

Front panel has 2 USB sockets, HDD and power leds and power button. As usual in mini-ITX cases there is no Reset button. Not present in my case (but available as option) is CompactFlash slot accessible from front. I did not ordered it because Alix has such one integrated.

Summary

Case is very high quality made — no sharp edges, easy access to all peripherals. And all those addons which are in a box makes overall cost smaller. If someone is searching for good mini-ITX case then MiniPC ones are good choice (and there is smaller version without place for PCI cards).

PCI 3.3V :(

As I wrote before I plan to make router based on Alix.1c — but after putting it into case I discovered one problem with board itself. It has 3.3V PCI slot so I have no use of PCI riser which was added to case. Will search for VIA one because it is universal (3.3V/5V) so I will get slots (but have to remember that cards have to accept 3.3V signals).

Few months ago I decided that after 2 years of “HaeRWu Marcin Juszkiewicz” company it is good time to drop first part. The reason was simple — “HaeRWu” is hard to pronounce for English speaking people (and not only them). And I think that I am more known as Marcin Juszkiewicz in community then by my company name.

As next step I bought “juszkiewicz.com.pl” domain for all of my private and company things. And today moved this website to new address. Old ones will work of course — they redirect to proper one.

All email addresses will work too.

I already bought tickets for bus to/from Berlin, planes tickets and booked room in Astrid hotel.

The plan starts on Thursday with Berlinia bus from Szczecin to Berlin Schoenefeld (SXF) airport. Then Easyjet flight number 4701 (16:00) to Brussels (BRU) and from there to Astrid hotel. I will do return trip on Sunday — Easyjet flight number 4702 (20:50), then bus to Szczecin.

So if you want to meet me before FOSDEM crazy time you can catch me on Thursday evening or Friday (rather morning as I plan to do walk around a bit to see something other then hotel and conference).

Since few months I have 10/1Mbps network connection (downlink/uplink). Recently it was downgraded to 1/1Mbps and I had no idea why. Finally it appeared that my router was the problem…

Exact reason was QoS which I enabled few days ago. It looks like DD-WRT which I use now can not handle it on WRT54GS without degrading network speed. For now I disabled this but it is not an option because I plan to use VoIP more in next months so I need warranty that it will get all bandwidth it needs never mind what else would be running.

Current plans are to make use of Alix 1.c which I have from PC Engines. Soon I will have nice case for it so the only things to buy will be miniPCI WiFi card (friends suggested getting one of Atheros based ones) and 1GbE network card. I already have 2GB CompactFlash for rootfs and spare 2.5” hdd which will be used for storage.

This configuration should be fast enough to have more functions then just router/AP. I plan to make it also printer/scanner server and probably there will be some more to add.

After 691 days of not using Progear I unpacked it and got it running again. Why “691 days”? It was written by fsck during booting.

Progear support in OpenEmbedded is a bit updated now. New kernel (2.6.27) gives VESA frame buffer which finally utilize XGA resolution (in 2.6.19-rc5 it was VGA centered on screen). It still lack good AC/Battery support anyway. External modules which were used (progear-ac, progear-battery) do not build with current kernels (not strange as they were hacked ACPI modules) so I tried to write driver to get at least AC status. It works more or less.

I currently do not have any plans for this machine. Will use it to learn how to write ugly kernel drivers which probably no one will use (how many Progear users plays with current kernels?) and sooner or later it will go back to basement as other toys will need space on desk.