<sn0wmonster>
bipul, i highly recommend looking at the data on the website then
<sn0wmonster>
because there is no sense in reinventing the wheel, but even if you decide to, you should know what has already been tried and why it did or did not work
<bipul>
Yes.
<Joerg-Neo900>
bipul: basically we ship a "motherboard" that's free to use whatever software you like on it
<Joerg-Neo900>
copare your PC
<bipul>
ok.
<Joerg-Neo900>
for PC you can get a Asus or gigabyte or Intel motherboard, For N900 case you can get a NeoN motherboard, or you get a NeoN MoBo with case and display and all, called Neo900
<Joerg-Neo900>
the NeoN board has no locks on any software, you can run whataver you want on it
<Joerg-Neo900>
just like on PC you're free to install Win-NT -XP, -7, -Vista, -8, -10; Linux (all versions); Free/Open-BSD, OS/2...
<Joerg-Neo900>
we will focus on giving support to our users/customers to install maemo fremantle. This is what the board gets "certified " against
<bipul>
I am just interested in knowing from you that, is it possible to make a OLED type screen, where i can write on a screen.
<Joerg-Neo900>
please elaborate
<Joerg-Neo900>
do you talk about hardware mods?
<bipul>
See, i am making a project, where i am looking for a help. regarding screen.
<Joerg-Neo900>
screen as in (LCD/OLED/CRT-)display?
<Joerg-Neo900>
the NeoN board is made to attach the N900 LCD display to it. But basically that's just the genuine OMAP3 display interface, so you can program it to work with whatever is meant to work with OMAP3
<Joerg-Neo900>
but for all sorts of "flexible displays" you might as well use the Hackerbus interface, particularly when the display technology doesn't allow high framerates
<sn0wmonster>
bipul, i think the fact that you want to make your own project is definitely admirable, but this project is a bit tapped at the moment for advice-giving as its busy trying to succeed on its own
<sn0wmonster>
perhaps you should be further along in your project and then officially bring on technical expertise to answer these questions?
<sn0wmonster>
just a reasonable suggestion
<sn0wmonster>
we wouldn't want #neo900 to become the support for every other project lol
<sn0wmonster>
support channel*
<Joerg-Neo900>
one thing's for sure: the NeoN board is *not* flexible :-D
<bipul>
sn0wmonster, Ok, :) well it's ok.
<sn0wmonster>
bipul, start by writing up what you're trying to do someplace so that you can easily link it to people.
<bipul>
But if you support me, i might contribute for neo too.
<Joerg-Neo900>
and I'm looking into flexible display technologies for STEP2
<sn0wmonster>
bipul, appreciate the sentiment, but our supporters tend to have no strings attached to their support
<sn0wmonster>
as in, they support it because they believe in it.
<sn0wmonster>
if you can write up what makes yours difference, and it proves itself, you can get the same kind of stringless support too
<bipul>
I have revolutionary idea, but i need people like you to accomplish it.
<Joerg-Neo900>
I think the question what's possible to attach to NeoN board has been answered comprehensively
<sn0wmonster>
that sounds like you want others to do the work for you i'm afraid.
<sn0wmonster>
i get a lot of this on freenode and it ends up in channel bans, so lets just stop there :)
<Joerg-Neo900>
sorry, we have no manpower to investigeate into any new ideas
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<sn0wmonster>
definitely take the first part of advice to write up what you're trying to do before soliciting for help, it will make everyones life easier
<sn0wmonster>
good luck mate!
<bipul>
sn0wmonster, All right, this is email where you get interact contact@neo900.org
<bipul>
?
<sn0wmonster>
me? i do not accept unsolicited email from outside projects, no.
<sn0wmonster>
you need general support, not Neo900 support.
<sn0wmonster>
i recommend visiting #freenode and asking for a recommendation of a proper channel to ask in
<sn0wmonster>
there are plenty of hardware development channels
<sn0wmonster>
all of which are not tied to a registered project
<bipul>
ok.
<bipul>
Thank you. sn0wmonster :)
<sn0wmonster>
no worries, again, best of luck
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<Joerg-Neo900>
fun! ;-D
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<rhn>
since Neo900 is supposed to be based on GTA04, did you have to change plans after the PoP chips gave them lots of trouble?
<Joerg-Neo900>
we still hope we have some tricks in sleeve
<Joerg-Neo900>
trouble with soldering the PoP are expected, nothing really unusual
<Joerg-Neo900>
you need a testrun of maybe 10 or 20 devices, called PV aka Production Validation
<Joerg-Neo900>
the problem with GTA04 is: their whole batch is only 30 devices
<Joerg-Neo900>
it's an economical prolem rather than a technological one
<rhn>
does it mean that Neo900 has seen more interest/more money?
<Joerg-Neo900>
we are at 300+ preorders now, we need more for production
<rhn>
how many are needed for production?
<Joerg-Neo900>
600
<rhn>
that sounds high
<rhn>
is that what's holding the project now? or are the wheels whirring?
<Joerg-Neo900>
well, that's why we plan for a kickstarter to get another 300 preorders, after proto_v2
<Joerg-Neo900>
metacollin is busy with layout of proto_v2, then we go kickstaarter when we have something to show off
<tramtrist>
hmm
<rhn>
will you close preorders before kickstarter?
<tramtrist>
v3 is the kickstarter?
<tramtrist>
which should be close to RC right?
<tramtrist>
maybe ill wait
<tramtrist>
i just post 600$ for librem5
<tramtrist>
i wish all these projects could converge
<Joerg-Neo900>
rhn: unclear
<rhn>
ack
<tramtrist>
postmarketos
<tramtrist>
purism5
<tramtrist>
neo900
<tramtrist>
almost same goals
<jonwil>
I suspect the different "open" phones have different goals.
<jonwil>
Goal for Neo900 is to use same hardware as N900 and same case/keyboard/etc to be compatible with N900 but better
<tramtrist>
yeah
<tramtrist>
postmarketOS makes n900 a dailydriver basically
<tramtrist>
librem is looking for a full open platform
<tramtrist>
neo900 could be that
<tramtrist>
erm purism
<tramtrist>
not librem
<rhn>
tramtrist: I'm not sure if this is doable considering n900 must be powervr to retain compatibility with maemo
<tramtrist>
ya
<tramtrist>
thats where postmarketos comes in
<tramtrist>
but i see that is an issue with n900
<rhn>
yup
<tramtrist>
erm not issue
<tramtrist>
just not same goal
<tramtrist>
maemo people will freak
* rhn
is surprised that postmarketOS actually got anywhere
<tramtrist>
its pretty active community
<tramtrist>
runs on my maguro nexus
<tramtrist>
runs really well on n900
<tramtrist>
nexus 5 is pretty far along
<tramtrist>
has promise
<rhn>
it shows mainline kernel on N900 - something I actually wanted to play with
<tramtrist>
go fo rit
<tramtrist>
only takes a few minutes
<rhn>
tramtrist: a bit reluctant at the moment, as I broke my main N900 and not willing to risk more "fun"
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<jonwil>
It looks like librem5 is using a Freescale i.MX SoC so at least you get a CPU that isn't full of holes from the get go like you do with anything running Qualcomm silicon
<rhn>
jonwil: what kind of holes?
<jonwil>
privacy-violating holes
<rhn>
oh, you mean binary blobs at low levels?
<jonwil>
Yes, all the deep level blobs needed to even use a Snapdragon part
<jonwil>
i.MX seems to be relatively blob free excluding the usual GPU blobs I guess.
<jonwil>
same as TI OMAP being fairly blob free as well.
<rhn>
that's what I like about the librem5 pitch
<rhn>
although it's still more important to me to just get anything with mainline kernel and the standard libraries
<jonwil>
Ooh, its got a Vivanti GPU apparently and there is an open driver for that.
<jonwil>
Even better then if that means no blobs on the librem5
<rhn>
that's the point, but don't they have wireless blobs anyway?
<Joerg-Neo900>
I'm pretty sure they have a RIL blob for modem
<Joerg-Neo900>
or when it's FOSS then obscure FOSS that only tells magic numbers but no interface spec
<jonwil>
They do claim to have a stretch goal for "Reverse engineering faster WiFi/BT firmware" so they clearly care about not being loaded with blobs
<jonwil>
Also their FAQ says this about the hardware:
<jonwil>
From testing the CPU, GPU, Bootloader and all software will run free software, we are evaluating the WiFi and Bluetooth chips and firmware, this is an area we have to evaluate, finalize, and test. The mobile baseband will most likely use ROM loaded firmware, but a free software kernel driver. We intend to invest time and money toward freeing any non-free firmware.
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<jonwil>
So it sounds like they dont plan to have a binary blob for the cellular radio
<jonwil>
binary host-side blob that is
<tramtrist>
ya
<tramtrist>
i wish i could get you all in one irc channel haha
<jonwil>
So just like the Neo900 (which wont have such a blob)
<Joerg-Neo900>
>>The mobile baseband will most likely use ROM loaded firmware, but a free software kernel driver.<< supports my guess
<Joerg-Neo900>
"free" kernel driver to run a non-documented hw interface protocol to the modem
<Joerg-Neo900>
Neo900 hw interface and protocol to modem are completely documented
<Joerg-Neo900>
we don't need to provide a "free kernel driver", everybody can write their own
<rhn>
that's a nice feature
<Joerg-Neo900>
it's just plain good old Hayes modem
<rhn>
although I don't think it's possible to have complete blob-freedom just yet
<Joerg-Neo900>
aka "AT command set"
<jonwil>
Going to send them an email and ask about that, see what they have to say.
<jonwil>
I am curious about it
<rhn>
that niche probably needs to show more interest and money, so I'm super happy if any one half-free project is successful enough to release free middleware and GUI stuff
<rhn>
then others can focus on blob-freedom
<jonwil>
I have no problems with a baseband that has its own firmware inside and exposes an interface to the outside world (as is the case on the N900 or Neo900)
<bencoh>
rhn: I wonder how maemo would perform with llvmpipe instead of powervr
<bencoh>
(on n900)
<rhn>
bencoh: PostmarketOS doesn't have hw acceleration
<rhn>
maybe it's worth to try
<Joerg-Neo900>
a pity I'm busy. Nice discussions in this channel :-)
<Joerg-Neo900>
BBL
<jonwil>
I suspect it would be a CPU and battery hog since its doing everything in software
<rhn>
in my usage it would be only annoying to use CloudGPS, which is a kind of a power hog anyway
<Joerg-Neo900>
ooh, the DSP stuff in maemo is also not exactly open
<bencoh>
right, s/maemo/foss hildon-desktop/
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<sn0wmonster>
speaking off, anyone have a suggestion for a decentralized, open source map system?
<sn0wmonster>
i wanted to make a page that showed a map of locations of contributions and such, but didn't want to do it manually and refuse to use Google
<tramtrist>
you all should really talk to each other
<Joerg-Neo900>
I'm only doing the hardware, I can consult a little on software issues
<jonwil>
For all we know the librem 5 may well be planning to use the same Gemalto modules the Neo900 plans to use or some other module that is just as open.
<Joerg-Neo900>
Neo900 is explicitly OS agnostic
<Joerg-Neo900>
if Purism delivers to their own goals, I see nothing stopping you from running their OS on Neo900
<Joerg-Neo900>
their OS, or any other open OS you could think of. Or even closed commercial OS if the manufacturer of that OS delivers the development tools to you
<Joerg-Neo900>
now for good: BBL
<Joerg-Neo900>
sorry
<jonwil>
The Neo900 will be OS-agnostic but I suspect the #1 choice for many users will be the Neo900 port of Maemo
<sn0wmonster>
I'm gonna be using an ARM version of Tails or Heads (whichever works)
<jonwil>
The biggest problems remaining in regards to Maemo on the Neo900 are the audio blobs (still a work-in-progress), the GPS stuff (need to write a clone of liblocation that talks to the GPS hardware in the Neo900) and the cellular radio stuff (need to produce a new daemon or daemons or whatever that expose the same DBUS and other interfaces as the N900 cellular daemons do so the upper level...
<jonwil>
...stuff keeps working correctly)
<Joerg-Neo900>
audio is mostly solved
<jonwil>
The clone of the pulseaudio blobs is still incomplete.
<jonwil>
Finishing that will bring it from "mostly" to "completly"
<Joerg-Neo900>
the remaining blobs are not exactly needed, and you're free to use them as is if you nevertheless want them, for improved audio quality
<Joerg-Neo900>
honestly that's all about *prting* maemo to new kernel etc. Which is not exactly mandatory. The goal of hw design is to allow a pretty much original maemo fremantle to run on Neo900, and the only topics to take care about are replacing the modem ISI interface by a simple AT interface, and the GPS ISI interface by a simple AT interface, and the ISI audio interface by a simple PCM ALSA soundcrad interface
<Joerg-Neo900>
audio hardware in Neo900 is 100% compatible to N900, except the audio interface to modem
<Joerg-Neo900>
where the Neo900 modem audio interface is plain standard, compared to a proprietary ISI interface in N900
<Joerg-Neo900>
I always hear we would need a new kernel for the DM3730 and the 1GB of memory. I doubt that
<Joerg-Neo900>
even the PVR drivers should work on DM3730 i'd think
<Joerg-Neo900>
please correct me if I'm wrong on anything of that
<bencoh>
there is no pvr support in mainline, so you'd need to rebase the ""driver"" once more
<Joerg-Neo900>
I only need to rebase when I plan to build a new kernel
<bencoh>
you'll most certainly want to build that new kernel
<jonwil>
Right now the cellular modem has a bunch of binary blobs that expose dbus interfaces on the upper end and then talk ISI to an open-source kernel driver (and from there to the modem). For fremantle-on-Neo900 the goal would be to produce a new set of things (daemons/libraries/whatever) that expose the same dbus interfaces at the upper end (so the dialer, SMS app and such will continue to work)...
<jonwil>
...but send AT commands to the modem module.
<jonwil>
Same for the GPS hardware (produce a library that is ABI compatible with liblocation but sends AT commands to the modem model for GPS.
<Joerg-Neo900>
bencoh: sure a new kernel is something highly desirable. But the idea been that it's not mandatory to get an OS (namely maemo) running on Neo900
<Joerg-Neo900>
jonwil: exactly
<jonwil>
I seriously doubt it will be possible to run the stock unmodified N900 kernel binary on the Neo900.
<Joerg-Neo900>
why?
<Joerg-Neo900>
what in kernel would blow chunks?
<Joerg-Neo900>
the SoCs are almost drop-in pin compatible
<Joerg-Neo900>
afaik
<jonwil>
Wont there need to be a new kernel driver to expose the AT interface to the modem module?
<Joerg-Neo900>
err nope, that's a good old TTYusb driver
<jonwil>
Is it possible the drivers for the N900 baseband could get in the way since that hardware doesn't exist on the Neo900?
<Joerg-Neo900>
don't think so
<Joerg-Neo900>
there are no baseband drivers in maemo linux
<Joerg-Neo900>
only the FOSS HSI drivers
<Joerg-Neo900>
which get used by the ISI libs
<Joerg-Neo900>
actually the BB5 and OMAP3 omly support SSI but it gets managed by the HSI drivers as well, just slower than HSI
<Joerg-Neo900>
and no other kernel level drivers for modem afaik, maybe some tiny stuff to monitor a RST or watchdog signal
<Joerg-Neo900>
of course there's thr audio stuff that gets sent in packets via a virtual network on HSI/ISI
<Joerg-Neo900>
see cmtspeech which does that audio stream management. Needs to get replaced by a very normal standard ALSA PCM soundcard driver
<jonwil>
In any case having a newer kernel (with all the right drivers present) is a good thing since it would contain who knows how many man-hours worth of bug fixes and improvements vs the stock N900 kernel.
<jonwil>
Oh and in terms of the audio blobs, the best way forward IMO is to reverse engineer enough of the missing pieces so that we have the entire thing cloned except that the actual proprietary audio algorithms (the ones we dont need on the Neo900) are implemented as "do nothing except pass the audio through unchanged" functions instead of actual audio algorithms. Then libcmtspeech and related...
<jonwil>
...bits can be ripped out and replaced with the stuff talking to the cellular modem via ALSA or whatever is needed.
<jonwil>
Since the audio hardware (including the speakers) will be the same on the Neo900, we still want the same algorithms for things like music and regular non-voice audio (e.g. stereo widening and xprot speaker protection)
<jonwil>
Although those bits are pretty much all reverse engineered now anway
<Joerg-Neo900>
yep
<jonwil>
Its mostly the special "make voice sound good" algorithms that are missing
<Joerg-Neo900>
yes
<Joerg-Neo900>
and XPROT
<jonwil>
xprot has been reverse engineered AFAIK
<Joerg-Neo900>
( I got a 200 spare speakers ;-D )
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<jonwil>
There are definitely a few unimplemented-but-important functions left in the pulseaudio blobs (as well as whatever it is that does the secret audio algos)
<jonwil>
in any case pulseaudio blobs are not my department at this point since I did all my skills allow me to do
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<sn0wmonster>
what are the technical limitations getting 2GB of RAM available to the Neo900?
<sn0wmonster>
is it primarily the price?
<bencoh>
iirc there is no compatible chip
<bencoh>
or that was an omap3 limitation, I don't exactly remember
<sn0wmonster>
is the OMAP5 something we can't entertain because of closed-source-ness?
<Joerg-Neo900>
OMAP3 has an address range (physical) of 1GB
<Joerg-Neo900>
OMAP5 is a completely different hw platform, different size and all
<sn0wmonster>
so we'd have to redesign everything to get that working?
<sn0wmonster>
is it at least similar in that it would meet the Neo900's requirement sfor open source and ability to isolate?