Sky's Blog of Revelation (and gadgets!)

Next Project: Mounting my (SMB/CIFS) file share on the Gentouch78

Sky — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 23:08:55 GMT

The goal is to be able to watch my media collection via wifi on my tablet. The Gentouch78 processor, Telechip 8902, has the sufficient hardware decoders to play all my videos but the rom that came on my tablet lacks any SMB/CIFS support.

Next step was to add this support by adding a compatible cifs.ko module to tablet, which turns out difficult: No source is available for the TCC8902 processor.

Well, after much searching I was able to locate a binary of the cifs.ko which can be successfully loading into the kernel. I was not able to test this further yet, but here it is:

CIFS.KO for Gentouch78 / Telechips TTC8902

New Android Tablet - Augen Gentouch 78 (got Angry Birds working!)

Sky — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 07:26:43 GMT

So I picked up the Augen Gentouch78 V2 online for $75 from one of those 'deal a day' sites. The unit looks sleek and seems to have a reasonable amount of power thanks to the telechip processor.

One issue I discovered quickly was that Angry Birds would not run properly and was missing most of it's textures. Some investigation into the mali200 OpenGL driver uncovered that the issue is related to lack of texture memory. A bit of hackery in the drivers and now it works:

So here is how to get Angry Birds (and other games with similar texture issues) working:

Warning: Following these steps may permanently damage your Gentouch78 and/or lead to permanent data loss and/or other issues. This is experimental and done at your own risk. These instructions were only tested for the Gentouch78 V2 (white power button, 3.5mm headphone jack).

You will need the following:

Software:

- The Android SDK - after setup, run the manager and install all packages.
- Development USB drivers for the Gentouch78 V2 m
- DroidExplorer (not required, you could do this command line style)
- mali.ko library with larger texture memory (compressed using 7zip)
- Decent text editor (I used Notepad+)

Hardware:

- Gentouch78 V2 (white power button!)
- USB cable

Steps:

1. Install the SDK, run the manager and download and install all packages. While that is running, start up the Gentouch and go under
'Settings'. There go under 'Applications', then 'Development' and make sure 'USB debugging' is turned on.

2. Plug the Gentouch78 V2 into your computer via USB. Don't mount the SD card or select any other notifications on the tablet. You should be prompted to install a driver for a 'Android Eclair' device. Use the USB driver above.

3. Now install the DroidExplorer. After the installation, it should automatically locate the Gentouch78 V2 and display the file system.

4. Make a backup of the following two files on your Gentouch78 V2.

/system/build.prop
/system/lib/modules/mali.ko

Do not skip this step. If you have a different hardware or software revision then me, these files will be need to restore your tablet.

5. Use DroidExplorer to replace the mali.ko file in

/system/lib/modules/

with the mali.ko w/ larger texture memory from this article.

Note: If DroidExplorer becomes slugging or unable to open specific folders, just disconnect your tablet, wait a few seconds and reconnect.

6. Make another copy of the build.prop in /system/ and open it in a text editor. Locate the following line:

dalvik.vm.heapsize=24m

and change the 24m to 32m

dalvik.vm.heapsize=32m

Save the file and upload to changed file to /system/ on your Gentouch78, replacing the old build.prop

7. Reboot your tablet (there's an option under 'Tools' in DroidExplorer).

You should now be able to install Angry Birds and it should play without any graphical issues. I successfully tested Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons Xmas and St. Patrick's Day and Angry Birds Rio.
I was not able to get Angry Birds Seasons Summer Picnic to work, but the same was true on my friend's Galaxy, so this appears to be an issue with Angry Birds and not the Gentouch.

If your tablet only shows a black screen or gets stuck during the startup after replacing the mali.ko file, you should still be able to connect to it via USB with DroidExplorer. Simply restore the mali.ko and build.prop from your backup to get it working again.

The mali.ko file contains a value on how much texture memory is reserved. The file contains the hex value 0x00008001 (about 25MB) which was changed to 0x00002003 (about 52MB). This appears true for different versions of the mali.ko file, but the location of the value varies by file. In my case it was between 0000DC3004 to 0000DC3007. I got this information from here.

tl;dr - Use adb to replace mali.ko in /system/lib/modules/ and change dalvik.vm.heapsize to 32m in /system/build.prop

Good luck!

The $100 iPad Killer: Eken M001 7" Android Tablet MID

Sky — Fri, 21 May 2010 19:48:07 GMT

Ok, maybe this device is not an iPad killer - the iPad is an impressive piece of technology with an impressive price tag. What we have here is the sub $100 China version: A 7" Wifi enabled touch screen running Android 1.6 for the price a digital picture frame was a year ago.

I had my unit for a few weeks now and in spite of some shortcomings, the unit was worth the money. The processor, running at 350Mhz, is not the fastest and makes the pad a bit unresponsive at times. Also, a hardware video decoder would be nice, since currently the pad only plays iPod style mp4s.

So what are the specs? It took a bit to be actually sure about this, but based on forum posts and data sheets, the following seems to be true:

- VIA/WonderMedia WM8505 at 350Mhz (yes, even plenty of sites claim 600Mhz.
- 7" TFT LCD 800x480 with resistive touch screen (no multi-touch)
- 128MB DDR2 SDRAM (running at 600Mhz?)
- 2GB Internal flash for OS and preinstalled apps (1.5GB or so available)
- Wifi (internal) b,g
- Internal LiPo battery, lasts 2-4 hours depending on use (Wifi: 2.5 hours max).
- USB, headphone plug, microphone, G sensor

The unit comes usually with Android 1.6 - the ARM core in the WM8505 is to old to run Android 2.1, so there is not going to be a newer Android version for this device, but Windows CE is also available as a firmware choice.

While this device has some shortcomings, for the price point of just over $100 it is hard to not recommend it regardless.

It is available on DealExtreme.

Weather Direct WA-1030U Internet Weather Station by La Crosse Technology

Sky — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 02:49:35 GMT

This is another recent piece of woot-loot I got. For $20 bucks I was able to pick up this Internet-enabled talking weather station plus external wireless sensor. The pitch was to have Internet updated weather forecasts for my location, plus my choice of news feeds, all spoken at the push of a button. On top of that, the unit makes the reading of the local wireless sensor available on the Internet.

When the unit arrived, first impressions were not that great: the unit came in the blister pack from hell. Honestly the worst packaging I have ever encountered. Beyond that, the weather station feels a bit cheap, with one of the volume buttons working but lacking the "click" feel of the other buttons. Included was also a small dongle with an Ethernet port and the wireless external sensor.

The setup of the unit was pretty easy, although the setup is a bit odd - the unit uses an Ethernet dongle to connect via a proprietary 915Mhz signal to the station. Notable was the huge selection forcast location, including local landmarks which enabled me to set the location within a few blocks of my residence. Once done with the setup, the unit set the time correctly, downloaded the forecast and connected to the external sensor. Getting the unit registered with the Weather Club, aka the site were you can see your sensors temperature on the 'net, was a bit more of a hassle, but multiple tries were eventually successful.

The unit does mostly everything that was advertised - the forecast is spoken with computer text-to-speech in an alternating male and female voice, same for the 3 news feeds selectable. While the forecast is pretty useful, the selection of the "news" feeds is more then limited. As a matter of fact, the selection lacks any real "news" and has barely more then a few cnet and zdnet feeds available - the option of custom RSS feeds would be really nice here.
The feature of the station to make your local temperature available over the Internet generally works, but requires the use of the somewhat poor knock-off of My Yahoo! including empty (thanks to adblock) advertisement window - the temperature in anything more usable, like a feed or widget for my site, is missing.

On the good side, a call to Weather Direct's customer service number was handled promptly and was followed thru with an email - compliments to a good US based customer service department.

After a few days I wanted to find out more about the unit, partially motivated by the lack of custom RSS feeds. I look inside the station did not yield much - custom chips all around. I was curious if the unit actually contained a text to speech engine or just downloads compressed audio over the 'net.

I tried to find out more about the Ethernet wireless dongle and came across this site exploring a different Weather Direct model. Based on the info on that page, I hooked my dongle via an old hub to WireShark and started taking a closer look.

The result was unfortunately not what I had hoped - instead of a build in TTS engine the unit just seems to play really low quality mp3 files. I didn't really go much further at that point, since I was hoping for a talking RSS reader and not an wireless low-fi mp3 player.

Beyond the set-back on the TSS engine, the unit is ok. It does what is advertised, although the crappy selection of "news" really hurts the unit in my book. If you like an instant weather forecast and can live with the cheap feel of the unit, for the right price I would go for it again.

The future of cat herding - the Meccano / Erector Spykee Wifi Robot

Sky — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 18:45:33 GMT

The future has arrived in form of the Spykee Wifi robot. While the product is clearly aimed at a young audience, I stumbled across it during a recent Woot-Off and for $100 it became mine, because once you look beyond the toy appearance you will find some interesting stats:

� 200 MHz ARM9
� 32Mb SDRAM
� 4Mb NOR Flash
� WiFi client 802.11b/g
� USB host
� 8-bits VC to control the dual DC motor and control the charge
� 4 status LEDs
� Infrared receiver
� Charge control for the 9.6V NiMH battery
� JTAG / Serial / port i2c port available
� Loudspeaker 8 Ohm 2W
� Audio sampler microphone 16bits / 16 kHz
� Sampler speaker 16bits / 8 to 48 kHz

Yes, you will find all this inside the base of this toy, plus it comes with a web cam with build in microphone and white LED. As the final touch, the unit can self dock and charge.

Since I left most of the plastic junk off the unit (only the webcam actually does anything, everything else is in the base.), I quickly turned this toy into a webcam I can drive around my house from work! My cats are not quite as excited by this:

The unit is controlled via a proprietary software available for Windows and Macs, but the protocol has been deciphered and alternative software is in the early stages of development. The unit can be used in ad-hoc mode or with an access point - and if you know how to open up a few ports, it can then be controlled from anywhere in the world with Internet!

The track drive on the unit works great when it has to overcome an occasional sock or cord, but cannot handle any stairs or otherwise non-flat surfaces. The camera produces good video at 320x240 and the internal speaker and microphone on the unit do their job just fine. Only bad point so far is the battery run time, only around 15-20 mins of driving around time until the unit want to dock again.

In regards to hacking not too much done has been done with this robot, but firmware with USB and NFS mounting capabilities and telnetd running are available. One hardware modification was to add the ability to move the camera up and down to be able to see more - although I found that a $2.58 Wide-Angle "Jelly Lens" works even better to improve the viewing angle.

But even with those shortcomings, this is a great product. I wish it was less aimed at kids and that Meccano would take their developers more seriously, but it is a blast either way.

New NAS: WLX-652 (652 WLXKJ) - linux, torrent and hacked!

Sky — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:00:29 GMT

While the WANSER-R was a great device, a recent upgrades to my storage space finally forced me to move away from FAT32 and in turn away from the WANSER-R.

As a replacement, I picked up the WLX-652 USB NAS from DealExtreme, my preferred Hong Kong seller. Equipped with two USB 2.0 ports and a build in BitTorrent client, plus support for NTFS and EXT2/3 it seemed like a good choice. A few weeks later the unit arrives and first impressions are good as well - the unit feels solid, is well made and seemed to initially work just fine.

However, after using the unit for a few days I quickly noticed some major drawbacks:

- Mounting of NTFS partitions is unreliable and access is quite slow
- The BitTorrent client requires all the units resources, making the SMB server unresponsive
- Worst Part: The unit would crash frequently, especially under high load.

After initially suspecting an overheating problem, I found out that the crashing issue seems to be fairly widespread with this units and even a firmware update did not resolve it. It seems to be a case of sloppy programing of the firmware.

Luckily, it turns out that this sloppy programing had some other side effects: It permits easy access to the units file system and in turn interested a group of users into hacking this device. The unit seems to be running on a Star 8132 system-on-a-chip, has 32MB memory and 4MB flash.

The result, the so called SNAKE OS Linux is not only stable, but has also been updated to contain the latest Transmission BT daemon, SSH support and an improved file system. I am currently running the SNAKE OS Beta 2r1 (and will soon be upgrading to the Beta 3) and I had up times of 10 days and more. You can find SNAKE OS firmware here:

DealExtreme NAS Google Group

Keep in mind that this firmware is beta and installing it may void your warranty, etc. I also want to mention that while this unit still supports NTFS, this support requires a lot of system resources and it is recommended that ext3 or ext2 is used instead, especially when using Transmission.

Update: DealExtreme started shipping a new version of this unit, marked as WLX 652R. The WLX 652R is NOT COMPATIBLE with the Smake OS!

WANSER-R 1.48a firmware update

Sky — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:55:39 GMT

Here is the latest firmware I was able to obtain for my NAS adapter, 1.48a. If you currently have a branded firmware (including the 1.42b from the post below), you will not be able to use this firmware due to the OEM name/webtag check.

There is a way to circumvent this checkwebtag issue. The WANSER-R uses two verifications when a firmware file is uploaded - it checks the firmware header for the proper OEM name and the file checksum before updating.

Warning: Do this at your own risk. All instructions provided as is. This may damage ("brick") your NAS and/or result in data loss. Read full disclaimer here.

If you currently have a 1.39 or earlier firmware you do NOT need these steps - just upload the firmware file for the 1.48 should work. These steps assume that you have the 1.42 MRT version of the firmware installed (from previous blog post).

Firmware Version G5S5020300148A0 L:1.17 . If you go to http://NAS/__config.htm, you should see VENDOR="MRT"; CHECKWEBTAG="1" [...]

To circumvent the webtag check and to upload the 1.48a, follow these steps:

1. Download this 1.38 firmware file. It has been altered to contain the MRT webtag. I did this with a hex editor by just comparing with the 1.42 MRT firmware file.

2. Unpack and upload the R3282_1_38a_MRT_header.bin to your WANSER-R

3. The WANSER-R should "think" a few seconds after the upload before giving you the incorrect file error. This is because the file passes the initial header check, but not the checksum.

4. Now open man_firm.html on the WANSER-R to force the update
http://NAS/man_firm.htm

5. The unit should reboot and once completed will be running the 1.38 firmware again. If the unit does not reboot after the update wait 5 mins then reset it to default settings: Unplug, push and hold reset button, plug back in and wait for 30 seconds, while still pushing the reset button, then power cycle again.

6. Now just update your firmware to the 1.48a from this post, the 1.38 firmware will accept this file and it will change your vendor to BASIC and your webchecktag to 0: VENDOR="BASIC"; CHECKWEBTAG="0". Again, if the unit does not reboot after the update, wait 5 mins then reset it to default settings: Unplug, push and hold reset button, plug back in and wait for 30 seconds, while still pushing the reset button, then power cycle again.

Once you have the checkwebtag set to 0, you can upload any firmware - just keep in mind that any branded (MRT or Addonics) firmware version 1.41 or higher will set the checkwebtag to 1 again.

Good luck.

Addonics USB NAS Adapter Dongle with BitTorrent!

Sky — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 17:16:04 GMT

After my efforts to add network attached storage to my Asus router failed (well, it did work, but only with USB 1.1 speed) I started looking for a flexible solution to attach a large hard drive to my network.

After looking at some strange IDE NAS drive enclosures on eBay, I came across the Addonics NAS Adapter - a small network dongle that provides the missing link between ethernet and USB. The feature list on the website was perfect, as the unit supports both SMB ("Samba" = Windows networking) and FTP and on top of that has a build in Bit Torrent client. For $55 the price was right and I ordered the adapter from ShopAddonics.com.

I have been using the NAS Adapter for a week now and I am quite impressed. I am using the unit with a 500GB Hitachi SATA drive in an USB 2.0 enclosure and the adapter recognizes and uses the hard drive flawlessly. Over SMB I get speeds around 8MB/sec when using Ethernet and around 2MB/sec over Wifi, which is in line with the expected speed for those networks. The NAS adapter runs smoothly even under heavy load (4 torrents, uploading to the HDD via wifi and streaming a video off the drive at he same time is no problem). The unit is entirely controlled via a web interface and can act both as a DHCP client or server. Both SMB and FTP allow multiple users and access levels.

The build in bit torrent client is reasonably fast and can handle up to 4 downloads simultaneously. Performance is quite solid and the unit is capable to resume downloads after a reboot (even though the manual claims differently).

Overall I am quite impressed with this small device and was curious to find out what's ticking on the inside. Unfortunately, the casing had no visible way of opening it and I didn't want to break the small device, so I did some Internet research.

What I found:

This device is an OEM product, meaning that Addonics only does QA control, but did not develop this unit. The 'official' part number seems to be WANSER-R. I was not able to find the actual manufacturer, but on the inside seems to be a RDC R3210 system on a chip. the R3210 is a 32bit RISC processor, running at 133Mhz. It has buildin ethernet and USB, plus dual DMA controllers, making it quite fitting for the job.

You can find the specs sheet of the R3210 in PDF here.

My Addonics NAS Adapter came with firmware 1.33c, which was stable but I found a 1.42b update on the this site (look for WANSER-R). Make sure you read the included readme. The 1.42b appears to be solid as well and I've noticed an increase in BitTorrent performance. Unfortunately, Addonics has not made any of the recent firmware updates available through their site. The unit appears to be linux based and there is an OpenWRT build for the R3210, but I did not make any attempt at flashing this unit with 3rd party firmware.