I think the XO is a... ground breaking device. Did I get one? No, I realized that it is does not meet my needs and would end up in the closet or given away to a child...
Mine have done just that since Xmas, until today. ...
I couldn't find my shoulder bag big laptop and so on my way out the door, I grabbed one of the kids XO's so I could try it out for the 5 hours I would be sitting at the kids swim meet.
Sitting in the stands, I fired it up, and to my amazement wireless! bingo up came my favorite web pages, and then email. After reading email I went to edit some of my web pages. Flipped the screen around to tablet/book style so that the pages were long and I could read like a book. Holding the device in one hand with the nice finger holes provided.
Wow, what a neat way to access wireless, email, web pages, and live mobile APRS. Less than 1/2 the bulk of my big laptop, and only $200 at risk instead of the $1200 labtop.
I can't wait for the ham software to start working with it. Talk about portability... The ease of use, will assure that I will now probbly have the ham radio laptop apps with me more often than before since I will be more apt to carry the small XO at low risk then lug the big laptop.
I'm sold!
And now that my kids see how easy the itnernet access was, I now have to buy my own XO, since now their inteerest has been re kindled and they do want to take them both back to school...
Bob, WB4APR
Bob Bruninga wrote:
I think the XO is a... ground breaking device. Did I get one? No, I realized that it is does not meet my needs and would end up in the closet or given away to a child...
... I can't wait for the ham software to start working with it. Talk about portability... The ease of use, will assure that I will now probbly have the ham radio laptop apps with me more often than before since I will be more apt to carry the small XO at low risk then lug the big laptop.
Bob, WB4APR
For what it's worth, I've had good success getting Xastir working on the box. The only part I'm having real trouble with is soundmodem keeps crashing when ever it decodes a packet. Otherwise all is compiling and working nicely, once the appropriate prerequisite packages are installed.
-Paul
For what it's worth, I've had good success getting Xastir working on the box. The only part I'm having real trouble with is soundmodem keeps crashing when ever it decodes a packet.
Im hopling you will well document the steps so those of us that follow later will have the benefit of your efforts.
In the DC area, I think we have several Hams with XO's. Maybe we should schedule a meeting and show and tell so that everyone cal beenefit from the fruits of our efforts?
Kinda like those early digital meetings we used to have.
TO make it easy to compute the centroid of people, everyone could beacon their position on APRS using the LAPTOP symbol with an overlay of "O" and then FINDU.COM can draw us a map. Then we pick the centroid to plan a meeting...
Thanks! Bob, WB4APR
Paul Kronenwetter wrote:
Bob Bruninga wrote:
I think the XO is a... ground breaking device. Did I get one? No, I realized that it is does not meet my needs and would end up in the closet or given away to a child...
... I can't wait for the ham software to start working with it. Talk about portability... The ease of use, will assure that I will now probbly have the ham radio laptop apps with me more often than before since I will be more apt to carry the small XO at low risk then lug the big laptop.
Bob, WB4APR
For what it's worth, I've had good success getting Xastir working on the box. The only part I'm having real trouble with is soundmodem keeps crashing when ever it decodes a packet. Otherwise all is compiling and working nicely, once the appropriate prerequisite packages are installed.
-Paul
Hello,
Thanks for the information about Xastir. There seems to be so many linux projects out there these days that I can not keep track and 10,000 of them are multimedia players. :) I have to try it. I also wish there were more Radio-related Linux projects and less of duplicate "mainstream" projects.
I have a number of older laptops (Thinkpad 380 and 600 series) that I use for mobile dxing of Trunked Radio systems. I have been looking for something smaller for years to do this. I also want to run Winradio software and connect up to my D700 on the road.
Besides doing some GNURadio development I have a hand in Trunked Radio Decoding Software development, in particular LTR, DOS Trunker (Motorola and EDACS), and Windows ports of Trunker, I want do do Linux versions but until then I have to use Windows. So I went with the Eee PC because I could put 2GB of Ram in it and Windows XP can be put on it. I would not consider the Classmate either since it does not really have enough RAM to run Windows XP. I still run Windows 98SE and W2K on my older laptops to minimize the bloat.
I have "standardized" on openSuSE for my linux distribution and on KDE in particular. Although I have used the built-in OS on the Eee PC for web browsing, irc, and listening to internet audio, I still installed openSuSE. I am still setting it up and want to try compiling GNURadio on it. So I think it is also neat having my familiar Linux environment in the palm of my hand.
73 Eric
All,
I've started a page on the laptop.org WIKI, currently at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Kronenpj to document what I've been doing. Once I get it a bit further along, I'll see if the OLPC folks want amateur-radio stuff in their wiki or somewhere else. In the meantime, anyone with comments or suggestions, please use the discussion tab and we'll work through things.
-Paul
Paul Kronenwetter wrote:
Bob Bruninga wrote:
I think the XO is a... ground breaking device. Did I get one? No, I realized that it is does not meet my needs and would end up in the closet or given away to a child...
... I can't wait for the ham software to start working with it. Talk about portability... The ease of use, will assure that I will now probbly have the ham radio laptop apps with me more often than before since I will be more apt to carry the small XO at low risk then lug the big laptop.
Bob, WB4APR
For what it's worth, I've had good success getting Xastir working on the box. The only part I'm having real trouble with is soundmodem keeps crashing when ever it decodes a packet. Otherwise all is compiling and working nicely, once the appropriate prerequisite packages are installed.
-Paul
All,
I've updated the laptop.org Wiki page with locations to download the packages I'm using on the XO. I had a bit of a delay because I tried to update to one of the Joyride builds and it toasted the data on my SD card. I lost all my work. So, with that out of the way, here are the links:
http://n2kiq.dyndns.org.nyud.net/xoaprs/ http://n2kiq.dyndns.org/xoaprs/
If you can, please use the Coral network to get a faster download speed.
I'm also looking for help getting Thomas Saylor's soundmodem package to work with Alsa and a 2.6 kernel. It builds and runs fine until it goes to actually do something with the sound card. This problem isn't specific to the XO, it's just keeping me from using it and another system the way I want to.
Thanks all & 73! -Paul
Paul Kronenwetter wrote:
All,
I've started a page on the laptop.org WIKI, currently at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Kronenpj to document what I've been doing. Once I get it a bit further along, I'll see if the OLPC folks want amateur-radio stuff in their wiki or somewhere else. In the meantime, anyone with comments or suggestions, please use the discussion tab and we'll work through things.
-Paul
Paul Kronenwetter wrote:
Bob Bruninga wrote:
I think the XO is a... ground breaking device. Did I get one? No, I realized that it is does not meet my needs and would end up in the closet or given away to a child...
... I can't wait for the ham software to start working with it. Talk about portability... The ease of use, will assure that I will now probbly have the ham radio laptop apps with me more often than before since I will be more apt to carry the small XO at low risk then lug the big laptop.
Bob, WB4APR
For what it's worth, I've had good success getting Xastir working on the box. The only part I'm having real trouble with is soundmodem keeps crashing when ever it decodes a packet. Otherwise all is compiling and working nicely, once the appropriate prerequisite packages are installed.
-Paul
I've done a little more investigating and the only consistent error I'm receiving is this:
sm[3179]: audio: snd_pcm_writei: File descriptor in bad state
I've briefly looked at the code in the alsaio.c modules and been tempted to add code to help it recover from this state, but I'm not an alsa programmer so I haven't a clue how far I'd need to go. I welcome and appreciate any help the community has to offer.
Soundmodem stays running and still properly decodes packets, but won't encode anything. It just outputs a large quantity of those error messages. What else can I provide?
-Paul
Paul Kronenwetter wrote:
All,
I've updated the laptop.org Wiki page with locations to download the packages I'm using on the XO. I had a bit of a delay because I tried to update to one of the Joyride builds and it toasted the data on my SD card. I lost all my work. So, with that out of the way, here are the links:
http://n2kiq.dyndns.org.nyud.net/xoaprs/ http://n2kiq.dyndns.org/xoaprs/
If you can, please use the Coral network to get a faster download speed.
I'm also looking for help getting Thomas Saylor's soundmodem package to work with Alsa and a 2.6 kernel. It builds and runs fine until it goes to actually do something with the sound card. This problem isn't specific to the XO, it's just keeping me from using it and another system the way I want to.
Thanks all & 73! -Paul
Paul Kronenwetter wrote:
All,
I've started a page on the laptop.org WIKI, currently at: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Kronenpj to document what I've been doing. Once I get it a bit further along, I'll see if the OLPC folks want amateur-radio stuff in their wiki or somewhere else. In the meantime, anyone with comments or suggestions, please use the discussion tab and we'll work through things.
-Paul
Paul Kronenwetter wrote:
Bob Bruninga wrote:
I think the XO is a... ground breaking device. Did I get one? No, I realized that it is does not meet my needs and would end up in the closet or given away to a child...
... I can't wait for the ham software to start working with it. Talk about portability... The ease of use, will assure that I will now probbly have the ham radio laptop apps with me more often than before since I will be more apt to carry the small XO at low risk then lug the big laptop.
Bob, WB4APR
For what it's worth, I've had good success getting Xastir working on the box. The only part I'm having real trouble with is soundmodem keeps crashing when ever it decodes a packet. Otherwise all is compiling and working nicely, once the appropriate prerequisite packages are installed.
-Paul
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Bob Bruninga -
Eric A, Cottrell -
Paul Kronenwetter -
Robert Bruninga