N900
This section is about the Nokia N900, especially developing applications for it
Maemo, Moblin, MeeGo, and running RPMs on the #N900
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 02/17/2010 - 10:56The recent announcement about Nokia and Intel planning on merging Maemo and Moblin into MeeGo has generated a lot of interesting discussions online. What does this mean for the future of the N900? What does this mean for developers wishing to write for Maemo or Moblin? Perhaps the biggest discussion has been about the packaging system. On the MeeGo FAQ page, they say “MeeGo will use the .rpm format”.
Now if you think the wars between Mac and PC users can get a bit over the top, you should see the discussions that go on between developers concerning one packaging system or another. I jumped into the fray and asked if anyone had run RPM on the N900. Other than a few replies suggesting I wait until Meego is available or asking why anyone would want to do that, I’ve gotten little for responses.
The #N900 Bobsled in an Open Source Mobile Virtual World Experience
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 02/14/2010 - 10:38Between watching events in the Olympics, I played a few games on my Nokia N900 and it occurred to me that the game waiting to be made is the #N900 Bobsled run. Let me present a few videos to give you an idea about what I have in mind.
First, there is this video of the bobsled run from a first person point of view:
Then, there is this sample game that comes on the Nokia N900:
Could Bounce evolve to use a Bobsled track? Even better, could it evolve to use various Bobsled tracks from different virtual worlds? This idea comes from reading about the announced release of Naali, an open source virtual world viewer that might port nicely to the N900. Of course the Naali viewer would need enhancements to take advantage of the accelerometer. Discussions about this are already taking place.
To push it even further, what about slalom racing in virtual worlds where the competitors use accelerometer enabled mobile devices? I want to go the sports bar where people bring their N900’s and race each other this way. Each racer sees their own view of the track on their N900s and the participants watch the race on a big screen over the bar.
What I like about OpenSim, the virtual world platform often used with Naali, Naali itself and the N900 environment is that they are all open source and combined they could provide an great platform for an incredible open source mobile virtual world experience.
Controlling the Status LED on the Nokia N900
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 01/30/2010 - 11:53My latest adventure with the Nokia N900 has been learning how to control the Status LED on the front of the Nokia N900. The best discussion of this can be found in the thread (N900) Possible to change the colour of the notification light???.
Codemonkey listed the current set of patterns and said that adding new patterns to the list should be easy, but that getting other applications to use the new patterns might be difficult. So, I figured I would go out and add a few new patterns and see if I could get them to work.
iPads, Nexus One and the N900
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 01/29/2010 - 16:29So, I’ve had my N900 for a little over a month now. I’ve written programs for it, I’ve streamed video on it, I’ve used it as an MP3 player to listen to music as well as to books on tape. I’ve used the PDF viewer for reading court briefings and maps of local parks. I used it as a tape recorder, an HDR camera, a game console, and even used it from time to time to send and receive text messages or make phone calls.
I’ve also followed closely discussions in the Maemo developers world about problems with the maemo and Nokia servers, issues about documentation, testing, and the community as a whole. I’ve talked about these issues with friends of mine in the open source industry. During this time, I’ve also watched the launch of Nexus One and of the iPad.
Through all of this, I’ve wondered if the N900, Maemo, and Nokia have what it takes to remain relevant in the rapidly changing world of Internet enabled mobile devices. In spite of everything I love about the N900, I still have significant doubts.
High Dynamic Range (HDR) Imaging on the #n900 Using Gstreamer and Enfuse
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 01/28/2010 - 13:32I am constantly finding new and interesting things to do with my Nokia N900 phone and the latest is HDR photography. It took a little work to get it going, but I now have my first HDR photographs.
I started off by reading the thread HDR Pictures with the N900?. It pointed to an article about HDR and Python. The article looked promising and talked about using CHDK and exposure bracketing. I have CHDK running on my Cannon camera, but wanted to find out what is available on the N900 similar to CHDK.
In looking around a little bit more, I found simple intervalometer for the N900 (time-lapse photography). This uses gstreamer and was used as part of the Kite Aerial Photography project. Note to self: kite aerial photography looks like another very cool and interesting project.
