Planet OpenSolaris

David Clack: Technical difficulties

Tue, 15 May 2012 21:50:00 +0000

Hi All,

So I'm having a few small technical difficulties here, I want to post some better pictures of the tablets and some movies of Java SE and JavaFX running on the tablets, we have a 2MB upload limit on the blog site, so I'm having to find ways of dealing with this.

Basically Tom knows now how to build a Linux for a stock tablet we can buy of the web, it's been much easier with Marvell, Freescale and FIC helping us with techniques and drivers.

Touchscreen has cause Tom a lot of grief but we have single touch under control now.

Getting a wifi network manager caused him fits, but that is fixed also.

We are now looking at developing a commercial tablet just for Java.

I'm basically sold on using the Canonical Ubuntu distribution for the OS.

We are trying to pick what sort of ARM processor we want, single or dual core to start.

Screen size, I'm leaning to 1280 x 1024 to start.

What size nand to put inside 8Gb or 16Gb, what ports we want, USB, HDMI, do we want a 3G chip, which means we need a sim card slot.

Though all of these decisions always come back to price point.

We have found a couple of really great hardware partners who can help build the first few designs, here in the USA, Taiwan and Europe.

More later

Dave

David Clack: Freescale i.MX5x ARM tablet from FIC

Mon, 14 May 2012 20:51:14 +0000

Hi All,

So here are some pictures of the Freescale i.MX5x powered FIC tablet running our Linux (Open Embedded), XFCE desktop Java SE Embedded for ARM and Tom's JavaFX 2 build.

FIC is a Freescale partner that built this tablet for a Brazilian customer.

My next task is to see if I can get the Canonical Ubuntu (Linaro) build for i.MX53 to boot on this device with the Unity desktop.

I do have the Canonical build running on a i.MX6 quad core developer platform, so I'm hopeful the i.MX53 build will work on the tablet.

More to come, like what would you want as hardware for a Java tablet ?

Dave

Simon Phipps: Wildlife Service Area

Mon, 14 May 2012 00:54:04 +0000

Reblogged from The Global Mink:

The tranquil isolation of Mono Lake in California – just outside the eastern entrance to Yosemite National Park at Lee Vining – makes it almost a place of pilgrimage for me. It’s a lake filled with mountain snow run-off from the Sierras, and it has no outlet. The mineral wash from the mountains and the volcanic springs that enter from the lake bed get concentrated through evaporation and as a consequence the water is highly alkaline.

David Clack: Who thinks a Linux ARM tablet with Java SE and JavaFX is a good idea ?

Sat, 12 May 2012 19:58:23 +0000

Hi All,

So it's been awhile since I blogged, I've been busy with my colleague Tom Karbowski investigating the whole would of ARM, Linux and tablets.

Well because of the great work by Tom we now have a three tablets that don't run Android anymore.

We have a Freescale, Nvidia Tegra 2 and Marvell powered tablets that run our version of Open Embedded Linux, they both run Java SE Embedded for ARM fine.

Tom took the JavaFX code for Linux and cross compiled it for ARM.

We still need to deal with power management of the tablet, but Tom has got most of the hardware working, touchscreen, wifi, USB, ethernet.

Our plan is to work with Canonical (Ubuntu) to replace our Open Embedded as we are the Java Guys not Linux guys, I'm going to try a Canonical Linora build for the i.MX53 on the Freescale tablet next week, this will get use the Unity desktop instead of the XFCE we currently have.

We will be demoing most of this at The Freescale Technology Forum show in San Antonio Texas the week of June 18th, Oracle is a Gold sponsor of this event, so if your in the area come and see us at the show.

http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?code=FTF_2012_AMERICA_HOME_CAT

I'll be blogging more about building a commercially available Linux tablet as we go through the process.

Dave

Simon Phipps: Suite Activity

Fri, 11 May 2012 16:44:30 +0000

While the news about the ongoing Oracle-Google trial in the US has been holding my attention, there have been a sequence of news releases about desktop productivity showing up over the last few weeks. It’s all too good to miss, so I’ve written summaries over on ComputerWorldUK and an enhanced version on InfoWorld.

Simon Phipps: Palm Nuts

Thu, 10 May 2012 16:50:15 +0000

Reblogged from The Global Mink:

Staying with a dear friend near São Paulo, I noticed a sound like crickets or cicadas coming from the front of the house. I’ve never actually seen a cicada in action (they go quiet when you find them) so I rushed outside with my camera, only to find it wasn’t insects.

The sound was actually made by squirrels gnawing through the leathery shells of the palm nuts that had fallen to the ground from the tree just outside the house.

James Lee: My Homemade LOM

Wed, 09 May 2012 21:17:42 +0000

In one of the final classes of my CS master’s program, Embedded Computing, we were required to complete a semester project of our choosing involving embedded systems. Like in previous semester projects, I wanted to do something that I would actually be able to use after the class ended.

This time around I chose to build a lights-out manager for my Sun Ultra 24 server (which this blog is hosted on). With a LOM I can control the system’s power and access its serial console so I will be able to perform OS updates remotely, among other things.

Since I already owned one and I didn’t want to spend a lot of money, I chose to develop the project on top of the Arduino platform. I like the size of the Arduino, and the availability of different shields to minimize soldering. It’s also able to be powered by USB, which is perfect because the Ultra 24 has an internal USB port that always supplies power.

To make things a little more challenging for myself (because the Arduino is pretty easy on its own), I chose to implement a hardware UART to communicate with the Ultra 24′s serial port. Specifically, I chose to use the Maxim MAX3110E SPI UART and RS-232 transceiver. Great little chip.

For communication with the outside world, I bought an Ethernet shield from Freetronics. It’s compatible with the official Arduino Ethernet shield, but includes a fix to allow the network module to work with other SPI devices (such as my UART) on the same bus. I started to implement the network UI using Telnet, but after realizing I would have to translate the serial console data from VT100 to NVT, I switched to Rlogin, which is like Telnet, but assumes like-to-like terminal types.

Lastly, for controling the system’s power, I figured out how to tap into the Ultra 24′s power LED and switch. Using the LED, I can check whether the system is on or off, and using the switch circuit and a transistor, I can power the system on and off. I managed to do this without affecting the operation of the front panel buttons/LEDs.

I’ll spare you all of the implementation details (if you’re interested, you can read my report). Suffice it to say, the thing works as well as I could have imagined. Here is a screenshot of me using the serial console on my workstation:

From my research, the serial and power motherboard headers are the same on most modern Intel systems, so this LOM should work on more than just an Ultra 24. If you want to build one of your own, my code is available on GitHub and the hardware schematic is in the report I linked to above.