Nokia N810 as a bluetooth GPS-module?
Posted on November 26, 2007
Filed Under Ideas, Maemo, N810, Software | 6 Comments
Is it possible to use N810 as a bluetooth GPS module? For example GPS might be needed on a laptop, or to test a cellphone application. At first the idea seems a bit stupid, but I’m sure someone somewhere might appreciate the functionality.
I’m pretty sure it won’t work out of the box, but creating an application that acts as BT SPP server that just outputs data from gpsd might work. I’m not familiar with BT-programming, so would this be possible or even “easy”?
Mediaserv on Fedora core 8
Posted on November 20, 2007
Filed Under Maemo, N800, Tips, Tutorials | Leave a Comment
Installing mediaserv on Fedora 8 is simple, but doesn’t work exactly like mediaserv Readme indicates. Here are the few steps needed to make it work.
To install all the needed mplayer/mencoder-packages, you might need the livna repository.
rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm
After that, all the transcoding and xml-stuff are installed.
yum install mencoder mplayer perl-XML-RSS
That last part perl-XML-RSS is the trick. This is because Fedora 8 doesn’t seem to like perl MCPAN, but instead uses yum to install all the needed perl dependencies.
After this just run the install.sh script and make all the needed changes to the ~/mediaserv/config and you’re good to go.
Both tablet-encode script and mediaserv can be downloaded here. Thanks for the great program!
ps. If you try to use the encoders “best” option, all the streaming fun is a no-go with atleast my n800’s built-in mediaplayer. “good” works just fine.
Videocenter with mplayer
Posted on September 8, 2007
Filed Under Maemo, N800, Software, Tips | 5 Comments
This is the application I’ve been waiting for. But it has abug (or a feature) that needs some knowledge to bypass.
So the idea of this program is to be able to watch vidcasts & live TV easily on the go. A feature that I almost decided to implement myself 
But because this program uses the internal mediaplayer for videos, it doesn’t support all the shows I want.
Luckily there’s a option in the settings to use external player.
To use mplayer for example, just enter this path to the box:
/usr/sbin/mplayer -cache 1024 %s
The “cache” is optional but it’ll make mplayer stream those videos much more smoothly.
The tricky part is to use that external player. If you just press the “>>”-button, the video will start in the internal player even though external is selected. To launch the stream in mplayer you’ll have to go to internet videos screen, select the video and go to “menu->file->stream video”. That’s all there’s to it.
Thanks again for the great application.
IRC with N800
Posted on July 17, 2007
Filed Under Maemo, N800, Software, Tips, Tutorials | 9 Comments
For reasons not specified here, I had to get IRC working on some level with my N800.
The easiest way would’ve been to use web-irc, but I wanted a better solution. First I tried to find an irc-client, but didn’t. The I tried using gaim with irc-protocol, and ended up cursing the program to the hottest and deepest parts of hell. (that program should be made illegal by law)
The I deciced to try osso-xterm and ssh to a server where irssi was already running in screen. All went well until I tried to ssh from xterm to the server - I needed the ssh. For some reason I had trouble locating openssh or dropbear, and hence decided to tell you where they can be found. Maybe other people doesn’t have to google so much in the future for this little feat. So, the repository you’ll need in Application manager is Maemo Hackers:
Maemo Hackers
http://maemo-hackers.org/apt
Distribution: bora
Components: main
Just install osso-xterm and dropbear-client. Happy IRCing, if thats your thing…
Update:
As ossi1967 pointed out, there is an IRC-application called X-Chat for maemo. I’ve actually used it before - silly me
DVD disk and image transcoding for N800
Posted on July 17, 2007
Filed Under Maemo, N800, Software, Tips, video | 2 Comments
I needed to encode a movie, but the Media Converter didn’t seem to work with DVDs in Windows Vista.
After googling a while, I stumbled upon two programs that seem to do the job. For transcoding DVDs to N800 format (MPEG4 400×240) the open source solution MeWiG is adequate. The GUI crashes after a few minutes of encoding, but mencoder still runs in the background and gets the job done. The interface is quite intuitive, and it even scans the DVD for you to make for example cropping easier.
If you have an image of DVD already ripped in you hard-disk, HandBrake does the job very well. It seems to support multi-core processors, and it very easy to use. For some reason the DVD-transcoding doesn’t work with this program in Vista.
I’m not saying that Media Converter is a bad - it is a great program - but in Vista I couldn’t get it to use DVD as a source.
Some additional MPlayer testing
Posted on May 7, 2007
Filed Under Maemo, N800, Software, Tips | Leave a Comment
After my last post, MPlayer has been updated to version mplayer_1.0rc1-maemo.16, and I decided to test again to further optimize my video experience. I’ve found that when you transcode your videos with 30 fps instead of 25, the effect to smoothness is for some reason very dramatic. Mayde I should also try with 24, but haven’t got round to it yet.
I aimed at 500 x 300, but decided that the best result is achieved with lower resolution and a bit higher bitrate. So here’s my latest preset for 770-encode.p. I can’t say that it’s the best available preset for N800, but hopefully it’ll give you a place to start your own testing.
n800big => { abitrate => 128, vbitrate => 640, width => 480, height => 288, fps => 30
A few MPlayer tips for the weekend
Posted on April 21, 2007
Filed Under Maemo, N800, Tips, Tutorials | 1 Comment
The MPlayer from maemo has become a higly usable and pretty stable piece of software. I’m using the currently latest version 1.0_rc1-maemo.14.800 in my N800 thats available from the garage. I use a modified 770-encode.pl to transcode vidcasts etc. in my linux server.
This is the trascoding setting in the script that i use:
n800 => { abitrate => 128, vbitrate => 640, width => 400, height => 240, fps => 30 },
I also used sync those files to my device with a grsync configuration, but recently I’ve been mainly streaming through an http server.
The tip part of this post comes here.
Most of you probably know that mplayer is able to stream video, by simply cut’n pasting the url to the textarea, and pressing the play button. But sometimes when you’re using your tablet over 3G data, or the connection to the server is for some other reason too low, the streaming fails.
In this case, i’ve found it useful to first start to a video download from the browser, and then starting mplayer. Even though the file isn’t finished, it shows up in the mplayer filelist, and you can start watching. The time-delay between starting a download and watching it should be adjusted according to filesize/connection speed etc. for obvious reasons.
Happy downloading and fave a nice weekend!
PS. Please also tell me about your own tips and tricks when it comes to tablet video.
Windows Xp on a Nokia N800
Posted on March 8, 2007
Filed Under Maemo, N800, Tutorials | 3 Comments
Well, sort of
This hack includes virtual display driver from ZoneOS called ZoneScreen and a VNC server for windows. For testing I used RealVNC. The Idea is, that you create a virtual screen in windows that shows up in Display settings as a normal screen. So you can drag programs and use it as a secondary monitor. Then VNC is used to connect N800 to it via vnc-viewer application from garage.
The reason to try this, is that I’ve been wondering would it be possible to create sideshow drivers to Vista, that would use N800 as a display device. For some gadget/widget/vimpula love.
Problems with this initial test setup.
- vncviewer goes to screen saving mode
- no 800 x 480 resolution in basic Zonescreen display settings
- RealVNC doesn’t seem to support broadcasting only one screen, so you have to scroll from you main screen to the secondary when you start to use it.
- Scroll-bars present because of the last two.
Canola 1.0 beta 2 is out
Posted on February 17, 2007
Filed Under Maemo, N800, Software | 4 Comments
Today these killerapps just keeps on coming…
Our friends at indt have just release a pre-release of beta 2 from a media managing software called Canola. To my knowledge, betas have been available for Nokia 770, but this one also runs on N800.
I really like Canola, now that I have finally been able to try it on my N800. It is smooth, and very intuitive to use.
I highly recommend everyone to try it. But I had to boot my system to get it working - just a heads up.
Download links and instructions after the jump. Join #maemo on freenet if you want to contribute. I didn’t notice the key-people aspect of this relese, by bad. Thanks for MikeL for pointing that out.
New theme and some mediacontrol
Posted on February 16, 2007
Filed Under General, Maemo, N800 | 1 Comment
I decided to change my theme to something more usable - the last one was “pretty” though. This new one is a modified version of the Vertigo theme.
Now I’m again a one happy customer, because I decided to try a new program called Maemo Music Player Client. It just works. The idea is that you install Music Player Daemon to your linux-desktop/server and use mmpc to control the music that is played. So basically a remote control - a good one.
Yu’ll have to install the mpd first, but luckily i had - i think it was dries - repository configured in my FC6-setup, so installation was a dream.
Thank you again for this couchpotato goodness!
