Qbus Remote with CTL support now available!

Qbus Remote v1.8 now supports CTL controllers!

Grab it from the Play Store


Requirements:

• Latest Qbus CTL firmware (v.5.37) & ETH0 firmware v2.1.1 (to upgrade, download the latest Qbus Serial Manager II package from www.qbus.be)
• Android 2.1 and up.

Known issues:

• Not all shutter types are supported (only the ones that show up in the eth menu)

Qbus Remote for CTL

Binnenkort komt er een versie van Qbus Remote voor de originele CTL controllers.

Indien je deze Android app wil testen, graag een mailtje naar qbusremote@nalolabs.be met de vermelding "CTL beta".

Voor meer info volg Twitter @nalolabs

Of via Google+

----

Soon there will be a new version of Qbus Remote with support for the older CTL controller series.

If you want to participate in testing this Android app please send an e-mail to qbusremote@nalolabs.be mentioning "CTL beta"


For further info follow Twitter @nalolabs

Or on Google+

Qbus Remote for Android

Qbus Remote is (eindelijk) beschikbaar op de Android Market:

De app leest de ingangen uit die gedefiniëerd staan op de eth0 bedieningstabel (zie Qbus Manager). 

Requirements:
- Qbus CTD v3
- CTD Firmware 5.11 of hoger.
- Android versie 2.2 of hoger.

De applicatie is nog in ontwikkeling. De bediening van de temperatuur programmatie is momenteel nog in een test fase en is voorlopig uitgeschakeld. 

Download: Android Market

Graag feedback!

The Ultimate Tablet?

You have e-readers, with clean & easy-on-the-eye e-ink displays, and you have tablets with full color multi-touch displays. Want to have both in 1 device? Look no further!

I came across this Nvidia Tegra2 based tablet, called Adam, from Notion Ink that features a Pixel Qi transflective display. It's basically an e-reader screen with multiple modes:

- Full color LCD transmissive mode;
- A low-power, sunlight-readable, reflective e-paper mode;

This will bring you 16h of reading pleasure!

For more specs, check Notion Ink's Adam page.

QNap Firmware with TimeMachine & S3 Cloud

The latest QNap TS-439 firmware introduces native support for Apple's TimeMachine and Amazon's S3 Cloud backup.

Just install the firmware, enable the 'TimeMachine' service, launch TimeMachine and select your QNap NAS (it's displayed in the list) and viola... unlimited TM storage for your Mac! ;-)

More firmware details.

I love my QNap!

Nvidia Tegra prototypes

Check out Nvidia's new hardware for tablets and MIDs. I'm still not up to date with the iPad specs, but this baby features a 1Ghz dual-core CPU, hardware 3D graphics & HD video playback.

I don't believe it is shown in the video, but the Tegra powered 15,6" Vega tablet from ICD is looking very sleek. Anyone fancy a 15" calendar/browser/videoplayer/e-mail display in their kitchen?

HTC Magic Sense's New Features

Let's have a quick look at what is new in HTC's Sense UI update for the Magic:

Multitouch is here!
While browsing the web or watching your photo's you can now pinch zoom to grow or shrink the content. If you don't want to pinch, you can still double tap to switch between 4 different zoom factors. Awesome feature which was until now only possible on custom roms.

New Browser
A new browser with MT enabled and visual bookmarks which show a thumbnail preview of the page.

Google Maps
The latest Google Maps v3.2.1 client, but with layers and navigation disabled (only available as of Android 1.6).

Tethering
USB tethering is selectable from the Communications Settings menu. You can enable it by pluging in the USB cable. Another feature previously only available for rooted roms.

Clock
The clock application allows you to add different places & timezones, great for people who travel alot and want to keep track of the time at home. They also added a stopwatch and a countdown timer to the default clock application.

HTC Widgets
Doesn't really need mentioning, but cool nonetheless! Have a look at all the HTC Hero widgets. Oh, and as a bonus, the new HTC Hero & Eris widgets on the Android Market seem to work too!


I'm sure I missed some other additions, but these ones really popped out at me.

On a side note: the new HTC Sense UI for Android 2.1 will be available by the end of March 2010.

So let's keep building those awesome customized kernels & roms! Continue the inspiration ;-)

Dell Mini 5 Tablet Shown By CEO

A cool mini tablet running Android from Dell is shown in a quick video by the chief himself!

Check out the video on Phandroid!

Flashing The Proximus Magic

If you want to start flashing other roms on your Proximus Magic, then follow the next steps to enable custom rom flashing:

1) Install a custom recovery image:
Follow Amon_RA's recovery guide, or..

alternatively, and more easy IMO, you could use the FlashRec application (if exploit is not yet fixed on your magic). This app lets you flash Amon_RA's recovery image (or any recovery image) to your phone without having to install Android SDK. You just download Amon_RA's recovery image (for 32A) and put it on your SD card so the app can select the recovery image.
If you start the FlashRec app, first make a backup of your standard recovery image (press 'Backup' button). Then type in the location and filename of Amon_RA's recovery. For example, if you put it in the root of your SD card, you should type /sdcard/recovery-RA-sapphire-1.5.2H.img, if the path and filename are correct the 'Flash Recovery' button should become enabled.

Tip: rename the recovery file to something simple, like recov.img, more keyboard friendly ;-)

You can boot into recovery mode by powering down your phone and restart it by holding both 'Home' & 'Power' buttons until the phone vibrates once. Once in recovery mode you can make a nandroid backup of your current rom. I strongly advise you make a backup before flashing any other rom, this way you can always restore the original rom if things go wrong.

2) Install an engineer SPL:
This step is normally not required to flash roms that are made for your current radio version (v3.22). However, if you want to flash newer radio images (required for the latest roms and most likely also for the latest Android versions) this step is required.

- Download the 1.33.2009 ENG SPL update image, and put in on your phone's SDCard.

- Power down the phone and boot into recovery mode by holding both 'Home' & 'Power' buttons until the phone vibrates once.

- From the recovery menu select 'Apply sdcard zip', select the SPL update file.

- After update, press 'Green' key & reboot your phone (notice that the screen will say "Formatting cache:...", don't wait, if the recovery menu appears select 'reboot'.


If you completed both steps, you can flash any rom, radio or SPL through fastboot or by using the custom recovery rom.

Happy flashing!

Official HTC Sense UI for Proximus Magic (update)

Months have gone by and still no OS updates from Proximus. I contacted HTC, but they told me that Proximus needs to approve the updates. So nothing will happen unless Proximus wakes up.


For those of you who want to experience the official HTC Sense UI on your Proximus HTC Magic and don't want to wait for Proximus:

The latest stock HTC rom has been provided by CursorDroid.

This stock rom is the Official HTC Magic Sense UI 3.05.401.3 for Europe, slightly altered to have root access. This rom uses the latest HTC kernel, making it a very stable rom.

You also need to update to the latest Radio and SPL images. Follow the instructions carefully!

Once installed, select English language and continue the setup. If you want to switch to Dutch language you need to download the MoreLocale application from the Android Market.



I'll explain how to prepare your Proximus Magic for flashing in another post.

UPDATE: HTC just made an offical announcement for Europe, stating that SenseUI is now available for non-google branded Magics. You can find the official rom on the HTC Europe site. BEWARE: installing the update from the HTC site will leave your Magic with a perfected SPL, making it nearly impossible to flash other roms. I advise you to install the stock rom (which is identical but comes with an engineering SPL) as explained above.

UPDATE2: And as expected not for Proximus Magics since Proximus is still hibernating. You won't be able to download the rom with your HTC serial *sigh*

More Android 2.1 Screens From Nexus One

Some new screenshots are up on Phandroid.. and one screen showing some of the available animated wallpapers.

The revamped media gallery is also pretty cool, I like the stacked picture previews.

And I can't wait to see the "3D revolving music visualizers" in action!

3D Movies & Gaming

One of Sony's "pilars" for 2010 will be focused on bringing 3D visuals for home entertainment.

Yesterday, the Blu-ray Disc Association reported that the 3D Blu-ray specs have been finalized.

"The Blu-ray 3-D specification allows PS3 game consoles to play back Blu-ray 3-D content in 3-D. The specification also supports 2-D discs in upcoming 3-D players and allows 2-D playback of Blu-ray 3-D discs on the large installed base of Blu-ray Disc players.

The Blu-ray 3D specification calls for encoding 3D video using the Multiview Video Coding (MVC) codec, an extension to the ITU-T H.264 Advanced Video Coding (AVC) codec currently supported by all Blu-ray Disc players."

Only downside is that you'll probably have to buy a new TV. Or maybe not.

The Nexus One

HTC Passion.. Google Phone... who cares... next Android OS is looking pretty sweet!

New hardware features include proximity sensor & FM radio. I wonder what the proximity sensor is used for?

Hopefully heading to Europe too.

Early 2010.




(PS. Please let it be unlocked, I don't want any provider deciding what and when to upgrade! My Proximus Magic has not received a single official HTC update, most likely because Proximus does not care about hardware & software.)

Experimental Successes

Got around to play with some soft & hardware experiments, the ones I blogged about earlier:

1) Flashing my WRT54G LinkSys router:

I received my new power adapter some weeks ago and succeeded in flashing my router with DD-WRT firmware. First attempt with latest DD-WRT release didn't work, a second attempt with a lower version did the trick.
It froze on me after flashing. At first I thought it bricked (leds kept blinking), but resetting it somehow fixed it.
Updating to the latest version was painless.

2) QNAP NAS Squeezecenter:

4 words: fast simple audio streaming. Tested it with PC player and Mac player, fooled around with some Android remote controls (Squeezer and Sqeezecontrol) that worked as advertised.
I also was pleasantly surprised that you could select online radio stations by location; Studio Brussels and some other Belgian radio stations were all listed.

Google Maps Navigation (beta)

Free interwebs enabled turn-by-turn navigation software from Google for Android 2.0

Check it out!

Official Google release statement

Navigation in action:

QNAP & opensource MP3 streaming

Allow me to introduce my next hobby project:

For the moment this seems to be the easiest solution, since we already have a QNAP TS-439 NAS hooked up in our network.

What our QNAP currently does:

• Hosts 2TB of storage
• Hosts all our media (pictures, movies, music, documents)
• Shares a USB printer over the network
• UPnP connection to PS3 (for our movie viewing pleasure)
• iTunes Server

We also rigged our new house with speaker wires and cat5e cables for a future multisource/multiroom solution (NuVo Essentia). A Squeezebox can be hooked up as a source if needed. It comes with a wireless remote, LCD included, to select songs and playlists.

Another good thing is that the Logitech Squeezecenter (formerly known as SlimServer) is opensource. There are opensource clients available for nearly all platforms, check out SoftSqueeze for example, their site lists other clients as well.

I also found some Java code that demonstrates how to connect to the music server. Maybe my next Android project? ;-)

Anyone want to share other solutions?

Qbus Remote v0.3 - Download

[Update] A new version for Qbus3 is available on the Android Market (link)

This is the first public release candidate of Qbus Remote. To install it, see links below.

New features include error handling (you now should have a clue of why things go wrong) and a better layout (button size is fixed, more spacing and the labels are bigger). Languages include English and Dutch.

Requirements:

- Qbus Ethernet (ETH01) controller

- WiFi connection (or 2G/3G connection and internet access to Qbus enabled)

- A Google Android device (HTC Hero/Magic/Tattoo, Samsung Galaxy, Archos 5 Tablet, and others)

Preview Android 2.0 (Eclair)

Some new Android 2.0 screens can be found on the BoyGeniusReport site.

New Android 2.0 features:

• Native Facebook support
• Native MS Exchange support
• New "Car Home" screen (new UI for easy usage while driving)
• Faster browser
• Layers in Google Maps
• YouTube snap & upload widget
• Combined Inbox
• Contacts have context features (send message, e-mail, call, facebook profile, etc.) 

HTC Magic & Android

So I've been using my new HTC Magic phone for 12 days now, and I'm liking it more every day. The platform is quite young compared to other mobile platforms. Android Donut (v1.6) was released earlier this month, and now the people at Google are gearing up for Eclair.

The possibilities with Android keep surprising me.

Last weekend I turned my mobile phone into a metal detector!

And today I discovered I can actually debug my application on my HTC Magic device through its USB cable. Just plug it in, install the ADB USB-driver (from the Android SDK), launch Eclipse and start the application on the device. From Eclipse you can connect to the application that's running on your device, but make sure that it was built with the debug option enabled, otherwise it won't show up in Eclipse.

Qbus Remote v0.2

Alright.. this little Android project is coming along better then expected.

The latest version is able to refresh the controls from the Qbus Ethernet Control Table (or whatever it's called). It parses the response (and I must add that the stuff that is returned is very awkward) and builds the control list.

I also added a Settings screen where you should enter the ETH01 controller's address and port.