Internet Shoebox V1.0

Note: This post was intended to go out back in January right after MadHackerHaus and never got finished/published

The Internet Shoebox is a collection of equipment to provide reliable WiFi Internet in a place that may not have WiFi, or assist coverage of existing venue. The Internet Shoebox is sorta like a mifi type device, but hopefully better, with less limitations. The Verizon or Sprint Mifi type devices normally support around 5 devices. When at a tech event five is a very limiting number, we almost had 5 devices connected in the mini van for the trip down to MadHackerHaus at Sector67.  The number of devices supported will be based more off upstream connection rather than a fixed limit.  The Mifi devices also have limited WiFi range and crappy battery life.  Version 1.0 of the Internet Shoebox can work great, but I was somewhat disappointed with the overall performance.

The Internet Shoebox has three main components, a Linksys WRT54G, a broken Cradlepoint MBR1000 Router and a Linksys WAP54G. The Linksys WRT-54G is running DD-WRT and used to share wifi to be used by devices and provide QOS.  The Cradlepoint is providing the wan connections.  The WAP54G can be used to connect to an upstream wifi connection.

The Cradlepoint router can load balance over up to 4 connections, for most of my use, I was using a USB Sprint card and a USB US Cellular card. With the Cradlepoint, each connection is its own path to the Internet so the router does not bundle connections up into once fast connection.  This means that any connection is only as fast as the connection that the data is router over.  Now with more than one connection things will speed up but load balancing on the Cradlepoint seems to suck.  It seems to preference one of the connections over the other.  The router also doesn't do any quality of service, or speed tests on the connections.  At any point it might be picking the slower connection or one that hardly has service.  While mobile we had bad packet loss on the upstream USB connections at some points durning the drive.

I still need to do more testing to determine ways to improve the setup and see what I can to to improve, I would also like to make custom housing to hold all the devices and add a fan to aid in cooling all three devices that tend to get fairly warm while being used.  Also each device has its own power brick at the moment and all of them are 12volts so I plan to combine them all down to one power brick to make it easier to plug in.  I also want to setup a power cord for use in the car to make mobile use easier.

If you want to see a picture, you can visit Internet Shoebox project page on the DHMN wiki.

Update: The Internet Shoebox was used on the road trip to the Milwaukee Makerspace Open house in April, but didn't get as much testing, and only had one USB card that day because that was all I could borrow for the day.

Samsung Galaxy Tab Review

I am posting to my blog with a Samsung Galaxy Tab on US Cellular. I am lucky to be the first to evaluate the tablet for work.

I have to say that before getting the Tab I thought that 7" tablets were to small, and that 10" tablets are much better. I have to say that I like the Tab more than I thought I would.
The down side of the Tab might be the screen size, for general web browsing, I think a 10" is still a better size. I have to say in the first day, I didn't browse the web very much, so I really can't take points away for that.

I didn't use the Tab for much browsing yet, so what did I use it for?  I used the google reader app for reading rss news feeds. I found the screen size was perfect for the app. I use the Google reader app on my Samsung Mesmerize but I never found it to be a very enjoyable experience.

I also used the Tab to watch videos with my son. We watched some youtube videos and some TV shows that I converted off of my Tivo.  The screen size was reasonable for watching the videos. I converted the videos to mpeg4 using Tivo desktop and used dropbox to transfer the videos to the Tab. I like the fact that I haven't needed to connect the Tab to my computer yet.

One of the reasons we are looking at the Tab is as a picture viewer for our sales team to show photos to customers. The Tab would an acceptable photo viewer, but I again feel screen size may win this battle. I think more important than screen size might be the photo viewer app that we would end up building.
Hardware wise, the Tab is just a bigger version my phone, without the ability to make phone calls. It's reasonably speedy

I think I will have to fork the Tab over for another person to try on Monday so I am trying to use it a lot this weekend to see how I really like using it so far.

I hope to do a follow up post after I use it a little longer.

MadHackerHaus at Sector67

Yesterday 1/22/11 I went on a road trip with the Distributed Hacker Maker Space group from Appleton to the MadHackerHaus at the Sector67 Hackerspace in Madison.  The day started with DHMN picking me up in Fond du Lac.  The ride to Madison was the first real test of the internet shoebox, a collection of USB cellular cards and routers with the hope of providing reliable mobile internet.  The first half of the trip the upstream connection seemed to be unreliable, but as we got closer to Madison things improved.

 We got to Sector67 and had a fun filled day of learning and socializing with others of the MadHackerHaus.  I learned some more about android programming but I was most interested in Sector67 and how it was started.  I don't think anything was ground breaking information, but it made me confident that DHMN could do it and that I might be able to do something in Fond du Lac some day.

Stay tuned for a post on the internet shoebox, what I learned and what my plans are for making it better.

You can also check out Bob's post with some other details of the road trip.
http://mydigitechnician.blogspot.com/2011/01/mhh-sector67-road-trip-update-fond-du.html

Simple Invoice

My brother asked me to help him do some invoicing for him.  In the past I have used freshbooks and was very happy with how it worked, but in the end the free product wasn't enough.  I set out to find a simple free product to create invoices.  I tend to use a bunch of different computers so a LAMP based solution seemed like a good choice for me and desktop software like GnuCash seemed overly complicated for my needs.

I looked around a while and found a few different options, but Simple Invoices stuck out to me because it had a unique offering.  Simple Invoices is a LAMP based project, but somebody created a Windows version.  At first I thought this is a great way to test out Simple Invoices with out investing a lot of time into setup.  With the Windows version, you extract the zip file, and run exe, and you are off and running in minutes.  I was able to test and determine this would work fine for me.  This Windows version was enough to get me in the door and get me hooked on using it.

The exe starts prepackaged versions of apache and mysql and allows you to open your default browser or the included app (a very simple browser). I was going to setup my linux server to host the final install, but before I did the setup I wanted to make sure I setup ssl so I would feel a little better about the idea of doing billing over the internet. I had a brainstorm before I get a chance to setup ssl.  I use a wonderful service called dropbox to keep a folder synced between my computers, and the windows version of Simple Invoice runs out of a folder, why can't I put my Simple Invoice install in my dropbox?

I have been using Simple Invoice in my dropbox on three computers for a few weeks now, and so far no problems.  I will add this disclaimer, I have not had simple invoices running on two computers at the same time yet.  I would imagine two copies of mysql running at once against one database could lead to big problems so I have avoided that by being very careful to always shutdown when I am done.  Maybe some rainy day I will to more testing on my test install before messing with live data. Speaking of test install, I have two simple invoice folders in my dropbox, one that is my live data, another that is a dummy test folder. I keep the test one just in case I need to test how something works before I go live with something.

So check out http://www.simpleinvoices.org or check out dropbox with my referral link http://db.tt/QOohbuE

January 1st Vampire Make Session DHMN

Saturday night I went to a DHMN work session at @erinql house in Appleton. I didn't really have a project of my own to work on, but I had fun just the same.  DHMN is a new Distributed Hacker Maker Network based in the Fox Valley, and this was my first chance to attend an event, but I hope to attend more in the future.

This session featured a lot of talk about android programming and many other good discussions.

If you want more information on the work night, vis the page on the DHMN website.
http://www.dhmn.net/Work+Session+1+Jan+2011

Drupal

I've been playing with drupal and wanted to tester something. Watch out for the drupal kool-aid..

Android on the Sprint Touch Pro (in color)

As of last night, Connect-UTB has released an Android build that fixes the color issues on the Sprint Touch Pro. This build for the RAPH800 is still not ready for day to day use, but is a clear sign that progress is being made. Currently you can't make phone calls, or much else, but does give you the chance to see how Android runs on the phone. I have to say I'm impresses how smooth it runs. The wonderful people at XDA behind this are doing a wonderful job making this happen and deserve a shout out. Also a thank you for Connect-UTB for hosting the file.

Grab the new build here

Ubuntu, CPU Scaling, Battery life and You

My laptop was almost burning my legs tonight so I did a little looking for CPU scaling options in Ubuntu. I found a very useful page on how to adjust the power save method in Gnome on Ubuntu 8.04.

Ubuntu, CPU Scaling, Battery life and You

Last Nights FDLLUG Meeting in Review

Here is a list of things from last night to review, if I miss anything
feel free to let me know. Thanks to everybody who helped.

1. MPTC blocks IRC, work a rounds were needed to join the "fail safe" channel.
2. MPTC wireless issues, most of use had issues joining the network/getting an IP. Once on the network with an IP things were ok.
3. Streaming video over EVDO Rev A. isn't to bad. (Sprint)
   
4. Group audio is an issue. (headsets would help)
   
5. I want a better camera
6. DimDim might work best for whiteboard, and maybe presentations, audio and video kinda lacking yet. Only the presenter can stream a small video. Limit to 3 Audio mics and seemed laggy.
7. Stickam had decent video and audio for a presenter, might be one of the best options to stream video.
8. Adobe Breeze was kinda neat, was the best "shared" video experience We got 4 streams going at once everybody had the same size video window. Audio was also decent. Sharing docs was better in DimDim.
9. I should get a headset with a mic built in.
10. Learned a bunch about the touchscreen thingy that controls the room. It is east to use but we still don't know everything.
11. Having more than one internet connection was nice when we started loading on the video.
12. We could have used more time and been more prepared.

Other thoughts and ideas.

• I had an idea that might be good to try. We have two projectors that can be hooked to two different computers, for presentations coming from a remote source we could combo a shared presentation on google docs on one screen and a stickam session showing video of the presenter with audio on the other.
• More research about what we can do at MPTC with what the room is equipped with might help.
• Maybe look at Talkshoe for audio, didn't have time for this last night.
• Look for other video options. I'm sure there are other options that might have andvantages.
• It would be nice to figure out how to record the audio/video for later distribution via a podcast.

New Podcast and FDLLUG News

I added the new gdgt podcast to my listening today done by Peter Rojas and Ryan Block.  The podcast can be found at http://gdgt.com or in iTunes.  I have listened to a little over half of the first weekly podcast.  This podcast is going over things in the gadgets in the past year. It sounds like future podcasts might be more about the current weeks gadget news in the future.  Audio quality was good and the two make a good team, I think this podcast will stay in my subscription list.

I am also preparing for the next FDLLUG meeting, so far things are going ok, I think we will have enough things to test to keep us busy for a little while.  It looks like DimDim might be a good option to use overall, but we will see what that night brings.  If things go well, I might be able to wrap everything up into a podcast and release it also.

NSLU2 Internet Gateway

I had an idea to try to setup my NSLU2 as a Internet gateway to be able to share my HTC Mogul's Internet connection when needed. I've almost had it working over bluetooth pan except the NSLU2 doesn't seem to be getting an IP address. Once I get that issue figured out I hope to have a full guide. I hope to have it setup before the next FDLLUG meeting in hopes to attempt see how streaming video over Sprint EVDO Rev A. works.

Debian on the NSLU2 - Success

I finally succeeded in installing Debian on my NSLU2, now to play around and see what it can do. I am considering making it a webserver to server content to my Wii via the browser.

This is my first arm based linux box so it will be interesting to see what I can do with it. I also wonder how the 133Mhz is going to hold up. The NSLU2 can be modded to remove the factory underclocking, but there are some concerns about stability when running full speed. Time will tell what I can do with it now that it is a working linux box.

iContact for Windows Mobile

I came across iContact for Windows Mobile today. The iContact app brings iPhone like finger-friendly contact management to windows mobile. The out the authors website.

Debian on the NSLU2

I've now made a couple attempts to install Debian on my Linksys NSLU2. The NSLU2 has a very limited amount of memory so installing is a challenge. My big issue is seems to be running out of memory while formatting my drive. I've been lucky so far that it hasn't locked up because I am remotely accessing the machine via ssh from home. It looks like it isn't going to work again, I think I will have to prepare the drive in another computer and try again tomorrow.

Internet Laptop Update

I've made some progress on my fast booting internet laptop. Right now its booting in just under a minute. I hope to do some more tweaking and tuning yet, but 45 seconds is seeming harder to hit off of my Ubuntu install. I have already delayed starting of most non critical services until after firefox is loaded. Laptop is working decent otherwise except I also want to scale the CPU down a bit after its done booting to help with heat and battery life. Hopefully I will post a full guide after I'm happy with the results.

I still haven't made much progress on my simple web based wireless card manager. I have thought about it and I'd also like to maybe include a few other things like battery life info on this web page. I would really like to be able to get any computer information I need directly from firefox.

Project: Simple Internet Device

Goal: Create a fast booting laptop to get me to a browser asap and have simple wireless setup.

I have a laptop that boots up ubuntu base install with fluxbox right now. My plan is to have it boot up and start firefox. My current issue is I want to be able to setup wireless without having to fire up anything extra on the gui. My idea to fix that is to create a web based wifi manager to find and connect to access points. I lack php skills so this may be an issue, but I don't think it will be that hard to do.

Hopefully I can round up some help on this project. Once I can get a handle on the wireless then its time to start tuning the boot time and add some firefox extentions to fill in any other gaps.

I think this would be great to be able to apply this same idea to a web tablet, but until tech crunch comes out with their web tablet, I'm hoping this will be the next best thing.

Ubuntu 8.04 mogul usb tethering

I got my Windows Mobile Sprint Mogul to work via USB tethering and Internet Connection Sharing on my Ubuntu 8.04 install.

Here are my simple steps.

apt-get install subversion
svn co https://synce.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/synce/trunk/usb-rndis-lite
cd usb-rndis-lite/
make
sudo ./clean.sh
sudo make install

Next plug in the usb cable, and fire up Internet Sharing and click connect on the phone.

On the computer click on the network icon on the top panel and select "Wired Network (Unknown USB Wireless Interface)" from the list and shortly you should have a IP address and be all set.

As a side note to make tethering work make sure that you turn on "Enable advanced network functionality" under "USB to PC" icon on the connections tab in your windows mobile settings.

3 Phase Makes the Motor Go Round

I did a little reading today about the Tesla Motors sports car that is coming out next year. The Tesla car makes use of a 3 phase AC motor with regenerative braking. I also did some reading on frequency drives today. The frequency drive is how you can control the speed and torque of an AC motor, and reduce power draw during startup.

I don't know how easy it would be to do, but the question I am asking at the moment is can I make a computer control the frequency drive? If not full control it would be fun at least to be able to have three profiles that we can use. I'd like to be able to adjust from max battery/econo mode to performance/max acceleration mode with just a click or knob adjustment.

Well off to more research.

Dominic's First Christmas

Today was Dominic's first Christmas. While he is kinda young to understand what is going on, I think he had a wonderful Christmas. Dominic got a lot of stuff, but I thought I would take a moment to share one gift we got for him that I really liked. We got him the Sakar Crayola Keyboard. This is a keyboard designed for younger kids with easy to use large buttons. Dominic is only 9 months, so he has a long way to go, but its never to early to start. More details on the keyboard here.

Dominic likes playing on the computer while we are trying to use it, so I want to set him up with a computer and software designed for infants and toddlers. I hope to start him out right from the start with a linux computer.

Fond du Lac Technology Conference

I had an idea a few weeks ago to have a Fond du Lac Technology Conference. My idea is to help help boost technology and linux/open source on a local scale. Details are scarce at the moment, but I am looking for anybody who might be willing to help. My goal is to make something happen by 2009/2010. One of my goals in this idea is to promote the Fond du Lac Linux Users Group (FDLLUG) and promote people and businesses that make a living of open source. If your interested or have suggestions, please email me at t i m f d l l u g . o r g