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Thank you for purchasing this Developer release of Neo FreeRunner. The Neo FreeRunner phone is the second hardware platform to take advantage of Openmoko. This guide will help you get to know your Neo FreeRunner and how to start using your Neo FreeRunner. Some Frequently Asked Questions for new owners are featured in the Getting Started FAQ. |
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[A short video] is also available. It was shot using the previous version of the Neo, but the installation procedures remains the same.
When using the Neo FreeRunner for the first time, you should charge the battery completely. The battery can be charged using the provided charger (at 1000mA) or from a powered USB port capable of providing 500mA worth of current. Most computers will be able to charge the FreeRunner without any problems.
Charging an empty battery at 100mA takes 12~15 hours, at 500mA takes 2,5~3,5 hours, and at 1000mA takes 1.5~2.5 hours. (90%~100%) [to be confirmed]
Make sure that the battery never discharges completely. This is an issue because the internal charging circuitry can not be turned on until the FreeRunner has booted, and booting through USB power alone does not work. Should the battery become completely discharged, your options are: - Use external stand-alone charger (compatible with the Nokia BL-5C battery) - Boot the FreeRunner with an alternative battery, or with a spare GTA01 or GTA02 battery, plug USB power, then switch to the empty battery. - Boot the FreeRunner with a 4.5VDC external power source (steady hand and great care involved), plug USB power, then insert the empty battery.
Power
Tapping the power button exits the current application. Holding the power button brings up a menu allowing you to:
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Aux
Holding the Aux button brings up a menu allowing you to:
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When the screen is locked, you should see a Matrix-style green graphic with the Openmoko symbol in the middle of the bottom of the screen along with lock and unlock symbols. If you drag the Openmoko symbol to the unlock symbol at the top then the screen will become unlocked.
Note: this section describes the interface used by the "2007.2" image, which is the current default image for Openmoko.
See Today/2007.2 for more information about the Today page and customization.
Stub: This is a stub. You can help OpenMokoWiki by expanding it. |
Current categories are PIM Suite, Applications, Games, Utilities, and All.
Stub: This is a stub. You can help OpenMokoWiki by expanding it. |
Any time an application is running, you can simply click the device's power button and the application will exit, returning you to the Today page.
Alternatively, you can switch tasks at any time by clicking the menu of tasks at the far upper-left of the screen, which will display a list of running tasks, allowing you to select one.
(Note: If the task menu is not shown, use the Aux button to bring up the Aux menu, and select "Toggle Fullscreen".)
To start a console from "Today" page, click the middle tab at the bottom of the screen to display the "Launch applications" page, then select Terminal in the "Applications" submenu. The multitaps keyboard slides up (and down) from the bottom of the screen automatically when you touch the screen.
From the terminal, type the following, but replace MM with the month (01-12); DD with the day (01-31); hhmm with the time (0000-2359); YYYY with the year (optional); and .ss with the seconds (optional).
date -s MMDDhhmmYYYY.ss
To make the change persist between reboots, sync the hardware clock with the updated system time.
hwclock --systohc
See Setting_Date_and_Time for more discussion, including synchronizing with an NTP server.
As of this writing, there is no way to adjust the volume from the screen.
For now, run the terminal application or log in via usb, and run the alsamixer application. The mixer is simpler than it looks. Just use the left and right arrow keys to select "headphone" or "PCM" and use the up and down arrow keys to adjust the volume. You can also adjust your microphone volume with the "mic2" adjustment. Press ESC when finished. Then exit the terminal application or log out of the USB login.
You may need to update configuration files in /usr/share/openmoko/scenarios/ to make the microphone setting permanent. Use
alsactl -f path-to-statefile store
to do this.
The default files are as follows (in /usr/share/openmoko/scenarios/):
These correspond to the various Sound Profiles accessible in the Debug Tool under Applications.
One way to increase the volume of the microphone is to do the following:
Mounted at /media/card by default.
If you have multiple partitions on the card, the first (/dev/mmcblk0p1) will be mounted at /media/card, the second at /media/mmcblk0p2, the third at /media/mmcblk0p3 etc.
This is discussed in the USB_Networking section.
There are three layers to the software on the FreeRunner:
In order to keep the FreeRunner up-to-date with the latest features and bug-fixes, it is advisable update the software at regular intervals. There are two main methods of doing this: using the package manager opkg (discussed in this section) or flashing the device.
uboot, the kernel and the root filesystem can all be flashed to update them. For uboot, this is the only possibility. The advantage of flashing the kernel, rather than using opkg seems to be speed. The disadvantage of flashing the root file system is that it wipes out all local modifications, including /home. If /home is moved to the SD disk, this is no longer a problem.
Assuming that your FreeRunner can access the internet (see above), the kernel and other packages can be updated with
# opkg update # opkg upgrade
The first updates the repository information, telling opkg what packages are available. The second upgrades all packages for which a newer version is available. At the moment, some signature files are missing (404 errors), which opkg complains about, but this is cosmetic. The repositories will still update with the missing signature files.
Note that running opkg upgrade on a factory-fresh phone will upgrade dropbear (the ssh software) and various xserver packages, and neither upgrades elegantly while in use, so either upgrade dropbear from the FreeRunner's terminal and then upgrade the rest via ssh, or upgrade the xserver packages via ssh and then upgrade the rest from the FreeRunner's terminal. For example, go to the FreeRunner terminal and type:
# opkg upgrade dropbear
which will upgrade it to the latest version. Then connect to the FreeRunner via ssh and type:
# opkg upgrade
If you do your first upgrade in two installments like this, it will go more smoothly.
It will be possible in the future to update uboot with opkg, but this has not yet been implemented
There are many applications you can install - check out the Repositories for a list of packages.
The calendar can be installed with
opkg install openmoko-dates2
For a Media Player:
opkg install openmoko-mediaplayer2 wget http://abraxa.dyndns.org:81/random/openmoko-mediaplayer-theme.tar.bz2 tar xjf openmoko-mediaplayer-theme.tar.bz2 -C /usr/share/themes/Moko/gtk-2.0 rm openmoko-mediaplayer-theme.tar.bz2
If you want a basic image viewer, have a look at the one from the gpe suite:
opkg install gpe-icons opkg install gpe-gallery
To obtain the standard web browser, use:
opkg install openmoko-browser2
An alternative browser, minimo, offers many more features. First download and unpack it on your GNU/Linux host:
wget http://www.ginguppin.de/files/minimo.tar.bz2 tar jvxf minimo.tar.bz2
Copy it over to the FreeRunner:
scp minimo_* root@openmoko:/tmp
Then on the FreeRunner:
opkg install /tmp/minimo_0.02\+cvs20070626-r0_armv4t.ipk
You'll probably also want to change the keyboard including the keyboard toggle applet
If you can export your contacts to VCard format, either multiple files or single file containing all of them, you may use the script on Import Vcf Contacts page to bring them to Neo.
Congratulations for setting up your Neo FreeRunner. There are many more ressources to help free your phone:
The stock Openmoko2007.2 image flashed onto the Neo FreeRunner is really just the bare bones. For example, you don't have the clock and the quick-launch icons showing. Here's how you can change that:
# dbus-launch gconftool-2 -t boolean -s /desktop/poky/interface/reduced false # /etc/init.d/xserver-nodm restart
If you rather have a regular clock instead of the digital one, do this instead:
# dbus-launch gconftool-2 -t boolean -s /desktop/poky/interface/reduced false # dbus-launch gconftool-2 -t boolean -s /desktop/poky/interface/digital_clock false # /etc/init.d/xserver-nodm restart
More information about today screen customization at Today/2007.2.
With either clock, you may wish to set the correct Date and Timezone.
Also, if you prefer having a full keyboard, using matchbox's qwerty keybord, see these instructions. Then you may also see these, which describe a way to add an applet allowing the showing/hiding of that keyboard.
See GTA02 WLAN about wifi. See Manually using GPRS.
Simple guide to get going with GPS:
# opkg install gpsd # echo "GPS_DEV=\"/dev/ttySAC1\"" > /etc/default/gpsd
and restart gpsd, the gps daemon, with
# /etc/init.d/gpsd restart
To test GPS, you can use agpsui:
# opkg install openmoko-agpsui
For a nice map, try tangoGPS:
# opkg install http://www.tangogps.org/downloads/tangogps_0.9.2-r1_armv4t.ipk
More information on GPS page.
According to some posts, GPRS might be broken currently (2007.2), though. There are also critical GPS Problems. To install the updates when they become available, you will probably want to learn about Booting the Neo FreeRunner and Flashing the Neo FreeRunner.
There are several [Mailing lists]
There is an active community mailing list. You may ask for help on the support mailing list : more details at https://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/support
An excellent tool for searching all the openmoko mailing lists is http://openmoko.markmail.org/
If you want to know more about the Neo FreeRunner then you can get more information in the following topics:
To search this wiki with Google, use the following search term:
<search term> site:http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/
The collection of blogs on OpenMoko.