Jacek Wojciechowski's Forum Nokia Blog

Jacek Wojciechowski's Forum Nokia Blog http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/jacek-wojciechowskis-forum-nokia-blog Thoughts on new mobile technologies and development areas. P.S. Use Nokia barcode reader to read the code ;-) jack44 2009-11-24T02:46:07Z Feel the power of USB OTG on Nokia Internet Tablets (and other mobile platforms) http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/jacek-wojciechowskis-forum-nokia-blog/2009/09/16/feel-the-power-of-usb-otg-on-nokia-internet-tablets-and-other-mobile-platforms In my <a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/jacek-wojciechowskis-forum-nokia-blog/2009/08/24/thoughts-on-local-connectivity-nokia-internet-tablets-and-s60">last post</a> I wrote about local connectivity - this time I'd like to continue the topic and look into USB OTG possibilities that IMHO are not well advertised to the users and developers. Generally, almost all smartphone manufacturers are on the same level taking into account hardware (e.g. the same ARM processors, memory chips and other I/O components) - the biggest difference lies in the software/OS/integrated services and look&feel of the device. Of course, the manufacturers have many opportunities to improve the hardware/software (do you remember my post "<a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/jacek-wojciechowskis-forum-nokia-blog/2007/06/13/japanese-vs-european-smartphone-features">Japanese vs European smartphone features</a>" or "<a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/jacek-wojciechowskis-forum-nokia-blog/2007/08/01/how-future-displays-for-mobiles-may-look-like">How future displays for mobiles may look like?</a>"?). IMHO, the next big thing after touch (WOW factor guaranteed!) may be USB host feature (also called USB OTG or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_OTG">USB On-The-Go</a>). No one should be surprised that we can connect different USB accessories to our PCs, but some may be amazed that the same idea works on several mobile devices. Let's start with Maemo platform. With the help of on-board USB OTG chip, F-F USB adaptor and "USB Control" application (like <a href="https://garage.maemo.org/projects/usb-otg-plugin/">Kate's usb-otg-plugin</a>) you can connect for example: * normal PC keyboard <div style="text-align: center"> <img src="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com//data/blogs/resources/15055/n810_usbotg_ex1.jpg" alt="N810, USB OTG, example 1" /> </div> * <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_mass_storage_device_class">USB mass storage</a> device (e.g. your smartphone, pendrive, digital camera, various digital audio players & portable media players) <div style="text-align: center"> <img src="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com//data/blogs/resources/15055/n810_usbotg_ex2.jpg" alt="N810, USB OTG, example 2" /> </div> * USB toys (like little fan, LED light, etc.) <div style="text-align: center"> <img src="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com//data/blogs/resources/15055/n810_usbotg_ex3.jpg" alt="N810, USB OTG, example 3" /> </div> The limitation lies in A) power consumption (not enough current to supply any type of USB accessory, in this case USB HDDs, USB CD burners; according to FN, N810 can power an external accessory with a maximum of 100 mA; a standard PC USB host may output up to 500mA per USB port), B) software/drivers (like tv tuner, printer, scanner, <a href="https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1897">mouse</a> support; some USB Hubs are supported after recompilation of the kernel which is not a perfect solution for the end-user). I have no doubt that this technology will be improved in the future (don't forget that USB host was rather hidden feature of internet tablets at the beginning). I eager to know whether there're some improvements in this matter in Maemo 5 devices like N900, so don't hesitate to post comments to this blog as soon as you get one! And other mobile platforms? It's a pity that we still can't play that way with USB host mode on S60 smartphones (AFAIK, USB OTG extensions <a href="http://developer.symbian.com/main/downloads/papers/new_v9.3.pdf">were intoduced in Symbian 9.3</a>; OS provides the support within its framework, but the provision of USB Host stack and drivers is left to licensees and partners). I hope that <a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/jacek-wojciechowskis-forum-nokia-blog/2007/08/20/microusb-in-mobiles-for-charging-data-and-other-tasks">the idea I presented more than two years ago</a> will be introduced in S60 and it will move beyond <a href="http://www.forum.nokia.com/Resources_and_Information/Explore/Mobile_Technologies/Connectivity_&_Interfaces/Wired_Interfaces/Universal_Serial_Bus_-_USB.xhtml">current possibilities</a> (USB peripheral classes supported on S60: Wireless Mobile Communications Device class for serial communication with PC - used by Nokia PC Suite, Mass Storage class, Still Image Capture Device class, PictBridge/Picture Transfer Protocol, Media Transfer Protocol). USB OTG is available on selected Series 40 devices (USB Host classes supported: Digital Audio Class, HID class + USB peripheral classes). Linux-based Android should get USB OTG too. I've got a feeling that USB host (implemented for a rich functionality) may become a distinguishing feature of internet tablets for some time, but if I am not wrong, we may see similar functionality on S60 too. Till then, power users can use <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2009/05/21/microsd-to-usb-mobidapter-is-a-smartphones-best-friend/">such adapters</a> to have access to mass storage devices through normal microSD slot.  This may sound crazy, but imagine that you get a monitor, mouse and keyboard, USB Hub, Nokia Internet Tablet, then hook up everything only via USB and you suddenly have a desktop-lite PC. And that is only the beginning...   Connectivity S60 Series 40 maemo 2009-09-16T20:24:21Z jack44 Java ME Platform SDK 3.0 (final) is out http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/jacek-wojciechowskis-forum-nokia-blog/2009/04/23/java-me-platform-sdk-3.0-final-is-out In case you're still interested in developing Java ME applications <img src="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/js/tinymce/plugins/emotions/images/smiley-wink.gif" border="0" alt="Wink" title="Wink" /> there's a final version of Java ME Platform SDK 3.0. I wrote about it's features (based on EA version) ealier on <a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/jacek-wojciechowskis-forum-nokia-blog/2008/10/16/a-first-look-at-java-me-platform-sdk-3.0">my blog</a>. One may note that it's still only available for Microsoft Windows XP or Vista (what about linux?). <a href="http://java.sun.com/javame/downloads/sdk30.jsp">Download link for final version (116.7 MB)</a>   Java S60 Series 40 2009-04-23T13:35:44Z jack44 A first look at Java ME Platform SDK 3.0 http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/jacek-wojciechowskis-forum-nokia-blog/2008/10/16/a-first-look-at-java-me-platform-sdk-3.0 Java ME Platform SDK toolbox is the successor to the well known <a href="http://java.sun.com/products/sjwtoolkit/download.html">Java Wireless Toolkit 2.5.2</a> and <a href="http://java.sun.com/products/cdctoolkit/download.html">Java Toolkit 1.0 for CDC</a>. It integrates CLDC, CDC and Blu-ray Disc Java (BD-J) technology into one SDK. It provides device emulation, a standalone development environment and a set of utilities for rapid development of Java ME applications. The key features include: <ul> <li>Integration with 3rd party emulators and Windows Mobile devices </li> <li>On-device deployment and on-device debugging </li> <li>CLDC/MIDP, CDC/FP/PBP/AGUI and BD-J integrated into one SDK </li> <li>New CLDC HotSpot Virtual Machine </li> <li>Optimized MSA 1.1 stack with extensions </li> <li>Profiling support </li> <li>BD-J support </li> <li>New development environment based on Netbeans Platform </li> <li>Lightweight UI Toolkit (LWUIT) integration </li> <li>Device search database integrated in SDK </li> </ul> <a id="res_1807" href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com//data/blogs/resources/15055/javame_sdk3ea.jpg"> <div style="text-align: center"> <img src="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com//data/blogs/resources/15055/previews-med/javame_sdk3ea.jpg" border="0" alt="Java ME Platform SDK 3.0" /> </div> </a>   From developer's point of view, the deprecated KVM has been replaced with the CLDC HotSpot VM which provides a significant performance advantage over KVM. Java ME Platform SDK contains an optimized CLDC/MIDP stack that is build upon CLDC 1.1 and MIDP 2.1. It also contains the following new JSRs: Mobile Sensor API (JSR 256), XML API for Java ME (JSR 280), Java Binding for the OpenGL ES API (JSR 239). What I really like is the support for XML API for Java ME and Mobile Sensor API. The first API enhances the XML support distributed over several JSRs today (it provides SAX2 event handler-based parsing, efficient DOM-style document processing) and it's goal is to avoid further fragmentation by offering one common set of XML APIs. The second one and my favourite allows Java ME application developers to fetch data from sensors (sensors can vary from physical sensors such as magnetometers and accelerometers to virtual sensors that combine and manipulate the data they have received from various kinds of physical sensors. An example of a virtual sensor might be a level sensor indicating the remaining charge in a battery or a field intensity sensor that measures the reception level of the mobile network signal in a mobile phone. JSR 256 supports many different types of sensor connection - wired, wireless, embedded and more). Wouldn't it be nice to see this API working on <a href="http://www.forum.nokia.com/main/platforms/s60/#5th">S60 5th edition</a> (there's a sensor framework for C++ and it would be sensible to have JSR 256 too)? Maybe it will happen in S60 5th FP1 <img src="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/js/tinymce/plugins/emotions/images/smiley-wink.gif" border="0" alt="Wink" title="Wink" />. Java ME Platform SDK comes with a built-in "<a href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/daniel-rochas-forum-nokia-blog/2008/05/14/lwtui_toolkit">sexy</a>" <a href="https://lwuit.dev.java.net/">LWUIT library</a>. What's really cool is the built-in <a href="http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/">WURFL database</a> search tool that allows you to search a large number of mobile device properties (currently more than 8000 device specifications). As the tool is based on <a href="http://www.netbeans.org/">Netbeans</a> platform it looks familiar to Netbeans IDE users (e.g., look&feel, profiler based on Netbeans profiler, shared project system, modularized environment with the ability to update on the fly). The Java ME SDK is currently available as <a href="http://java.sun.com/javame/downloads/sdk30ea.jsp">an Early Access for Windows XP and Vista</a>. The new Java ME SDK looks attractive, doesn't it? Looking forward to your comments. Java S60 Series 40 2008-10-16T19:24:48Z jack44 Open source scripting for mobile phones (part 2) http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/jacek-wojciechowskis-forum-nokia-blog/2007/09/08/open-source-scripting-for-mobile-phones-part-2 <img class="" height="400" alt="" width="652" vspace="10" src="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/file.html?id=567&file=jw_qbasic_comparison.jpg" /> <a target="undefined" href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/view_entry.html?id=691">Last time</a> I wrote about TCL based language - HECL. Now, let's go back in time. I believe you still remember <a target="undefined" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOS">DOS</a> and its scripting language (also available in "visual" version in current Windows platforms). This time I will focus on <a target="undefined" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QBasic">QBasic</a> language, which is also available for mobiles (Java ME). It's called <a target="undefined" href="http://cellbasic.sourceforge.net/">CellularBASIC</a> and it's an open source project. The scripting language is a dialect of QBASIC 1.1, supporting more than 90 keywords, along with some special features (64-floating point arithmetic, trigonometric, screen I/O, file I/O, SMS sending, network programming, graphics...). The project has good documentation (<a target="undefined" href="http://cellbasic.sourceforge.net/index.php/item/254">command reference</a>, <a target="undefined" href="http://cellbasic.sourceforge.net/index.php/item/255">keywords with examples</a>). If you would like to play a little with old QBasic 1.1, you can download it from <a target="undefined" href="http://download.microsoft.com/download/win95upg/tool_s/1.0/w95/en-us/olddos.exe">Microsoft pages</a> or play with <a target="undefined" href="http://cellbasic.sourceforge.net/index.php/item/257">CellularBasic</a> directly on the device (editing of code is supported) or PC. For these of you who are not familiar or don't remember the language, the simplest Hello World code is as following: <pre>PRINT "Hello World by Jacek Wojciechowski!"</pre> I wish I had a FDD to read my very old 5.25" floppy disk with my old QBasic apps, but this task is not very easy nowadays ;-) Java S60 Series 40 2007-09-08T12:14:38Z jack44 Open source scripting for mobile phones (part 1) http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/jacek-wojciechowskis-forum-nokia-blog/2007/09/06/open-source-scripting-for-mobile-phones-part-1 If you had to create a prototype of mobile application quickly, many of you would probably choose <a target="undefined" href="http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/Category:Python">Python</a> - someone may justify this choice by pointing out that you can write and run the code (script) immediately on the device and that other similar solutions aren't so integrated with smartphone's advanced functions. For simpler tasks you can choose <a target="undefined" href="http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/Category:Perl">Perl</a>, <a target="undefined" href="http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/Category:Ruby">Ruby</a>, <a target="undefined" href="http://wiki.forum.nokia.com/index.php/Category:OPL">Opl</a> (or some others). Such solutions have one substantial drawback - they need operating system to work on, in this case - Symbian. Recently, I've found interesting Java based option (it works with J2ME, MIDP + CLDC based devices). It's called <a target="undefined" href="http://www.hecl.org">HECL</a> and it's an <a target="undefined" href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/hecl/">open source</a> project. Hecl derives simple, flexible, command based approach from Tcl and it's easy to learn even for people who aren't programmers. Of course, Hecl isn't a 'replacement for Java', but I find it as a complementary approach to Java. It's unlikely that an entire software would be written only in Hecl, so it's interesting how you can integrate Hecl and Java. Generally, there are two ways of doing this: <ul> <li>calling Hecl from Java - to utilize Hecl code from Java, you need to initialize the interpreter and then use it to evaluate the code</li> <li>creating Java Extensions for Hecl - write your program in Hecl and add Java extensions to perform specific tasks. This model is very popular with mature languages like Tcl, Ruby and Python, where the scripting language contains all the functionality necessary to write a fully functioning system, and extensions (usually written in C) are needed only to deal with specific tasks.</li> </ul> You can use Hecl for example to script some configuration, automatically get the updates of the application just by downloading a text file (self-updatable script); one interesting thing is that you may have more than one of the interpreters at a time (in java code). Thus, you don't have to wait for <a target="undefined" href="http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/view_entry.html?id=516">JavaFX</a> Script to appear, you may try similar idea today. Java S60 Series 40 2007-09-06T16:48:03Z jack44