Date   : Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:36:39 +0200
From   : rick@... (Rick Murray)
Subject: RR09 Photos (Day 2)

Alex Taylor wrote:

> I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or you actually don't know what
> Android (capital A) is:

Actually, it was a genuine question.


> http://www.android.com/

Nice site - lots of videos and practically no easy-to-read information 
within quick reach. I ended up Wikiing it.

Right. An odd mix of open and closed source for a non-standard port of 
Linux to a phone with a peculiar featureset (in other words, you need to 
add hacks to get useful stuff (touchscreen, SD integration, yada yada)). 
Fails on non-standard Java and non-standard GUI so being an Android 
(there's the capital A) developer will be a bit more involved than 
porting existing Javacode or recompiling an X-win application.

Featureset appears to be "reasonable", if not perfect. Notice there's no 
Japanese mobile companies in the list of carriers involved. I wait 
patiently for the day the mobile phones we have in the West can do the 
stuff the Japanese ones can do.

Take a peek here if you want to see what we oughta be aiming towards:
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_mobile_phone_culture

Unfortunately I can't just mail order one. They don't tend to use SIM 
cards, instead being hardwired to a specific provider. Oh, and they 
don't have GSM either. Some (few) phones can do it for global roaming. 
Many can't.


> I'd rather see RISC OS on an ARM netbook, for fairly obvious reasons
> :-D (That brought things almost back on-topic!)

I think the problem RISC OS will suffer is a lack of suitable 
applications - web browser, movie player, Skype... all the cack an 
average person thinks they need.

Of course, in an embedded world, there may be room for a version of RISC 
OS as a fairly stable system with decent application support and the 
ability to GUI to set up the system. If there is such a thing as a 32 
bit FlashROM (the last time I checked, they were 8/16 bit paths), I bet 
you could dump a load of "rubbish" and get a reasonable installation of 
RISC OS into maybe 1Mb, leaving another 1 or 3 (2Mb/4Mb part) for the 
embedded application, which could be written in C or even, God help us, 
BASIC! :-)


You might think a mini RISC OS computer for an embedded thing is way 
overkill. Well, *I* think way overkill is at work we have an automatic 
opening "curtain" door between production area and packaging area. The 
controls are in an ABS box. Said controls is a densely-packed board 
(many ICs) with another board loaded in SMC stuff piggybacking. There is 
a bunch of 7-seg LEDs for status readout.
This for a door that has an IR sensor each side, a button for 
auto/manual, buttons for up/down, and a time-out before auto-closing. 
While it must have a way to detect the 'up' and 'down' states, it seems 
the IR sensor is the only way it can detect transport. If something is 
left in the way, the curtain will slam into it and crumple up (and 
usually snag).
Why am I saying all this? Well, *I* might have been inclined to do it 
using a heap of CMOS logic. Or nowadays a PIC. If you want to go to the 
level of complexity this thing appears to have, you might as well run an 
itty-bitty ARM board with RISC OS installed. And a twenty-line BASIC 
program. :-)



Best wishes,

Rick.

-- 
Rick Murray, eeePC901 & ADSL WiFI'd into it, all ETLAs!
BBC B: DNFS, 2 x 5.25" floppies, EPROM prog, Acorn TTX
E01S FileStore, A3000/A5000/RiscPC/various PCs/blahblah...