Working Tomtom Nav On Angstrom, - working adequately, seeking permission from tomtom Options

[speculatrix]

EDIT 20070502 - working on Angstrom in chroot without patching kernel, package coming sometime.

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http://www.tomtom.com/page.php?Page=gpl

my wife bought me a TomTom GO 300, and I discovered that it runs linux when I, naturally, googled to see what hacks had been done. I was quite surprised to find it ran linux.

interestingly, TT originally used 2.4.18 but now 2.6.10.

they provide useful downloads and all the patches for the kernel, so those with a particular predilection for low-level hackery might find that page interesting or useful.... especially if it'd be possible to use TT's bluetooth hands-free system.

all we need now is to hack a GPS receiver into our Zauruses along with wifi and bluetooth, and we've got it made!

oh yeah, there's an OpenTom project too:
http://www.opentom.org/index.php/Main_Page

[ltrm]

This really is exciting! I agree with Tovarish, a good GPS application would be a killer app (for me anyway )

Have you thought about adding a link to your page for sponcership? I think that this is a really worth while project and would support it. Its probably fairly unlikely but you could even point out the size of the Japanese Z market to TomTom and see if they'd also sponcer you....

[speculatrix]

This really is exciting!  I agree with Tovarish, a good GPS application would be a killer app (for me anyway    )

Have you thought about adding a link to your page for sponcership?  I think that this is a really worth while project and would support it.  Its probably fairly unlikely but you could even point out the size of the Japanese Z market to TomTom and see if they'd also sponcer you.... 

The snag here is that I am treading a thin line with TT's s/w rights... because I own a GO 300 I figure that I am simply seeking to allow me to run the software on an alternative device.

As I understand it, the maps and stuff are all locked to the device hardware (it tries to read a specific section of flash to get the device ID), possibly even encrypted using a key unique to the device. Now, I am created "look-alike" devices/files which will make the ttn think it's running on a GO 300, *but* it will be running on a copy of *my* device. If I then released a file system dump, it'd mean everyone would be using my license key which would be a Bad Thing.

If I get it running, I can tell people how to do it, and if they have a GO, they can use their own licenses! And if they want to donate a beer, that's fine.

If I can turn round to TT and say "look, it's really easy, why not release it for the Zaurus, it will run with very little modification", then maybe they will - if enough Z users ask! Maybe we should ask them anyway - or maybe there's no way they could lock it down? Does each Z have a unique ID somehow? From vague memory, the Picsel browser is somehow locked to the memory card they supply it on?

This post has been edited by speculatrix: Mar 9 2006, 10:40 AM

[ltrm]

The snag here is that I am treading a thin line with TT's s/w rights... because I own a GO 300 I figure that I am simply seeking to allow me to run the software on an alternative device.

As I understand it, the maps and stuff are all locked to the device hardware (it tries to read a specific section of flash to get the device ID), possibly even encrypted using a key unique to the device. Now, I am created "look-alike" devices/files which will make the ttn think it's running on a GO 300, *but* it will be running on a copy of *my* device. If I then released a file system dump, it'd mean everyone would be using my license key which would be a Bad Thing.

I thought that something like this might be the case. The best scenario for me would be if the Z did have something (processor id?) that could be used as a key so that I could just buy the closed source map data from TT and use it with the open source software. I fully understand TT wanting to keep control of that.

Since they do sell software only packages for other platforms I guess there is an outside chance they might go for just selling the maps, unsupported, on SD if they could still DRM it somehow.

As for time scales, I'm not too fussy about that. Just knowing it was possible would be enough for me to start pestering TT

Failing getting a legal working copy on my 860, I think that I'm going to have to get a symbian phone and run GPS software on there. Seems like a shame to miss out on the Zaurus screen though....