Messages

16

Cosmo Communicator - Hardware / Compiling Cosmo Android kernel

« on: June 27, 2020, 12:35:49 am »

Is this repo even the source from the latest OTA? https://github.com/dguidipc/cosmo-android-kernel

That appears to be a Planet Computers employee, but the repository certainly doesn't appear to be active.  This one: https://github.com/gemian/cosmo-linux-kernel-4.4 looks active, but I've got no idea which the correct branch is.

Anyone know how to compile the Cosmo Android kernel? I'd like to have a go at fixing keyboard debounce (pressing a key generating multiple of the character).

Well, usually it is the conventional Linux kernel build steps.  Configuration options are often odd due to mysterious manufacturer modifications.  Good news is there is a /proc/config.gz so Planet Computers appear to be shipping the kernel configuration in a very ready format (manufacturers don't always provide configuration).  Installation is massively different from desktop kernel installation, there are tools for handling Android boot images and you'll need those.

17

Cosmo Communicator - General Discussion / The unofficial official my cosmo has arrived thread

« on: June 27, 2020, 12:11:25 am »

Well for others whom are urgently waiting, mine showed up last Friday so contribution #56xx took this long.  A rather hefty delay due to COVID-19 there.  Events like this do happen in life.    

18

Cosmo Communicator - General Discussion / Latest updates on Indiegogo

« on: January 30, 2020, 12:40:16 am »

They have included a chart of fulfilled, locked and placed based on the month people contributed. So now I at least know I'm one of 19 people (out of 255) still only "placed" from contributing in December 2018. Not that it helps much, my device is still not even produced yet...    

You've had a longer wait, but you did get yours for less.  I had thought my current device would still be worth staying with, but unexpectedly it became clear I urgently needed to move off of it.  I need one of the common configurations, but since I ordered mine late I expect to get mine near the end.  Right now I don't have a time-frame either.

19

Cosmo Communicator - General Discussion / Firmware update

« on: January 30, 2020, 12:30:43 am »

Maybe you're both right. While I know we're a bit OT here, after briefly checking that Google Maps and my compass app of choice from another phone seems to agree with the mentioned "GPS Status and Toolbox", I did some tests with the latter (which I soon bought). The compass moves and is not random, so the sensor IS on, but something is weird. If I calibrate the compass (and pitch and roll), holds the screen reasonably parallel to the ground and points the top of device roughly to where I know north is, the compass seems reasonably accurate and moves fairly swiftly, but the further I turn the top of the device away from North, the greater the error gets, and the slower the compass seems to move (yeah, weird). When I point roughly West, the heading slowly settles on around 330, not 270, so it's about 60 degrees off. When I point roughly East, I slowly get a heading near 30 instead of 90, so it's also about 60 degrees off. When I point South, the North compass really slowly finds its way to a heading near zero, with the North arrow pointing South... Would someone want to share more details on their results (the free version of  "GPS Status and Toolbox" will do fine), perhaps we should move this to another thread. Do notice that speakers and such can have fairly strong magnetic fields, so it's better to be a bit away from... well... everything, outdoors is probably best, but I found a spot in the hallway where an analogue compass and a city map agreed on North (yes, I know I'm capitalizing the cardinal directions wrong - to make them stand out a bit from the rest of my ramblings).

Thinking about this...  What orientation were you holding your Cosmo in when you tried this?  Was it in keyboard level, typing on flat surface position?  Was it in screen level, doing common Android things position?

What I wonder is where the Cosmo's sensors are on the device?  Some of them might be in the keyboard portion, some of them might be in the screen portion.  If the orientation sensor and magnetometer are in different portions and the sensor handling code doesn't correctly compensate for this things would go wrong.  Potential bug?

20

Cosmo Communicator - Hardware / Rooting the Cosmo Communicator

« on: January 30, 2020, 12:19:13 am »

Here's images for the V19 update:

Boot partition, unmodified: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PHL6IlE3lq...iew?usp=sharing
Boot partition, rooted with Magisk: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UqXZHeuPjr...iew?usp=sharing
Full images (~1.2GB): https://drive.google.com/open?id=1A9K04eyaX...sVVt3e6pVZGRA0Y

Mind advising us as to the origin of these?  Did you get your Cosmo updated to V19 and then download images from it?  I would much rather have "official" images from Planet Computers in some format which is signed so I can check signatures before installing them on a device.

on the phone:
1) install magic manager (you'll need to download the APK, and enable unknown sources) - https://magiskmanager.com/

I would tend to link to the source rather than this site which appears to be making money by advertising someone else's work (they may be doing some valuable service, but it wasn't immediately obvious).

21

Cosmo Communicator - Android / Once my Cosmo arrives, do I actually dare to use it?

« on: January 12, 2020, 11:24:12 pm »

I disagree; I'm certain that there is malevolent intent on Digitime's part. Why would they go so far to hide it, otherwise? The code is obfuscated, the server URLs used by the malware component use domains like 'flurrydata.com' and 'facebook-3rd.com' in an attempt to look like legitimate services, and moreover, today I discovered that Digitime actually pushed some new worker packages just 2-3 days after my email to Planet - a new empty feature-less one for the Cosmo, and a new build of the standard version for the Gretel A7.

I'll have to color myself a bit skeptical of being overtly malevolent.  More likely this is encouraged by intelligence agencies in China.  They're not all that likely to think they can successfully target interesting European or US people.  Likely their main target is surveillance of Chinese citizens.  If the code leaks to the wider world, they may not be all that worried and will happily gather information from whomever ends up with an appropriately contaminated device.

22

Cosmo Communicator - Hardware / Connectivity Kit

« on: January 12, 2020, 10:20:27 pm »

Yup - I can confirm that a DisplayLink adaptor is the only other type that will work. Unlike other adaptors, I believe it actually has a small graphics chip integrated into the adaptor, so it can work independently no matter what the device supports. You just need to download an app from the Play Store (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.displaylink.desktop.demo). It basically acts as a driver from what I can tell. As soon as the DisplayLink adaptor is plugged in, the app runs in the background and outputs your display.

I would suspect that displaying application is unneeded, except for extra features.  What this sounds like is that perhaps the MediaTek chip is implementing either the DisplayPort or MHL USB-C alternate modes, but many cables are for the HDMI alternate mode.  The HDMI alternate mode is merely a specially wired cable which doesn't do any protocol conversion, this is cheaper, but requires hardware features on the phone.

23

Cosmo Communicator - General Discussion / The unofficial official my cosmo has arrived thread

« on: January 12, 2020, 09:51:02 pm »

Us keyboard Eu charger.
Located in the netherlands.
Ordered 17-7-2019.

I was attempting to generate an estimated mapping from Indiegogo order #s to arrival date.  You ordered your's before me, but I don't have any idea how long before me.  If yours was in the 54xx range then mine would be expected almost any day now, if you were in the 39xx range then I'll be waiting a bit longer.

The numbers were pointing at around 100 being dispatched per day, but New Year's will have an impact on that.  Then comes the issue of whether production is ramping up or remaining at the same rate.

Sounds like some of the less common keyboard layouts are going to be slow.  This surprises me since I wouldn't expect that to be a difficult part to produce the variants of.  There would be a need to figure out how many of them to produce, the only difficulty would be if some of those were outright rare (which could mean higher price after the first production run).

24

Cosmo Communicator - Hardware / Hardware layout: battery, main screen hardware

« on: January 03, 2020, 01:30:36 am »

I keep wanting to find a power supply which simply provides 5V, but is high efficiency.  That way I'm not worried about burning my fingers or starting a fire from a charger which generates lots of heat in a small space.  Charging slow means less heat in the charger too.

25

Cosmo Communicator - General Discussion / The unofficial official my cosmo has arrived thread

« on: January 03, 2020, 01:26:47 am »

Mine (UK) arrived today!  \o/

I'm presuming you've got the standard radios?  You haven't mentioned what range your contribution was in.

So far we've got:

Japan radios:
09xx: Nov 28

Standard (Europe/T-Mobile US) radios:
0076: Nov 25
0126: Nov 25
3359: Dec 28

No information on ones with the Verizon radios, though we know a few people on here have them.

I haven't gotten mine yet, but with the trend so far being in the 56xx range suggests middle or end of January.

While the keyboard layout makes a difference, that is minor compared to the choice of radios.  You could potentially put a Deutsch, Japanese, UK or US keyboard layout on any device.  Different radio frequencies require changing the motherboard.

26

Cosmo Communicator - General Discussion / News from CES 2019

« on: December 30, 2019, 10:02:57 pm »

Someone on Indiegogo has mentioned that the display itself will run Wear OS, acting as a standalone device, but no confirmation has been found yet, so at this point this is most likely a speculation.

Looking back at this old thread, I cannot help but wonder if this might be true?  Would be interesting for Planet Computers to release enough information on the cover display to do interesting things with it...

27

Cosmo Communicator - General Discussion / Help! My Cosmo is dead after 4 days.

« on: December 30, 2019, 06:30:56 pm »

Okay, as quoted in large, friendly letters of the cover of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "Don't Panic".  Planet Computers would readily be able to help you with this situation and I'm a bit surprised no one here hasn't already replied.

What almost certainly happened was you accidentally held down one (or more) buttons when you attempted to restart.  As a result your Cosmo ended up in "fastboot mode".  Nearly any search engine would get you some information for the string "fastboot".

There are several ways to get out of fastboot mode.  If you've got the Android tools installed on a handy computer, plugging your Cosmo in and typing the command

Code: [Select]

fastboot reboot would restart your Cosmo.  This though requires installing the program onto an appropriate computer, a handier method may be to open the cover, remove the battery and all power sources.  The battery only needs to be out briefly at which point you can reinstall the battery and boot normally.  (note, I'm used to phones where batteries are easily removable and the Cosmo may not be line this; I haven't got it yet so I don't know)

When your Cosmo is initially starting make sure not to hold any keys.  Holding buttons during startup of many electronic devices often cause them to enter various special modes.

By now I imagine you've already tried pulling the battery and your Cosmo is fine.  Forums like this can be a bit slow.  Hopefully this information has been informative even if likely too late for your purposes.

28

Cosmo Communicator - Hardware / Serial Console

« on: September 29, 2019, 02:11:21 pm »

When I sent e-mail to the folks at Planet Computers I was advised "Console access will likely not be available to the general public."

This will be disappointing if so.  Perhaps most people don't need it, but for some this is valuable to have.  I'm under the impression disabling the console UART generally involves cutting traces on release PCBs, and no removal of components.  If so, no cost savings, yet you need to get a special version for console access.

Once you've got a working kernel configuration debugging is easy since panics occur after the point where you've got adb or other logging.  Before then console access is near-magical.  Look at the Raspberry PI Foundation for how much value it has.  Learning about early startup has value.

Meanwhile if one is wacky enough to ponder the idea of installing Xen, console access for everyone wouldn't hurt.

29

Cosmo Communicator - General Discussion / Missing features of Cosmo

« on: September 29, 2019, 02:02:04 pm »

- 4000 mAh battery is now the standard in this price range (even the Gemini does not accomplished two full days - Cosmo will have for sure higher energy demand and conversely shorter runtime)

Does apparently have a faster processor, but that will be at least somewhat offset by being more recent and thus likely using less power per transistor.  The feature I would like to see is either a pair of smaller batteries or else a capacitor large enough to keep Linux in something akin to suspend mode for 2 minutes.  One of these and you could hot-swap batteries without needing to restart the OS.  Once you can hot-swap batteries the time needed for boot becomes a non-issue and the underlying issue is mostly solved.

- main screen not an AMOLED display

I'm pretty sure I'm the wacky one here.  Yes, the true black of OLEDs is extremely nice, but burn-in is a severe problem.  Nearly all measures which attempt to reduce burn-in also damage the positives of OLEDs.  One of the main efforts is to spread the color a bit to adjacent pixels and suddenly the benefits aren't nearly so wonderful.  What appeals to me is higher resolution.  You think 3840x2160 is high resolution?  I would love a device which could output to dual displays at 7680x4320@85Hz.

Image stabilisation? It's a PDA not a camera.

Optical Image Stabilization is a feature found on many cellphone cameras.  It is present on pretty well all mid-high end cellphones.  As the Cosmo is in this price category, it seems like a feature people will expect.

30

Cosmo Communicator - Hardware / SIM/SD card thoughts

« on: September 29, 2019, 12:57:50 pm »

According to the information currently out, "hybrid dual-SIM".  Better description for such would be "hybrid not-really-dual-SIM".  If you can only make use of either a SD-card or a second SIM, you're cutting off your right arm to become ambidextrous.

You can readily find information on how to make use of both features at the same time, remove the extra plastic on a SIM and then glue it to the bottom of the SD-card.  The fact that this is so well circulated seems a strong recommendation that this is not a desirable feature.  Make the base of the carrier 0.76mm thicker and both features work together without modification (minor modification required for the contacts, but I imagine that would be simple).

So a mere extra 83mm^3 for such a large improvement doesn't seem like a big deal.  This isn't the original iPod where Steve Jobs demonstrated there was wasted space by dropping it in a bucket of water and observing that bubbles came out.


The other problem with the hybrid slot is there is a potential need to completely power the phone off to do anything.  It depends upon the device, but both SIMs and SD-cards can be hot-swapped.  Many phones are deliberately designed to prevent this, but the potential exists.  Potentially one could have a full load of Debian on a SD-card, but when you want to hot-swap you're stuck.
The ideal phone I would create if I ruled the world would have two SD slots.  One would be the OS card which the phone booted off of. There would be no potential to hot-swap this, but would allow upgrading the card Android is on to something larger than 128GB.  Then have a dumb card for music collection or games/whatever.