blog.teemu.im

Since summer holidays are now over (for me at least), it is time to start getting familiar with the new Pymaemo version for Maemo 2.0 platform. I decided to start with a no-brainer by porting the pysqlite library, since I thought it might be useful in my future projects. I’ll put the link to the deb-packages to the MaemoWiki Application Catalog.

I’m also continuing to work with the BitTorrent and Flickr Uploader clients that I wrote about earlier. I’m also very eager in testing the new D-Bus and GStreamer stuff that should also be possible in the new Pymaemo version. Maybe, I even get my tutorial section back up againg and updated to Maemo 2.0 stuff. But still the best Python tutorial so far can be found from the Maemo Howto pages.

As I already mentioned in my previous post, I bought myself a bluetooth GPS receiver so I can use it with the Maemo Mapper application. Ok, I had to take this a bit further and since I’ve seen other people having their Internet Tablet attached to their car’s windshields I decided to give it a try. I Googled for a while to find a suitable holder to get the N770 attached to my car. Finally, I found a Universal PDA Holder sold by the PDA Hut in UK that seemed to be well suited for this task. Here is a couple of pictures of it in action…

I only made a brief test drive and the holder performed very well. It is easy to adjust it in a right position and it stuck really firmly to the windshield and also to the N770. It is also really easy and fast to attach and remove the Internet Tablet form the holder. I could also connect the Tablet to my car’s cigarette lighter to get it charged since most of the connectors are free even when the Tablet is in the holder.

Here’s a picture of the whole setup that I have and also couple of closeups of the Universal PDA holder holding the N770.

Yes it has finally arrived. Get the Gizmo Project SIP based VoIP client software for the Nokia Internet Tablet from here. Below are some screenshots of it running on my Nokia770. I did brief tests and it seemed to work just fine. Only downside is that it takes 8MBs of memory when installed.

Huh, man it has been a hot summer here in Finland. It has been something like 30 degrees centigrade for a month now and I’m sort of thinking that this starts to be enough. Anyway, I haven’t been writing to my blog for quite a while now. I was on a vacation for some time and in couple of weeks I will go out for some more. Meanwhile, a lot has been happening with the Nokia Internet Tablet. The final version of the 2006 software has been released and now we finally have also a almost fully functional Python runtime for the Maemo 2.0 platform as well. Now it is time to start making some serious Python applications for the Nokia 770.

I bet that everyone that has the Nokia 770 knows about the Maemo Mapper. I’ve also been using it for some time know and finally yesterday I wen out and bought myself a bluetooth GPS receiver so that I can fully utilize the power of Maemo Mapper. I have to say that I’m impressed. It works like a charm. Btw… the GPS receiver that I have is Insmat InsSiRF III.

As we all probably know by now the Beta version of Maemo 2.0 and OS2006 has been released. Too bad that I forgot my Nokia 770 at work and I cannot test the new software yet. Of all the weekends, why It had to be now.

Anyway, I’ve been browsing through the Maemo.org site and I noticed that there was very nice Python tutorial there that includes lots of useful information. It seems that now it is really possible to develop fully working applications for Maemo platform using Python, since LibOSSO and D-BUS services are included. The tutorial has also very good instructions on how to make application installer packages from your Python applications.

The tutorial mentions that the Nokia 770 software images won’t include the Python runtime by default, but it has to be installed separately. This is quite understandable considering the amount of memory that is available on Nokia 770 for installable software. Also according to the tutorial the Pymaemo runtime package should be downloadable via maemo.org, but I haven’t found it yet. Anyway, the future looks promising.

Please also note that my previous tutorials do not apply anymore on Maemo 2.0 since hildon.App and hildon.AppView have changed to hildon.Program and hildon.Window.

I though that I set up a collection of the pymaemo tutorials I’ve written so that they would be more easily accessible. From now on you can find them at pymaemo.teemuharju.net. Of course, I still put them on my blog also. I haven’t written much new tutorials lately, but I think that during the weekend I could write about things like how to create a Hildonized toolbar etc.

Last weekend I was doing some travelling and ended up spending some time in Finnish city called Lahti. As I was standing at the railway station waiting for my friend to arrive I remembered reading some news that Lahti has built a WLAN network covering most of the city and that this network would be open for everyone. Naturally, I had my 770 with me and I tried to find this open WLAN using that. To my surprise I actually found an open WLAN network and I was able to connect to the Internet using that. It was nice to be able to check my emails and read interesting blog posts while waiting for a train to arrive. Sadly, there are not many open WLAN networks in Finland. In Helsinki there are only couple.

Btw, the display of the 770 seemed to work quite nicely outdoors. Of course, the sun does not shine much in here in Finland, but I didn’t even need to put the display brightness to full.

Besides working with the BitTorrent client, I’ve been also working with application that I call MaemoFlickr. I’ve been building this application from scratch and when it is ready it will be able to upload photos to Flickr using simple and intuitive user interface. The intention is that if you have camera phone or something you could easily upload the photos you’ve taken to Flickr. Future versions might include also some photo organizing features, but I think that for starters it is probably better to keep it simple.

Here are some screenshots…

Ok, now I’ve got the UI of the BitTorrent client somewhat Hildonized. I decided to move the start/stop button, the search field and the connection indicator to a toolbar at the bottom of the view. I think this makes it a bit more usable. I’m considering moving the upload rate adjust bar to the toolbar also, so that the main view would only contain the information about the torrents that are being downloaded or uploaded. I haven’t yet touched the other views, but I think those need less editing anyways.

The search bar on the bottom does not of course work yet, since it is not possible to launch the web browser form Python applications yet. However, this should become possible with the new software release and new pymaemo version. Then also MIME support for bittorrent files would be nice. I’ll look into that and then we have full blown BitTorrent for the Maemo platform. All I would need now is actual content distributed via BitTorrent that actually could be used in the Nokia 770. Usually videos are too large and those iPod mp4 videos does not seem to play in the video player. Anyone know any good podcasts that are distributed using BitTorrent?

As the readers of this blog have probably noticed, I like doing stuff with Python. I also like downloading all kinds of stuff from the Internet and what better way to do that nowadays than the BitTorrent. How convenient, BitTorrent has originally been written in Python. Here we go… I need to port the BitTorrent client on Maemo platform using pymaemo. I know there are command line versions of some other BitTorrent clients already available for maemo, but I kind of like having UIs. They make life alot easier.

The surrent stable version of the BitTorrent client uses PyGtk for the user interface so porting should go quite smoothly. I decided to give it a go and as I suspected it worked straight from the package. Of course I had to modify the .deb installer a bit to make it install using the application installer on the device, but otherwise nothing else was needed.

Here are couple of screenshots. As you can see, no Hildonization for the UI yet, but I’m already rolling up my sleeves so lets see when I can release the first installer package.