The XO Computer for Navigation

[drewc]

Paul, thanks once again for your hard work in helping us "marinize" our XO laptops. Although I was successful in installing the MapCal and JTides activities using your downloads, I am apparently stuck with SeaClear as I was one of the unsuccessful with your detailed instructions in your prior post (after clicking on the SeaClear activity the box just blinks without ever starting up the activity.) I have removed the SeaClear.activity directory but the plain square icon remains in the row of icons even after several reboots. Apparently, this is inhibiting my install of the new SeaClear activity using your latest post. Any ideas?

Drew

[phiggins]

Drew,

If you installed using my downloads, it will put the activities in a different directory from my detailed post. They new ones go in:
/home/olpc/Activities

So go there and delete: rm -rf /SeaClear.activity Make sure that none my activities still exist in the /usr/share/activities then reboot and try to reinstall the SeaClear-1.xo again using the instructions in my last post.

If it only blinks, open the Log Viewer activity and look at the log for the SeaClear Activity. I found it sometimes explains why it won't start.

Paul

[phiggins]

I found yet a simpler way to install/remove new Activities:

Xo-get - OLPC

Go there and follow the instructions to install the xo-get.py

Attached is a new version of the SeaClear activity that I added code to define com ports 1 and 2 and an improved icon. To install it right click on the attacment and click 'Save target As' and download it to your SD card or memory stick. Then rename it to SeaClear-2.xo . Put the card in the XO and then:

if you already have the SeaClear activity installed:
./xo-get.py remove SeaClear

then install the new one:
./xo-get.py install /media/KINGSTON/SeaClear-2.xo

After its installed you probably won't see the new icon until you reboot.

If anyone followed my first post on this and used the manual method to install the activities, I would recommend you uninstall them by:

su
cd /usr/share/activities
rm -rf SeaClear.activity (do same for MapCal and JTides)
reboot

Then follow the above instructions to install the attachments.

[dmms]

Hello every one this is the first time I have made a post but can any one out there tell me if theres is a program that will copy my sea max world PC charts to my C-map card for my furuno 1900c thanks and happy sailing

[phiggins]

I found that by adding the instructions to define the com ports caused SeaClear to take forever to load so I removed them. Actually they really aren't needed as you should have defined the com ports when you installed SeaClear.

So attached is new SeaClear activity and also MapCal and JTides which I made the icons nicer. Again right click them and 'Save Target As' to your SD/MemStick then rename them to: SeaClear-2.xo MapCal-2.xo and JTides-2.xo and move it to your XO.

To install them issue ./xo-get.py remove SeaClear
then ./xo-get.py install /media/KINGSTON/SeaClear-2.xo
Repeat above for MapCal and JTides (change KINGSTON to your SD/memStick name).
Then Reboot.

Is anyone actually doing this or am I just whistling in the wind?

[agkirk]

Paul, You are not whistling in the wind! I'm still working on getting xo-get working. I suspect others are working hard to just keep up with your effort. I recently had an occasion to use the XO outdoors in the sunlight and WOW it really works great with the monocrome reflective display. Just one more feature that will be appreciated at sea.

[drewc]

Paul, I am most appreciative of your help in getting these apps going. I currently have all three working and can tell you this last rev is a huge improvement in performance. One app that I am working with now is GpsGate, a terrific TCP/IP gateway for GPS. Basically, it's a GPS server that can send the NMEA sentence stream over TCP/IP, Bluetooth, GoogleEarth, etc. formats, acts as a NMEA splitter & multiplexer, virtual COM ports, etc. As it is only offered in Windows, I tried bringing it up under WINE, but it fails during install. You might give it a try as it would be quite valuable on the XO as a universal translator of sorts. You can find it at: GPS splitter, simulator and logger. Serial port splitter. - Franson GpsGate. Cheers

Drew

[phiggins]

Thanks guys for the feedback.

Drew I've had GPSGate for quit awhile and find it very useful on windows to test these things. I suspect it would be a big job to get it working on Linux. I tried another program I found called AIS Simulator but couldn't get it working on Linux so I'm trying to write my own. I'll let you know if it works.

One other thing, I think from what I've read that virtual ports are actually built into Linux which is proably why I couldn't find a progarm similiar to GPSGATE for Linux. I'm still trying to figure out how to use virtual serial ports in Linux.

I decided to try out Opera as a browser and discovered they create an icon for it similiar to way I'm doing it for SeacLear etc. But I looked at the code they use and its a lot simpler than mine so it brings up the application a little faster. So I have updated my Activities once more using their method. Let me know if you want me to post them.

BTW Opera is really neat. Well worth using than the browser that comes with XO.

Paul

[lsoltero]

XGate has a built in gps repeater that will read NMEA streams from TCP ports or serial ports and repeat them to TCP ports or to /dev/ttypX pseudo terminals (i.e. virtual serial ports).

You dont need to have a xgate subscription to access the NMEA/GPS repeater.

Of course you can also use xgate to do email over iridium or pactor HF but you have to pay for that.



--luis

--


Luis Soltero, Ph.D., MCS

[lsoltero]

I have been following this thread with interest and I am having a hard time understanding why everyone is so intent on getting their apps running the xo's sugar/fedora environment.

debian is so much more usable and it requires very little space. I currently have a dual boot environment where I boot debian as the default OS and then boot into sugar if i have for some reason. After installing debian, and a bunch of stuff including Thunderbird, Firefox and XGate I still have about 300Mb of free space on the disk.

Here is a photo of my XO running debia while doing an e-mail session over our Pactor development system using XGate and Thunderbird.

http://www.globalmarinenet.com/downloads/olpc.jpg



--luis

--


Luis Soltero, Ph.D., MCS

[phiggins]

Luis,

As you probably read previously I did try Ubuntu and it worked very well on the XO. But I found there were enough differences that confused a new user of Linux like myself that I decided to go back to Sugar. Also, I think it would be hard for others following the thread who don't have other Linux systems installed.

If you were already familiar with Linux then installing your version would probably would be a good choice.

Thanks for pointing us to free GPS repeater for linux.

Paul

[phiggins]

Luis,

Would you happen to have an rpm or tar version of xgate instead of deb? Not sure if we can install a .deb under Sugar.

Thanks, Paul

[Beausoleil]

Originally Posted by phiggins

Luis,

Would you happen to have an rpm or tar version of xgate instead of deb? Not sure if we can install a .deb under Sugar.

Thanks, Paul

Paul,

Try alien. Not sure if it's available for Sugar (which is a RHEL4 derivative?).

[lsoltero]

Originally Posted by phiggins

Luis,

As you probably read previously I did try Ubuntu and it worked very well on the XO. But I found there were enough differences that confused a new user of Linux like myself that I decided to go back to Sugar. Also, I think it would be hard for others following the thread who don't have other Linux systems installed.

If you were already familiar with Linux then installing your version would probably would be a good choice.

Thanks for pointing us to free GPS repeater for linux.

Paul

Debian and Ubuntu are the most popular linux distributions on the planet. Ubuntu is a debian derivative so the statement can be made the debian is the most widely used distro on the planet. Sugar, on the other hand, has very limited acceptance. On the XO it has been customized with tools for 8 year olds. The interpreted shell is slow and awkward to use. IMHO since you are making the move to linux anyway, you might as well spend some time learning how to use the debian package manager and one of the popular desktops such as gnome or kde.

The ubuntu forums are very very good. There is lots of help there with a very large and diverse user group.

One reason to go with debian over ubuntu on the XO is size. The default ubuntu installation is quite large. You can really prune things down and get the most of your 1GB for flash if you start with a fresh debian install.

There is a nice HOWTO debian on the XO wiki.

Those are my thoughts anyway...

--luis

[lsoltero]

Originally Posted by Beausoleil

Paul,

Try alien. Not sure if it's available for Sugar (which is a RHEL4 derivative?).

my guess is that alien will work on sugar. You can always extract the content of the deb file and copy the files over manually.

XGate requires GTK+ so you need to make sure those graphic libraries are installed. The libraries come standard with gnome and kde. They are not required for sugrar (i dont think) so you many need to install these.

Take care.

--luis