todbot blog

• Promi-SD from Lemos International
  http://www.lemosint.com/scripts/bluetooth_promi.asp
  (kinda expensive, also check out the other BT products they have)
• EmbeddedBlue from Parallax
  http://www.parallax.com/detail.asp?product_id=30068
  (you may need to strap on a BASIC Stamp board)
• Bluetooth accelerometer
  http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/ccg/resources/btacc/index.html
  (it has a serial port BT device in there somewhere, I think it’s one of these:
  http://www.btdesigner.com/modules.htm
• http://www.vprf.com/vmx.htm
  (from SOCALWUG)
  

  commonly refered to as bluetooth serial cable replacement devices they can be found from many diffrent makers. These are fully intergrated modules that take serial in and spit BT out. Most need power of some sort but if you can find one that takes 12VDC then installing it in a car would be cake. Maybe even a small stepdown would work well, some cars even have other voltages running around. It would suck to have to change the battries all the time.

hardware-hacking | 1 Comment »

“Describe in single words,
only the good things that come into your mind
about: your search engine.”
“My search engine? Let me tell you about my search engine. BLAM!!”

“It’s too bad she won’t click. But then again, who does?”

I’ve written Java you people wouldn’t believe.
Attack applets on Firefox off the shoulder of Andreesen.
C++ beams glittering off the JNI gate.
All that code will be lost,
Like posts to slashdot.
Time to debug.

misc | No Comments »

I’m beginning the process of switching to T-Mobile (from Cingular), because “Tmo” has very cheap all-you-can-eat data plans: from free to $19.99, depending on the level of studliness you want.

I’ll be using a Sony-Ericsson P900.

There are apparently 4 different “Internet plans”:

• $0.00 - “free/unlimited internet”, aka “basic WAP”
  “just ports 80 (web), 25 (smtp), 110 (pop3), 143 (imap). ”
  all others blocked (and some reports say only port 80 is allowed as of late 2003)
  access to the t-zone portal sites. NATed?
  uses APN ‘wap.voicestream.com’
• $4.99 - “unlimited t-zones”, also aka “basic WAP”
  same as above, but access to t-zone portal
  uses APN ‘wap.voicestream.com’
• $9.99 - “unlimited t-zones pro”
  same as above, but access to slightly different portal
  allows one to “access corporate email” ???
  uses APN ‘wap.voicestream.com’
• $19.99 - “T-Mobile Internet Unlimited”
  no blocked ports, non-NATed too?
  uses APN ‘internet2.voicestream.com’
  Does ‘internet2′ represent a GPRS gateway and ‘wap’ a GSM gateway?

Calling their ‘data specialists’ was pointless. Comments in t-mobile howardforums are also very confused.

Some perhaps useful info gleaned tho, in rough order of usefulness:

• “Definitive Internet/T-Zones plans post”. It gives current (Jan 2004) and historical definitions for the various T-Mobile Internet plans. Unfortunately,
  he calls everything ‘WAP’ and thus makes no distinction between GPRS and GSM.
• Also by the same author: “How to configure WAP on Ericsson P800/900″
• There is a T-Mobile Wireless Data Configurator that may be useful. Once you go through the ‘wizard’, it sends a magic SMS message with configuration information that’s supposed to ‘just work’.
• Setting up a P800 on T-Mobile: http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?threadid=262715
• Free WAP allowed ports”
• thread about free wap
• Outgoing SMTP mail server : “myemail.t-mobile.com”
• “Internet2/Internet3 DNS settings”:
  • West DNS - Primary: 216.155.175.40 , Alternate: 216.155.175.41
  • East DNS - Primary: 216.155.175.170, Alternate: 216.155.175.171
  • Central DNS - Primary: 216.155.175.105, Alternate: 216.155.175.106

  whatever the fuck that means, maybe ‘internet2.voicestream.com’?

• “So for those of us who want to use the free data instead of paying $19.99, I understand the following change has to be made in our connection settings.
  • Previous with $19.99 plan: +CGDCONT=1,,”internet2.voicestream.com”
  • Now with FREE wap plan: +CGDCONT=1,,”wap.voicestream.com”"

  The ‘internet2′ / ‘wap’ hosts are referred to as ‘apn’s. what is that?

• Sony-Ericsson t68i settings with T-Mobile:

  T-Mobile Settings
  
  Configure for free WAP access:
  go to settings--->connect--->data comm
  add account GPRS
  CID=1
  preferred service=GPRS and GSM
  SMS access=GPRS
  configure APN as wap.voicestream.com
  no user id
  no password
  no IP address
  no DNS address
  
  Go to WAP Services
  enter a new profile
  configure to connect using GPRS from above
  IP address=216.155.165.050 (dots get entered automatically)
  No user ID
  no password
  data mode=conn. oriented
  security=off
  chg homepage: select a page such as http://wap.voicestream.com
  
  If you call T-Mobile customer support, they can email you a file which
  will automatically configure these settings, but you may be on hold for awhile!
  
  Configure for unlimited internet access:
  
  go to settings--->connect--->data comm
  add account GPRS 2
  CID=2
  preferred service=GPRS and GSM
  SMS access=GPRS
  configure APN as internet2.voicestream.com
  no user id
  no password
  IP address=216.155.165.050 (dots get entered automatically)
  no DNS address
  
  set Bluetooth options as follows:
  
  mode-->operation mode=on or automatic
  make discoverable or pair with your computer if you haven't done so.
  
  set your computer or handheld to use bluetooth,
  "telephone number": *99***2#
  No account name or password.
  
  You should be able to connect.
  

toys | No Comments »

Once again,
Circuit Cellar magazine comes to the rescue. There’s both an advert
and an article that uses a new all-in-one wireless module.

It’s the
DPAC Airborne Wirelss LAN Node Module and it seems to be almost
exactly what I want.

• size; 1.26″ x 0.83″ x 0.46″
• power: 3.3V @ 420mA (transmit), 350ma (recv), 75mA (sleep)
• supports WEP @ 64/128 bits
• 8 digital I/O and a serial I/O, (and “up to” 8 channgels 10bit A/D)
• 36 Pin connector (?)

I can’t find any definite pricing, but the article says $80.
It’s unclear from the context whether that’s for the module itself
or the development kit.

Anyway, I’m excited. I’m ordering a few of these asap. Want.

hardware-hacking | No Comments »

The world needs a wireless coprocessor that functions like the
http://siteplayer.com/ and
the http://lantronix.com/ Xport

Sure, there exists
http://www.iosoft.co.uk/wlan2.php, but it’s very expensive ($200)

We need something cheap, ~$50-75.

hardware-hacking | No Comments »

Is this possible? How programmatically controllable is GarageBand?

macosx | No Comments »

The IP2000 is a cheap chip (< $10 in quantity) for doing 802.11b. It is a general purpose RISC cpu that's fast enough to do MAC routing in software. (is that correct?)

Info from picklist:
http://www.piclist.com/techref/ubicom/ip2k.htm

Low cost devkit:
http://home.netcom.com/~gregor_g/ip2022isp.html

An SBC using the IP2022-160:
http://ultradense.com/product_sbc.html

Ubicom page on the IP2000:
http://www.ubicom.com/products/ip2000/ip2000_processors.html

Picture of it being used in the Slimdevices Squeezebox:

http://www.slimdevices.com/images/inside_squeezebox/

Update 12 Feb 2004:
Drat, from what one of the Squeezebox guys have said, you must buy the $15k dev tools from Ubicom to do development. And, you still gotta buy a wireless card. This is not worth it.

hardware-hacking | No Comments »

Has anyone made a converter that converts SOAP servers to REST?
Perhaps you specify a converter, with the query args you want to use
to then fill in the SOAP query, and an XSLT for output. This could be
automated.

Does this exist?

Why I want it: I imagine a large universe of simple clients,
either by virtue of their capabilities (no RAM) or their programmers
(SOAP can be needlessly complex),
which cannot do SOAP. But everyone can do REST.

ideas | 1 Comment »