Tux Droid

Introduction

_The_ gadget any linux geek should have ;-)

Moreover it is designed in Belgium, tadaam!

Having kids can help justifying such a, hum, impulsive buy ;-)

http://www2.tux-is-alive.com/mediawiki/images/thumb/b/b9/Tux-proto.jpg/200px-Tux-proto.jpg

Sites

• Keep Your Sense Of Humor Commercial site
• Tux is alive! Community site (recent changes)
• Tux Droid development wiki (should disappear after transfer)
• Logs of the IRC channel #tuxdroid on irc.freenode.net
• Blogs aggregated flatted or summarized
• Forum
• Mailing lists
  • tux-droid-user
  • tux-droid-svn
  • tux@kysoh.com was the old one(?)
• Subversion server
• Bugreports
  • daemon
  • firmware/hardware
  • API
  • bootloader
• Atmel
  • ATmega88

Audio

• Plugging everything for the first time, and I got immediately a new Alsa device:

cat /proc/asound/cards
...
2 [default        ]: USB-Audio - TUX RF DONGLE 
                     C2ME BELGIUM TUX RF DONGLE  at usb-0000:00:1d.2-1, full speed

And I can already place an Ekiga test call :-)
Note that echo between internal speaker and microphone is very important so echo tests are quite terrible!
Using the OSS emulation, I can play whatever I want:

mpg321 -o oss -a /dev/dsp2 /path/to/some/mp3
mplayer -ao oss:/dev/dsp2 http://www.paul.sladen.org/pronunciation/torvalds-says-linux.mp3

Or using the native alsa layer:

mplayer -ao alsa:device=plughw=2.0 http://www.paul.sladen.org/pronunciation/torvalds-says-linux.mp3

Reflashing

Then I learn that to run the new (alpha2) tuxdaemon I'll also need to flash the stuffed pinguin.
Instructions are given on the web site and are not... straightforward.

Additional notes:

• Be sure to have installed properly libusb and to have mounted /proc/bus/usb, cf /usr/share/doc/libusb-0.1-4
  • For users to have the right to access usbfs, change /etc/udev/rules.d/020_permissions.rules and add GROUP=usb:

SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device",        MODE="0664", GROUP="usb"

• Recompile dfu-programmer from sources! I first tried alien on the rpm but there were glibc problems and when trying tuxup fuxusb.hex I got the following "common problem" but here it's really not because of permission problems.

Programming fuxusb.hex in USB CPU
Tux not found on USB

• They explain about tuxup fuxrf.hex and tuxup --main . but I had also to fix the tux rf counterpart: tuxup tuxrf.hex
• At the end, replug the dongle and restart the tux

Compiling a firmware

apt-get install gcc-avr avr-libc gdb-avr

Follow the howto starting from SVNWCRev section.
To get the proper header files to compile SVNCRev:

apt-get install libsvn-dev

And edit svncrev-0.1/config.mk to fix the following path:

APR_INCLUDE=/usr/include/apr-1.0

Personalizing the firmware

For basic stuff, we'll only change the tuxcore.eep file where are stored the basic standalone behaviors.
Edit common/config.h based on commands listed in common/commands.h
Each line is one first byte (what for?) then a frame of 4 bytes to combine between 1 and 4 commands as explained in commands.h
My first personalized firmware has the following behavior:
Eyes closed when no rf link and opened when rf link is established.
Note that it would be easier if there was a CLOSE_EYES_CMD
I solved it by using the seq "OPEN_EYES_CMD, BLINK_EYES_CMD, 1, 0"

Note that for such personalization, only eep file is required but if you plan to use the hex file, I noticed that there was a problem in the versioning structures order, you've to some files and invert some lines:

firmware/tuxaudio/trunk/main.c invert lines 42 and 44
firmware/tuxcore/trunk/global.c invert lines 53 and 55

Remote Control

(from the forum)
Press 'ALT' then 'Tux and phone' and you're in test mode.
The arrows should move tux, if you press a digit key, you change the number of movements. So 4 then up will move the eyes 4 times (2 blinks: close - open -close - open)
Read firmware/tuxcore/trunk/standalone.c l262 to see all possiblities

Raw commands

gtdi allows to send raw commands, see /firmware/tuxdefs/commands.h

Misc Tips

• First time, don't forget to plug Tux to the power adaptor for a while (~5h)
• Want to get Acapela Telecom? It's actually available as the tts-daemon

Misc Problems

• tuxdaemon from svn eats all CPU when running daemonised :-(
• tuxttsdaemon launched by gtdi eated 100% cpu after a while with tux off
• gtdi source to be modified: add a space between gnome-terminal -e and "the_commands"
• wrong comments in commands.h 0x1A & 0x1B control both leds

Misc Questions

• How to use alsa natively, not through /dev/dsp2 OSS layer?
• How to control the volume by software?