Cell phone goodies!

So after a few weeks of having my new cell I'm going to write about it. Let me start by saying it is a MASSIVE improvement over my old phone. I got the HTC Fuze (AKA Touch Pro) and I could not be happier about it. This phone does everything I was looking for - maps, messaging, youtube,web and basically what ever I want. Of course, anyone who knows me well knows I cant leave well-enough alone so I modified this thing so much I already had to hard-reset it because of a boo-boo :)
My old phone is a HTC 3125 (Right) and my leatherman (left) and the HTC Fuze (middle). One of the things I miss is the external screen on my old phone, but that's minor over getting a touch screen!
When opened it's clear that the Fuze is much better at messaging. The vibrant screen is light controlled and the resolution is excellent (640x480)... better than almost any other phone.
The camera on this is very nice in that it's auto-focus. I believe it used the same idea as a CD reader by using electo-magnets with a lens element. The reason why I say this is when trying to focus on an object really close and it gets a lock, once I let go of the button it snaps to return to normal state. --- This is another nice feature, all the buttons are captive in that a touch activates a first level and a press is another (like a SLR camera button).

So, as stated above I did many, many upgrades to the base install. Here's a few of the things I found particular useful and stable (Not going to link since they can be updated - most of them are from http://www.freewarepocketpc.net)

• S2U2 - Slide to unlike like iphone (required due to lack of locking).
• Advanced Configuration Tool - Tweak it! Used to increase cache sizes to speed thigns up and also to improve battery life
• Diamond TF3d Config - Tweak Touchflow 3D settings (also used to remove a tab)
• Diamond Tweak - Another tweak, similar to Advanced Config tool
• Google maps - Boo ya! Also included latitude :)
• Gremote - use the phone like a mouse, in the air :) Uses accelerometer for positioning.
  
• HTC Album TP2 - Upgrade to album viewer in this release.
  
• Microsoft Live Search - Like google maps but can accept voice queries and is sometimes more accurate.
  
• MoDaCo Smartphone GPS Activator - enable GPS to be useful for other things
• Power Guard - see what consumes the most power (typical Idle is 80mA-100mA)
• Seismo - neat little tool that uses accelerometer. Hit the table and see!
• Total Commander - Must have for registry hacks
• WM6.1 fix for smtp mail [WindowsMobile61-KB958639] - Required to send email with this version (link to MS)
• Fuze PTT mod - Stupid PTT button was useless, remap to camera or something.

Amongst those packages I have also done registry hacks to further increase cache size beyond the apps and other fun things. Most of the real fun stuff is too complex to put here.

I got the MS Dev packages (free!) for windows mobile and plan on giving that a try to see what I can do with the g-sensor and what not.

Router Project

So after getting a bit annoyed at our electric bill being the same month after month I decided to get back onto building a mini smart router. Currently I use a P4 computer (under clocked) that hosts files, is a web server, print server and a quality of service for internet amongst other things. Most off-the-shelf router don't even come close except for one particular model.. a netgear wgt634u which is no longer made (shame).

So why use an out of date router? I had it and wanted to make the best of it, besides I have 2 so if i get one working then i can use the other for those network cameras :) The best part is that the 634u is a mips processor with 8mb of flash, usb, multiple network ports and wireless all in a 5w package.
*Here's an image of a semi-modified of the 634u.

I got this at CompUSA refurbished for cheap! The reason for refurb (my guess): overheating, hence the extra heatsinks. The black one is the processor (broadcom mips 200mhz) and is on with epoxy. The others use thermal tape is is of my doing. With an IR gun the heatsink gets up to 60C quickly.. a bit more than I appreciate so an addition of a small fan should suffice.

I found a nice initial disto: http://wiki.openwrt.org/OpenWrtDocs/Hardware/Netgear/WGT634U that is proving most useful. I had to buy some components to build a serial comunication interface and get a usb adaptor.
The chip is a SP232CP. When connected I'm able to talk with the router and load linux on it via some very old connumication ideas (tftp). So far I've been able to load usb drivers for the thumb drive. I found some extra commands to swap what the root is so I can use the thumb drive instead of flash which gives me much more space to load stuff :) Once I got this down (and revisited how to modify the rd.d) I started to load openssh and cups. I plan on more but need to ensure this minimum mount of tools works before going further.

Once I'm done I will cut my server energy usage by 24x (old server uses about 120watts)

If all else fails I'll just get an Intel Atom server for $70 which is about the same power consumption :) That way I can easily compile things on my own and use gentoo which is my preferred choice of linux.