Category Archives: Vendors

Playing Asterisk voicemail on Android devices

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I got my first Android device last year and ever since getting it I wanted to play back the e-mailed voicemail messages sent by Asterisk’s Comedian Mail voicemail system.

It certainly is possible however your Asterisk rig needs one minor tweak which results in a more compatible codec at a higher bitrate.

In voicemail.conf Asterisk defaults to:

format=g723sf|wav49|wav

You need to attach the wav codec. So you can either:

format=wav|gsm|wav49

AND/OR

attachfmt=wav

And then the best method of e-mailing your Android device is to a Gmail address – as a new message alert will appear instantly in most cases. Don’t bother with the E-mail app – just use the Gmail app.

Superuser for Noontec A9, UMAX A9 & Media-Tech Media-Droid HQ

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Well there has been some developments in rooting the Noontec A9. rodos15 on xda-forums posted about how to install files into Noontec supplied firmware for the Noontec A9. rodos15 also posted about the Media-Tech clone device and the 1.2.07 build firmware they offer.

Nobody else has posted a complete firmware image where you can just perform a firmware upgrade as you do with Noontec firmware. So I did.

In my opinion use the 1.2.07 build. Its better and has newer software pre-installed. There is more support for USB Webcams for one and support for USB Keyboards is improved.

Extract the update.img file from the ZIP to the root of an SD card, then put that SD card in your Noontec A9 which is switched on. When asked, install the firmware update. Your data will be wiped as with other firmware updates. After the device reboots, installs firmware, and reboots again, you will have Superuser preinstalled as well as a functional su binary.

I briefly tried to get cifs.ko working with no luck. I’ll look at this eventually I’m sure, but right now I don’t really have the time. My 1.2.07 build comes with a non-functional cifs.ko

Given that nobody else is doing it and I now have the tools to do it, I guess I’ll start shipping my own firmware builds for the Noontec A9. My blog is the best place to check for updates.

As another plus I managed to dribble some crap on xda-forums so I no longer have moderator restrictions. Yehaw.

Cyanogenmod 7.2 for Samsung Galaxy Gio GT-5660S

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cyanogenmodI only just realized that at the time of writing my guide for Cyanogenmod 7.1 RC3 for Samsung Galaxy Gio GT-5660S is out of date.

Cyanogenmod 7.2 24/02/2012 GIO-KANG is the latest version. So if you used my guide before all you need to do is download ClockworkMod 5.0.2.7 ext4only for Samsung Galaxy Gio GT-5600S and the latest Cyanogenmod 7.2 image.

From there you just copy them to your memory card probably after turning off your phone and connecting it to a PC. Then boot up your phone into recovery by holding the home and power buttons. Then flash ClockworkMod, reboot and let your phone boot all the way into Cyanogenmod, reboot into recovery, then flash the Cyanogenmod 7.2 image.

Simple!

Also the latest Google Maps (6.3) seems to work great on this Cyanogenmod image.

A couple tips on if you want to improve your battery performance on your Gio running Cyanogenmod:

  • Settings, Cyanogenmod Settings, Interface, Render effect, Calibrated (N1) Low Red – this setting doesn’t seem to preserve after reboots however it reduces the power consumption on the screen
  • Settings, Cyanogenmod Settings, Performance, CPU settings – here you can under-clock your processor which has the most battery improvements I’ve seen. I clocked mine to a min of 245MHz and a max of 480MHz with Set on boot enabled
  • Install Battery Monitor Widget and add the widget to your home screen to keep track of your charges and discharges. Tapping the widget shows a graph
  • If you’re going to buy a Samsung Galaxy Gio – DON’T – buy the HTC Incredible S instead. It may be twice the price but the battery is probably twice as good at the least and it also can run Cyanogenmod provided you haven’t installed the latest HTC firmware

Noontec publishes v1.2.06 firmware for A9

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Well I haven’t yet tried it but heedna on xda-forums sent me a private message to let me know that Noontec has published v1.2.06 (alternative link on Minus) on their website.

I’ll probably try it in the next few days and revise this blog.

I created my own collection of firmware for the A9 on Minus as seen below… might be a little faster than UMAX or Noontec’s websites:

Zello – Push to Talk for Android, BlackBerry & Windows Mobile

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zelloWell I’ve tried many Push to Talk apps for Android both over WiFi and 3G networks and tested them all with poor reception. I must have tried about 20 apps, and only one of them really held up to be any good.

LoudTalks Lite was released for Android on July 25th 2011 so its very new software. Just a few days ago they changed their name to Zello.

What makes it so good is its use of keep-alive and allowing the user to alter this preference. Keep-alive directly affects battery drain while Zello is operating and if the connection is retained when travelling through an area with total loss of 3G signal.

Further to this, Zello allows the user to tinker with buffering settings. Zello uses the open source Speex codecs. Zello also supports channels which can optionally be privatized with a password or moderated.

My testing by talking with my partner showed that Zello was most likely to get a message out in all scenarios with the least amount of delay.

All we need now is an iPhone version.

Flashing Cyanogenmod 7.1 to Samsung Galaxy Gio GT-S5660 with S2E and Google Apps & Maps

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cyanogenmodWell Cyanogenmod is certainly the most well known unofficial Android firmware and is compatible with many devices including my Samsung Galaxy Gio. Cyanogenmod has even been purported by some as being better than official firmwares shipped by manufacturers and carriers. For now Cyanogenmod is not officially supported on the Gio, but it seems that’s on its way.

I blogged about how I started using it some time ago. I’ve nutted out some problems I had and now feel I can blog about its installation so that everything works and the handset is stable.

ISSUES:

I continue to have some minor stability issues with S2E, however its very easy to fix. Because I now use Google to sync & store my calendar, contacts & notes, the real hard part of fixing the S2E issue is having to re-flash the phone. I did this just this morning so hopefully the problem doesn’t pop up again where I can’t install apps (the handset reboots during installation) or that apps begin to slowly disappear.

Another issue is that if I change the screen brightness, the LEDs behind the menu and back buttons will stay on and will not turn off until the handset is rebooted. This is known about, is considered a bug, and should hopefully be fixed in the next version.

And the final issue which I solved is Google Maps, Latitude & Navigation when installed from the Market crashes very soon after you load it. The solution is to not install the latest version from the Market but to install version 5.12 from the link I provided above. This version seems stable, the new 6.x versions are not stable on this firmware (they should be, its a firmware bug that should hopefully be fixed in the next version).

You will need:

  • Clockworkmod 2.0 for Samsung Galaxy Gio
  • Cyanogenmod
  • Google Apps
  • Google Maps 5.12 APK
  • Mini Partition Tool Home Edition
  • A MicroSD card that can be re-partitioned with at least 512MB to be used for app storage
  • 02gio – replacement startup file that disables tune2fs on the SD-EXT partition
  • Root Explorer (buy it you cheap asshole)
  • S2E

This folder on Minus has everything you need:

 

To install:

  • Remove your memory card from your phone and connect it to your PC with a memory card reader. Do not use the USB cable to your phone as Cyanogenmod doesn’t support this so you won’t be able to do this once you’ve flashed it, so you should now begin to get in the habit of your phone unable to act as a memory card reader.
  • Repartition your memory card with Mini Partition Tool Home Edition. You can right click the existing partition, select resize, and free up enough space for your new partition. When you create a new partition make it a Primary partition of the Ext4 filesystem with a cluster size of 4kb. Hit the apply button and it should be done in a couple minutes.
  • Safely remove the memory card from your PC and then re-insert it
  • Copy the ZIP files to the FAT32 partition of your SD card. You will need to copy Clockworkmod, Cyanogenmod, Google Apps, Google Maps APK & 02gio to the SD card. Probably put it in a folder named Cyanogenmod. Most other guides say put it in the root folder but you don’t have to do that, you can organise your shit (nothing prevents this).
  • Safely remove the memory card from your PC
  • Turn off your phone, put your memory card back in the phone
  • Turn your phone on by holding the home and power buttons. Keep holding these buttons until presented with the recovery menu
  • Select ‘Install ZIP from SD card’
  • Select ‘Choose ZIP file’
  • Browse to the Clockworkmod zip file and flash it
  • Press the back button to get you back to the main menu
  • Reboot your phone
  • Once your phone boots up, turn it off
  • Turn your phone back on holding the home and power buttons until the recovery menu is presented
  • Select ‘Install ZIP from SD card’
  • Select ‘Choose ZIP file’
  • Browse to the Cyanogenmod zip file and flash it
  • Press the back button until you get back to the main menu
  • Reboot your phone
  • Once your phone boots up, enable WiFi, connect it to your WiFi access point, then turn your phone off
  • Turn your phone back on by holding the home and power buttons until the recovery menu is presented
  • Select ‘Install ZIP from SD card’
  • Select ‘Choose ZIP file’
  • Browse to the Google Apps ZIP file and flash it
  • Press the back button until you get back to the main menu
  • Reboot your phone
  • Once your phone boots up, you’ll be presented with the Google Market installer. Make sure you sign in with your Google account
  • You will be presented with the Google Market showing all the apps Google have published. Hit the back button. You’ll be taken back to the Google Market installer which has a few more things to skip through
  • When the wizard is gone, load up Market and install Root Explorer and S2E
  • Exit the market, and load up Root Explorer
  • Copy 02gio to /system/etc/init.d and change its ownership to root:shell and its permissions to 640
  • Browse to the Google Maps apk you copied to the memory card and install it
  • Reboot your phone
  • Open S2E, hit the menu button, select Preferences, tick Mount EXT4
  • Reboot
  • Open S2E, enable S2E for Applications and the Dalvik cache, hit the menu button, select reboot
  • Congratulations – you have Cyanogenmod with S2E and Google Apps & Google Maps

Sync’ing with Microsoft Office Outlook and Android

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I use Microsoft Office Outlook for my e-mail because it has other tools like a calendar, task list and address book. I do not use Microsoft Exchange but I do use Outlook on a number of computers which all run the same version of Windows 7 Ultimate x64 and Microsoft Office 2010 Premium.

I also have a Samsung Galaxy Gio running Android which is currently the Cyanogenmod firmware. The best method to use contacts by far on this device is “in the cloud” on Google Contacts. The calendar is the same with Google Calendar. And so are notes with Notes in Google Docs.

I previously have had lots of problems sync’ing to Android. I first used Samsung Kies which seemed alright except it had a tendency to duplicate contacts and calendar events continually so that my phone’s memory eventually filled up. Cyanogenmod won’t actually support Samsung Kies, mainly because the USB device function seems to be broken on the Samsung Galaxy Gio port and Cyanogenmod also lacks the Samsung Apps framework.

I found GO Contact Sync Mod after trying several other methods of sync’ing. When run on a PC which uses Outlook, it essentially sync’s your Outlook Calendar & Notes with Google.

Google also have put out Google Calendar Sync which will sync your Outlook to Google Calendar.

So with those two apps, you have a total sync solution that doesn’t fuck out if you run it on two PCs – and it uses the Internet connection so no direct connection between the phone and PC is needed, just the Internet on both devices.

Cyanogenmod for Samsung Galaxy Gio

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cyanogenmodYesterday I began trying Cyanogenmod 7 for Samsung Galaxy Gio RC 3.0.

I was finding that SimpliGio+ had some weirdness where sometimes the mobile network, GPS or WiFi wouldn’t work. The only way to fix it was to restart the device. I also had some troubles with predictive text not working at all. I probably could have fixed these issues but it was a lot of fucking around and I really can’t be bothered.

So far Cyanogenmod seems to be working great and has a good set of features. For a start it is the most used unofficial firmware, and like the DD-WRT unofficial firmware for wireless routers, it supports hundreds of devices and provides a common feature set and user interface between all those devices. Cyanogenmod has even received praise for being better than factory supplied Android firmware. At present the Samsung Galaxy Gio port is not officially supported by Cyanogenmod, but I’m guessing the low price point of the Samsung Galaxy product lines will probably change that.

I didn’t have to install sipdroid as it has native VoIP. I also setup s2e with a 300MB EXT4 partition on the MicroSD card – and now magically my phone has statics of internal memory so I can install really big apps like Angry Birds. It also has OpenVPN bundled so I’ll have to play with that later.

I’ll have to blog more about Cyanogenmod after I tinker with it. I’m still yet to reflash my partners handset with it.

Damaged charge/sync connector on a HP iPAQ 212

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I had a customer bring me a HP iPAQ 212 because it had a damaged charge/sync connector. I had to disassemble it to discover that the charging connector is surface mounted to the mainboard PCB, and therefore impossible to repair, at least short of replacing the entire mainboard.

This video was helpful in the disassembly:

However I did learn that despite the connector having bent pins… as an alternate the device can be charged through the Mini USB port. So I billed my customer for that knowledge and some Mini USB cables.

Alternative firmware for the Noontec A9

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After posting on xda-forums the other day I was pointed to this page. Umax is Noontec’s distributor in the Czech Republic and have published a couple firmwares that Noontec haven’t. They are:

I’m yet to try the 1.2.04 myself, but I will soon and naturally I’ll blog about it.

I have made some small steps in rooting the Noontec… in that realizing root is available by default through the adb shell when connected via USB to a PC.

I also realized that the /system partition on the Noontec firmware is cramfs, and therefore read only, and therefore I cannot modify it even with Super User installed. This seems like an absolutely stupid move by Noontec considering the device’s tech specs mention it has 2GB of NAND memory (so its capable of being in a writeable format) and the advantages of root on Android include things like playback of videos over CIFS network shares (which would be a target market for a “Smart TV Box”).

It seems like I’ll have to work on my own firmware image. I’m just a little fearful of this considering the Noontec also lacks a /recovery partition which makes the recovery menus non-existent.