Akademy 2008 KDE contributors conference part is over and i had there presentation "Qt on maemo" with Antonio Aloisio you can download pdf from maemo_qt.pdf If you like to see presentation as video, look here

There was also many other very interesting presentatios. Some of my favourities was QtWebkit by Simon Hausmann, How Graphics View Works by Andreas Aardal Hanssen andGallium3D - Graphics Done Right. It as also nice to see that porting Qt/KDE applications to maemo is going with good speed. Antonio has Arora webkit based browser running with maemo Qt port, the KDE Plasma has been running in maemo a while.

The embedded and mobile conference day is coming tomorrow, Tuesday I am starting at 9.00 with presentation Developing applications for the Maemo platform. In this presentation I will be handling how to develop Qt applications for maemo platform. After my presentation we are starting to give developer devices to the lucky ones succeeded to become eligible to get one.

In my previous blog entry I told that in addition to the first 100 that register to this maemo presentation will get free device, we have devices to be given out for good and interesting open source projects. The KDE board will decide who will get a devices. I have tried to pass requests that I have got via email to the KDE board. If someone still likes to get a device tomorrow but the name is not in anybody's list, please contact directly the KDE board to apply for a device.

Akademy 2008 KDE contributors conference part is over and i had there presentation "Qt on maemo" with Antonio Aloisio you can download pdf from maemo_qt.pdf If you like to see presentation as video, look here

There was also many other very interesting presentatios. Some of my favourities was QtWebkit by Simon Hausmann, How Graphics View Works by Andreas Aardal Hanssen andGallium3D - Graphics Done Right. It as also nice to see that porting Qt/KDE applications to maemo is going with good speed. Antonio has Arora webkit based browser running with maemo Qt port, the KDE Plasma has been running in maemo a while.

The embedded and mobile conference day is coming tomorrow, Tuesday I am starting at 9.00 with presentation Developing applications for the Maemo platform. In this presentation I will be handling how to develop Qt applications for maemo platform. After my presentation we are starting to give developer devices to the lucky ones succeeded to become eligible to get one.

In my previous blog entry I told that in addition to the first 100 that register to this maemo presentation will get free device, we have devices to be given out for good and interesting open source projects. The KDE board will decide who will get a devices. I have tried to pass requests that I have got via email to the KDE board. If someone still likes to get a device tomorrow but the name is not in anybody's list, please contact directly the KDE board to apply for a device.

As you may be aware already, the first 100 developers that register to "Developing for Maemo - Talk and Workshops" will be given free Nokia N810 Internet tablet from Nokia.

If you miss the registration and don't fit to the first 100, no problem, we have reserved lots of devices for selected projects. If you have a good project, please describe your project and apply for device from the KDE board or Nokia representatives.

And there is lots of interesting Maemo and Nokia content in Akademy, for example:

Saturday:

13:45 - 14:30 Keynote
Deepening KDE and Qt collaboration
Sebastian Nyström (Nokia)

15:00 - 15:30 Qt on Maemo
Kate Alhola (Nokia), Antonio Aloiso (Nokia)

Tuesday:

 09:00 - 10:00 Developing applications for the maemo platform

Kate Alhola (Nokia), Antonio Aloiso (Nokia)

We also have a meeting place and Maemo open lab and we have technical people from Nokia present. Please come to talk with us.

So, there are lots of good reasons to attend Akademy 2008. See you there!

Nokia will have strong participation in aKademy 2008. Nokia is the platinum sponsor for the event. We have had a strong particiarion in GTK/Gnome community and now we would like to create similar position in Qt/KDE Open Source community and catalyst many Opeopen Source Qt projects for our Internet tablets. There will be multiple maemo related presentations. Kate Alhola and Antonio Aloiso will have a presentation "Adapting Qt for maemo hildon". We try arrange also other presentations like how to develop Qt applications to devices running maemo and how to design mobile UI to Qt/KDE applications, maemo devroom/workshop etc. If you have good ideas or have already made Qt applications for internet tablets, please let us know.

The aKademy will be also a launch event for maemo/hildon Qt port. The port is developed in open source fashion. You can download current snapshot from qt4 maemo garage page.

The Akademy will be a good place to meet maemo/Qt/KDE developers and to start developing your application for internet tablets.

Nokia will be also hiring Qt specialists, please look http://www.nokia.com/imaginemaemo or contact Jakub Pavelek or Carlos Guerreiro to addresses which are in format forename.surnane@nokia.com.

FreeDroidz

It is one month since LinuxTag but i like to share some cool favourities from there. The LinuxTag was great showplace for many open source projects. In Tarent booth there was demo for Freedroidz project . The Freedroidz are Lego Mindstorm based robots that can be controlled with Nokia Internet tablet with Jalimo Java package. It shows how tablets can find many new innovative areas of use. It looks like tohaving lot of interesting fun to give for both adults and children. 

LinuxMCE

Other interesting application running in maemo internet tablet was LinuxMCE . You can find client for maemo from pluto-nokia pages from garage  The combines control of the media, home automation and even ip telephony together. You can use your tablet to be general remote control device to control  our Home Theatre, lights, heating or even watch security camera. If you like make very cool StarTrek style house, you can attach some tablets as wall control units in to the rooms. That's not at all so insane idea if you compare prices of tablets to the many home automation systems. I will tell more when i got my system running.

BeagleBoard

The Beagleboard  is another cool device. It is small TI Omap3 based board, running full Linux and using just milli wats to couple of wats power. That's magnitudes less than any PC uses. The Beagleboard CPU belongs in same TI Omap family than our Internet Tablet CPU  so you should be able to use maemo SDK with it. I even saw picture that someone already hacked hildon desktop running on it. I have not yet been able to try but hopefully soon. It is easy to find lot of applications to this small energy efficient embedded board.

Maemo with QEMU

If you like to run all maemo, not only user mode applications unde QEMU, there is good instruntions Marcin Juszkiewicz blog

In LinuxTag Nokia released some new facts about future of maemo.
After the soon to be released Diablo release we are going to have releases
with codenames Fremantle and Harmattan. You can find full release in 
Quim Gil's slide set .

The this presentaion gives lot of answers for the hottest maemo
question, Qt or GTK .  The Fremantle will still be GTK+ based release
and Harmattan will give Qt support. The all important but invisible
maemo framework technologies like Dbus, Gstreamer, Telepathy, X11,
Bluez  or debian packing will remain there.

Even though Qt support is coming in Harmattan release, it does mean that
maemo developers should wait so long until able to develop
Qt applications for Nokia tablets. There is already garage.maemo.org
project Qt4 for maemo that runs in current Chinook
release. The current release lacks some important maemo integration
features like maemo input method or maemo menus support but I think
that we will see them there soon. Nokia will support this community
efford to bringing Qt as soon as possible to maemo developers.
 

I will be participating Open Source in Mobile USA conference in San Francisco.

If you are maemo developer or like to to be one, just come and chat with us. If you have any technical  issues in your mind or you like to talk how Forum Nokia can help you developing maemo applications come and talk with me.

If you like chat with Quim Gill from Nokia internet tablet product management, he will be there also.

We have reserved meeting room called "Lombard" for Wednesday 12th and we have also some small snack there. 

Nokia Internet tablets are volume produced, low power consumption devices that are designed to be enough rugged that they can last as mobile devices. Even they are designed to be used as Internet communication devices, thay are also excellent for controlling embedded devices.

This is my presentation in Fosdem 2008,Brussels  about Controlling embedded devices aith maemo Internet Tablet Fosdem_maemo_2008.pdf

Internet tablets have many advantages like price, rugged design and small power consumption compared to both PC-based or special embedded hardware based designs. They have also new challanges because they does not have so wide selection of interface options. 

Some examples of embedded controll projects using Internet tablet is Small aircraft Glass cockpit, Home Automation, Accelleration sensor interface, maemo puppy robot or Carman car data terminal. 

In N800/N810 you have basically three interface options Wlan, Bluetooth and USB. All of these optios require with some rare exeptions separate embedded processor or microcontroller to controll I/O box.

Wlan is fast and versatile but requires in practice multichip embedded controller running Linux.  Good example  is to (mis)use  Wlan routers with  Openwrt

In small series Bluettoth and microcontroller module may be more costly than wlan router.  

The USB is most practical way to expand tablet I/O capabilities. Microcontrollers with USB-device interface price start from some tens of cents to few Euros. USB-device needs something around hundred lines of the code in the microcontroller.

Two easiest ways to connect USB microcontroller to Internet tablet is to use libusb or make device emulationg USB serial converter. In N8xx musb driver has certain limitations that may need some workarounds. 

Kate Alhola and Teemu Sorvisto from Forum Nokia, Nokia professional developers organization will be in Fosdem . If you have questions, ideas or proposals memo application developing, please come and talk to us.

I have in presentation " Controlling embedded devices with the Maemo internet tablet" in Sunday morning 10.00 in embedded in Embedded developer room AW1.126 .