LaForge's home page (Posts about openmoko)https://laforge.gnumonks.org/blog/categories/openmoko.atom2022-06-21T07:49:54ZHarald WelteNikolaRe-launching openmoko USB Product ID and Ethernet OUI registryhttps://laforge.gnumonks.org/blog/20180609-openmoko-usb_id/2018-06-09T00:00:00+02:002018-06-09T00:00:00+02:00Harald Welte<p>Some time after <a class="reference external" href="http://openmoko.org/">Openmoko</a> went out of business, they
made available their USB Vendor IDs and IEEE OUI (Ethernet MAC address prefix)
available to Open Source Hardware / FOSS projects.</p>
<p>After maintaining that for some years myself, I was unable to find time to continue
the work and I had handed it over some time ago to two volunteers. However, as
things go, those volunteers also stopped to respond to PID / OUI requests, and
we're now launching the third attempt of continuing this service.</p>
<p>As the openmoko.org wiki will soon be moved into an archive of static web pages only,
we're also moving the list of allocated PID and OUIs into a git repository.</p>
<p>Since git.openmoko.org is also about to be decommissioned, the repository is now
at <a class="reference external" href="https://github.com/openmoko/openmoko-usb-oui">https://github.com/openmoko/openmoko-usb-oui</a>, next to all the archived openmoko.org
repository mirrors.</p>
<p>This also means that in addition to sending an e-mail application for getting an allocation
in those ranges, you can now send a pull-request via github.</p>
<p>Thanks to <a class="reference external" href="https://github.com/cuvoodoo">cuvoodoo</a> for volunteering to maintain the
Openmoko USB PID and IEEE OUI allocations from now on!</p>openmoko.org archive down due to datacenter issueshttps://laforge.gnumonks.org/blog/20180525-openmoko_archive_down/2018-05-25T00:00:00+02:002018-05-25T00:00:00+02:00Harald Welte<p>Unfortunately, since about 11:30 am CEST on MAy 24, openmoko.org is down due to some
power outage related issues at <a class="reference external" href="https://www.hetzner.de/">Hetzner</a>, the hosting
company at which openmoko.org has been hosting for more than a decade now.</p>
<p>The problem seems to have caused quite a lot of fall-out tom many
servers (Hetzner is hosting some 200k machines, not sure how many
affected, though), and Hetzner is anything but verbose when it comes to
actually explaining what the issue is.</p>
<p>All they have published is <a class="reference external" href="https://www.hetzner-status.de/en.html#8842">https://www.hetzner-status.de/en.html#8842</a> -
which is rather tight lipped about some power grid issues. But then,
what do you have UPSs for if not for "a strong voltage reduction in the
local power grid"?</p>
<p>The openmoko.org archive machine is running in Hetzner DC10, by the way.
This is where they've had the largest number of tickets.</p>
<p>In any case, we'll have to wait for them to resolve their tickets.
They appear to be working day and night on that.</p>
<p>I have a number of machines hosted at Hetzner, and I'm actually rather
happy that none of the more important systems were affected that long.
Some machines simply lost their uplink connectivity for some minutes,
while some others were rebooted (power outage). The openmoko.org
archive is the only machine that didn't automatically boot after the
outage, maybe the power supply needs replacement.</p>
<p>In any case, I hope the service will be back up again soon.</p>
<p>btw: Guess who's been paying for hosting costs ever since Openmoko, Inc.
has shut down? Yes, yours truly. It was OK for something like 9 years,
but I want to recursively pull the dynamic content through some cache,
which can then be made permanent. The resulting static archive can then
be moved to some VM somewhere, without requiring a dedicated root
server. That should reduce the costs down to almost nothing.</p>Ten years Openmoko Neo1973 release anniversary dinnerhttps://laforge.gnumonks.org/blog/20171009-ten_years_openmoko_neo1973/2017-10-09T00:00:00+02:002017-10-09T00:00:00+02:00Harald Welte<p>As I <a class="reference external" href="http://laforge.gnumonks.org/blog/20170709-10years_openmoko/">noted earlier this year</a>, 2017
marks the tenth anniversary of shipping the first Openmoko phone, the
<a class="reference external" href="http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo_1973_hardware">Neo1973</a>.</p>
<p>On this occasion, a number of the key people managed to gather for an
anniversary dinner in Taipei. Thanks for everyone who could make it, it
was very good to see them together again. Sadly, by far not everyone
could attend. You have been missed!</p>
<p>The award for the most crazy attendee of the meeting goes out to my
friend <a class="reference external" href="https://www.meriac.com/">Milosch</a>, who has actually flown from
his home in the UK to Taiwan, only to meet up with old friends and
attend the anniversary dinner.</p>
<p>You can some pictures in <a class="reference external" href="https://twitter.com/FoolsDelight/status/916723871641780224">Milosch's related tweet</a>.</p>Purism Librem 5 campaignhttps://laforge.gnumonks.org/blog/20170903-purism-librem5/2017-09-03T00:00:00+02:002017-09-03T00:00:00+02:00Harald Welte<p>There's a new project currently undergoing crowd funding that might be
of interest to the former Openmoko community: The <a class="reference external" href="https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/">Purism Librem 5
campaign</a>.</p>
<p>Similar to <a class="reference external" href="http://openmoko.org/">Openmoko</a> a decade ago, they are
aiming to build a FOSS based smartphone built on GNU/Linux without any
proprietary drivers/blobs on the application processor, from
bootloader to userspace.</p>
<p>Furthermore (just like Openmoko) the baseband processor is fully
isolated, with no shared memory and with the Linux-running application
processor being in full control.</p>
<p>They go beyond what we wanted to do at Openmoko in offering hardware
kill switches for camera/phone/baseband/bluetooth. During Openmoko days
we assumed it is sufficient to simply control all those bits from the
trusted Linux domain, but of course once that might be compromised, a
physical kill switch provides a completely different level of security.</p>
<p>I wish them all the best, and hope they can leave a better track record
than Openmoko. Sure, we sold some thousands of phones, but the company
quickly died, and the state of software was far from end-user-ready. I
think the primary obstacles/complexities are verification of the
hardware design as well as the software stack all the way up to the UI.</p>
<p>The budget of ~ 1.5 million seems extremely tight from my point of view,
but then I have no information about how much Puri.sm is able to invest
from other sources outside of the campaign.</p>
<p>If you're a FOSS developer with a strong interest in a Free/Open
privacy-first smartphone, please note that they have several job openings, from
<a class="reference external" href="https://puri.sm/job/kernel-driver-developer/">Kernel Developer</a> to
<a class="reference external" href="https://puri.sm/job/pureos-phone-developer-os/">OS Developer</a>
to <a class="reference external" href="https://puri.sm/job/pureos-phone-developer-ui/">UI Developer</a>.
I'd love to see some talents at work in that area.</p>
<p>It's a bit of a pity that almost all of the actual technical details are
unspecified at this point (except RAM/flash/main-cpu). No details on
the cellular modem/chipset used, no details on the camera, neither on
the bluetooth chipset, wifi chipset, etc. This might be an indication
of the early stage of their plannings. I would have expected that one
has ironed out those questions before looking for funding - but then,
it's their campaign and they can run it as they see it fit!</p>
<p>I for my part have just put in a pledge for one phone. Let's see what
will come of it. In case you feel motivated by this post to join in:
Please keep in mind that any crowdfunding campaign bears significant
financial risks. So please make sure you made up your mind and don't
blame my blog post for luring you into spending money :)</p>GTA04 project halts GTA04A5 due to OMAP3 PoP soldering issueshttps://laforge.gnumonks.org/blog/20170306-gta04-omap3_pop_soldering/2017-03-06T00:00:00+01:002017-03-06T00:00:00+01:00Harald Welte<p>For those of you who don't know what the <a class="reference external" href="http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-main/">tinkerphones/OpenPhoenux GTA04</a> is: It is a
'professional hobbyist' hardware project (with at least public
schematics, even if not open hardware in the sense that editable
schematics and PCB design files are published) creating updated
mainboards that can be used to upgrade Openmoko phones. They fit into
the same enclosure and can use the same display/speaker/microphone.</p>
<p>What the GTA04 guys have been doing for many years is close to a miracle
anyway: Trying to build a modern-day smartphone in low quantities,
using off-the-shelf components available in those low quantities, and
without a large company with its associated financial backing.</p>
<p>Smartphones are complex because they are highly integrated devices. A
seemingly unlimited amount of components is squeezed in the tiniest
form-factors. This leads to complex circuit boards with many layers
that take a lot of effort to design, and are expensive to build in low
quantities. The fine-pitch components mandated by the integration
density is another issue.</p>
<p>Building the original GTA01 (Neo1937) and GTA02 (FreeRunner) devices at
Openmoko, Inc. must seem like a piece of cake compared to what the GTA04
guys are up to. We had a team of engineers that were familiar at last
with feature phone design before, and we had the backing of a consumer
electronics company with all its manufacturing resources and expertise.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, a small group of people around Dr. Nikolaus Schaller has
been pushing the limits of what you can do in a small <em>for fun</em>
project, and the have my utmost respect. Well done!</p>
<p>Unfortunately, there are bad news. Manufacturing of their latest
generation of phones (GTA04A5) <a class="reference external" href="http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail/gta04-owner/2017-February/007259.html">has been stopped due to massive soldering
problems with the TI OMAP3 package-on-package (PoP)</a>.
Those PoPs are basically "RAM chip soldered onto the CPU, and the stack
of both soldered to the PCB". This is used to save PCB footprint and to
avoid having to route tons of extra (sensitive, matched) traces between
the SDRAM and the CPU.</p>
<p>According to the mailing list posts, it seems to be incredibly difficult
to solder the PoP stack due to the way TI has designed the packaging of
the DM3730. If you want more gory details, see
<a class="reference external" href="http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail/gta04-owner/2017-February/007262.html">this post</a>
and <a class="reference external" href="http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail/gta04-owner/2017-February/007271.html">yet another post</a>.</p>
<p>It is very sad to see that what appears to be bad design choices at TI
are going to bring the GTA04 project to a halt. The financial hit by
having only 33% yield is already more than the small community can take,
let alone unused parts that are now in stock or even thinking about
further experiments related to the manufacturability of those chips.</p>
<p>If there's anyone with hands-on manufacturing experience on the DM3730
(or similar) TI PoP reading this: Please reach out to the GTA04 guys and
see if there's anything that can be done to help them.</p>
<dl class="field-list simple">
<dt>UPDATE (March 8, 2017)</dt>
<dd><p>In an earlier post I was asserting that the GTA04 is open hardware
(which I actually believed up to that point) until some readers have
pointed out to me that it isn't. It's sad it isn't, but still it has
my sympathies.</p>
</dd>
</dl>Volunteer for Openmoko.org USB Product ID maintenancehttps://laforge.gnumonks.org/blog/20151206-volunterr-wanted-usb_iids/2015-12-06T00:00:00+01:002015-12-06T00:00:00+01:00Harald Welte<p>Back when Openmoko took the fall, we donated the Openmoko, Inc. USB
Vendor ID to the community and started the registry of free Product ID
allocations at <a class="reference external" href="http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/USB_Product_IDs">http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/USB_Product_IDs</a></p>
<p>Given my many other involvements and constant overload, I've been doing a
poor job at maintaining it, i.e. handling incoming requests.</p>
<p>So I'm looking for somebody who can reliably take care of it, including</p>
<blockquote>
<ul class="simple">
<li><p>reviewing if the project fulfills the criteria (hardware or software
already released under FOSS license)</p></li>
<li><p>entering new allocations to the wiki</p></li>
<li><p>informing applicants of their allocation</p></li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<p>The amount of work is actually not that much (like one mail per week), but
it needs somebody to reliably respond to the requests in a shorter time
frame than I can currently do.</p>
<p>Please let me know if you'd like to volunteer.</p>