The Task Manager app from the Android Market, is great for this, but what didn’t have, until a few days ago, was something to help me monitor the state of the battery at a glance.

BatteryLife from www.curvefish.com – and available in the Android Market, is the answer to this problem. it gives you a widget for your screen that shows the remaining batter life as a percentage, and when charging, will show how thats going too.

Using these two apps, I’ve been able to go longer between charges, the battery life of the Samsung Galaxy Portal I’m using, will never be close to that of the Nokia E63 that I’ve been used to, but the features of the Android system are worth more frequent visits to the mains socket!

My New Android Phone

My new mobile phone is a Samsung Galaxy Portal.  I chose the Galaxy Portal because at the time, it was the cheapest Android phone I could get on contract with three – It was possible to get the phone for just a few pounds more than I was already paying.

Since then, there is now a cheaper Android phone from ZTE I could have had that without any increase, so I’m interested to see how it compares to my Galaxy.

I’m happy with the Samsung, even though its costing me a little more.  One of the first things I tried with it was the Skype Client.  I Use Skype quite a lot, and on three, the free Skype calls appear to be routed through their voice network – incoming calls appear as a regular call – but even so, on the Nokia E63 I was using, skype calls didn’t quite have the same quality as regular mobile calls or pc based skype calls.  On the Galaxy, the skype calls have much better quality audio.

The Next thing I noticed (possibly because I was doing so much Skype Calling was that battery life on the Galaxy is much shorter than on the Nokia – but I have been used to the  E63′s long battery life.

Searching around, I read that leaving programs running can draw more from the battery, I’m guessing that the processor is slowed down by the Android system when its not needed.  What I couldn’t find in the Android software, was a way of seeing what was actually still running.

To the rescue came ‘Task Manager’ from Rhythm Software, it can be installed free (add supported) using Google Market.

Task Manager will Show you all of the apps and running in your phone and let you shut them off all at once – you can mark apps you want to keep running, and these wont be listed next time you use Task Manager.

Another App I picked up from Google Market is ‘IM+ Lite’ its Instant Messaging Software, but importantly for me, it will talk to any Jabber/XMPP chat server, as well as Google, Live, Yahoo etc.. Using it, I can send commands to my Router-Hardware controller that uses a php chat client to listen for commands – more on that here.

After being used to having the qwerty keyboard on the Nokia E63, it takes me a bit of getting used to the touch screen on the Galaxy Portal.  My fingers seem to be the wrong shape and size

In the Android system however, you are not stuck with the keyboard software that comes with the phone.  I tried several different keyboard apps from the market before finding ThickButtons.  ThickButtons  cleverly watches as you type and after each key, makes the buttons it thinks you might be going to use next bigger!  This works very well – for me, so far, and I’m pleased, because before I found it, I was starting to  wonder just how long I would go before having to get a Android Phone with a ‘propper’ keyboard.

Even if your fingers are the right shape and size,  you might want to check out the ThickButtons app to see if it increases your typing rate.

Both the hardware I’m using and the Internet Services available.

When I first looked at using the sweex router for hardware control, access to the router from the Internet meant opening a port on your router, and running a web server.

But today, it is possible to use a chat server somewhere on the Internet to make the link between you and your devices – or your devices and each other!

There is also Openfire a Java Chat / Jabber server that will run on just about any server you can install a Java SDK on.  Run this at one site (opening the necessary firewall ports), and you can have two way communication with hardware at any other net connected site.

As Soon as I get the time, I’ll be writing up how to flash the router from scratch with stock openwrt midge  and control its i/o ports using a Jabber / Chat client on an Android Phone.

After upgrading the RAM to 512Mb, I tried to get several versions of linux – including the latest Ubuntu – to install, each time, the X server failed to run and once booted, the Imac refused to access the built in cdrom leaving me to continue the install from an external usb drive.

Then I tried a debian iso from http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/4.0_r5/powerpc/iso-cd/, I used :- http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/4.0_r5/powerpc/iso-cd/debian-40r5-powerpc-xfce-CD-1.iso

Hopefully, the xfce environment will suit the lower power of the old G3 platform.

As the installer ran, it recognised and continued to use the internal cdrom – it also saw the firewire as a possible network – full marks!!

Since then, I’ve mostly been using it as a spare terminal to access the openvz server – with both ssh and vnc clients.  its quite up to the task although in terms of speed, even the eeepc beats it!

I also have the pulseaudio package on it – allowing it to become the sound output for any linux system – virtual or physical – that also runs the pulse audio system.

Its happy to play mp3 files stored locally on its hard drive using Rhythmbox.

It boots quite quickly, so I keep it to one side of the desk for those times when I need an extra terminal.

The I2C Remote Control refused to work.  Reading the analog pin on the PIC 16F876a seemed to work a couple of times after startup but failed after that.  It looked like the power to the 5v rail was still too low.

As I had allowed myself a slightly longer cable, it seemed reasonable that a combination of this and 78L05 were causing the problems.

I ditched both the 78L05s and wired in a 5v 2A PlugPack adaptor that used to run a Wifi Bridge – plenty of power!

Still the 16F876a processor refused to talk consistently to the I2C.  I checked that the bus was indeed working by plugging in the little i2c eeprom module I tested the original I/O bus with.  That worked no problems.

Looking at the I2C details on the www.sunspot.co.uk site and others, I wondered if the I2C pull ups were anything to do with the problem.  I was using 4k7 and I saw others using values as low as 2k2.

Substituting a pair of 2k2 resistors solved the problem, however, the 5v line dropped below the 5v mark.  Increasing them to 3k2 brought the 5v rail back to just under 5v and the PIC continued to talk to the I2C bus.

Lesson:  be prepared to tinker with the I2C pullups etc. when using different line lengths and slave devices.

When I tried to open the case, I found that the wires to the Scart Plug had melted themselves into the plastic base of the router!

Router Case After the Wires 'Moulded' Themselves to it.

I thought ‘perhaps I had drawn too much power through the wires’, but the marks at the top of the picture are from the wires to the LEDs.

I guess the problem is a result of a chemical reaction between the soft plastic of the base and the rubbery style insulation used on the black wires from the ‘cheap’ scart splitter.

I notice that the scart to scart leads with coloured wires inside seem to be made with a different insulating material.  I’ll have to re-wire, (using one of these) as when I pulled the wires from the base, several of them left a good portion of insulation behind.

The following program requires an update to the PIC I2C Slave software to set PORT B to output and the Remote Control On/Off lines connected to PORTB 0 and 1.  A 0v Line is also required between the two.  I continue to run the Mains Remote Control unit with its own 12v Battery although, the 12v supply to the router could also be used.

The following Blassic (Basic) program sets up the Router I2C software to talk to the PIC and then inputs “On or Off” from the console.  If the Response is On, PORT B0 is set high for a few seconds.  If it is ‘Off’, PORT B1 is used.

Here is the Program Listing

     10 REM Remote.bas
     11 REM Test The Mains Remote Control Via I2C
     12 REM Input On or Off then Switch the Plug On or Off
     14 REM Needs Update to PIC I2C software to Set Port B as Output
     20 REM
     30 REM I2C Control
     40 I2CAddress=34
     50 I2CData=35
     60 PIC16F876=46 : REM Address of Our Chip
     70 REM Commands
     75 PortB=1
     80 AnalogRead = 4
     90 PortA1Invert = 5 : REM Invert A1
    100 REM Begin
    105 INPUT "On or Off ",a$
    106 IF a$ = "On" THEN OnOff = 1
    107 IF a$ = "Off" THEN OnOff = 2
    110 POKE I2CAddress,PIC16F876 : REM Address the chip
    200 POKE I2CData,PortB : REM we are sending port be some data
    210 POKE I2CData,0 : REM ensure PortB All off
    220 POKE I2CData,PortB
    225 POKE I2CData,OnOff : REM Bit 0 = A1On, Bit 1 = A1Off
    230 GOSUB 800 : REM Delay long enough for the Remote Xmit
    240 POKE I2CData,PortB
    250 POKE I2CData,0 : REM and Stop Pressing Remote Buttons
    300 END
    800 FOR x=0 TO 4000: NEXT : RETURN
Ok

Update:
I was setting PORT B to 03 to turn off the power switch, ( B0 and B1 both HIGH) in error, the above code now only sets PORT B1 HIGH.

I also was getting random result trying to use a Blassic program to control the PIC 16F876a/Mains Remote from inside a shell script. That turned out to be a power problem, I’m only using a low power regulator for the 5v rail. This supplies both the USB Memory Stick, an LCD Display and the PIC Processor. When the USB Memory Stick is accessed, the power dips enough to reset the PIC Processor.

As the LCD Display was not needed for the Power Remote Control, I simply unplugged the display from the bus and the reduced power load allowed the rest of the systems to function.

I will now add a second 78L05 to the router and use that to power the bus.

As explained in an earlier post, rather than mess with the EeePC setup, I  ‘mount -bind’ the /dev and /proc folders of a linux root system sitting in an external drive ( a portable hard drive being faster by a mile than a usb memory stick).

This allows me to take several systems with me when working away (or simply on holiday).  I have a copy of the ‘general desktop’ I use day to day, the php & mysql system I tinker with and an OpenWrt buildroot system for the router.  These all live in folders under the /vz folder of the hard drive.

I have tinkered with the system for a while now and it is quite a simple matter to press “Ctrl-Alt-T” on the EeePC to get a terminal, “sudo su -” to get to the root shell, I don’t even have to type the “mount –bind” or “choot” commands in, a couple of presses on the up arrow and they are there in the command history.

At home, the system works fine, I turn off the wireless, run the gsm script and access the web.  With the 3G locally, I get between fast ISDN and early (512k) broadband speeds – not always good enough for Skype, but for general web browsing, emails and updating a blog, good enough.

However, last week, when we got to our destination (North Devon), I found that the phone only had a gsm connection – that starts at 9.6k.  Downloading voicemail messages emailed from the office took about 5 min per minute of message!  I got to keep up with the emails, but not much else.

The problem that stopped me dead in my tracks however, was that some websites (the bank, google adsense etc.)would refuse to completely load.  All of the sites that failed were https sites.  I keep shortcuts and login details stored within the “general desktop” system.  These sites seemed to be loading up to the part of the page where the login details would show.

The slow connection had me thinking that the browser must be giving up before the page was delivered, or perhaps it was something to do with the gsm modem service.

When I got back, I set the system back up and tried both the wifi/broadband link and the 3g modem connection.  Sure enough, when accessing the sites through the 3g phone, the same secure passworded pages failed.  Accessing those same sites via the Wifi/Broadband everything was fine.  Being back at the office, and with a faster connection, and copies on hand, I was able to try a few things out.

Re-naming the .mozilla folder caused the browser to ‘forget everything’ and I could once again access the sites.  Swapping back to the regular .mozilla folder, I dug a little deeper.

Deleting temp files made no difference (I had tried that whilst away), deleting the mozilla cookie files revealed them to be the problem!  Now some of the sites I need store part of the account details within cookies, so I guess I’ll have to make a few notes before setting off next time, as it seems that some site/cookies hold info about the connection you logged in with.

So, if you have any trouble accessing a passworded site and you are plumbed in to a different connection, try deleting or renaming the cookie files within the .mozilla/firefox folder.

With access to some sites, impossible and others slow, I was not able to do to much with the EeePC/Hard Drive combo this trip.  The system however, as a means of keeping several working environments accessable from the EeePC (or any other linux laptop) is – in my book – a winner!  The Hard drive (or memory stick if you favour battery operation over speed) can be carried away from the laptop, if that gets lost, none of your work or passwords are on the internal drive.

Usually, a VPS (Virtual Private Server) is offered by web hosting companies to their customers as an alternative to virtual hosting (where they can upload web pages and applications, but not configure the server software) and Dedicated Hosting (Where they get – and pay for – an entire server that they can specify and manage themselves).  Like Virtual Machines on a Workstation, a VPS on a server allows the hosting supplier to slice up one big server into many smaller servers, each with their own operating system, RAM and Hard Disk space.

Now, on one of these hosted VPS machines, you get enough resources to run a few web services accross one or more domains – depending on your budget.  The operating systems are pre-installed with the minimum software required, its up to you to add more – but its best to stick with the minimum you need for reasons of performance and security.

Move that same VPS system onto your own server connected to your workstation with a 100Mb network behind a properly setup router/fire wall and things are very different.

You can slice up your server however you need, I’m using a recent single core machine with 3 Gb RAM and a couple of 80 Gb SATA Hard Drives raided together.  At the moment, a 110Gb Drive is also sitting on the IDE connector.  It currently has seven containers running, the smallest has 900Mb ram and 6Gb of Hard Drive Space and is a bit of an overkill running DNS to the rest of the network as it does.

The Largest has 3Gb RAM, 26Gb of Main Hard Disk and exclusive access to the 110Gb IDE drive.  This is my ‘Desktop’ system.  It runs VNCServer, creating a virtual desktop that I can log into from wherever I happen to be sitting, an Ubuntu 8 Server operating system with the addition of XFCE desktop (compiled from source rather than the Ubuntu packages), Firefox web browsing, Gftp, Thunderbird for email, Open Office for general documents, PDF Viewer etc.  Also running in this container is Samba, so that I can share any files with the windows machines I now use to access the system.

In order to run server software like Samba, that requires a little more access to the networ card than usual, the OpenVZ vethN device is used, this requires that a script is run on the server after the container has started.  As I don’t often need to restart the server or the desktop container very often, I run this from a SSH login.

Regular server software such as Apache, sshd and even VNC Server are quite happy with the regular ‘venetX’ devices that start whenever a container is started.

The VPS Software running all this is OpenVZ.  It has command line tools for creating and modifying  ’containers’ and there are several templates for various distributions of linux, or you can create your own.

On top of this, there is a great browser based tool for managing the server, VTONF is GPL software from a hosting company called Bobcares.  It allows you to completely run the VPS Server using a browser, creating, starting, stopping and modifying containers at the click of a button.

So, How is this any better than a Virtual Machine running on a server?

Well, as the only software running as some version or other of Linux, OpenVZ is able to keep all of the container file spaces under a single directory “/vz” on the main system.  To inspect or retrieve some files, from a container, you just need to navigate to the relevant directory under “/vz”.

If a container is going to need more space that you planned for, VTONF (or a shell command) will allow you to increase it.  Ditto for memory.

Unlike a VPS up at a web host, your VPS Server can be asked to map any physical device ( in the ‘/dev’ directory) can be mapped to a container.

I recently found another advantage.  As the file system inside an OpenVZ container is simply a complete linux system root, should you need to use it on another linux system, it can be copied to a drive or memory stick and then, it is just a matter of ‘mount -bind’ing then ‘/dev’ and ‘/proc’ directories before chrooting into the container root.

I did this with an EeePC and the Container I use to do a bit of PHP developement.  A couple of changes in the container’s ‘/etc’ folder – to deal with the different network settings – and I was able to start the container’s apache webserver and log into the content management system using the EeePC web browser pointed at “http://localhost” .