Build your own UBUNTU from scratch • Install Oracle JDK Version 8
Year One Issue #4 Apr 2014
ODROIDMagazine DO IT YOURSELF EDITION
Off-Roading with an ODROID Truck PC GET STEP BY STEP TUTORIALS ON HOW TO CREATE: A MINECRAFT A HEAVY DUTY SERVER TABLET CUSTOM ANDROID BUILD What we stand for.
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Simple, modern and distinctive. So you can have the best to accomplish everything you can dream of. EDITORIAL
inaro 12.11, which is reaching its end of life this month, was the last version of Ubuntu to offer the Unity 2D desktop environ- Lment, which is popular with both beginners and experts be- cause of its friendly icons, unique desktop customization options, and easy-to-use interface. However, its predecessor and close relative, Linaro 12.04, is still alive and well, and comes with Unity 2D. 12.04 is the most recent Long Term Service (LTS) release, and will be supported for 3 more years, until April 2017. If you’re looking for an extremely stable version of Ubuntu, Linaro 12.04 is your best bet. However, the 12.04 version of Ubuntu isn’t available as a pre-built from Hardkernel. Why? Because, as the ODROID box says, you can Do It Your- self! The ODROID family of computers are primarily intended for developers, who love to build everything from scratch for two reasons: 1) they usually get paid by the hour, and 2) they spend days constructing long, intensive build scripts that take hours to finish, so that they can go make sand- wiches and drink coffee while they wait for the build to be done! This month, Mauro shows us how to build a custom Ubuntu image from scratch, so you can amaze your friends at your next party, and show that you are a true Linux hacker, worthy of their adoration and free jelly donuts. We also are very proud to present an emerging trend in the automobile world: a fully functional computer installed in your car’s dashboard! Known as Car PCs, several large computer companies have recently contracted with major car manu- facturers to include their hardware as high-priced options in certain high end mod- els. But who says that Car PCs have to be expensive? Our feature article, the Truck PC, is a guide to building your own onboard computer, as an affordable alternative to supergluing an iPad to your dashboard. Requiring less than 5W of power, the ODROID CarPC and its battery can be charged straight from your electrical system, or by using a small solar panel mounted on the roof. The future of truly mobile computing is here today, and ODROID line of micro-computers are once again proven to be ahead of their time.
ODROID Magazine, published monthly at http://magazine.odroid.com, is your source for all things ODROIDian. Hard Kernel, Ltd. • 704 Anyang K-Center, Gwanyang, Dongan, Anyang, Gyeonggi, South Korea, 431-815 Makers of the ODROID family of quad-core development boards and the world’s first ARM big.LITTLE architecture based single board computer. Join the ODROID community with members from over 135 countries, at http://forum.odroid.com, and explore the new technologies offered by Hardkernel at http://www.hardkernel.com.
ODROID MAGAZINE 3 STAFF
ODROIDMagazine
Rob Roy, sole. erating systems. Chief Editor Bo Bruno Doi- Lechnowsky, che, Art Edi- I am a computer Editor tor programmer liv- ing and working in I am President of Re- Went a little crazier Silicon Valley, CA, USA, spectech, Inc., a technol- than usual while studing designing and building websites such ogy consultancy in Ukiah, CA, USA again how a color blind person sees, and as Vevo, Hi5, Dolby Laboratories that I founded in 2001. From my missed having a colorblind coworker as and Hyundai. My primary languages background in electronics and com- when he worked on EGM Brazil in his are jQuery, Angular JS and HTML5/ puter programming, I manage a team old gaming magazine editing days. CSS3. I also develop pre-built operat- of technologists, plus develop custom ing systems, custom kernels and opti- solutions for companies ranging from mized applications for the ODROID small businesses to worldwide corpora- platform based on Hardkernel’s offi- tions. ODROIDs are one of the weap- cial releases, for which I have won sev- ons in my arsenal for tackling these eral Monthly Forum Awards. I own a projects. My favorite development lot of ODROIDs, which I use for a languages are Rebol and Red, both of variety of purposes, including media which run fabulously on ARM-based center, web server, application devel- systems like the ODROID-U2. I have opment workstation, and gaming con- deep experience with many unique op-
News from Art Editor Bruno: umns, and my art editing teacher would You will notice a few changes in this remind me to keep the layout consistent. issue. The first is that we are now using However, the articles will be much more a color-coded system at the top of each comprehensive for you to follow the article to show the level of technical de- code, which is the main point!. tail. This expands our color palette, and From now on, we are going to leave some as a bonus, we are mixing our content and space at the end of the technical articles, so including shorter articles on subjects such that any future revisions will have room to as Linux Tips and Android Gaming. grow. Once an article is published, we do a We are also changing the format of some lot of tweaking based on user feedback, and of the more technical articles, by including if the technical articles are too tight, the ad- text in two columns when necessary. ditions can be difficult to adjust. Why? well it was a bum- Finally, we now have a Table of -mer when we need- Contents, which you can see on the -ed to type a longer str- next page! Cool, huh? Now you won’t -ing of code and it was cut. be caught in my little in-jokes like on This means that, in some cases, we the last edition, not that I won’t try to are changing the style from three col- put some humor here and there!
ODROID MAGAZINE 4 INDEX BUILD ANDROID ON ODROID U3 -6
TURN YOUR ODROID TO AN ITUNES AIRPORT AUDIO STATION - 8
PORTABLE IMAGE BACKUP - 9
RENAME YOUR FILES 10
PARANOID FILE EDITING - 10
BUILD YOUR OWN UBUNTU FROM SCRATCH -11
INSTALL THE ORACLE JDK VERSION 8 - 14
USING ODROIDS IN HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING - 16
VECTOR - PARKOUR PACKED ACTION - 17
HOW TO SETUP A MINECRAFT SERVER - 18
DOWNLOAD YOUTUBE VIDEOS TO WATCH OFFLINE - 20
LEARN REBOL - 22
BE HEARD WITH ÜBERCASTER - 27
ODROID U3 I2C COMMUNICATION - 29
HEAVY-DUTY PORTABLE LINUX TABLET - 32
HOW I BUILT A TRUCK PC - 34
MEET AN ODROIDIAN - 38
ODROID MAGAZINE 5 TECHNICAL ARTICLE BUILD ANDROID ON ODROID-U3 FROM SCRATCH TO SMASH, TAKE TOTAL CONTROL OF YOUR ANDROID SYSTEM by Nanik Tolaram and Fabien Robert
n this tutorial, I will discuss how to build the Android operating system Ifor the ODROID-U3 from source, including the kernel. The Android build system is robust, but also a bit complicated if you haven’t used it be- fore. There are steps that need to be done properly in order to have a work- able and repeatable build system. By the end of this article, you will hope- fully have sufficient knowledge and un- derstanding of how it all works. a good 25-35 minutes waiting time for the Download Source Build Hardware build to complete, and this can be very The Android source code for ver- and Environment time-consuming if you have to constantly sion 4.1.2 (JellyBean) that I used in this I won’t go into details in terms of work with Android on a daily basis. Make article can be downloaded from droid. setting up your build server for building sure to have as much free disk space as com website at http://dn.odroid. Android since Google’s own Android possible, with the minimum requirement com/4412/Android/4.1.2_Jan- around 100GB. There is another trick to . There are a couple page has lots of information at http:// 15-2014/BSP/ speed up the building process and this is files that you need to download from source.android.com/source/ the use of ccache project. In the next that link, as shown in below: initializing.html. If you are hav- ing problems installing JDK 6, follow the section I will outlined on how to use it. Download the 2 files android.tgz If your hardware is not as powerful and kernel.tgz, and extract them to a steps in this link: http://askubuntu. as i5 or i7 and you are using a normal directory in your local drive. Put the com/questions/67909/how-do-i- hard drive than make sure you have your install-oracle-jdk-6. coffee ready ! Building the Android source code is Android and Kernel source code a big task and requires a powerful ma- chine. To give you an idea, my computer has the following specification:
32GB RAM i5 Intel Processor 2 x 256GB SSD Drive
Android build systems do a lot of writing and reading, and this in turns requires constant I/O operations. Even with an SSD drive, you still have to spend
ODROID MAGAZINE 6 TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Kernel directory inside Android ./odroid-u-patch/fix-build- odroid-u3.patch:173: trail- kernel files inside the kernel/ directory ing whitespace. under the Android root directory as ccache = shown above. warning: 2 lines add The cache directory and its subdirectories, numbered in Hex from 0 to F The main reason to place the kernel whitespace errors. inside the Android directory is to facili- tate the creation of the build script, since One additional file required for the source build/envsetup.sh the build system revolves around files in- build process is Makefile, which should lunch odroidu-eng side the main Android source directory. be copied to the kernel/drivers/media/ export USE_CCACHE=1 I created a set of patch files for this video/samsung/tvout directory. export CCACHE_DIR=\ article on GitHub at https://github.
git apply ./odroid-u-patch/
ODROID MAGAZINE 7 TIPS AND TRICKS TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Console SHAIRPORT output of TURN YOUR ODROID TO envsetup.sh AN ITUNES AIRPORT AUDIO STATION Run lunch and you wil be shown se- what you should be seeing when you get lection as shown below. Select the 7th successful compilation. by Bruno Doiche option. Image files ot an old stereo with amazing After the build is completed, the re- speakers in need of a little mp3 action? Plug a regular Stereo sulting binaries and image files (.img) are G found inside the directory out/tar- Male to 2-RCA from your odroid to the AUX ports on the Stereo and do get/product/odroidu/ . the following on your Linux terminal:
sudo apt-get install\ avahi-utils libmodule-build-perl\ libio-socket-inet6-perl libao-dev\ libssl-dev libcrypt-openssl-rsa-perl\ You shouldn’t need to think that 7 is a libwww-perl pkg-config number to pick just to get lucky, it is in git clone https://github.com/ fact the correct option here. njh/perl-net-sdp.git perl-net-sdp There are several different .img cd perl-net-sdp/ files that you will need for your perl Build.PL Inform ccache of the directory that ODROID-U: sudo ./Build it will use to cache the compiled file, and sudo ./Build test also an environment variable to inform sudo ./Build install boot.img • this file is the main cd .. the build process that we want to use bootloader image that contains the git clone https://github.com/ ccache. u-boot, kernel and ramdisk files hendrikw82/shairport.git cd shairport make export USE_CCACHE=1 recovery.img • this file is used ./shairport.pl -a name export CCACHE_DIR=
Android has Goonix, what a cute hostname for a been built machine… But wait!? Isn’t that the same successfully! computer used to do the PS3 media server Good job! in the last issue? Such versatility!
ODROID MAGAZINE 8 PORTABLE IMAGE BACKUP PORTABLE IMAGE BACKUP CREATING A RECOVERY FILE FOR YOUR FAVORITE OPERATING SYSTEM by Rob Roy, Chief Editor
nce you’ve got your ODROID set up the way that you like, it’s Oimportant to make sure that you can restore your system quickly and eas- ily. If you enjoy experimenting with Li- nux or Android, need to install your OS on several ODROIDs, or want to keep Good backup habits will a backup in case of disk failure, you can keep you safe from bad luck, do so by making an image of your SD evil pets, and especially card or eMMC module. An image file is your own hubris an exact bit-for-bit copy of the original disk, complete with bootloader, kernel, USB drive in the dropdown, choose the root file system, and user files. image file destination using the folder xz -z mybackup.img To begin, power down the ODROID button, and press “Read”. and remove the eMMC or SD card that Depending on the size of your SD This step will also take some time you’d like to backup. Using another Li- card or eMMC module, the backup pro- to complete. After the compression is nux host computer with an SD card to cess may take anywhere from 15 - 60 done, a file called mybackup.img.xz will USB adapter, plug the SD card or eMMC minutes. The resulting .img file will replace the original .img file. This can adapter into the USB port. If using end up being the exact size of the disk shrink the file up to 80%, depending on an eMMC module, attach the SD card that was copied, so make sure to have the amount of data stored on the origi- adapter that came with your ODROID enough disk space available first. Note nal operating system. Make backups of before inserting it into the SD card slot. that the image backup should be done your backup by storing several copies on Depending on which operating system on an NTFS partition, since DiskImager different disks, in order to ensure that your host is running, the procedure for will be unable to write a file larger than you won’t lose your valuable data. backing up your disk to an image file will 4GB to a FAT32 disk. When it’s time to recover the backup be somewhat different. After the image has completed, we image by writing it back to an SD card can make it more portable by com- or eMMC module, use the xz command Windows pressing the file using the xz utility, again to decompress the backup file: Hardkernel which has the advantage of very high publishes an im- compression ratios. If xzip is not al- xz -dk mybackup.img.xz proved version of ready installed, download and unzip the Win32 DiskImager prebuilt Windows binaries at http:// This will recreate the original .img that automatically tukaani.org/xz/, then copy the ap- file by reversing the compression algo- fills the disk with propriate version of xz.exe to the same rithm. Note that the -k option preserves Ugh.. Windows zeroes before writing directory as your backup file. Type the the original .img.xz file, so that it may be the image. It’s available for free down- following command into a Windows reused later to do another recovery. load at http://bit.ly/1lYQ7MF, command prompt, after navigating to Finally, go back to Win32DiskIm- and is very easy to use. Simply select the the correct directory: ager and select the destination disk for
ODROID MAGAZINE 9 TIPS AND TRICKS PORTABLE IMAGE BACKUP
writing the image from the dropdown, RENAME choose the .img file with the file ex- sudo dd of=/dev/sdX bs=1M YOUR FILES FROM plorer, and press “Write”. Note that it if=./mybackup.img must be at least the same size or larger UPPERCASE TO than the original disk. After the process LOWERCASE IN ONE completes, the selected disk will be an Mac OSX exact copy of the your original operating The procedure COMMAND LINE system. Insert the new disk into your for creating an im- by Bruno Doiche ODROID, power it on and enjoy! age file using OSX is similar to Linux, ver needed to organize the files Linux with three small in your directories, but have a In true Linux fash- differences. First, We may not talk bunch of misfits that need to be ion, image backups instead of using often about Macs, E but the magazine renamed to comply to your so dreamed are done entirely from apt-get to install xz, art is made on OSX orderly database of files? Sure, when the command line. If download the xz- they are few, you just issue the mv com- the xz binaries are not utils package from the same website mand and resolve. But what if they yet available on your Yeah Linux baby! mentioned in the Windows instruc- come in hundreds? system, type sudo tions above, making sure to select the Issue the following syntax on your Ter- apt-get install xz-utils to in- OSX binaries (http://tukaani. minal: stall them. Then, mount the SD card or org/xz/). The other differences are for i in *; do mv $i $(echo $i eMMC module by double-clicking on the that the block size (bs) parameter for | tr [:upper:] [:lower:]); done USB adapter’s desktop icon. Type df -h the dd command is in lowercase, and in the Terminal window and make note of the USB adapter’s device name is in It’s that easy! the device name, which will be in the for- the format /dev/diskX: mat /dev/sdX. Read from the original disk to an image Navigate to the directory where the file using OSX PROTECT image file is to be stored, then type the YOURSELF FROM following command, substituting the sudo dd if=/dev/diskX bs=1m SUPERUSER ACCIDENTS device name of the USB adapter noted of=./mybackup.img henever you are editing sys- in the previous step for /dev/sdX: tem files on your text editor, Write from an image file to a new disk Wdo you go to superuser mode sudo dd if=/dev/sdX bs=1M using OSX using sudo or su ? Break this dangerous of=./mybackup.img habit of exposing yourself to an acci- sudo dd of=/dev/diskX bs=1m dental file deletion, move or reboot by Just like Windows, after the Read op- if=./mybackup.img creating a script that will keep your envi- eration is completed, xz is used to com- ronment safe. Let’s call it autosudo.sh press and decompress the image file for It’s a good idea to make a backup of portability: your system before a major upgrade is #!/bin/bash attempted, a challenging configuration FILE=$1 Compress an image file using xz # Check Write Permission is completed, or a large set of software if [ -w $FILE ] xz -z mybackup.img packages have been installed. In case then the original disk becomes corrupted, /usr/bin/vim $FILE else Decompress a zipped image file a compressed image backup will also # Sudo If We Dont Have Write using xz get you back on track quickly, without Permissions needing to take the time to reinstall sudo /usr/bin/vim $FILE fi xz -dk mybackup.img.xz and reconfigure the entire system. If your data is important enough, Give it executable pemissions with When writing the decompressed image It’s also a good idea to keep a backup chmod +x , copy it to /bin run sys- to a new card, use the same dd command archive as well as some offsite copies for temwide and then edit like this: as the Read operation with the input file safekeeping. You can never have too autosudo.sh yourfile_to_edit (if) and output file (of) options reversed: many backups!
ODROID MAGAZINE 10 BUILD YOUR UBUNTU FROM SCRATCH BUILD YOUR OWN UBUNTU FROM SCRATCH USING LINARO’S ROOTFS TO COMPILE LINUX LIKE A PRO! by Mauro Ribeiro
major advantage of open- source operating systems such A as Linux is having the option to download the source code and compile it yourself. You can add patches, tweak the code, and inspect it for bugs without needing to wait for an official release or Soon, Ubuntu stores will be the favorite hangout spot for a future ODROIDian society. update. The ODROID platform can Setting up run many different operating systems, the environment • Kernel Sources and some of them are not available as pre-compiled ARM images. Taking the time to learn how to build your system cd ~ git clone --depth 0 https:// from scratch enables you to download mkdir ubuntu-guide github.com/hardkernel/linux. newly developed operating systems and cd ubuntu-guide git -b odroid-3.8.y odroid- try them out. In this example, Linaro’s export GUIDE=`pwd` 3.8.y version of Ubuntu will be used to dem- export SDCARD=/dev/sdX • Toolchain for Crossbuild onstrate how easy it is to take control of Make sure to replace X with the In this guide, I’m using GCC 4.7.2 your OS at the most basic level. correct letter of your SDCard. from Archlinux ARM as my toolchain. I General Notes like this toolchain given the known sta- Downloading all bility of this version. the necessary • This guide was tested on a host components computer running Ubuntu 13.10 wget odroid.in/guides/ubun- 64-Bit with ia32 libs installed. tu-lfs/arm-unknown-linux- • Pre-built bootloaders gnueabi.tar.xz • Free up at least ~10GB of disk This article won’t cover bootload- space on your host computer. er building because nothing changes • Linaro’s rootfs • Set aside some spare time. over the pre-built bootloader pro- I chose to use Linaro’s rootfs because • If something goes wrong, start vided on the Hardkernel developer it comes easily packed as a .tgz file, and over. website. will work very well for this guide. At the • The default user and pass- moment of this writing, Linaro’s 13.12 is word is “linaro”. what was available, and any other rootfs • TTY1 will auto-login as root. wget odroid.in/guides/ ubuntu-lfs/boot.tar.gz should work just fine.
ODROID MAGAZINE 11 BUILD YOUR UBUNTU FROM SCRATCH
wget http://releases.lin- 2 e139ce78-9841-40fe-8823- aro.org/13.12/ubuntu/arn- 134114 96a304a09859 dale/linaro-saucy-server-
ODROID MAGAZINE 12 BUILD YOUR UBUNTU FROM SCRATCH
I use -j8 because my computer is a 9. Unmount and clean-up boot.scr files for different monitors and quad-core with hyperthreading, so 8 resolutions. threads are available. You should con- sudo umount boot Everything below this is just regu- figure the number to match your com- sudo umount rootfs lar Linux usage that you can find on puter’s processor. sync Google and Linux Forums, and is intended only for those who want a 7. Install the kernel and modules that we First Boot Graphical environment. just built and Configurations First, install just the kernel image. Now, we are ready to do our first Install xubuntu-desktop boot. Remove the card from your com- sudo cp arch/arm/boot/zImage puter and connect to your board. Before starting the downloading, ../boot make sure that you have at least 450MB 1. Configuring your network card. of disk space available. Next, install the modules: cd /etc/network/interfaces.d sudo apt-get install xubun- sudo make ARCH=arm INSTALL_ cat << __EOF__ >> eth0 tu-desktop MOD_PATH=../rootfs modules_ auto eth0 install iface eth0 inet dhcp 1. Installing Mali Drivers cd .. __EOF__ reboot cd ~ Once the modules are installed, the mkdir mali kernel is ready! 2. Configuring FSTAB cd mali
8. Create an initial Boot Script for the first mount -t devtmpfs devtmpfs / 2. Downloading the Mali dependencies boot dev cat << __EOF__ >> /etc/fstab wget http://builder.mdrjr. cd boot UUID=e139ce78-9841-40fe- net/tools/mali.txz cat << __EOF__ | sudo tee 8823-96a304a09859 / ext4 wget http://malideveloper. boot.txt errors=remount-ro,noatime 0 arm.com/downloads/drivers/ setenv initrd_high “0xffffffff” 1 DX910/r3p2-01rel4/DX910-SW- setenv fdt_high “0xffffffff” /dev/mmcblk0p1 /media/boot 99003-r3p2-01rel4.tgz setenv bootcmd “fatload mmc vfat defaults,rw,owner,flush, apt-get build-dep xserver- 0:1 0x40008000 zImage; bootm umask=000 0 0 xorg-video-armsoc 0x40008000” tmpfs /tmp tmpfs apt-get install mesa-utils setenv boot- nodev,nosuid,mode=1777 0 0 mesa-utils-extra libgles2- args “console=tty1 __EOF__ mesa-dev libgles2-mesa console=ttySAC1,115200n8 libgles1-mesa-dev libgles1- root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 rootwait mesa libegl1-mesa libegl1- rw mem=2047M” mkdir -p /media/boot mesa-dev boot mount /media/boot __EOF__ 3. Installing Blobs and Headers 3. Running the kernel update script tar zxf DX910-SW-99003-r3p2- apt-get install u-boot-tools 01rel4.tgz sudo mkimage -A arm -T wget builder.mdrjr.net/ tar Jxf mali.txz script -C none -n boot -d ./ tools/kernel-update.sh mv /usr/lib/arm-linux-gnue- boot.txt boot.scr chmod +x kernel-update.sh abihf/mesa-egl ~ cd .. ./kernel-update.sh cp -aR blobs/* /usr/lib cp -aR include/* /usr/in- This creates the boot.txt file, and the Running this step is important to clude sudo mkimage line creates the boot.scr. create a uinitrd as well add all the other ldconfig
ODROID MAGAZINE 13 BUILD YOUR UBUNTU FROM SCRATCH
4. Building and Installing the X11 Driver Identifier “Mali-Fbdev” Mode 0666 Driver “mali” EndSection cd DX910-SW-99003-r3p2-01- Option “fbdev” “/ __EOF__ rel4/x11/xf86-video-mali-0- dev/fb1” .0.1 Option “DRI2” 6. Create a udev rule to change mali ./autogen.sh “true” permission in order for a regular user cd src Option “DRI2_PAGE_FLIP” to use it rm -rf compat-api.h “true” wget http://cgit.freedesk- Option “DRI2_WAIT_VSYNC” cat << __EOF__ >> /etc/udev/ top.org/~cooperyuan/compat- “true” rules.d/10-mali.rules api/plain/compat-api.h Option “UMP_CACHED” KERNEL==”mali”,SUBSYSTEM==”m cd .. “true” isc”,MODE=”0777” make -j4 Option “UMP_LOCK” KERNEL==”ump”,SUBSYSTEM==”um make install “false” p”,MODE=”0777” mv /usr/local/lib/xorg/mod- EndSection __EOF__ ules/drivers/mali* /usr/lib/ xorg/modules/drivers Section “Screen” Congratulations.. You made it! Identifier “Mali-Screen” 5. Configuring Xorg.conf to use Mali Device “Mali-Fbdev” DefaultDepth 24 cat << __EOF__ >> /etc/X11/ EndSection xorg.conf Section “Device” Section “DRI”
HOW TO INSTALL THE ORACLE JAVA DEVELOPMENT KIT (JDK) VERSION 8 SAVE TIME WITH JAVA’S “CODE ONCE, RUN ANYWHERE” ARCHITECTURE by Robert Raehm, Edited by Venkat Bommakanti
ava is one of the most popular a rich platform for development, includ- programming languages for both ing significant speed improvements over J application and web develop- previous versions. ment. It has the advantage of true cross- platform compatibility, which means that code written in Java will run on any Java Requirements Virtual Machine regardless of the pro- cessor, computer, operating system, or • An ODROID from the X, U or Even though this issue is designed to highlight other hardware. Oracle publishes a free XU series several DIY projects, you could also call it the Development Kit, which is also available • An 8+ GB eMMC or Class 10+ “Cute Mascot” edition! as an ARMHF binary, which means that MicroSD the ODROID family can easily run the • A custom Ubuntu, Debian or Download the tarball vast library of Java software. The lat- similar image (13.04 or higher), To begin, backup your personal files est version available as of April 2014 is available from the ODROID Forums from your Ubuntu installation if necessary. JDK8, which can be installed alongside (http://forum.odroid.com) On the Ubuntu desktop, create a dedicated previous versions of Java, and provides folder to receive the downloaded package.
ODROID MAGAZINE 14 INSTALL JDK VERSION 8
The examples in this article use the Mount the Java tain symbolic links are created. We will March 13th, 2014 version of Oracle JDK. installation need to manually update those symlinks You can download the latest version by On Linux systems, Java is typically using the following 4 commands: visiting the Oracle website at https:// installed in the system directory at / jdk8.java.net/download.html usr/lib/jvm sudo update-alternatives by clicking the link for the most recent when using an automatic installer. --install /usr/bin/javac\ package labelled Linux ARMv6/7 VFP, However, since we are manually install- javac /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.8.0/ HardFP ABI. As the time of this writ- ing the package, the uncompressed files bin/javac 1 ing, the latest version available was jdk- will need to be moved to the correct di- 8-fcs-b132-linux-arm-vfp-hflt- rectory from the Terminal window. sudo update-alternatives 03_mar_2014.tar.gz. --install /usr/bin/java\ After agreeing to the Terms and $ sudo mv jdk1.8.0 \ java /usr/lib/jvm/jdk1.8.0/ Conditions and downloading the file, /usr/lib/jvm bin/java 1 it is good practice to check the md5- checksum of the package to make sure sudo update-alternatives that it was transferred correctly. This is Update the PATH --config javac done by using the md5sum utility: environment variable Your original Linux installation may sudo update-alternatives $ md5sum jdk-8-fcs-b132-li- have come with a prepackaged version --config java nux-arm-vfp-hflt-03_mar_2014. of the Java Development Kit, and the tar.gz location of that installation will most Verify likely be specified in the PATH - envi the installation The result should be compared to ronment variable. The PATH variable As a final step, we need to ensure that the contents of the checksum file lo- specifies certain directories to search JDK8 was installed properly, and that the cated in the same directory as the pack- when a command is typed into the Ter- appropriate components are being used. age download. For this example, the minal window, so that packages may be To do so, run the java binary using the md5sum file was located at http:// invoked from any directory. version parameter to report the current www.java.net/download/jdk8/ After installing JDK 1.8.0 with the default version: archive/b132/binaries/jdk-8- above steps, we need to ensure that the fcs-b132-linux-arm-vfp-hflt- 1.8 version is used as the default virtual $ java -version 03_mar_2014.md5. machine going forward. To do so, up- My downloaded file had the checksum date the PATH environment variable to The output should look similar to of c17b5194214b8ea9ad8e6fc302fe078. include the new version: this, indicating that JDK8 is the default: If the file that you downloaded has a dif- ferent checksum than the one located on $ export PATH=/usr/lib/jvm/ java version “1.8.0” the server, discard it, restart the down- jdk1.8.0/bin:$PATH Java(TM) SE Runtime Environ- load and compare the checksums again. ment (build 1.8.0-b132) The $PATH at the end of the com- Java HotSpot(TM) 32-Bit Unpack the tarball mand appends the current PATH envi- Server VM (build 25.0-b70, ronment variable to the new one. Since mixed mode) In the terminal window, change di- the $PATH string is searched for the first rectories (cd) to the designated down- occurrence of a program, once a match For additional information or ques- load folder and unpack the file: is found, the system ignores the rest of tions, please visit the original forum the $PATH string, thereby bypassing thread at http://forum.odroid. $ tar -zxvf jdk-8-fcs- any previous Java installs that may also com/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=204. b132-linux-arm-vfp-hflt-03_ be included. mar_2014.tar.gz Complete This creates a new subdirectory called the installation jdk1.8.0 in the download directory. Typically, when programs are installed in Linux using installation utilities, cer-
ODROID MAGAZINE 15 HPC IN THE HOME USING ODROIDS IN HIGH PERFORMANCE The A15 is designed with advanced power reduction tech- COMPUTING niques, and powers our flagship XU, so get the most of it! WHAT A DIFFERENCE The operation not performed is the most energy-efficient. A KERNEL MAKES In application code you can take full by Kurt Keville, MIT advantage of the capabilities of your chip. Using a fused multiply-add gets you those 2 operations for the same e have been comparing dif- prising how much better the 3.13 ker- clock cycles of running those operations ferent kernels and their re- nel is on the same benchmark as the separately. Wspective performance on 3.4 kernel on the Exynos 5410. The the XU (see http://tinyurl.com/ XU wins the race, likely because the XUBench1 and http://tinyurl. A15 cores were being fully utilized and Implement HPC maintainer / user be- com/XUBench2). It was interesting the A7 cores were quiesced, giving us havior modifications. to see the differences between the ker- the ideal power vs. performance ratio By this we mean queueing. If you nels you get with Rob Roy’s Particle for that benchmark. use something like PowerNap or Pow- erWake, you can save considerable pow- and Whisper images (3.4.67 was the Future ARM clusters like SpiNNa- er over the lifetime of your gear. This last update we did before we ran the ker will have hundreds of thousands of functionality was described in my article benchmarks) versus the 3.13 kernel cores, so every minor power efficiency in Issue 2 (February 2014) of ODROID you get with the experimental Linaro improvement will be important. Many Magazine. 14.02 distro. performance improvements also quite For those of you who worked with virtuously represent power reductions. the Calxeda Highbank or Midway ar- For instance, if you remove much of Categorize and maximize things that chitectures, which are reflected in the your local media, in the form of SD lend themselves to consolidation and openbenchmarking URLs referenced cards or SATA drives, you can use the distribution to leverage hybrid archi- above and at http://tinyurl. various tricks associated with tftp or tectures. Put your writeable directories on the com/ApacheOnARM, you will not PXE booting and ramdisks to speed be surprised at the Quad-Core ARM up operations and reduce the list of NFS shares so you don’t need journal- ing filesystems or checkpointing on Cortex-A9 performance when deliv- devices that you are powering. Net- your (read-only) directories on the client ering pages via httpd. Indeed, most booting and NFSroot are high on the nodes. It saves time and energy. traditional ISPs don’t need to do much list of power reduction techniques. math to serve up lots of web pages, so The path to energy-efficiency in the an A9 class processor with a shorter ODROID-centric Datacenter can be Find a way to effectively utilize idle NEON extension than the Cortex- facilitated through simple kernel and cycles for computation. A15 should work just fine. user space fixes. They don’t make a We used a profiling tool to calcu- It is interesting to see how the XU great difference on their own but they late the ideal communication vs. com- putation overlap strategy to grab the outperforms the quad-core A9 using add up. These are some of the more appropriate amount of data for an the Apache benchmark, and also sur- fruitful examples. operation, so that we never get into
ODROID MAGAZINE 16 ANDROID GAMING a data-starved or CPU-starved situa- VECTOR tion. If a data-starved environment is unavoidable we can go to a lower PARKOUR PACKED ACPI power state to dial to power ACTION back while we are waiting for the transfer to complete. by Ronaldo Andrade
ector is an exciting, ar- teresting, you will love this game. cade-style game featur- Compile code locally to maximize re- The action is fluid and the com- ing you as the exception- source usage. V mands simple, making it fun to al free runner who won’t be held The package GCC 4.8 on the XU play. But don’t let these words down by the system. The game seems to give us the best, smallest binary. fool you, the challenge the game opens with a view into a totali- presents is above average. There tarian world where freedom and Use the most numerically efficient ap- are three different stages which individually is nothing more you can play on the full version, proach. than a distant dream. But the each more beautifully constructed Here again, this has most to do with heart of a freerunner is strong, application code, since you can often and you soon break free. Run, represent your floating point numbers in vault, slide and climb using ex- a number of levels of precision. traordinary techniques based on the urban ninja sport of Park- Give the big problems their due em- our all while being chased by phasis, but also solve the lots of little “Big Brother” whose sole pur- problems. pose is to capture you and bring There are quite a few little fixes that you back. we recommend. It will come as no surprise to the ODROID kernel hack- and challenging than the last. ers out there, that there is considerable The main objective here is flexibility in what resources you can to escape from the guards that exercise and emphasize in your pro- are after you, but in order to duction application, and in what you get three stars, you will have to can turn off in the kernel with little to collect holo-cubes and perform no adverse effect. every trick, there is also some bonus money scattered through Inspired by the practice and the levels, but they are not nec- Conclusion principles of Parkour, Vector’s essary to get 3 stars. To get the best performance out of intuitive controls accommodate On the ODROID, you can your ODROID, you can turn on exact- players of all levels, and sophis- use your keyboard and your ly what you want and turn off every- ticated level designs challenge mouse to control the player, or thing else. Make sure you are just run- the most demanding players with a joystick as well. ning the single app you want to run (in fast-paced timing puzzles as the our case a benchmark). You can’t use traceur “flows” over the dysto- 100% of your processor in your pro- pian rooftops. GENERAL TIPS: duction app if you are busy respond- Overall, this is an awesome Collect every cube and perform ing to interrupts, so kill off (or don’t game from Nekki, a Russian de- every trick -- this will grant you start) unnecessary daemons. velopment company. If you ever three stars at the end of the level. You can drop down to single-user watched Parkour and found it in- Look ahead, check the sce- mode (init 2) if you wanted to be sure you nario to see what stunt you will were not losing resources to unwanted need to pass the obstacle us- apps, including anything you didn’t turn ing the least effort, consuming off in the kernel, like USB and video. less time. There are a few additional tips and tricks, At the store, you can use the such as the tickless kernel described at money you receive after each http://tinyurl.com/XULess- stage to buy gadgets that can be Watts . Enjoy the journey! useful in some situations.
ODROID MAGAZINE 17 HOW TO SETUP A MINECRAFT SERVER HOW TO SETUP A MINECRAFT SERVER CREEEEPERS! by @qkpham Edited by Venkat Bommakanti
When your hear creepers making the lmost everyone loves playing 3. A custom Ubuntu, Debian or Sssss… noise, there’s only one thing to do: games, especially Minecraft! It’s similar image (13.04 or higher), avail- RUN! A been enjoyed by over 14 million able from the ODROID Forums people worldwide for its addictive game- (http://forum.odroid.com) play and customizable maps. Although 4. Java version 1.8 (OpenJDK8 tarball is downloaded, type the following the official package from Mojang Soft- or Oracle JDK8) commands to start the server: ware is closed-source, several open- 5. Local Area Network (LAN) source Java versions of Minecraft Server connection, including a router with $ cd ~/minecraft are also available for the ODROID plat- port-forwarding feature $ java -Xms1536M -Xmx1536M form. Programming a virtual world us- -jar minecraft_server.jar ing a free Minecraft Server package such Install Java nogui as Spigot, Bukkit or BungeeCord is also If Java version 1.8 isn’t already in- a great way to learn Java while having stalled on your system, please refer to The Minecraft server should be up fun too! the article in this issue of ODROID and running now! The final step is to This article details how to install a ba- Magazine called Installing Oracle JDK8. get the server’s IP address so that our sic Minecraft server on your ODROID, Mojang publishes a Java version of the players can connect to it via their Mine- so that you can play online games with a Minecraft software for compatibility craft clients. few of your friends in a world of your with other operating systems such ARM own creation. Using the ODROID as Linux. Obtain the internal an inexpensive sandbox is also a great IP address way to test out maps, upgrades and Install Minecraft Find out the internal (local) IP ad- modifications before uploading them to First, download the latest Minecraft dress of your server by typing ifconfig a public server. Server software from the official site at in the Terminal window and locating the https://minecraft.net/download, tag inet addr. On my ODROID, the IP Requirements making sure to get the Java-based .tar address was listed as 192.168.1.10. Make 1. An ODROID from the X, U version. sure this address has a long lease issued or XU series Create a minecraft directory in your by the local DHCP server or router in 2. An 8+ GB eMMC or Class home directory for storing the down- order to avoid frequent configuration 10+ MicroSD loaded minecraft_server.jar. Once the updates.
ODROID MAGAZINE 18 HOW TO SETUP A MINECRAFT SERVER
Setup port forwarding Minecraft uses the TCP port 25565, which should be forwarded to the serv- er’s IP address by your local router us- ing port forwarding. Refer to the user manual for assistance with setting up the router to forward port 25565 to the IP address obtained in the previous step.
Obtain the external IP address The public IP address that identi- fies your LAN to the outside world can be discovered by visiting http://www. whatismyip.com. The address will be ccc.ddd:25565) when adding a new in the form aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd, which server to the client’s server list. At the white-list=false means that the fully-qualified URL for con- time of this writing, the Minecraft Cli- spawn-animals=true necting to the Minecraft Server on your ent software unfortunately does not hardcore=false LAN would be http://aaa.bbb.ccc. yet run on the ODROID platform. texture-pack= ddd:25565. Note the additionof the rel- There is a Minecraft Pocket Edition online-mode=true evant TCP port at the and of the URL. available for Android, but it is not pvp=true If your external IP is dynamic (typically compatible with the full version of difficulty=1 changed periodically by your ISP), you can Minecraft Server. gamemode=0 use services like No-IP. You can create an A successful connection to the max-players=20 account on their website, then download ODROID Minecraft Server will spawn-monsters=true and install the Dynamic DNS Update Cli- bring the user into our virtual world generate-structures=true ent (DUC) at http://www.noip.com/ as seen above. view-distance=10 download. Detailed instructions on set- motd=A Minecraft Server ting up Dynamic DNS can be found at Additional Server http://bit.ly/1ggmo2n. In this Configuration The three settings useful in changing case, the fully-qualified Minecraft Server The server options in Minecraft are maps and improving performance address would be http://yourac- configured by editing the server.properties include: ctusername.no-ip.com:25565. file located at /home/yourusername/ To make sure everything’s working, you minecraft/server.properties: level-name can test that your server is visible online by If you want to add another going to http://www.canyouseeme. #Minecraft server properties map or world to your server, just org. You can also quickly check its status #Mon Dec 24 09:23:18 EST unpack the world file inside your at http://dinnerbone.com/mine- 2012 minecraft folder and then change craft/tools/status/. # the level-name setting to the System performance will be ac- generator-settings= name of that folder. For example, ceptable under normal wireless ether- level-name=world if your extracted world folder is net conditions, but a wired connec- enable-query=false odroid then change the level-name tion will decrease latency and increase allow-flight=false value to odroid instead of the de- game responsiveness. server-port=25565 fault world value. level-type=DEFAULT view-distance Joining the Game enable-rcon=false Can be reduced to 7 to improve Start your Minecraft client on a level-seed= server responsiveness Windows or OSX machine by enter- server-ip= max-players ing the public IP address from the max-build-height=256 Performs best when set between previous step (http://aaa.bbb. spawn-npcs=true 2 and 5
ODROID MAGAZINE 19 TIPS AND TRICKS HOW TO SETUP A MINECRAFT SERVER
Please note that Minecraft relies Spigot/lastSuccessfulBuild/ DOWNLOAD heavily on floating point operations. artifact/Spigot/target/spig- YOUTUBE VIDEOS TO Unlike x86 architecture based CPUs, ot.jar ARM based SOCs are not optimized for java -Xms1536M -Xmx1536M WATCH OFFLINE floating point operations, so the server -jar spigot.jar options need to be tuned down to com- by Bruno Doiche pensate for the heavier load. Spigot is very stable, and since it is e are now leaving in a con- If you’d like to further improve based on Craftbukkit, the Bukkit plugins nected world, but from time performance, several open-source ver- NoLagg, PTweaks and NoSpawnChunks W to time, we need to go to sions of Minecraft Server are available above will also work with Spigot. places where there is no kind of net- that significantly decrease the server’s work connectivity. Well, pack up a sur- computations, providing a smoother MineOS vival kit with whichever you like from experience and allowing more players MineOS is a Web-based administra- youtube with youtube-dl! to join the game. tive panel that offers easy management To install, just type the following at of Minecraft servers. It can handle the terminal: Craftbukkit Vanilla, Bukkit, Tekkit and Canary by Create a folder for Craftbukkit by default, but you can install any other sudo pip install --upgrade youtube_dl typing mkdir ~/craftbukkit in a server system and configure it to au- Terminal window, then visit https:// tomatically download a new version Now you can download any video dl.bukkit.org/downloads/ whenever available. that you want from youtube, just do: craftbukkit/ to download the latest version of Craftbukkit to the newly cre- Copying your server youtube_dl
mkdir ~/spigot cd spigot wget http://ci.md-5.net/job/
ODROID MAGAZINE 20 CREATE A PAPERCRAFT DOLL TO GO ALONGSIDE YOUR MINECRAFT SERVER
When we meant a DIY edition, we meant business! Take the time to print this page and make your own creeper papercraft doll to go alongside your Minecraft ODROID server. Cut, fold, glue and have fun!
ODROID MAGAZINE 21 LEARN REBOL LEARN REBOL WRITING MORE USEFUL PROGRAMS WITH AMAZINGLY SMALL AND EASY-TO-UNDERSTAND CODE By Nick Antonaccio and Bohdan Lechnowsky
n the first installment of Learn Rebol, we discussed the motivation behind Rebol and learned how easy it is to cre- Iate a GUI-based program in Rebol on Android. We ex- panded on these examples in last month’s issue. This month, we delve even deeper into what can be done with Rebol3 on ODROID and other platforms. In this installment, we’ll list the web addresses of where to Windows (x86), Linux (x86), OSX (x86): get the most up-to-date version of Rebol for different plat- http://atronixengineering.com/downloads.html forms. The non-ARM binaries are listed so you can try your or http://rebolsource.net * Rebol 3 programs on your laptop and desktop computers as Windows (x64), Linux (x64): well (note, not all Rebol 3 binaries have the graphical compo- http://atronixengineering.com/downloads.html nent available yet). OSX (PPC), Haiku (x86), Linux ARM (soft-float), Li- It’s also my pleasure to announce that the current Rebol nux (IA64), OSX (x64): 3 builds for Linux ARM hard-float are being compiled and http://rebolsource.net * tested on ODROID computers! And remember, you can run any app you create in Rebol (* These builds do not contain the graphical compo- 3 for ODROID on your Android-powered phone or tablet as nents yet) well!
Writing More Programs in Rebol Installation The focus of these examples is not to teach programming Android: in Rebol, but rather to show how much is possible with how Open a web browser and navigate to little. For further learning resources, see the end of this ar- http://development.saphirion.com/experimental/ ticle. builds/android/ Here’s a little web chat app running at http://respect- Download r3-droid.apk (amazingly smaller than 2MB). ech.com/odroid/chat.cgi, complete with a simple veri- When finished, double-click on the download icon fication system to make it harder for the spambots to post. (usually by the clock) and grant permissions to install. The verification system uses a feature of Rebol where data and Go to the apps list and click the icon for R3/Droid. code are interchangeable. This makes doing things like a veri- fication system much simpler: Ubuntu: Open a web browser and download the ARM version #!./rebol3 -cs (currently titled “Linux (ARM v7 with hardware float- REBOL [title: “Group Chat”] ing point support) Great for ODROID!”) from http:// atronixengineering.com/downloads.html. ;The following line is required as the first Perform the following commands in the terminal emu- line in cgi output lator in the directory where you downloaded r3: print {content-type: text/html^/} sudo mv r3-armv7hf-view-linux r3 sudo chmod +x r3 ;Define where the chat messages are stored sudo ./r3 url: %./chat.txt
ODROID MAGAZINE 22 LEARN REBOL
notes: head reverse load dehex copy read/ ;Initialize the username string url username: copy “” ;Generate the pivotal part of the verification ;Read the POST string to see if there is data question to be processed random/seed now/time/precise if attempt [ ordinal: to-string pick [first second third submitted: parse (to string! read system/ fourth fifth] random 5 ports/input) “&=” ][ ;Output the HTML page ;Only process the following lines if POST print rejoin [ data was submitted {
} “” notes “” ;The “load” statement takes the ordi- ] nal value picked at random ; (e.g. The word “first”) and converts it to a Rebol word. ; The “do” statement tells Rebol to evaluate what follows it, ; in the case of this example, the command “first”, which picks ; the first item out of a series. submitted/6 = do load submitted/5 parse “cat dog pig hen cow” “” ][ write/append url mold rejoin [ now “ (“ submitted/2 “): “ submitted/4 “^/^/” ] username: submitted/2 ] ]
;Convert the chat file into plain text, includ- Important Note: In order to allow more efficient execution ing any new message that was of the examples from now on, we are going to download the ; just added above. Display it in reverse or- r3-gui.r3 graphic dialect definition to the local storage of your der so the newest messages device instead of downloading it each time. We can do this from ; stay on top, right after the input section. within Rebol itself. On your device, simply type the following:
ODROID MAGAZINE 23 LEARN REBOL
write %r3-gui.r3 read/string Here’s a small graphic sliding tile game, and no complex GUI http://www.atronixengineering.com/r3/r3-gui.r3 builder tool was required to create this code. It’s simple and read- able enough that a text editor and the built in help facilities of If you get an error when running any of the example scripts Rebol are all you need. The actual layout code is 5 lines. Have below on your device, try this instead: you ever seen code this simple used to create a game for Android (or even a desktop machine)? No IDE, SDK or build scripts are write %r3-gui.r3 read/string http:// needed either - just download the small R3 interpreter to your development.saphirion.com/resources/r3-gui.r3 Android device or your PC, click the plain text code file, and it runs the same on every platform, with graphics, touch events Rebol 3 is open source, and there are several groups work- and all, without any changes to the code: ing on enhancements. This leads to having different versions for different devices in slightly different states at any given REBOL [title: “Sliding Tile Puzzle” file: time. This will solidify and these issues will go away as time %sliding-tile-game.r] moves on. load-gui Doing the above will speed up execution greatly as the r3- sz: 120x120 gui dialect doesn’t need to be downloaded each time. Howev- fontize [ er, on most non-rooted Android tablets and phones, superuser p: button [font: [size: 60]] access is not allowed, so you won’t be able to write to the root ] directory and the above command will fail. This shouldn’t be stylize [ a problem on your ODROID running Android. In this case, p: button [ either continue to use load-gui or write r3-gui.r3 to another facets: [text-style: ‘p init-size: sz location, like the sdcard, with a command like this: max-size: sz] actors: [ write %/sdcard/r3-gui.r3 read/string on-action: [ http://.../r3-gui.r3 t: reduce [face/gob/offset x/ gob/offset] (Replace the “…” with one of the URL paths from the face/gob/offset: t/2 x/gob/ examples above.) offset: t/1 I’ve modified the examples on the website to check for r3- ] gui.r3 in the current directory and the root of the sdcard, and ] if it doesn’t exist in either location, then it uses load-gui. I did ] this by replacing the load-gui in the following examples with ] this code: view/options [ hgroup [ foreach cmd [[do %r3-gui.r3][do %/sdcard/r3- p “8” p “7” p “6” return gui.r3][load-gui]][ p “5” p “4” p “3” return if attempt [do probe cmd][break] p “2” p “1” x: box sz white ] ] ] [bg-color: white] Basically, there are three different ways to load the r3-gui dialect specified, and it tries each one until one works without While on the topic of games, it should be noted that R3 error. allows you to draw graphics and create animations very easily. To run the examples off the website instead of typing them Here’s a quick example: in, just type:
REBOL [title: “3D Box” file: %3d-box.r] do http://respectech.com/odroid/learnrebol/ load-gui file.r bck: make image! 400x220 view/no-wait [image bck] Replace file.r with the filename in the Rebol header (leave draw bck to-draw [ off the “%” though). fill-pen 200.100.90 polygon 20x40 200x20 380x40 200x80
ODROID MAGAZINE 24 LEARN REBOL
] view/no-wait/options [ t: text”ARROW KEYS” y: img 50x20 (fish) pad z: paddle blue return arrow left 120x120 arrow right 120x120 ] [ shortcut-keys: [ left [z/gob/offset/1: z/gob/offset/1 - 50 draw-face z] right [z/gob/offset/1: z/gob/offset/1 + 50 draw-face z] ] min-hint: 600x440 bg-color: white ] forever [ wait .02 fill-pen 200.130.110 y/gob/offset/2: y/gob/offset/2 + p draw-face polygon 20x40 200x80 200x200 20x100 y show-now y fill-pen 100.80.50 if inside? y/gob/offset (z/gob/offset - polygon 200x80 380x40 380x100 200x200 49x0) (z/gob/offset + 49x10)[ ] copy [] y/gob/offset: random 550x-20 s: s + 1 do-events set-face t form s p: p + .3 ] if y/gob/offset/2 > 425 [alert join “Score: “ s unview unview break] ]
Here’s a complete arcade game with image animation, col- lision detection, keyboard event controls, score keeping, and more. Try to catch the falling fish. Be careful, it gets faster as you go!
REBOL [title: “Catch Game” file: %catch-game.r] load-gui Here’s an R3 version of a program found in virtually every fish: load http://learnrebol.com/r3book/fish2. GUI instructional text - a basic calculator. Blink, and you’ll png miss the code for this one. There are no other files, layout s: 0 p: 3 random/seed now/time templates, initialization scripts, or tools required to run this stylize [ app on any platform. This is the entire, completely portable paddle: box [facets: [max-size: 50x10]] program. As you can imagine, with so little code, there’s a img: image [facets: [max-size: 50x20 min- short learning curve to fully understand how examples like this size: 50x20]] work. Compare this code to C++ (http://afsalashya-
ODROID MAGAZINE 25 LEARN REBOL
na.blogspot.com/2012/06/gui-simple-calculator- visual-c-source.html), Visual Basic (http://archive. msdn.microsoft.com/spektrum1calculator), or even the simplest possible RFO Basic example (http://rfobasic. com/#section-12.2). That last example was written by the author of this text to demonstrate the nearest comparably easy and produc- tive Android development tool available - and each of those examples runs only on a single operating system. Here’s a minimal HTML5 example (http://thecodeplayer.com/walkthrough/ javascript-css3-calculator). It requires multiple pages of HTML, CSS and Javascript code. All those examples just scratch the surface of complexities found in other development environments:
REBOL [title: “Calculator” file: %calc.r] load-gui Resources sz: 100x100 Online Chat and Help: fontize [btn: button [font: [size: 60 color: StackOverflow.com: black]]] There are currently over 1100 questions (and answers) re- stylize [ lated to Rebol on StackOverflow.com (http://stackover- btn: button [ flow.com/search?q=rebol). facets: [text-style: ‘btn init-size: 20 Points are required to chat on StackOverflow.com sz max-size: sz] (http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/291/rebol- actors: [on-action:[set-face f join and-red). If you don’t have 20 points (or an account at all for get-face f get-face face]] that matter), come on by anyway and look up [Rebol and Red] ] under the chat rooms. We are usually one of the most active. field: field [ We’ll help you get the 20 points you need to chat. facets: [text-style: ‘btn init-size: 415x60 max-size: 415x60] AltME: ] To join the Rebol-powered AltME world, send an email to ] user bo at the domain respectech.com asking to be invited. We view [ are a closed community to avoid spam. Don’t be shy, we’ve hgroup [ been called the friendliest software development community f: field return on the planet. btn “1” btn “2” btn “3” btn “ + “ return btn “4” btn “5” btn “6” btn “ - “ return btn “7” btn “8” btn “9” btn “ * “ return btn “0” btn “.” btn “ / “ btn “=” on-action [ attempt [set-face f form do get- face f] ] ] ] Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/rebol/
ODROID MAGAZINE 26 BE HEARD WITH ÜBERCASTER BE HEARD WITH ÜBERCASTER A REAL-TIME AUDIO BROADCASTER HOTSPOT by K.J Yoo of Echos Design (www.echosdesign.com)
he year was 2010. On the streets of the altstadt in Mar- T burg, Germany, I was playing the violin as street musician. Some found my music distracting and yet some found it beautiful. As a curious engineering student, I thought about a better medium to present my music so that only those who were interest- ed may hear what I played seamlessly. After realizing FM transmitter sys- tems were quite expensive, bulky, old The Ubercaster, build on the ODROID platform, is a 21st century way to listen to live music and simply not practical. I decided and it consists of device and client through your smartphone without having to to take matters into my own hands. mobile apps. push up to the front of the crowd. The solution was simple: Broadcast Essentially, the Übercaster device is audio to people’s favorite device: the an ODROID U3 running Hostap. (For es such as smartphones, tablets and smartphone. those of you who are not familiar with computers can connect to the Über- Hostap, check out Mauro Ribeiro’s ar- caster device, which is running isc- Design Goal ticle from the February issue “Using dhcp-server to handle all the clients. I wanted anyone to easily plug in an ODROID-XU as a WiFI Router”.) As soon as a connection is estab- any audio into the Übercaster; wheth- The device is running Ubuntu 13.06 lished, the Übercaster mobile client er it came from an instrument, TV, with a custom ODROID-3.8.y ker- app can be used to listen to whatever iPod or microphone, it didn’t mat- nel. The Übercaster application cap- the Übercaster device is broadcast- ter. The Übercaster starts broadcast- tures audio with ALSA, encodes the ing. The app listens to the broadcast ing the sound locally. Then multiple captured audio with OPUS (http:// IP address on the device, receives the listeners would use their smartphone www.opus-codec.org) and then packets, decodes it, and plays back devices to connect to the Übercaster packetizes the raw OPUS packets for the sound. like a wifi hotspot to “tune-in.” I also UDP-based multicasting. This pro- Now at a first glance, it seems like wanted the Übercaster to be an ele- cess takes on average 8ms and requires a basic streaming application like VLC gant and intuitive device in-line with about 6-9% of the CPU. I will admit or Icecast. However, Übercaster of- Dieter Ram’s 10 Principles of Good the ODROID U3 might be overkill for fers real-time performance. Real-time Design. what I am doing, but I was not able is relative and subjective depending to find a small dev board with a high on the applications, but for the Über- Development quality audio codec. caster system, the goal is to have the I have been developing the Über- So the ODROID works perfectly, total audio latency below 25ms. How caster with ODROID X2/U2/U3 de- and kudos to Hardkernel! I measure audio latency is the delay velopment boards since August 2013, Via Hostap, wifi capable devic- between the time audio goes into the
ODROID MAGAZINE 27 BE HEARD WITH ÜBERCASTER
caster support? I have tested up to 25 clients. However, it is theoretically possible to have many more. After the server-client relationship is es- tablished, the Übercaster is basically a one-way system. The Übercaster broadcasts UDP-based packets and the clients merely tune in on an IP address. That is it. However, there is a trade off: UDP isn’t always reli- An early 3D printed prototype of the Uber- able. The trade off is that UDP deliv- Using a minimum of hardware, the Ubercaster caster device, not to be confused with a head- ers packets faster and more efficiently delivers high-fidelity sound while consuming phone-ready bar of soap. than TCP because it uses non-ack. only 8W of power This is why the Übercaster transmits using small packet frame sizes to So, at CES 2014 in Las Vegas, I had Übercaster device and when it plays hedge against high packet loss rate, no problem giving a demonstration back on an iPhone 5S. (iOS has a which gives smoother playback. in the middle of the densely packed lower audio latency than Android de- South Hall. (It will be very interest- vices.) 25ms audio latency is not an Demonstration ing to work with an 802.11ac module arbitrary number, but rather the sup- Video very soon!) posed maximum audio latency before Please view the following demon- 2. In order to reduce latency, I a person is able to perceive the de- stration of the Übercaster. use OPUS, SPSC Circular Queue lay. Currently, the audio latency is < and a custom protocol that is based 50ms on iOS devices and on Android Übercaster Zwei: on UDP. I tried RTMP, RTSP and devices it varies significantly from de- vimeo.com/85006122 HTTP, but these really didn’t work vice to device. On the Google Nexus Übercaster Drei: out for me. Originally, I wanted to 7 (2013), the latency is 80ms. I have vimeo.com/88467399 use VLC or another RTSP client to tested the Übercaster with multiple stream content on client devices, but participants and even though the to- Dealing with Issues the latency was very high. This is why tal latency is currently double of my 1. To minimize frequency inter- I chose to go with native apps, which goal and the latency varies between ference, I am mainly using 802.11n at are very light. I am currently creating iOS and Android devices, 95% of the the 5Ghz band. The 2.4Ghz never an API that makes it very easy for mo- listeners were not able to perceive any works even in a moderately crowded bile developers to integrate the Über- delay when watching TV or a movie. area. While using the 5Ghz band, caster stream function. A quick tip So how many clients can the Über- the range is shorter and requires a concerning Android: it is important bit more power, but it is very stable. to match the sample rate and buffer size for minimum latency. Check out The Ubercaster has evolved into a sleek, sexy machine this interesting talk from Google I/O from its early tape-and-chewing-gum prototype. 2013 about High Performance Audio on Android: https://www.you- tube.com/watch?v=d3kfEeMZ65c.
The Application Übercaster started with a simple question: how can individuals have complete freedom and seamless con- trol of what they hear in a local sur- rounding? Or, how can individuals have complete freedom to seamlessly and easily broadcast sound to audience members in the local surrounding?
ODROID MAGAZINE 28 BE HEARD WITH ÜBERCASTER
It turns out that places like gyms, your smartphone. devices to access information from restaurants, tour guides, music ven- Übercaster not only offers a richer the same server a thousand miles ues, sports bars and airports have and higher audio quality than current away in Texas or California. TVs in a been thinking of innovative ways to products, but it also makes an incred- public area are in essence a form of broadcast sound. There have been ible seamless experience for both local broadcast. People within 50 feet attempts at using FM and infrared, those transmitting and those listen- see the TV. However I am not satis- however it didn’t prove to be practi- ing. Übercaster simplifies, reduces fied with how it works currently. So cal, and is expensive and complicated and enhances local audio broadcast- my goal is local distribution of con- to use. ing into just a single device. tent. Let’s say someone sees a TV in From the very beginning, mobile the airport broadcasting CNN with a was at the heart of the product. Cur- The Vision breaking news story. They should be rently 65% of all mobile phone us- Sound is a stepping-stone for me able to have access to the sound at a ers in the US use a smartphone. It is to test if local public content distribu- minimum -- eventually real-time HD widely adopted and it is growing at a tion works. I want to broadcast video video streaming to their phone at a staggering rate. So everyone essen- in real-time. I think of the future a local distance and also additional web tially has Übercaster-capable receiver lot, and it is clear that the frequency content relating to that news that is devices already. bands are getting crowded; people constantly aggregating on the Über- Imagine going into a sports bar want more bandwidth and faster in- caster device for distribution. It is and listening to any TV or tuning into formation. I think that in public more efficient; people get informa- the breaking news while you wait for spaces, there are too many data/bit tion more quickly and seamlessly. the flight to Frankfurt or listening redundancies. If a lot of people in a If you are interested in knowing with perfect clarity to the street mu- public area are interested in knowing more about the Übercaster or have in- sician playing guitar 50 feet away or more about something like the Real terest in the technology, please email experiencing a tour of Rome through Madrid game, it is redundant for their me at [email protected].
ODROID U3 I2C COMMUNICATION INTER-INTEGRATED CIRCUITS FOR THE REST OF US by John Taylor
fter ordering my ODROID-U3 Instruments, which I have successfully Setting up the specifically for I2C communica- set up. I decided, however, that the ODROID-U3 Ation with several slave devices, materials and additional programming We need to install i2c-tools so that I was unable to find a comprehensive needed for that project are beyond the we can probe the I2C bus. This is eas- guide explaining the process of how to scope of this article. ily done by running the following com- set everything up. In the interest of shar- mand in terminal, which will take a few ing with others what I’ve learned, I put Gathering minutes to install: together my own guide for setting up an the Equipment I2C system on the ODROID platform. sudo apt-get install i2c- The goal of this article is to intro- • ODROID-U3 tools duce you to I2C communication using • I2C LED Matrix http://www. the ODROID-U3 as a master. We will adafruit.com/products/1049 Now that we have the i2c-tools pack- communicate with an LED matrix from • Level Shifter age, we need to load the i2c-dev module Adafruit. I initially planned to write http://www.adafruit.com/ so that we can use it. You can do this this tutorial on communicating with an products/757?gclid=CI- using with the modprobe command, but MSP430 microprocessor from Texas NsJL057wCFURk7AodZkAArg every time the ODROID is reset we will
ODROID MAGAZINE 29 ODROID U3 I2C COMMUNICATION have to reload the module. To avoid this annoyance, we will add i2c-dev to the list of modules that are loaded at startup. Open the /etc/modules file with your favorite text editor such as nano, and add i2c-dev to the list.
nano /etc/modules
A simple high-level diagram of the interaction between the U3 and the I2C LED Matrix. The /etc/modules file being edited using Nano. Communicating Once you have saved the file, reboot the ODROID and We now want to make sure that we have connected ev- make sure that when you type the following command you get erything correctly. Luckily, we can do this easily using i2c- a similar result to Figure below. tools. After everything is connected execute the following command: i2cdetect -l -y i2cdetect -y 4 This command tells the computer to detect and list (-l) all of the I2C ports available. If you don’t use the –y flag the This command tells the ODROID to list all of the I2C computer will ask you if you are sure you want to perform this devices connected to bus 4. As you can see from the following action and warn you of possible damages that can be done by figure, our LED matrix shows up at address 70. messing with I2C busses. If you do not see a device at address 70, double-check the wiring.
A list of I2C ports available on the ODROID- U3.
The bus that is mapped to the 8-pin connector is i2c-4. We will cover its usage after we connect a slave device to it. A matrix of I2C peripherals, showing the ODROID’s I2C device at address 70. Wiring Now that we have our ODROID set up to do I2C com- munication, we can connect our slave device. The device that C code we will be using is an LED matrix from Adafruit Industries. Once we know that everything is connected properly, we Since the ODROID-U3 is a 1.8V device and our LED matrix can write some simple C code to control the LED matrix. The is a 5V device, we will use an I2C-safe level shifter, also from code shown below initializes the LED Matrix and sequentially Adafruit Industries. lights every LED. After you compile and run this code on the ODROID, you
ODROID MAGAZINE 30 ODROID U3 I2C COMMUNICATION
will see output similar to the video shown at http://bit. memset(transferBuffer,0,sizeof(transferBuffer)); ly/1fMOyMt. The code can be easily can be modified to display other patterns/shapes on the LED Matrix. //start internal oscillator on the LED matrix by sending 0x21 command #include
//Initialize the I2C channel //set the second Byte to transfer to the int i2cHandle = open(“/dev/i2c-4”,O_ lights to turn on RDWR); transferBuffer[1] = 0x01 << j; write(i2cHandle, transferBuffer,2); //Tell the I2C channel we aren’t using ten bit addressing //wait a while ioctl(i2cHandle,I2C_ for(k = 0; k < 5000000;k++); TENBIT,tenBitAddress); }
//Tell the I2C channel we have a slave at Ad- //make sure a column is completely off before dress 70 leaving it ioctl(i2cHandle,I2C_SLAVE,address); transferBuffer[1] = 0x00; write(i2cHandle, transferBuffer,2); //make sure there is no data in our buffers } memset(recieveBuffer, 0 , sizeof(recieveBuffer) } );
ODROID MAGAZINE 31 HEAVY DUTY PORTABLE LINUX TABLET HEAVY-DUTY PORTABLE LINUX TABLET WITH LTE ROUTER by Mauro Ribeiro
wanted to build a ODROID-based tab- let computer that was durable, rugged, Iand built of readily available compo- nents. A list of the hardware that I used is shown below the image to the right:
Now for the Software The software part of this project gave me the most headache! During my first tests with Ubuntu 13.10, I couldn’t con- nect to the LTE network and was stuck with 3G, but I couldn’t figure out why. It took me a while to discover that the Mo- demManager version on Ubuntu 13.10 is slightly out of date and didn’t properly support LTE. Updating ModemMan- The case is made from a combina- which yields a possible 11.1V(12.3V) ager by itself is nearly impossible since tion of aluminum and wood and mea- and 5000mAh. I salvaged them from it’s wired to NetworkManager and it has sures 21x13x6cm, which I purchased a laptop battery. a lot of dependencies, so I needed some- at a local office supply store. A step-down converter (aka Buck thing newer. My best option was to use The screen is a 9” touch screen regulator). I’m using a pre-made ArchLinux ARM, which always contains LCD. Now, I know that everyone LM2596 kit. This IC can handle 2A the latest package releases. will want to know where I got this, without a heatsink, so its enough for Once I got ArchLinux ARM running, and I have some good news for you! our project. I needed a nice user interface that would The screen is a prototype for a kit that The LTE Dongle was included for free from my mobile service carrier. It’s play well with the touchscreen, since I Hardkernel will be selling very soon: a 9” HDMI monitor with a built-in a Huawei E3276 CAT 4 adapter and don’t have a keyboard or mouse connect- touchscreen. can reach a max speed of 150Mbps. ed to this. I tested a few UIs, including I’ve opted to use an ODROID-U3 The WiFi dongle is based on the KDE Plasma Active, but then I saw some mainly because of power consump- Realtek 8192CU chipset, which is news about Mate 1.8 and decided to give tion concerns. I wanted to keep that very common. As an example, the it a try. It worked very nicely. low since the screen and the LTE one that I used is the TP-Link model However, I still couldn’t use my Mo- dongle also draw power. The LTE TL-WN821N. dem to send or receive SMS, and I need- dongle uses nearly 500ma of current White LED is from Aliexpress. ed something to monitor the connection on its own! It is a 3x3 LED matrix rated at health. At first, my idea was to put all For the battery, I used 6 Li-Ion cells 10W. I’m using it only at 0.5W to of those features on a custom app, but I wired together as two banks of 3 cells, illuminate the internals.
ODROID MAGAZINE 32 HEAVY DUTY PORTABLE LINUX TABLET
RED is the buck controller at- mentation about it online, so I took the Create a single iptables rules to tached to the battery. hard path! I connected the modem to a setup NAT (share the Internet con- nection). YELLOW is the ODROID-U3 Windows computer, installed a serial port Start DNSMASQ to provide GREEN is the WiFi Dongle sniffer, and used the application provided DHCP and DNS server. Two BLUE marks are the HDMI- with the modem to control it. Once I knew the commands, I finished my app. >LVDS board and the On-Screen Turn AP off: In case you are curious, the commands display board. Kill DNSMASQ for my HUAWEI Modem are: PURPLE is the USB Touchscreen Clear firewall rules controller. Stop hostapd CYAN is the External USB port For automatic network selection: Tell NetworkManager to manage AT^SYSCFGEX=”00”,3fffffff,1,2,5 with the LTE Dongle connected. a,””,”” my wifi again. WHITE is a 10W LED running at only 0.5W to light the internals in For 2G Only mode: You may wonder, why not leave it case we are in the dark. AT^SYSCFGEX=”01”,3fffffff,1,2,5 unmanaged all the time? Because I still a,””,”” ORANGE is the battery want to use the wifi as a client when I’m The 6-cell battery is wired as For 3G Only mode: at home, so I can perform package up- shown in the image. This gives me AT^SYSCFGEX=”02”,3fffffff,1,2,5 grades and poke around. 11.1V and 5000mAh. a,””,”” Another feature required for the tablet Charging Li-Ion batteries isn’t was to install an on-screen keyboard on And for LTE Only: complicated, but it does require AT^SYSCFGEX=”03”,3fffffff,1,2,5 Linux, which is available in both Ubuntu some small knowledge. a,””,”” 13.10 and ArchLinux via a package called Each Li-Ion cell must be charged onboard. Onboard is a highly configurable with 0.4V more than its rated volt- Those commands are sent to a “con- and customizable on-screen keyboard with age (3.7V) and you can only feed trol” serial port that the modem creates. many features. It works very well! half of its rated current as charging Some modems (like mine) even have AT Finally, I needed to enable right button current. commands to allow grabbing its internal emulation while using the touchscreen. So for my case, since I’m using 3 cells in series (3.7 x 3 = 11.1V + temperature! They provide a lot of good This is done by adding the following con- 3x 0.4V = 1.2V = 12.3V), my charg- information that you can extract to learn figuration to the /etc/X11/org.conf file, ing voltage is 12.3V. Since I know the quality of your connection/signal. or to a new configuration file in the direc- that the total capacity is 5000mAh Another issue I had to deal with was tory /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d. (~800mAh per battery), I won’t use NetworkManager. You can’t start hos- a charger rated over 2.5A. So I end- tapd to create a wifi network if Network- Section “InputClass” ed up using a 13V 2A PSU to charge Option “EmulateThirdBut- Manager is managing an interface. Even ton” “1” the batteries. if you are disconnected from the wifi Option “EmulateThirdBut- I used a Dremel to make the ex- network, it’s still possible to tell Network- tonTimeout” “750” ternal holes for USB, Power Con- Manager not to manage that interface. Option “EmulateThirdBut- nector, Power switch, USB, LVDS tonMoveThreshold” “30” You just add the following line to [Ed- EndSection Cable and Touch cable. itor’s note: need filename ]: The EmulateThirdButtonTimeout ended up finding Modem Manager GUI [keyfile] is the amount of time in milliseconds (http://linuxonly.ru/cms/page.php?7) unmanaged-devices=\ mac:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx that you need to keep the touchscreen that does all of that. However, there was pressed in order to be identified as still one missing feature! I needed to con- Where xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx is the mac ad- a right click. EmulateThirdButton- trol the modem so I could lock it to a cer- dress of the device that you don’t want to MoveThreshold is the amount of pixels tain network type (2G/3G/4G). manage. I then added another feature to that your finger can move and still be So, I made a custom app. I chose QT my application for turning AP on and off. considered as the same position. 5, since QT Creator makes Linux appli- Turn AP on: With all of that done, you now have cation development very easy. I needed Tell NetworkManager to not a Linux-powered touch screen tablet, to know what commands the modem manage my wifi adapter. that also functions as an LTE router, required in order to force it to a certain Start hostapd to create my wifi enabling you to tether to a 4G network network type. I couldn’t find any docu- network. from anywhere!
ODROID MAGAZINE 33 BUILD A TRUCK PC WITH ODROID HOW I BUILT A TRUCK PC WITH MY ODROID NEVERMIND THE PRODUCTS ON THE MARKET, GET THE MOST BANG FOR YOUR BUCK! by Jeremy Leesmann (Killer Turtle)
ars with high-end navigation sys- tems are becoming more com- C mon as in-vehicle technology improves. However, the main issues that many CarPC units have is that 1) the map updates are expensive, and 2) you are lim- ited on functions and software. There are a number of Android-powered head units available now, but they generally run outdated versions of Android, and are consequently slow. So, I wanted to install a CarPC in my truck with the most bang for my buck, and chose the ODROID- U3 as the platform for my project.
This ODROID PC navigation system keeps Jer- My goal was to have the following A list of applications that I installed emy’s truck on the road and out of the mud! functions available through my Truck on the ODROID: PC: Waze (Navigation) Setting up • Navigation Pandora (Internet Radio) the Arduino as a • Radio Google Play Music (MP3) Keyboard • MP3 player USBGPS (Gives access to GPS via The first task is getting the Arduino to • Physical button controls the USB port) emulate a USB HID keyboard. Start by Anycut (Gives access to Quick building the code for the Arduino, which Here are the parts I used to build Launch settings) is included at the end of this article. my system: Nova Launcher (customizable Once the code is built and uploaded, ODROID-U3 with 16GB eMMC, and home screen) go to http://hunt.net.nz/users/darran/ Real-Time Clock (RTC) battery SwiftKey keyboard (or any 3rd and follow the directions for putting the USB Wifi Dongle party keyboard) Arduino into DFU program mode, and Bluetooth dongle GApps for Play Store program it to be a USB HID Keyboard. USB self-powered hub Custom kernel for touchscreen in- For reference, here is a map of all the USB GPS (BU-353-S4) put (thanks to @mdrjr for building it) keyboard codes: http://www.usb.org/ Arduino Uno Rev 3 And some PC applications used to developers/devclass_docs/Hut1_11.pdf. 16 GB USB Drive set up the Arduino and USB GPS I wired all the buttons to a common Lilliput 7” capacitive touchscreen Arduino IDE ground, and then each one to its respective 12 momentary push buttons SiRF Demo (to configure USB pin on the Arduino. Then, all I needed to do GPS for correct baud rate) was connect the Arduino to the ODROID.
ODROID MAGAZINE 34 BUILD A TRUCK PC WITH ODROID
Launch” settings. Open the settings and assign the first four to your choice of apps. My Quick Launch icons are Waze, Pan- dora, and Play Music, with the last button going back to the Home screen. Next, install a third-party keyboard. I have a Swiftkey, but any virtual keyboard will work. Once the keyboard is working, go to Settings, and Language and input, click on Default, and turn off Hardware keyboard. This will allow the virtual key- board to work while a physical keyboard is attached. Now, attach your GPS. If you get the one I have (BU-353- S4), follow these instructions: http://bit.ly/1gzbAXr. Complete the software installation by installing any other apps that you may find useful, such as Skype or Google Hangouts.
Installing the ODROID in your The Arduino Uno, when combined with an ODROID-U3, makes con- vehicle necting interface buttons as easy as connecting the dots. For my truck, I installed a 12V plug connected to a switched 12V line to run both the screen and USB hub. My PSU has a USB port rated up to 2.1 Amps which I use for powering the ODROID itself. I also installed a 400W 4-channel amp, con- nected everything up to the original stereo connections, and ran an RCA-to-headphone cord from the Audio Out on the ODROID to the input on the amp. The ODROID connects to the Internet via a Wifi hotspot on my phone. You may need to mount the GPS receiver on the roof (or some other area with an unobstructed upward view) us- ing a USB cord extension in order to ensure a stable connection. In my case, everything works great now, and I was able to build a fast, reliable Truck PC using an inexpensive ODROID-U3.
/* Arduino USB Keyboard HID for ODroid * Made by Jeremy Leesmann aka Killer Turtle */ Setting up the ODROID First, install the custom kernel for your touchscreen. For #define KEY_LEFT_CTRL 0x01 detailed instructions, please refer to the February issue of #define KEY_LEFT_SHIFT 0x02 ODROID Magazine’s Giant Android Tablet cover article. #define KEY_RIGHT_CTRL 0x10 Next, install GApps in order to get access to the Play Store, #define KEY_RIGHT_SHIFT 0x20 or you can install Amazon Appstore. [ Editor’s note: There are #define KEY_LEFT_GUI 0xE3 several posts on the ODROID forums explaining how to install GApps on your ODROID. The simplest way is to use the An- uint8_t buf[8] = { 0 }; /* Keyboard report droid Epic Loot Software Collection, available for free down- buffer */ load from the forums, which includes a one-click Gapps installer #define PIN_VolP 7 app for Android versions 4.1.2 and 4.2.2 ] #define PIN_VolM 8 For my home screen, I installed Nova Launcher because it #define PIN_Enter 5 looks great, but you can use any similar application to custom- #define PIN_Escape 6 ize the desktop. To get the Arduino buttons to work as hotkeys #define PIN_Up 9 for opening apps, go to the Play Store and install Anycut. After #define PIN_Down 10 it’s installed, add a shortcut, click activity, and choose the first #define PIN_Left 11 Quick Launch that are shown (there are most likely 3 of them). #define PIN_Right 12 This will place a shortcut on your home screen for the “Quick #define PIN_A 0
ODROID MAGAZINE 35 BUILD A TRUCK PC WITH ODROID
This TruckPC is ready for a non-stop Pandora The GPS interface makes sure you can pick up your Why go through traffic when you can drive party on the beach. date on time for a romantic off-road adventure. over it with your monster truck tires?
#define PIN_B 2 state = digitalRead(PIN_VolP); #define PIN_C 3 if (state != 1) { #define PIN_D 4 buf[2] = 128; // Vol + #define PIN_Space 13 //buf[2] = 27; // Letter X // buf[2] = 123; // Cut key: Less portable int state = 1; Serial.write(buf, 8);// Ssend keypress releaseKey(); void setup() } { state = digitalRead(PIN_VolM); Serial.begin(9600); if (state != 1) { pinMode(PIN_VolP, INPUT); buf[2] = 129; // Vol + pinMode(PIN_VolM, INPUT); //buf[2] = 27; // Letter X pinMode(PIN_Enter, INPUT); // buf[2] = 123; // Cut key: Less portable pinMode(PIN_Escape, INPUT); Serial.write(buf, 8);// Ssend keypress pinMode(PIN_Up, INPUT); releaseKey(); pinMode(PIN_Down, INPUT); } pinMode(PIN_Left, INPUT); state = digitalRead(PIN_Enter); pinMode(PIN_Right, INPUT); if (state != 1) { pinMode(PIN_A, INPUT); buf[2] = 40; // Vol + pinMode(PIN_B, INPUT); //buf[2] = 27; // Letter X pinMode(PIN_C, INPUT); // buf[2] = 123; // Cut key: Less portable pinMode(PIN_D, INPUT); Serial.write(buf, 8);// Ssend keypress pinMode(PIN_Space, INPUT); releaseKey(); // Enable internal pull-ups } digitalWrite(PIN_VolP, 1); state = digitalRead(PIN_Escape); digitalWrite(PIN_VolM, 1); if (state != 1) { digitalWrite(PIN_Enter, 1); buf[2] = 41; // Vol + digitalWrite(PIN_Escape, 1); //buf[2] = 27; // Letter X digitalWrite(PIN_Up, 1); // buf[2] = 123; // Cut key: Less portable digitalWrite(PIN_Down, 1); Serial.write(buf, 8);// Ssend keypress digitalWrite(PIN_Left, 1); releaseKey(); digitalWrite(PIN_Right, 1); } digitalWrite(PIN_A, 1); state = digitalRead(PIN_Up); digitalWrite(PIN_B, 1); if (state != 1) { digitalWrite(PIN_C, 1); buf[2] = 82; // Vol + digitalWrite(PIN_D, 1); //buf[2] = 27; // Letter X digitalWrite(PIN_Space, 1); // buf[2] = 123; // Cut key: Less portable delay(200); Serial.write(buf, 8);// Ssend keypress } releaseKey(); void loop() { }
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buf[0] = KEY_LEFT_GUI; // Windows Key buf[2] = 5; // Letter a // buf[2] = 123; // Cut key: Less portable Serial.write(buf, 8);// Ssend keypress releaseKey(); } state = digitalRead(PIN_C); if (state != 1) { buf[0] = KEY_LEFT_GUI; // Windows Key buf[2] = 6; // Letter a // buf[2] = 123; // Cut key: Less portable Serial.write(buf, 8);// Ssend keypress releaseKey(); } The ODROID TruckPC goes anywhere in style, state = digitalRead(PIN_D); including your favorite grassy hilltop. if (state != 1) { buf[0] = KEY_LEFT_GUI; // Windows Key state = digitalRead(PIN_Down); buf[2] = 7; // Letter a if (state != 1) { // buf[2] = 123; // Cut key: Less portable buf[2] = 81; // Vol + Serial.write(buf, 8);// Ssend keypress //buf[2] = 27; // Letter X releaseKey(); // buf[2] = 123; // Cut key: Less portable } Serial.write(buf, 8);// Ssend keypress state = digitalRead(PIN_Space); releaseKey(); if (state != 1) { } buf[2] = 44; // Vol + state = digitalRead(PIN_Left); //buf[2] = 27; // Letter X if (state != 1) { // buf[2] = 123; // Cut key: Less portable buf[2] = 80; // Vol + Serial.write(buf, 8);// Ssend keypress //buf[2] = 27; // Letter X releaseKey(); // buf[2] = 123; // Cut key: Less portable } Serial.write(buf, 8);// Ssend keypress } releaseKey(); void releaseKey() } { state = digitalRead(PIN_Right); buf[0] = 0; if (state != 1) { buf[2] = 0; buf[2] = 79; // Vol + Serial.write(buf, 8);// Release key //buf[2] = 27; // Letter X delay(500); // buf[2] = 123; // Cut key: Less portable } Serial.write(buf, 8);// Ssend keypress releaseKey(); } state = digitalRead(PIN_A); if (state != 1) { buf[0] = KEY_LEFT_GUI; // Windows Key buf[2] = 4; // Letter a // buf[2] = 123; // Cut key: Less portable Serial.write(buf, 8);// Ssend keypress releaseKey(); } state = digitalRead(PIN_B); if (state != 1) {
ODROID MAGAZINE 37 MEET AN ODROIDIAN MEET AN ODROIDIAN MARIAN MIHAILESCU: ONE OF OUR TOP FORUM CONTRIBUTORS edited by Rob Roy
Please tell us a little about yourself. I am a computer science research fel- low currently living in Adelaide, Austra- lia, working at the Teletraffic Research Centre, Adelaide University. Originally from Romania, I did my undergraduate studies in computer science in Bucharest, and then PhD at National University of Singapore.
How did you get started with computers? As a kid, I saw a Spectrum ZX at a family friend and liked the games. I am still very fond of many of those games, like Saboteur, Dizzy, Elite or Chuckie Egg. I had the opportunity to join a special sec- ondary school class where the BASIC pro- gramming language was taught, and also in a communist country, import of tech- Visiting Arapiles - Australia. joined the (small) local computer club. nology was prohibited, so Spectrum was The high school that I went at also had an all I grew up with; I saw my first PC when What types of projects have you done with informatics degree program. Growing up I started high school. your Odroid? I initially got the ODROID U2 for a low-power HTPC, as my Raspberry Pi was too sluggish. From all the ARM A9- based boards at the time, the ODROID was the only quad core that had pros- pects for getting Open GLES working in Linux. I actually helped out a bit with this and with getting XBMC working, and won the ODROID XU as a monthly forum award. Currently, I am using the XU for more than just HTPC - it’s also a home server (Apache, MySQL, SSH), download box, and home monitoring system (motion detection and tempera- ture logging). I am working now on
Journeying through Nepal at 5000M high.
ODROID MAGAZINE 38 MEET AN ODROIDIAN
Climbing 4000M high at malaysian mountains. Exploring exotic beaches at Thailand. adding more functions - I want to use it lot of places in southeast Asia, Thailand no. My old Raspberry Pi was completely to control my cat feeder, control the air being the perfect place where you can replaced by the XU. Whatever project I conditioning unit, and the garage door. enjoy sport climbing right on a beautiful do for myself, I open up and describe for Also planned is integration of all of this beach. Adelaide, where I currently live, others too - there are several HowTo’s I functionality with SiriProxy, to get all this is also close to the Grampians National contributed on the forum, a couple of control on my phone via the Internet. Park and Mount Arapiles, two landmark articles in the ODROID Magazine, and places for bouldering and traditional the charting library that I created, which What other hobbies and interests do you climbing. In terms of mountaineering, I exports data from RRDs to highcharts. have? am currently planning my second trip to Most of the things there are general and I love travelling, mountaineering, Nepal - a visit to the Everest base camp. should work on any platform, and aren’t climbing and bouldering. Living in Sin- specific to the ODROID platform. gapore gave me the opportunity to visit a What do you like most about the ODROID community? It’s the community itself that I like. If you are work- ing on a project, you can ask for advice and people will go out of their way to help and give you valuable advice. If you have issues, you can raise them on the forums and, if a solution does not exist, a fix will be provided.
6. Are you involved with any other software or hard- ware projects in addition to the ODROID? Besides work, my projects on the ODROID take up most of my time. So the answer is
From Nepal’s high mountains to its hidden Rock climbing at Thailand, valleys, we just hope Marian had the chance enjoying the nature and the to use his ODROID to capture video of his adrenaline that comes with it. spectacular travels.
ODROID MAGAZINE 39