A Couple Of Minutes Of Your Time, Please?

Hello,

I just signed the petition, “Give Britain's last surviving Dambuster hero a knighthood.” I think this is important. Will you sign it too?

Here’s the link:

https://www.change.org/p/give-britain-s-last-surviving-dambuster-hero-a-knighthood?utm_medium=email&utm_source=notification&utm_campaign=signature_receipt&share_context=signature_receipt&recruiter=527146649

Thanks,

Steve 'SixtySixHundred' Burn.

Greatest. Prank. Ever!..

Read this.

Acts of vandalism don't really float my boat normally. But this tickled me.

Happy new year, everyone.

I Couldn't help Myself!..

Firstly, you should all know that I'm a 'tinkerer'. Nothing pleases me more than knowing how something works. Even as a kid I knew I loved machines, from transistor radios to that Gas Compressor my Dad kept in our house for 6 months. They were just for me!

Now, as fascinated as I am by electronics, I understand them. We speak the same stuff, (honestly! I awoke at 3am yesterday shouting, "01000001 01110010 01100111 00100001 00100000 01000011 01100001 01100010 01100010 01100001 01100111 01100101 00100001"). But what really amazes me, is the mechanics behind an Analogue Watch.

If I start a project that is going to require some soldering at any point, I dread it. I have a fairly unsteady hand y'see, so anything requiring any real precision is difficult for me, hence my fascination with the Analogue Watch. How those guys work with such intricate parts is beyond me!

Anyway, a new breed of watch maker has arisen over the past few years. A distinctively Chinese one!

There was a bit of a rush a few years back Smartwatches were being touted as the next big thing. Samsung offered the (quite frankly, beautiful) Gear S, while Motorola went with the, (1st with a round face/screen) Moto 360. Other wearables like fitness trackers and the like seem reasonably popular too but I resisted. Mainly because of the price, but ultimately because I felt the Smartwatch was essentially pointless. Why do I need a device on my wrist that is constantly linked to my phone by Bluetooth? draining battery power at an alarming rate? Just to get notifications from apps that make me grunt when I get notifications from them anyway? I decided that I'd hold off on a Smartwatch, at least until I can Play Pokemon Go on one! (*AHEM* Nope. Not buying an Apple watch, Android only for me).

U8 Smartwatch in white like I ordered.

As I like to tinker and as mentioned before, I like Android so I'm an avid reader of the XDA Developer Forums. I was browsing their 'Other Smartwatches' boards when a very well timed piece of targeted advertising came up.

I'd bought presents online over Christmas, an ad appeared for the site I'd been shopping on, (Wish.com). Inside that ad was a selection of smaller ads, one of which was for a Smartwatch, dirt, dirt cheap. Like £20 cheap. Seeing as nobody got me any Christmas presents this year, (thanks, kids), I went to Wish.com to have a look at their stock.

Now the £20 one I'd seem was a pretty sleek, stylish model somewhat resembling the Gear S, however, it was just designed to tether to a Smartphone for calls and music. I wanted a more complete device. One that could be run independently of a Smartphone, so I had a look around the site and sure enough, several watches came up, my 1st choice being one of these, so I bought it. But still didn't feel fulfilled...

Then, a model of watch appeared out of the corner of my eye... The U8 Smartwatch. I'd been reading of this odd little device all day, first trying to find the absolute cheapest smartwatch from China for testing/tinkering purposes, the U8 name came up quite a lot. Powered by a mysterious MediaTek MT6260 CPU, it's basically a Smartphone companion for getting notifications from apps and controlling media on you phone from it. I'm not expecting anything special from it, but at £7, (+£3 shipping) it's an absolute steal.

Further reading took me to bunniestudios.com (seriously, Andrew Huang, legend), who I distinctly remember from reading his Blog, was talking about a $12 feature phone he'd found in a Chinese market that was built on an almost unknown MediaTek chip. The device and the methodology behind its creation was an interesting read and further reading informed me of his Fernvale project, which is an open source project I'm really interested in. Basically an Open Source UI designed for a custom dev board based on MediaTek's obscure MTK6260 platform. The same as in the U8. This device has piqued my interest already and I haven't even paid for it yet,,, So I did. I spent £30 on Smartwatches and got 2 of 'em. The first will get used and reviewed in due course as it isn't as interesting to me as the U8. That thing is gonna get put through the mill! It better be enjoying the plane ride because when it gets here, I'm gonna punish it!

The U8. A £10 Smartwatch.

UPDATE: I'm aware of the clones and various firmware image silliness. I will arrange everything I have for the U8 when it arrives, until then. Keep reading! I may get a cloned one, I may not, we'll see. I'll also be applying my own brand of tinkerery to it too and see if I can't do something new with it. My goal for this device is to be able to control Windows Media Player from my wrist, I don't want it to use with my phone, not really. This is where I bought the watch from too. I will do a full review when the watch arrives. Until then, I'll just have to keep using this dumbwatch that doesn't even have Bluetooth. Just joking, I love my watch, even if it doesn't inform me of Tweets with my name in. :)

FURTHER UPDATE: The watch arrived, (2 weeks early, yay!). But it was a complete sack of crap so I sold it on. I'll get a better quality one and do a more detailed post on it. I'm actually looking to get a proper one, Android Wear powered. Or at least a more complete product. One that can work independently of a phone, with its own camera and SIM card slot. Just something worth taking the time to write about. In the meantime, don't waste your cash on these alleged Smart watches. They're stupid! 

A Slight Change In Direction!..

Needs work.

Curse you, real life. You really know how to put the boot in, don't you? Anyway, enough about my problems, Happy New Year to you all.

This little Blog of mine is to going to receiving a few additions to the subject matter. As of now, it was all about Retro gaming in some form or another, but as of today, I'm going to include any projects I'm currently involved with. As well as some more general ramblings about the world of Science and Technology.

I'm particularly interested in Android/Linux. I'm keen to get cracking on a Samsung ARM board and transform a bog-standard HDTV into an Android-powered, USB imbued Smart Telly. I'm familiar with SPI and BL0, BL1 & BL2, (cheers for that, Samsung. Actually, I'm not being sarcastic. The BL0 is the first stage of the Bootloader and is signed and on an unwritable chip). Conveniently for me, this device boots U-Boot, so all I really need to do is compile my OS. Anyway, the device specifics are listed below.

The EM210 from Boardcon.


* Processor: Samsung ARM Cortex-A8 S5PV210AH @1GHz
* RAM: 512MB 
* NAND Flash: 256MB/512MB/1GB/2GB/4GB optional
* Interface: 2x USB host, 1x USB OTG, 1x RS232, 2x RJ11, HDMI, GPIO, LCD, Ethernet, Camera, 3G, 1x T-Flash card, 1x SIM card, JTAG, Keyboard, Audio 
* Operating system: Linux3.0.8, WinCE6.0, Android4.0.3
* Board size: 108mm x 141mm

I've managed to get U-Boot to load onto the device but my Serial interface isn't displaying anything. Nowt. Not a sausage! I'll sort it, it isn't a serious project, I'm just really keen on getting it up and running. It has 3G support via a SIM card and I quite like the idea of a 3G enabled TV. It supports all kinds of interesting modules too, like GPS and thermal sensors and could even be used as a 3G wireless router, all while still being able to browse the web or watch TV via on-demand services. This really is a very interesting board with a tonne of potential. 

Even more interestingly, this development board went on to become the Samsung Galaxy S. You may have heard of it. Obviously, it's not the most powerful device on earth but it decodes 1080p videos and plays FLAC audio. Also, depending on what OS I choose to build for it, a wealth of retro console emulators. This dev board will power a PS1 emulator just fine. Throw in my Bluetooth Gamepad, (Droidbox) and what a thing to be attached to my secondary television!

So yeah, there's one ongoing project. I'm not working too hard on it, it is just a hobby. I do seem to have a taste for Embedded computing though so I ordered something from China that I've been reading about for months! More on that later, in the mean time, enjoy what I consider filth!

Phwoarrr!!

EDIT: I'm unable to get the source code files from Boardcon. If anyone has any joy, leave a comment. Hopefully I won't have to RE this device too hard to find the offsets I need to flash various files to.