[Wikireader] Any news on Wikireader ?

Wolfgang Spraul wolfgang at qi-hardware.com
Fri Oct 23 05:53:46 CEST 2009


Doug,
YES! This is an excellent summary and technical introduction to
the device...

Before trying to add a few things, let me first express my deep
personal thanks to a number of people that worked with me on the
device until 5 months ago (there was not enough space on the official
website to list them all there):

Tim Ruetz and Daniel Mack (www.caiaq.de) for the electrical design and microkernel
Joerg DocScrutinizer and Andy Green for hardware feedback and specs!
Holger zecke Freyther for system software and a (failed) WebKit-based renderer
John Lee, Matt Hsu and Marek Lindner for software improvements
Yi Zhang for product management all the way to functioning prototype
and our vendors like GoWorld and EPSON who provided significant engineering assistance

You all worked far beyond what was to be expected, or even compensated for.
It was a true pleasure to work with all of you, I learnt a lot - THANK YOU!
Let's hope the WikiReader will reach many people, and have a great future.

Now that that's done, some feedback:

> It does not use a Linux kernel.  It is an embedded device containing 
> only minimal amounts of software, just enough to be a WikiReader.  The 
> WikiReader program itself is the kernel.

We tried to keep the microkernel functions and the app separate. Chris has
documented this nicely, the microkernel was originally called Mahatma.
There is an interesting side story, in that at some point the plan was
to run a Japanese ITRON microkernel on the device!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_Project
This didn't work out as the ITRON implementation (free software: Toppers/JSP)
turned out to be too big. So it got deleted from the source tree at some
point. But if you dig in the history, you can still find it and it may be
an interesting starting point for some ITRON hacking on the device.
It was working at the time!

> I don't think RMS would have any complaints about carrying one of 
> these around.

Can you spend a bit of time to check the licenses? Chris Hall reviewed it
so I'm sure it's all good, but since it is all statically linked together
and GPL-licensed it means like you said every last bit of software needs
to be at least GPL compatible. An independent review on this would be great.
In addition to the microSD card, there is only a small bootloader in an
EEPROM (to boot from the SD card), but I think it's free software and in
the source tree as well.
Reflashing that EEPROM is a bit tricky (though possible, needs documentation),
but not sure who would need it.

> If you hold the third button down while turning on, it starts up the 
> serial console (19200 8N1).

Is it documented somewhere how to hook up a serial cable?
Currently there are three simulators available (console, cocoa, Qt4), but
when you want to do active development on the device, I think having a
serial cable is the only way to get faster feedback cycles, log output, etc.

> It has no connectivity, other than a serial port I haven't tried yet, 
> and SneakerNet (you take out the micro SD card and walk over to another 
> computer to update its contents).  This lack of connectivity keeps the 
> internals simple and the cost down.  The card and the serial port are in 
> the battery compartment.

If I think about this device, the one thing that pops out again and again
is BRUTAL SIMPLICITY. That is the real beauty of it.
You can load some software into this device, then give it to anybody and
not be worried they will get lost in a number of buttons and options.
They will (have to) focus on what you are delivering in front of their eyes,
and one thing where the WikiReader excels technically is the capacitive
touch screen, which makes interacting with it a joy.

Get more software on it!
:-)
Wolfgang

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 11:14:25AM -0700, Doug Jones wrote:
> -= Apertum =- wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > The (very interesting, IMHO) Wikireader product has been launched about
> > 2 weeks ago, but still i don't see any information about hardware and
> > software (IE we don't know if there is a Linux kernel in it, or not),
> > and/or how it will be hackable by the community.
> > 
> > It's there any news somewhere on the net, or when you at OpenMoko plan
> > to discover these (important) informations?
> > 
> > Thank you so much for your attention :-)
> > 
> 
> 
> Look for the thread labeled [reader] on this list
> 
> I have one, and have been spending some time looking at the code and 
> available docs.
> 
> It does not use a Linux kernel.  It is an embedded device containing 
> only minimal amounts of software, just enough to be a WikiReader.  The 
> WikiReader program itself is the kernel.
> 
> AFAICT the code on the device is entirely written in C and Forth, and is 
> 100% Free Software.  Unlike the Freerunner and every other cellphone on 
> this planet, it does not contain any chunks of proprietary code (it 
> doesn't need to worry about what the cell providers or the FCC thinks). 
>   I don't think RMS would have any complaints about carrying one of 
> these around.
> 
> This device is perfect for Free Software purists and for people who, for 
> whatever reason, don't carry Internet access in their pockets.  (As the 
> global collapse deepens, I expect more and more people will be unable to 
> justify the monthly cost of carrying around Internet access.)
> 
> 
> The wiki is small now but gradually growing:
> 
> http://wiki.github.com/wikireader/wikireader
> 
> 
> Much of the documentation is stashed away in the source tree:
> 
> http://github.com/wikireader/wikireader
> 
> 
> The device fits in my shirt pocket (barely) and has a daylight-readable 
> monochrome LCD display with no backlight.  It's a touchscreen;  you 
> scroll it up and down with a gesture, and follow links with a tap.
> 
> The on/off button is on the top edge.  It uses two AAA batteries, which 
> should last a very long time as the device is extremely miserly.  You 
> can use rechargeable (1.2 V) batteries if you like.
> 
> Under the display are three buttons:  Search, History, and Random.
> 
> The History button displays a list of the most recently displayed pages. 
>   The other buttons are self-explanatory.
> 
> The database contains a text-only snapshot of the entire 
> English-language Wikipedia, over three million articles.  You can search 
> on any word in the text.  The touchscreen keyboard is a bit small for my 
> fat fingers, but I can manage (it's capacitive, and won't work with a 
> stylus).
> 
> It has no connectivity, other than a serial port I haven't tried yet, 
> and SneakerNet (you take out the micro SD card and walk over to another 
> computer to update its contents).  This lack of connectivity keeps the 
> internals simple and the cost down.  The card and the serial port are in 
> the battery compartment.
> 
> If you hold the first button down while you turn the device on, it 
> displays a list of Forth programs you can run.  Just tap on the name.  A 
> lot of these are diagnostics, but there is also a simple calculator and 
> a drawing program.  If you know Forth, you can probably write your own 
> program and put it on the card, I imagine.
> 
> If you hold the second button down while turning on, it runs the calculator.
> 
> If you hold the third button down while turning on, it starts up the 
> serial console (19200 8N1).
> 
> The drawing program shows that the device could be used for pictures, 
> but don't expect any Wikipedia image content  --  there isn't room on 
> the card.  However, it might be practical to put in a lot of the 
> diagrams that can be compactly stored as SVG files.  Hopefully somebody 
> will add that functionality in, as well as equation support.
> 
> The microSD card that comes with it is an 8GB model.  I don't know if 
> larger ones will work.  I hope so.
> 
> The card has 3.8GB of free space on it, so there is plenty of room for 
> more content.  I have been looking into the possibility of adding custom 
> content (the multi-wiki concept).
> 
> 
> As I see it, there are two paths for code development:  New code to run 
> on the device, and user-friendly cross-platform code to run on the 
> user's desktop machine or laptop and which is used to simplify and 
> manage the task of updating the contents of the SD card.
> 
> New code to run on the device would come from Forth programmers who can 
> write new Forth apps, and embedded developers who can write C code for 
> tiny machines that don't have operating systems.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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