birds like wires

Latest Release: 6th November 2012

Download: Version 30300 – (136MB) MD5

• This software is not supported or endorsed by OpenPeak or O2. Use at your own risk.

Towards the end of April 2012, something rather unprecedented happened over on the Joggler Forums. It appeared that we were being linked to by O2 themselves as the point of contact after they discontinued their support for the device. After some negotiation, the forum was provided with a ‘sunset’ build of the OpenPeak OS for the OpenFrame 1, on which the Joggler is based.

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tags: joggler, linux Tweet

Latest Release: 23rd January 2013 – CHANGELOG

Download SqueezePlay OS v1.09 – (155MB) MD5

Download SqueezePlay OS for Internal Memory v1.09 – (155MB) MD5

• If you are using a version of SqueezePlay OS older than v1.05, installing the latest release is highly recommended.

I’d noticed that some people on the Joggler Forums were making more use of SqueezePlay as a replacement for the native operating system, loading it in preference to the Tango interface. I’d also toyed with the idea of running a few background services on a Joggler, but these were all things that were going to be tricky on a system as specialised as the OpenPeak one. So, I decided to make my own Linux distribution based on Ubuntu.

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tags: joggler, linux, squeezeplay, ubuntu Tweet

Latest Release: 4th January 2013

Version 1.53 (7.7.2-9705) – CHANGELOG
Download USB Installer – (12MB)
The USB Installer is for use with the Native OS only.

SqueezePlay is an open source music player written by Logitech for their line of wireless audio devices. Ordinarily, SqueezePlay is used on desktop systems, but because the interface was designed with touchscreens in mind, it’s particularly well suited to the Joggler’s display.

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tags: joggler, linux, scripting, squeezeplay, ubuntu Tweet

Latest Release: 23rd June 2012

Download System v1.09 – (103MB) MD5

Download Reflash Script v1.12 – (11KB) CHANGELOG

The O2 Joggler is a great device. It’s useful, hackable, affordable and fun. However, there’s always the possibility that the fun might go too far and leave you with a Joggler that’s not as happy as it should be. So here’s a recovery tool that should bring it back to life.

This is designed to be a reliable method of reflashing the O2 Joggler, even in the event that the internal flash memory has had it’s partitions destroyed. The Joggler is remarkably robust and will continue to boot from external USB devices even when the internal memory has given up, so unless you have a hardware failure or EFI problem this should get things working again.

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tags: joggler, linux Tweet

Updated: 5th November 2012

Download SSH/SCP Enabler v1.03 – (704KB)

Way back in the first days of Joggler hacking, the most important goal was telnet access into the native operating system. Telnet is a simple (and, by default, insecure) method of accessing a UNIX shell. Almost immediately after telnet access was achieved, the next goal was enabling Secure Shell access, or SSH.

This was achieved quite some time ago, and tools like this one have been in use for a while. However, other than getting SSH running, they did little else (and could even cause problems if run more than once). That’s why I put together this little enabler.

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tags: joggler, linux Tweet

Updated: 16th November 2011

Download Update Control v1.01 – (3.4KB)

On occasion, your Joggler will contact OpenPeak and ask if there are any operating system updates to be applied. It’s pretty certain now that the answer will always be ‘no’, but of course, it checks anyway.

Certain units, when contacting OpenPeak, provoke a response which makes the Joggler believe there is an update to be applied. However, no valid update is ever fetched, which causes the Joggler to enter a constant loop; booting, checking, attempting to install, rebooting…

Update Control for Joggler makes a tiny change to the libOPUtil.so library file, preventing the Joggler from reaching the OpenPeak servers, breaking the reboot cycle. There are additional update scripts in the Joggler’s software which may still attempt to connect to OpenPeak, but these do not appear to have an active function at this time.

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Released: 31st January 2012

Download GRUB2 v1.98 – (2.5MB)

I have a few Joggler plans afoot at the moment and one thing that has been bugging me a little is GRUB2. Almost two years ago the grub-gop-video-v1.patch was written, which enabled proper video output by GRUB2 on the Joggler at startup. This is brilliant. Now we can have splash screens and, more importantly, we’re able to see what’s going on at boot time. That’s pretty fundamental. However, it doesn’t look terribly pretty.

So, I set about recompiling GRUB2 v1.98 into two versions; one with the patch applied and one without. This way it is easy to switch to a quiet output, where the EFI boot logo remains on screen all the way through boot until the graphics driver is initialised. In case of problems, the USB device can be plugged into another machine and a quick change to boot.nsh will choose GRUB2 with graphics enabled.

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As one of my early Joggler releases, this has now been superseded. If you’re looking for a lightweight Ubuntu system for the Joggler, I’d recommend downloading SqueezePlay OS and deleting SqueezePlay from /opt/.

In developing the Joggler reflash tool it was obvious I’d need a relatively lightweight Linux which would actually run the script. There are distributions that are a lot more lightweight than Ubuntu Server, but because I’m used to using it and there was no startup cruft to clear out, it’s the one I went for.

This has the happy side effect that those people interested in running a Joggler as some type of server-only device can grab a copy of this and get started quickly.

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tags: joggler, linux, servers, ubuntu Tweet

I haven’t posted anything for a little bit, so I thought I’d test out embedding some video from Vimeo seeing as I’ve just opened a birds like wires account. No prizes for guessing what the content is about!

Ah, those hedonistic days. Those ‘Coming Soon’ icons. Joy. :)

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tags: joggler, tv Tweet

If you’ve ever tried the binaries of Squeezeplay 7.6 available from the nightly downloads, you’ll know that things aren’t quite right for Ubuntu. The same holds true for the Joggler the graphics and the audio are pretty messed up. But there is a way, if you compile it yourself!

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My word. After a chat with a friend in a pub, I found out that I had missed the opportunity to buy a hackable 7” touchscreen computer with an Intel Atom chip for £50. I’d been looking for something cheap and touch-screeny for the kitchen, so it was time for a trip to eBay.

I managed to pick up a mint condition O2 Joggler for about £70 in the end, and it’s superb. There’s no branding on the front at all, so it looks rather swish and inconspicuous. It’s rather like an electronic picture frame, but the spec is much more impressive. Made by OpenPeak, there’s an Intel Atom Z520 running at 1.3GHz, 512MB RAM, 1GB internal flash, wifi and wired ethernet, audio out, lovely display… and a USB socket on the side. That becomes important in a minute.

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tags: joggler, linux, ubuntu Tweet