KR1 and GPSd Technical Discussion

Michael · Last edited by Michael on Wed Feb 22, 2006 9:58 am; edited 1 time in total

Not sure if Kyocera folks understand how important GPSd will be in selling my KR1s (no need for StompBox). So, I am starting an official thread on the topic. The purpose of this thread is NOT to tell everyone the cool things you can do with GPSd + KR1, but rather a technical resource on getting it working with the KR1.

In another thread it appears we have get and put, so we should be able to put GPSd on the KR1.

I may have somebody here that has some free time over the next week or two to play with that and if we are successful, more information will be posted to this thread.

Admin: We have a non-technical discussion of GPSd for those interested
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tz1 · Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 1:48 pm Post subject:

The only reason I don't have it working yet is that I'm recompiling various flavors of GCC with MIPS and the linux include tree trying to find out the exact magical incantation needed to build binaries.

I already have a binary that will run (is recognized by the system) but crashes (elf-mips-tradbigendian). I need the correct prefix files (e.g. crt1.o), and to get it to use the libuClibc-whatever.so that is in the device (which I have a copy of).

(ah yes, GPL, but where is the source tree?).

There will be a problem running it out of ROM unless a firmware update can be hacked or we can determine the mechanism to create our own.

As a start you could simply forward the port (kill the diagnostic program and use ttyS1 to feed the NMEA streams to a TCP or even UDP port - netcat or socat, or even turn on telnetd and just do stty speed 4800 </dev/ttyS1; cat /dev/ttyS1), and use gpsd on the target for interpreting and multiplexing.

tz1 · Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 8:45 am Post subject: Progress...

The tools at

http://nonmips.sourceforge.net/ (the prebuilt stuff is for Linux).

will create a working hello world program for the KR1. gpsd and socat compile, but they terminate quickly with various SIGXXX messages. I haven't tried substituting the libraries - the kernel and libc versions are subtly different between their set and the KR1, so that may be the problem.

Also note that wget is available to "pull" files via http or ftp from other places once you get a shell.

When I fix some transmission problems (no, the kind that means you can't do reverse and need a tow-truck), I'll see if I can get any further.

If nothing else I should be able to do port forwarding to a socket with a simple multiplexer (think gpsd but only supporting the "r"(aw) command) shortly.

tz1 · Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 12:28 pm Post subject:

It doesn't like *stat64 calls, so after removing them socat works (using tftp put in binary mode)

http://homepage.mac.com/tz1/.Public/kr1socat.zip

socat tcp4-listen:8888 stdio

will let you telnet to port 8888 and then you see stuff to or from the console.

Now to do /dev/ttyS1 (after killing diagnostic and getting a cable for my GPS)...

Basically I recompiled the "nonmips" mips software in the link above for cygwin, replacing the include directory with the one from 2.4.26 (after applying the uClinux-2.4.26-uc0.diff patch).

hxmiller · EVDO User Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Posts: 46

tz1 · Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 2:51 pm Post subject:

A busier busybox (with script to install), socat, and see the README.

http://homepage.mac.com/tz1/.Public/kr1buso.zip

google for socat for all the options...

TFTP howto:
##you can also do "connect 192.168.0.1" after just doing tftp
#tftp 192.168.0.1 (the router address)
tftp>binary
tftp>put busybox
tftp>put socat
tftp>put dobusy.sh
tftp>quit

You can also do verbose and/or trace, and status to check the settings and the comm link.

(gpsd doesn't do anything, and I'm having problems with stty setting the baud rate on ttyS1 which I need for my multiplexer...)

The busier busybox should allow nfs mounts, and has most of the archiver stuff like tar, gzip, bzip, unzip, as well as more other utils.

tz1 · Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 4:29 pm Post subject:

I've updated the archive in the earlier post (kr1buso.zip) to include gpsd and strace. gpsd /dev/ttyS1 seems to work, and even will open a connection, but I haven't tried an actual GPS on the port (requires a null modem over my existing connection and a few other interesting things).

Strace or gpsd -D 9 reveals something interesting is happening if I create a pipe and send stuff, but gpsd will filter for correct NMEA sentences, so even raw mode won't show anything at the far end until I get a real GPS attached...

Michael · Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 4:33 pm Post subject:

Do you have a GPS for testing? If not, contact me privately.

I have extra Garmin GPS + USB To Serial Adapters, so you can test and get it working. Only catch to sending this to you, you have to publish your directions to this thread to get it working with a KR1.
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tz1 · Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 5:30 pm Post subject:

I have a serial GPS (or actually it is in the car which is in the shop, but I should be able to get it tonight).

The problem with some Garmin USBs is that they require a special driver (I don't know if I can do a kernel module at all). If they are recognized as USB serial, then it probably can go right into the phone port.

I'll publish full directions in any case.

The existing posts and the archive should be enough to get most started (if they know embedded Linux).

The only big caveat so far is that you need a console, which requires a serial port (mainly because I haven't found a way to get a shell without it, at least not so far, but now that I have strace and a few other tools...).

You can use wget (pull) or tftp (push) to move the files to the ramdisk, but that goes away when the power does.

If a firmware update comes out, it should be hackable.

hxmiller · EVDO User Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Posts: 46

visortgw · Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2006 7:44 pm Post subject:

tz1 · Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 12:09 am Post subject:

I've been too busy hacking the utilities to notice.

It has a 24 byte header which I've not decoded in this late hour, and a gzipped image (which does not contain a proper CRC and length ending) which is the kernel prepended to the romfs image. The trailing bytes are a serial number, "WL-EVDORT-...".

(dd if=run-KR1... skip=24 of=run.bin.gz will extract the compressed portion).

It appears "diagnostic" has been disabled. I will have to find the romfs and see if I can pull that out into a tree. (find the rom1fs? header)

I should be able to modify or edit it, and then, reinsert it.

Has anyone tried this update? Does "ps" show diagnostic running or not?

tz1 · Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 12:21 am Post subject:

yep.

Note it uses gzip -9 - a header in the gzipped image indicates maximum compression and gzip -9 run.bin recreates the identical image except for the modification time.

dd if=run.bin bs=1 skip=3186752 of=newrom.fs

you can mount or romfsck to extract the files.

Diagnostic has been commented out in /etc/rc, /bin/webs (the httpd plus lots of junk program) has changed, probably the misc. config page changes, and ath_pci.o has changed. As well as /etc/version.

Now do I want to be brave and replace the "#diagnostic /dev/ttyS1... &" line with "telnetd &" with hexedit in run.bin and repack...

hxmiller · EVDO User Joined: 30 Jun 2005 Posts: 46

After killing diagnostics I can't get any response on /dev/ttyS1.

stty returns an i/o error. whether or not the gps is attached.

gpsd runs and I can connect. but there is no communication to the receiver. used null modem and straight cables.

I also discovered that 4800 baud might not be supported. I set my Garmin 18 PC to 9600 baud.

Are you getting any response on /dev/ttyS1? Also other than bitpim I don't see any echos on /dev/ttyS1 when diagostics in running.

SL10 · Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 10:32 am Post subject:

Ummm. Is there a translator around here to decipher TZ1 postings? Unfortunely, I am not understanding all this programming info. Or could someone just post easy and simple info for "dummies" like me. Thanks so much. Smile

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