Mobile 3G Internet

Yesterday I switched my mobile network provider to ’3′, mainly because of their attractive fixed-rate Internet bundle. For £5 I get 30 days Internet access, up to a 2GB data-transfer limit. Compare that to my previous network provider (who shall remain nameless) and my £5 would get me only 1MB (0.5p per KB). Obviously this has given me a lot of freedom to surf the web, send/receive email and read RSS feed, which are supported nicely on my Sony Ericsson K800i. Other networked applications I have installed so far are Google Maps and YouTube. I had always wanted to use Google Maps when out and about before, but the amount of data that it uses was just too expensive before.

A particular feature that I have found interesting is my phone’s support for IMAP4 ‘push’ email. After adding support into my Courier-IMAP server, the phone receives email notification (like receiving an SMS message) as soon as new emails are stored on the server. If only my desktop mail client (Evolution) supported this too!

The other thing I want to mention is mobile TV. For £2 I decided to try out 3′s 30 day mobile TV add-on. Quality is obviously not brilliant as it is streamed and there’s not a mass of channels, but it’s amazing none-the-less the first time you see it. I don’t know yet whether I will continue to purchase this add-on, but I can see it being a boredom-buster for those train and bus journeys.

Overall, I’m really happy with the switch–SIM card cost nothing (free with £10 credit), it’s given my phone so much more value, I’m getting to keep my old number and still on pay-as-you-go (pre-pay).

Packard Bell Syntek webcam success

Approximately 18 months ago, my girlfriend was looking for a small and light laptop to replace her broken iBook. The replacement laptop is a Packard Bell Easynote BU45-U-045 (I think that’s the model number–product details). Most of the hardware is well supported by Ubuntu Linux–Intel graphics chip runs Compiz-Fusion well, SD card reader, and wireless–although with ‘Restricted Drivers Manager’. There is also a webcam integrated above the screen, but I didn’t get this working until today. The camera chip comes from Syntek Semiconductor Ltd but is usually assembled under the name D-Max.

The command ‘lsusb‘ was an obvious starting point, but no manufacturer/device name is given so you have to look carefully at the ID numbers. This is the output I have (174f:a821) but apparently there are other devices by Syntek that are supported (174f:6a31, 174f:6a33, 174f:6a51, 174f:6a54 and 174f:a311).

jayne@jayne-laptop:~$ lsusb
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 08ff:1600 AuthenTec, Inc.
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 174f:a821
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

I found the Syntek DC-1125 Camera Driver Project hosted on SourceForge, still in development (in face the latest version was released today!) but it worked OK for me. These instructions are how I managed to get it to work on Ubuntu. If you decide to carry out these yourself, you do so at you own risk and I accept no responsibility.

Download the drivers from the project page–you want the file stk11xx-*.tar.gz–and extract them. From the extracted directory, make the Loadable Kernel Module with the command sudo make -f Makefile.standalone. I got the following error about ctags, but this didn’t matter as the module had been compiled by this point (.ko file).

make: ctags: Command not found
make: *** [driver] Error 127

If compilation goes OK you should see a file called ‘stk11xx.ko’ in the directory which you should copy to your kernel’s module directory, sudo cp stk11xx.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers.

Run the following commands to load you camera’s kernel module. The light next to it flashes if you have one.

sudo depmod -a
sudo modprobe stk11xx

If all has gone well up to this point, test it with an application like Camorama or Ekiga. Install Camorama through Synaptic or by typing the following command.

sudo apt-get install camorama

For me the image shown was upside down, which was annoying at first. However there is an argument you can pass when you load the module which counteracts this. If you need the image flipped, use these commands to unload the module and re-load it with the argument ‘vflip=1′.

sudo rmmod stk11xx
sudo modprobe stk11xx vflip=1

Open Camorama again and you will hopefully now be the right way up. Now we have to make sure that this argument gets added automatically or you will be the wrong way up next time you start the computer. You want to create a new file in the directory ‘/etc/modprobe.d’ for the module with the line ‘options stk11xx vflip=1′ in it.

sudo touch /etc/modprobe.d/stk11xx
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/stk11xx

If you have a similar webcam, I hope this post is useful to you. If you have tried this for yourself, please leave a comment.