The Sad State of Open Source in Android tablets

This year a slew of companies have launched competing Android tablet devices. A lot of rhetoric has been spun about how Android's open source ecosystem gives manufacturers and consumers an advantage. Android is open source; it can be liberally extended to ...

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Debian on the Eken M001

Steps to get Debian up and running on the Eken M001 Android tablet. Debian on the WM8505 netbooks has been around for a while, thanks to the efforts of #easypc's abrasive. I needed to tweak a couple of things before ...

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Eken M001 Protection, Phone Home & “Demo Purpose Only”

"Derek" posted up a comment yesterday: I have a EKEN M001, which will not unlock the screen by pressing MENU. I have tried reseting the EKEN M001 by pressing the Reset button on the back ofthe MID, but te screen stays unlocked. The ...

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Structured EEPROM access with Arduino/AVRs

On an Arduino or other AVR, EEPROM access is a bit fiddly if you want to store different types of data. In this blog post, I'll show you a quick trick to use when you have lots of structured data ...

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Eken M001 teardown & serial console

See here for my review of the M001. This teardown shows the V006 revision of the board, a quick serial port install, and includes some console/dmesg output. The main difference between V005 and V006/V007 board revisions seems to be relocating the ...

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Notes on porting Android 2.x to Eken M001

Over the past couple of evenings I've been looking into porting Android 2.x (eclair or froyo) to the Eken M001. These are my notes from unsuccessful binary-only reverse engineering. Short version Although Android 2.1, and possibly 2.2, will run against Eken's supplied ...

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Eken M001 Android tablet review (Pt 1)

This is part one of an 3 part mini review of the Eken M001 tablet, from a tinkerer's perspective. Part One: Review of the M001 as a tablet. Part Two: Teardown & serial console. Part Three: The M001 board as an embedded computer ...

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Apple takes all

I'm a bit late to the party on this one. I've read all of the big ranty iPhone and iPad arguments. I've worried a little about the monoculture that the iPhone represents. I decided these were mostly ivory tower arguments. ...

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OpenWRT 8.09 & usb-storage

This is just a quick note on some experiences using an external USB drive with OpenWRT 8.09 on an Asus WL-500gP. Mount options not honoured It seems that mount options set in /etc/fstab aren't honoured properly. I've filed a bug report here ...

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Wireless client bridging with OpenWRT

Renting sucks when you're a nerd. When you move, you have to re-network all your bits and pieces, without the benefits of laying cable. Wireless is great, but not every network device has it. I have a VoIP phone and ...

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