PadOrbiter

PadOrbiter is a self contained operating environment based on Debian Testing (Lenny), for the WebDT 366 mobile computing tablet containing a fully functional Orbiter for LinuxMCE 0710.

The distribution contains:

• Base Debian Install
• Xorg 1.4, Containing the Geode display driver, and an input driver for the Penmount DMC9000 touch display surface.
• Ratpoison for Window Management
• The Orbiter software.
• A Nice boot splash, and X splash for bootup and router reloads/orbiter regens.
• A Configuration screen to set network parameters.
• A version of DropBear for ssh and maintenance
• Installs from a USB Flash drive.

Demonstration

A Demonstration of the PadOrbiter and my WebDT 366 pad is here:

• 1 of 2: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1080865851585336899&hl=en
• 2 of 2: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2013509531300772806&hl=en

Download

The Latest version of the Orbiter Image can be obtained here. It should be directly imaged onto a flash stick Using dd or Using Flash Imaging Software for Windows

Programmers Notes

Technical information can be found in Programmers Notes for PadOrbiter.

Updating PadOrbiter manually (0810)

For those testing the upcoming 0810 release, you may wish to updae youre padorbiter with the latest and greatest. This will detail how to do that.

• First, you must set up a builder to build a recent version of LinuxMCE-0810 (or have access to those binaries)
• Next, since padOrbiter doesn't come with scp installed, you will need a webserver from which you will download the new files from (Luckily, LinuxMCE has a webserver already installed)
• I will assume that you will be using the webserver on your core. ssh to you core.
• perform the following:

sudo mkdir /var/www/download

Orbiter must be specially build for padOrbiter. From your sources (/var/www/lmce-build/svn/branches/LinuxMCE-0810/src/Orbiter if you are using a 0810 builder)

make clean
make -f Makefile_padorbiter all
strip Orbiter
strip libDCECommon.so
strip libPlutoUtils.so
strip libSDL_Helpers.so
strip libSerializeClass.so

Place the following new binaries from 0810 into /var/www/download on your core:

Orbiter
libDCECommon.so
libPlutoUtils.so
libSDL_Helpers.so
libSerializeClass.so

Next, you will have to ssh into a running padorbiter (you will need to know the IP address)

ssh root@<padorbiter_ip_address>

Password is root

cd /usr/pluto/bin
rm Orbiter
wget http://192.168.80.1/download/Orbiter
chmod 755 Orbiter

cd /usr/pluto/lib
rm *
wget http://192.168.80.1/download/libDCECommon.so
wget http://192.168.80.1/download/libPlutoUtils.so
wget http://192.168.80.1/download/libSDL_Helpers.so
wget http://192.168.80.1/download/libSerializeClass.so
chmod 755 *

Because of the very limited memory of the padOrbiter, you may find that during any of these steps, you will get an error that the padorbiter is out of memory, and couldn't complete one of the downloads. You can free up some space by doing the commands below, and re-attempting the download:

cd /temp/cache
rm -r *

Once you are finished, reboot your padorbiter and all should be well!