At the end of last school year I had a school come to me with a problem. At the end of year each teacher is evaluated. One of the items in the evaluation is attendance. Each morning as the teacher arrives the teacher must sign in to the front office. If they have to leave the campus they must checkout on the same timesheet. Pretty simple, well maybe not. Days have to be counted by hand including tardies and checkouts. There’s a human error factor that makes this a drawn out process. Also, the honor system isn’t always held up. Sometimes the wrong time, date, or name is placed in the timesheet. Name meaning someone signing in for someone else. Computers can solve this problem. At first we were going to buy a program but after reviewing them it seemed we could do it ourselves. The best thing about DIY is you can customize to fit your needs.  We have setup cheap android tablets to connect to a webapp that will record the process. Well I’m placing what I have done so far online in hopes someone will find it useful. I would greatly appreciate any feedback or help. I won’t lie this is my first project of this nature. I only have a self taught understanding of programming so please forgive the poor implementation.

0.1 Timesheet

Over six months of nothing. Well some of that was cause I killed the tablet that was my last project. I have a new one but I decided not to experiment with it… yet. I have played with many things over the break.

Projects list

• Install Ubuntu Server on a Apple Mac Xserver (completed then abandoned)
• Create new firewall and guest wifi network (pfsesne)
• Replace WAN (MetroE)
• Create web Timesheet(php made for tablets)
• Replace Cisco voicemail server with asterisk (In the works)
• Scripting Ghost and FOG to image PCs(Fog is great but I need to customize it more)
• Play with Zoneminder to replace crap security system

That’s the short list. I’m going to start writing my experience down more.  Maybe my ramblings will help someone, even if it doesn’t it will be a note to myself on what I did. Stay tuned.

Things needed.
Android SDK
Theme-Porter_beta_3.zip by Daneshm90.
colorChange.jar by Ohsaka
smali
A theme to port. In my case I’m going to use Team CHAOS Clean Black.

Extract Theme-Porter_beta_3.zip and theme.zip. Copy framework, fonts, and app folders from theme’s system folder to the folder called old in Theme-Porter. Now we a need a copy of the framework and system folder from A81. Use adb to pull and place into Theme-Porter’s new folder.

Now we can run the script.bat in Theme Porter.

To change the clock color I used colorChange.jar. Zip the new framework folder under Theme-Porter. Run colorChange.jar. In my example I changed the clock to white.

Delete framework folder and extract framework.zip. Copy app, framework, and fonts back to A81.

Reboot and your device should have new theme. May take a few minutes on first boot this is normal. The standard warning of this may mess up something, it didn’t for me.

I think its amazing how people are making tools like colorChange.jar and Theme-Porter. Makes the whole process almost automated.

Check it out http://code.google.com/p/a81linux. So these two guys and I are working on linux for A81. Simon put up a google code page. They seem alot more knowledgeable than me so I don’t know how much help I will be.

I have taken my A81 apart one too many times. About two weeks ago while I had it apart I drop the very small clear power button. Gone in the abyss of never to be seen again. I have no clue where it went. So like any mad scientist I just made a new one. A beige piece of plastic is all I had to mold into the proper shape. It looked like trash, but worked. The plastic screw holders are really poorly made. First day I broke one. I just broke another. The best for last, my power button doesn’t work at all anymore. The sad part is I don’t really care. I’m really contemplating buying another one just so I can hack on this one and use the other. I might get a Smartv Q7 or a herobook instead. What do you think?

Here is a little back story on why I started work on a custom rom for a81. The only android device I own is my Wits a81. One of my buddies has a HTC Hero. While we were watching the Saints game I was messing with his Hero and took notice to how bad it was running. I convinced him to let me borrow it for about an hour so I could “work on it”. I ended up doing a backup and installing Bugless Beast custom rom. Talk about a big difference in how it ran. This got me thinking maybe I could do something like this for my wits. I knew how to root and install busybox. Thanks to a post by mns I had learned how to mount the ubi.img. Instead of wearing out the the nand making changes to it I decide it was better to boot from SD card. So I started extracting the files to my SD card and setting it up so I could boot android from it. I could easily make my changes and reset without having to do a full recovery if something went wrong. I went through a bunch of post to find example of what is common in custom roms. I found a bunch of apps and themes that I liked. Next question was how do I port what I have found. Through trial and error I found a sweet spot with Team Chaos Clean Black and adwlauncher. I’m going to continue to work on what I call my hazard rom but for now I think I will go play with linux some more. Where to download? Here.

Downloads needed:

mlo

mmcuboot-part3.bin > rename mmcflash.bin

uImage > kernel from wits android 2.2 809

Angstrom root

mk3PartSDCard

Install directions:

Download everything above.  Format SD card using mk3PartSDCard.

./mk3PartSDCard /dev/sdX

Mount first(fat) and third(ext3) partition.
mount /dev/sdX1 /media/card1
mount /dev/sdX3 /media/card3

Place mlo , mmcflash.bin, uImage on first partition.

Untar angstrom root to third partition.

cd /media/card3

tar zxvf /tmp/wits-angstrom.tgz  .

Umount and insert into A81.

umount /dev/sdX*

Power A81 like you were flashing. Angstrom linux should start.

P.S. Angstrom is from cm-t3530. I did a couple updates to it. Doing a full system upgrade breaks video. Next post I hope to have Wifi working.

So a little teaser video showing my wits A81-E running enlightenment. Running Angstrom and the 2.6.32 kernel from wits. Still need to work on sound, wireless, and bluetooth.

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Let’s start with an AA style introduction. Hi my name is Arlen and I am a nerd. I love technology, electronics, and comic books. I’m not ashamed of this fact. Enough with the self intro. This site will be my little blog on my projects. I hope to make it a place where people doing similar things to what I am can find some useful info. So please enjoy and leave a comment.