Together with Johan (project 338) we successfully established a video conference between France and Finland. Time to try new things on the EFIKA, webcams, VIC, Ekiga...

First step I've successfully compiled the spca5xx driver needed for a Labtec Webcam Pro device. The latest version works right out the box, you just need your kernel sources/headers (tested with a 2.6.19 version). To get the right colors simply load the driver with "force_rgb=1".

This will allow you to get a cristal clear picture of the Père-Noël with spcaview :-)



The serious things begin now. The Debian's Ekiga package works well. So it's now time to link two machines on the home LAN. The EFIKA called my Mac (running xmeeting) and the result was really great. Just have a look below.



The final goal was reached when Johan's get Ekiga working on his side. And the Père-Noël (in France) was finally able to call Johan's DVI adapter in Finland...



These applications and demos run perfectly on the portable prototype.

With a reasonable CPU load (less than 40%) when you display both local & remote videos, this application shows once again the great potential of the EFIKA platform.



Last point, you can also turn the EFIKA into a video control server for home automation, lab experiments monitoring or even factory monitoring.

The EFIKA is able to encode on the fly video coming from a webcam (QVGA resolution) in MP4 and stream it over a network (TS encapsulation). Using MS Windows Media Player as a client (wmv & mms) is also possible. You will find the 2 appropriate VLC command lines (MP4 & WMV streaming) as reference in the v4l_vlc_stream file. Now just tweak them to fit your own needs.

I connected various machines running different OS to the EFIKA and the video link was working like a charm.

Stellae

Summer has come for some of us and it's time for holidays but you don't want to leave your beloved EFIKA. ;-)

Here is the solution, a portable EFIKA. I finally put a 7 inches WVGA (800*480) display on an OpenClient (thanks again Genesi) and get the first "almost" portable EFIKA prototype.

It uses a Radeon 9250 (the XGI gfx could be supported in a near future) and the DVI-D signal is sent to the panel through the I/F I've previously designed. This is now a really nice piece of hardware which runs the latest 2.6.22-rc6 linux kernel (patched for the EFIKA).

Better than many words, a small video: eclipsis_00.mp4.

This video shows successively the boot process, a curses game example, a DirectFB demo and finally X11 with OpenGL support.

Just below: selected pictures of the system.



Complete system.



Behind the scene.



X11 + openGL.

On the technical side, a preliminary version of the DVI I/F schematics is now available.

• dvi_lite_0705_01_prelim_00.pdf
  
• dvi_lite_0705_01_prelim_01.pdf
  

The I2C DDC memory (EDID) can now be programmed under linux with the eeprog utility through the DVI connector.

As usual, you can find all the details on my website.

Last point, I started a small "subproject" which aims to design an external power management module for the EFIKA. This module will also include sensors (temperature, humidity...) for home automation applications.
Based on a FPGA containing a 32bits NIOSII softcore, this small system will act as an intelligent supervisor for the EFIKA. The code will be based on the U-Boot loader (init + exceptions handling).

The cross-compilation toolchain (binutils, gcc & newlib) runs on the EFIKA (30 hours of compilation from source to set it up).

Nevertheless this is a "backgrounding task" for me, so do not expect major progress before a while. The priority remains the portable EFIKA.

Picture of the module (FPGA system & a DS1305 RTC).



Progress of the day, the lowest level functions of u-boot are now running ;-)



Nice, but many things remain to do...

Stellae

I've already announced it on the forum but I put it also on the project blog to keep a record. With only few components, I've plugged a WVGA (800*480) screen on the EFIKA (through a Radeon 9250).

You can look at the forum thread or directly on my website for details.

Making a "clean" version of this interface is now a priority. I hope it will be helpful for the "EFIKA laptop" concept.

Noël (Stellae)

I've opened a dedicated page for this project on my web site (always under heavy development ;-)).

A first working version of the hardware is almost ready (VHDL is under validation).

A "quick and dirty" program which export Bitmap picture for the I/F is available on this page.

Since I use a custom FPGA board for this design, schematics, pinout, BOM... are available on a dedicated page.

I've successfully booted the EFIKA and started the debian installer using my ibook G4 as terminal.

An USB to serial adapter including a FT232R chip from FTDI has been used and Zterm as terminal emulator.

A screenshot is available.

Schematics & layout of the FPGA board will be soon available (time to make the web page).

On the software side work is in progress in order to get a direct access (not Virtual Com Port) to FTDI USB device. Their D2XX device driver is not open source and only exists as precompiled module for X86: shame on them.

The EFIKA has not reached France for the moment ;-), but work is in progress on the project.

I try here to develop a "lite" display interface for the EFIKA dedicated to all people who don't need an expensive & powerful GPU + screen solution. This interface is well suited for basic monitoring (static graphics) & I'm thinking about making an USB powered "fluent" console mode.

PCI is an option today since using this interface involve heavy HW & SW work (why not creating a sort of "synergy/alliance" with similar projects ?). I'm looking at alternative solutions using "more standard" ways to drive small size TFT panels with the EFIKA.

Nevertheless, the primary objective is the USB version for the moment.

You'll find a very nice description of the current development platform on B&R's blog. Thank you for this entry ;-).

Technical clarifications

Last week I discussed by e-mail with Matt and B&R from Genesi to obtain more information on the EFIKA system.

I thought using the "LocalPlus Bus (External Bus Interface)" as a direct interface to the PPC internal bus by disabling the PCI I/F (Normal Mode). But this is clearly impossible since it implies to heavy modification and signals integrity will be badly affected. I also suppose that heavy software modification have to be considered.
Conclusion: this interface is definitively not an option.

Perahps I can find some useful High Speed I/F (PSC) but USB & PCI are the prefered ways for the moment.

Noël