Chris Ball: An Openmoko bike ride

An Openmoko bike ride

Chris Ball — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 02:19:00 +0100

I've been having fun with new purchases recently: a new bike, and a Neo Freerunner phone from Openmoko. The phone is also my first GPS, and it's doing a fine job as one:

A bike-mounted Freerunner

Software for the Openmoko has come a long way since the previous model, with a pretty large community of developers building up. (I've tried to do my part by writing a patch to fix the touchscreen when the screen's rotated into landscape mode.) I'm particularly pleased with tangoGPS, which uses data from OpenStreetMap and has some great features: you can zoom out to enclose an area and ask it to download all of the map tiles inside that area for offline viewing, up to a specified zoom level (so, I now have map images for most of Massachusetts sitting on my SD card). You can also publish your current location and get a moving map of friends. It's written by a single developer, and I'd suggest making a donation to the project if you're using it — think about how much such an app might cost if it were running on the iPhone instead of the Freerunner!

The bike mount in the photo above is an Arkon CM927, which I don't recommend very highly; I've had the phone come off it (without major damage, which is good) twice now while riding over rough road. It should probably be strapped in separately, but that makes the whole thing less convenient. Let me know if you know of any better cell phone mounts.

Okay, on to the bike ride, which happened yesterday. It was a beautiful day, and we rode from Quincy Center to the beaches at Hull and back, with a few extra-fit people riding from Somerville to Quincy at the start. Here's a photo of the group:

At the base of Hull Wind 1

We've taken the ferry back into Boston harbor twice now (once from Salem and this time from Quincy) and the trip and harbor look fantastic around sunset.

Finally, here's a photo from tangogps:

Leaving Quincy Harbor on the ferry

"An Openmoko bike ride" by Modellbau Autos

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:19:48 +0100

It looks great! What release for OpenMoko are you using? I recently received my OpenMoko and am going through the steps to bring it to life and install an image

"An Openmoko bike ride" by Moped

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:35:22 +0100

It's great to have GPS in your phone! You can't get lost, wherever you are. ;) As I can imagine it's very useful at a bike tour, too. Built-in GPS receivers in mobile phones are the future, and today already many of such phones are available.

"An Openmoko bike ride" by Apoman

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:00:56 +0000

I can't get the GPS device to work neither. Upgrading didn't help me. I'm pretty clueless.

"An Openmoko bike ride" by Flüge

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:22:49 +0100

that´s an awesome. I am searching for an clamp for may nokia n95, because it also hase a navigation mode. Unfortunately the battery is stressed a lot in this mode, but it´s better than to lose one´s way.

"An Openmoko bike ride" by Chris

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 21:03:02 +0100

Unfortunately, I can't get the GPS device in my FreeRunner to work at all (it never gets a fix). Have you had any trouble with that?

No, I think I've been lucky. There are two things it could be:

some people have reported bad soldering on the internal GPS antenna, which would stop you getting a fix. My phone seems fine.
if you have an SD card plugged in, you should upgrade to a kernel that contains Andy Green's SD clock workaround.

"An Openmoko bike ride" by Craig

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 19:04:22 +0100

Unfortunately, I can't get the GPS device in my FreeRunner to work at all (it never gets a fix). Have you had any trouble with that?

"An Openmoko bike ride" by Chris

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:53:58 +0100

Is it possible to read sunlit display during ride or is displa contrast too low for that?

The contrast's too low in sunlight. It works well in shade, and it's just about visible in sunlight if you pull over and peer at it, but it's not readable while moving in sunlight.

If that's an issue, hooking up voice prompts through something like navit might help.

"An Openmoko bike ride" by petr

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 16:36:19 +0100

Is it possible to read sunlit display during ride or is displa contrast too low for that?

"An Openmoko bike ride" by Chris

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:56:33 +0100

It looks great! What release for OpenMoko are you using?

I'm using the FSO milestone 2 release at the moment.

"An Openmoko bike ride" by Jeff Stedfast

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:08:26 +0100

Heh, I think I may have seen you guys...

(I live in Quincy)

"An Openmoko bike ride" by desNotes

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:40:13 +0100

It looks great! What release for OpenMoko are you using? I recently received my OpenMoko and am going through the steps to bring it to life and install an image.

"An Openmoko bike ride" by rodrigo@gnome-db.org

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:14:52 +0100

If you want/can spend some money, have a look at http://www.touratech.com (it's for motorbikes but they sell bike mounts also) or http://www.ram-mount.com/

They have good mounts for all kind of GPS/PDA/Phones

Also, please make sure you record your tracks and upload them to http://openstreetmap.org :-)

"An Openmoko bike ride" by josch

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 11:48:39 +0100

well... i have a better bike mount for my neo1973. i made it myself out of a piece of thermoplast. I cut it out with a fretsaw and bent it over a candle until it fit my neo perfectly. Now it is impossible for the neo to fall out of it - even if i would turn my bike upside down, since it will only slide out of the mount when i disconnect the gps antenna and usb charging cable. here are some pictures and a drawing as svg: http://rabenfrost.net/openmoko/bikemount/ cheers josch

"An Openmoko bike ride" by Fotoalba

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 08:38:46 +0100

Hehe, it seems a little bit geek, but its really fun, an openmoko on a bike :)

I've bought a phone from openmoko last week too, but i hadn't time to test it.