I find sometimes that the hardest part of a project is choosing a name. I like to have a name set before I write any code so that I can keep a consistent naming scheme (NextStep: NSObject, NSString, ect). I spent sometime coming up with the name “OBDroid”, but it would seem that it is already taken. So I spent even more time and renamed the project to “DashDroid”. This time doing a google search before writing any more code.




Above is the latest screenshot of the UI implemented and running on my android tablet. As you can see the UI has changed a bit. Functionality is coming along. Finished “blind coding” the OBD2 stack tonight, I just need to test it (Of course its going to work first try! I mean, come on, it compiled!). So after I work out the bugs with that, I will just need to code the “WTF” Diagnostic Trouble Code Reader / Clearer. All in all, I’m pleased with it so far. Will be a sexy addition to my Talon’s dash once it is finished.

Started working on a new project codenamed OBDroid. It’s basically just an OBD-II datalogger and scantool for Android. The goal is to have customizable dash layouts (colors, gauges, ect) for displaying sensors and to keep it as generalized as possible (so that it will work with lots of vehicles). I’ll be using an ELM327 to USB cable to read the sensor data and trouble codes. Managed to get my butt in gear long enough to do a little design work. Here’s a quick preview of what I want it to look like. More to come hopefully.

My Atrix finally bit the dust (again) with screen related issues. It had a rough life. It survived being pulled into a lake with me, it wen’t with me to Fiji + Australia surviving the highly corrosive environments there, it was hacked, smashed, dropped, thrown, and had a screen replaced twice. The screen and home button broke on me from yet another drop (I play hard).

It’s been a great phone, but I feel like we’ve had our time together. It’s time to move on. So I wen’t and picked up a Samsung Gio (GT-S5660 to be precise) for $100. After rooting/unlocking and installing ClockWorkMod Recovery, I was able to get an Android 4.2.1 (jellybean) rom running on it smooth and stable. So far I’m quite pleased for $100, but we’ll see how it holds up to my life…

Dropped my atrix the other day which resulted in a very cracked touch panel. Fortunately it still worked if you could forgive the cracks all over the image. So I did what any normal geek would do and I ordered a new screen off of eBay and patiently awaited its arrival.

Got the screen, tore the phone open, took the old screen out (which broke as I was removing it), and started to install the new screen, but alas the new screen’s ribbon tore as I was putting it in. So I decided to probably do what any normal person would do and buy a new phone. In the mean time, I reassembled the phone and started on an epic quest to firstly get ADB running (cause apparently I had it disabled for some reason) and install a VNC server.

Since I had no way of interacting with the phone, I had no way of turning ADB on. Luckily, I had ClockWorkMod recovery installed. So I booted to recovery and was able to connect to the phone over ADB. Once I got a shell, I had to figure out a way to enable ADB for the main os. So I mounted all of the partitions in fstab and did some exploring. Ended up having to modify a few files in order to get ADB back. Here’s the full process:


mount -a
echo "1" > /data/property/persist.service.adb.enable
echo "adb" > /data/property/persist.sys.usb.config
/system/xbin/sqlite3 /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db "update secure set value='1' where name='adb_enabled'"
sync
reboot


Sweet! ADB was enabled in the main os and there was much rejoicing. Now I had to install a VNC server. I ended up using droid VNC Server as other open source servers couldn’t open the framebuffer for some reason. I installed it using the Google Play Store’s ability to install apps on your phone remotely. I figured I could simply ADB in and activate the daemon using the shell, but as it turns out, the daemon gets extracted by the app to the data folder when you first run the app and hit the start button. Great. So after some googling I found out that you can start an app via the terminal using the am command. I was able to start the app using the following command:


am start -n org.onaips.vnc/.MainActivity


The app started, but doesn’t activate the server until you hit the “Start” button. Whats more, my screen was locked and wouldn’t be able to see the app until I unlocked it. Dang. Back to Google. After a hardcore montage of me googling, I found a tool in the Android SDK called monkeyrunner. This can be used to send swipes, touches, button presses, ect to an ADB enabled Android device. Awesome, but I really didn’t feel like scripting the swipes for my pattern lock. So I disabled it using the following:


su
sqlite3 /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db "update system set value=0 where name='lock_pattern_autolock'"
sqlite3 /data/data/com.android.providers.settings/databases/settings.db "update system set value=0 where name='lockscreen.lockedoutpermanently'"
rm /data/system/gesture.key
sync
reboot


Now that the pattern lock was maimed, you could do any pattern and it will unlock the phone. So I wrote a quick monkeyrunner script that did just that:


start = (400, 700)

end = (500, 700)

device.drag(start, end, 0.2, 2)


Yeah! My screen unlocked and revealed the droid VNC Server app’s main screen. Now all I needed to do was hit the start button and with monkey runner that wasn’t a problem:


device.touch(300, 200, 'DOWN_AND_UP')


BAM! Good News Everyone! The sever fired up! Once the server was started, I was able to make things permanent by toggling the daemon to run on system boot. Now I can simply point a VNC viewer at the phone’s IP and use it to answer phone calls and read texts until I get a new phone or try replacing the screen again (shutter).

Just released a new version of Exposed that includes: Compatibility fixes for iOS 6, Updated libvncserver to 0.9.9 which has all sorts of speed improvements as well as enables Apple’s builtin Screen Sharing application to finally work, and finally, I added a default password for liability reasons. Default password on new installations will be “exposed”. Super secret, I know. The source code has also been updated on my github. Enjoy!

Just released a new version of Exposed that includes compatibility fixes for 5.0+ as well as merged in some long due fixes provided by @nitoTV so don’t forget to show him some love. Also from the source code side of things, I added a project build script that copies the bundle bin to a dylib and plist making it easier to test builds. Happy Easter!

New Website

The old version of my site was first off an old design getting older by the day, and secondly and most importantly, all of the content was statically coded directly into the html. This meant that every-time I wanted to make a post, add a photo, or release software, I had to modify the html directly. Social networking sites have made me lazy and I simply cannot be bothered to do that, thus the new site. The new site allows commenting (thanks to WordPress) so feel free to comment your little heart out. Another awesome freebie that the new site gets with WordPress is the ability to publish new content from my smartphone or iPad. Hopefully this will help remove laziness as an excuse for not posting.

When migrating to the new site, I tried my best to keep legacy links active and do redirects wherever possible. If you find something horribly broken please let me know.

Life

So you have a new site, what else is new? Another terrific question seeing as how I haven’t posted anything in like a year (because I’m lazy). Wen’t on a 3 month mission trip to Rabi Fiji and then stopped by Australia for 2 weeks before finally heading home for christmas. I had a lot of fun, but I’m sure glad to be back coding again.

Projects

I have been working on a number of different projects (this website being one of them) and I’m hoping to start releasing them now that I have a proper outlet for doing so.

Exposed has been updated to be compliant with the latest version of the Apple TV Software (5.0/5.1). You can look forward to a new release of it in source and binary form in the not too distant future. Stay tuned.

That’s all for now. Play around with the new site a bit. Would love to hear some feedback on it.