Smart Home Blog

Finally, the repository for Nokia Internet Table Orbiter was setup (thanks to Andrew Herron from Convergent Home Technologies Ltd) to provide one click installation for Orbiter. Actually, that possibility is available for OS2008 (Chinook and Diablo) only. There is no way to specify more then one repository in Mistral (I suppose nobody use it now) and Bora (it’s used on Nokia770 only I guess). So, if you don’t have OS2008 on your device you should add Maemo and Maemo Extra repositories first.

Anyway, with new one click installation the Orbiter can be installed on your device easily and quickly.

When I played with Nokia770 under OS2005 I built the Plutohome Orbiter with OpenGL support. As result I run UI2 with overlay on Nokia770. it was completely useless because UI2 was designed for Gyration remote control or mouse pointer. So, on Nokia770 it was difficult to navigate through menu.

As you may know LinuxMCE supports smartphones under Symbian OS 1st edition, Windows Mobile 2003 and Treo as mobile Orbiters to control your home. It uses Bluetooth to communicate with smarthome system. So, it’s too difficult port every time the code to the new version of mobile OS. So, a big fan of LinuxMCE Hari decided to develop the Orbiter on Java Mobile platform. In that case we can have universal code which can work even on ordinary mobile phone with support of Java and Bluetooth. The idea of Java Orbiter will be more attractive if you remember about Google’s Android.

The progress of development of JavaMO (Java Mobile Orbiter) you may see on the picture. It’s really cool work! To get the latest news about JavaMO, please, read that topic on the LinuxMCE forum. If you’d like to participate in development or investigate the code just checkout it from the SVN repository. All contributors are very welcome!

Many users of Nokia770 claim that the device work unstable as LinuxMCE Orbiter. The Orbiter crashes very often, especially on Video screen. So, I decided to make a brief research to make device more stable. Here is a few suggestions.
Read more »

My project – Plutohome Orbiter for Nokia770/N800 was accepted to the N810 maemo device program! Thanks to Nokia I’ll able to port and test the Plutohome/LinuxMCE Orbiter to the new N810 and smarthome folks will get a possibility to control their houses using Nokia’s Internet Tablet.

Thank you Nokia for the perfect gadgets and choice of Plutohome Orbiter project!