Blogospheric Refraction

Today I splurged on a new toy.  Previously, I had been frustrated by the complete lack of wireless headsets (bi-directional, not headphones which are listen-only), even to the point of wanting to homebrew one.  On the advice of a number of people, I also gave Bluetooth a try — unsuccessfully I might add.

Well it seems the people at Logitech have seen the need for a wireless headset for computing applications.  This is the first such headset I’ve seen on the market.  It uses the 2.4GHz ISM band, using some digital mode — no idea what modulation method is used.  Apparently it’s uncompressed too, which beats A2DP.  It breaks up if you move more than 10m away (line-of-sight), which is to be expected.

Linux talks to it straight out of the box.  The dongle emulates a USB audio device, which of course is supported by the snd-usb-audio driver in ALSA.  It looks as if Logitech has taken their other headsets, and separated the ADC/DAC from the USB logic, inserting the radio link in-between… so as far as the host is concirned, it’s just a wired USB headset.

It’s not quite the holy grail I’m after… a purely analogue version would be really nice since that’d be much easier to interface with my mobile phone and radios… but this is a very nice comprimise and isn’t that expensive

I’m now happily chatting on EchoLink (on node 95092) and enjoying not being tethered to a computer.

For those with a similar need, it’s definitely worth a look.

Hi All,

My P4 laptop died recently, which is a pain as I now have to look at replacing it in the near future… however, this has meant I now have 2GB of DDR400 SODIMMS that can be used in the Lemote systems.

There was a catch however.  The PROM had to be flashed on one of the units so it would initialise the RAM properly, otherwise the kernel would b0rk.  With this done, both units now recognise the 1GB sticks of RAM installed.

At present, both systems are available for developer use.

How to upgrade the PROM on the Fulong.

For the reference of others who may wish to perform this upgrade on their Lemote equipment.  This is the procedure.

1. Download pmon_v1.1.zip from this page and unpack it.
2. Copy the pmon.bin file located inside, to your /boot partition (or somewhere else accessible to the PROM)
3. Reboot, and hit ESC/DEL repeatedly to break into the PMON prompt.
4. Type set, and write down any critical settings such as al and karg
5. At the PMON prompt, enter the following command (adjust:path as appropriate)
   load -r -f bfc00000 /dev/fs/ext2@wd0/pmon.bin
6. Restore the settings you wrote down using set arg value.
7. Type reboot to reset the system.

If at step 5, the load fails, DO NOT REBOOT OR POWER OFF! Hit the up-arrow on your keyboard, double check the command, then press ENTER to execute it again.

I’d like to thank the members of the Lemote Forum community who provided the necessary infromation.