After many time with no changes, my MP3 player has got an important update to hardware and firmware.

Changes made are the following:

• A new ICSP socket has been added (for programming the PIC with something like PICKit)
• Fixed many bugs found in the firmware

Visit the project’s Downloads section in order to get the new files.

Although the Android system is pretty good, it is not that visually attractive as other systems. But that can be changed.

I’m putting here the link to an upgrade that changes the status bar (along with its icons) to black. If you also use a widget like Beautiful Widgets (which you can download from Android Market), the system’s appearance can be greatly improved: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=563551

If you want to apply this upgrade you must have CyanogenMod 2.4.5 and root access in your phone.

Time have past since my last post and it has been due to almost no time I have because of the activities I’m involved with. Work, final project, etc…

Changing to the subject related to this post, I recently got a new phone: T-Mobile myTouch 3G also known as HTC Magic. This phone (which is a wonderful phone) uses the well known OS based on Linux called Android (by Google) which is an excellent OS for mobile devices. So, if it is that great… what is the problem with it?

Well, it has no problem (at least, a significant one) but the system doesn’t have the root access enabled.

In my opinion, for a common user, this is not a problem, but for advanced users that want to have the most of their phones, having no root access is a great limitation.

For example, having root access allows us to flash a customized ROM (with many features and optimizations) like the excellent CyanogenMod. Besides, it allows us to change many system’s visual elements to make the user interface more eye-candy. Another really neat feature which requires root access (in most cases) is called WiFi Tethering. It allows us to share the data plan with some notebook, making the phone behave like a mini wireless router.

Now, rooting the phone is a very simple process but it isn’t risk free (if you do it wrong, you can permanently damage your phone). Anyway, I’ve done it many times with no problems following the steps I describe here:

First of all, we need the following files:

• HTC Android 1.6 Recovery Image
• The latest version of CyanogenMod ROM

1. Turn you phone off
2. Turn it on in Recovery Mode (pressing the Home button while powering on)
3. When the recovery screen shows up, press over Nandroid backup. This will make a copy of the entire system inside your SD memory card in case of future problems. If nothing related to Nandroid backup appears, just move to the next step.
4. Once the security image has been created (if you have done so in the previous step), the phone will go back to the same recovery menu. Turn off the phone and start it normally.
5. When in home screen (if your phone has started normally), put it in USB connection mode and copy the two files needed to your SD card (recovery image + Cyanogen ROM).
6. Turn your phone off once again.
7. Wipe your phone.
8. When the process is completed, select Choose Zip (Alt+A) and choose the HTC_ADP_1.6_DRC83_rooted_base.zip file. This will flash the image to the phone. If the phone reboots itself, be sure to press the Home button to enter the recovery mode again. DON’T LET THE PHONE BOOT THIS TIME!!!
9. In the recovery menu, select Choose Zip (Alt+A) again and choose the Cyanogen ROM this time.
10. Reboot the phone and enjoy your HTC Magic with root access enabled.

Thanks to Francisco, the spanish version of the book Programming the Z80 by Rodnay Zaks is available in PDF.

You can download it here.

PS: The book was found in public Internet forums. The author of this blog takes no responsability for the information contained in this book and the way it is used.

These latest days I have been digging on the creation of WordPress templates or themes. To learn more I wanted to create one, and what best to practice than creating a new theme for my own Web page based on WordPress.

I hope everyone of my readers to enjoy this new fresh air in the site.

Finally, the FAT32 Driver written in C/C++ for the CCS compiler is available.

The code was written for the PIC18F2550 microcontroller but it could be easily adapted for other microcontrollers.

With some aditional work, it could even be adapted to work with Atmel AVR microcontrollers using WinAVR.

The project can be downloaded from the project’s page clicking here.

Many times when working with some systems like microcontrollers, accessing a hard drive or SD/MMC card formatted with FAT32 is needed.

FAT32 is a file system created by Microsoft present in almost every computer and operating system.

For this reason, it is very useful when doing some projects to have some driver for this file system capable of read and write files.

In the Projects section, I’ve published a FAT32 driver created by me, written in C# for the handling of directories and files.

Also, soon you will find the same code written in C/C++ that could be used in other platforms like PIC microcontrollers, Atmel AVR, etc.

Go to the project page clicking here.

After many days down, finally the web site is back online again. I hope to post some new projects I’ve been working on, as soon as possible.

Continuing with the development of some applications using the 32feet.NET bluetooth communication library, I’ve created this tiny application capable of send and receive hand-drawings made by someone else. For example, you can transfer some information with a coleague in a meeting, or to a friend in a classroom, etc.

The program supports various pen widths and colors. Excelent for sending short messages and/or drawings.

The full application, as well as other test programs, can be downloaded from here.

That’s the name of my latest C# application for Pocket PC. Some days ago, the concern of creating a Windows Mobile application capable of communicate using bluetooth came up and after some research, I found an excelent library at Codeplex called 32feet.NET created by In The Hand. This library encapsulates the Windows bluetooth interfaces in both Windows versions, for desktops and mobile devices.

The BTChat application, is a simple prototype of a bluetooth capable application and has been created encapsulating the classes provided in the library mentioned before even more.

The program also support the “server” option, that is, it can repeat the received messages to all the clients added to a list.

If you want to try this application or modify to adjust it to your needs, you can do it downloading the source code from here: BTChat v1.1

Also, a desktop application is also available with same functionalities as the Pocket PC version. Remember that this program only works with the Microsoft bluetooth stack, otherwise an error will occur.