As I’ll write my Master Thesis on OpenMoko, I bought a Neo1973 as soon as it was available in the OpenMoko Online Shop. OpenMoko is an open source distribution for mobile phones, and the Neo1973 the first publicly available Phone, using it.

After it arrived, I managed to write some software just to get used to the environment. I’ve chosen Python for the task, as I like the development speed you can achieve with it and the number of libraries it provides.

OpenMoko is based on OpenEmbedded (OE), and so I was happy it had the most important Python libraries in its recipe database. I could start using pyGTK, Distutils, Subprocess and urllib right away.

What would you code on a virgin Embedded System like the Neo? Well the first thing that came to my mind, after playing around with the functions that could be only accessed by the on screen terminal or an ssh connection, was a User Interface to provide these functions. That way, I would be able to set options on Audio, Video and GSM connection without having to use the onscreen keyboard. SettingsGUI was born.

It’s a great experience to work with the OpenMoko community. There is a Wiki to get in-depth information, and the guys at #openmoko (and #neo1973-germany) at the freenode.net IRC network are providing instantaneous help. I could commit patches and bugs into the Bugtracker, to get the existing source code adjusted to my needs, and Alessandro offered to package my programs for his repository. Thanks for that.

So, it is really fun to develop for OpenMoko. Currently I’ve also got an SMS tool and a note writing program in the works. Expect more blog posts on those and on an experimental RSS Feed Reader soon.

This all provides a great basis for the Master Thesis, and I am really looking forward to start writing in the next weeks (after my university approved). So stay tuned and don’t hesitate to send me any thoughts or ideas.