fonosfera

This is my first post here, I’m Matthijs Kooijman and I’ve been doing some work for Fon in the last few weeks. Fon has a very cool community surrounding their Fonera firmware, but it hasn’t been investing nearly enough time in communicating with this community recently. There is a lot of useful feedback that hasn’t received the attention it deserves. My (part-time) work is now to get the fonosfera, the Fon community, back on track. Let’s look at a few things I’ve done or am still doing.

There were a lot of comments on this blog that needed to be moderated. Partly because everybody was busy and partly because there wasn’t a single person responsible for comment moderation, this list had accumulated to nearly 300 comments. In the last few days, I’ve gone through the list, deleting half of the comments since they were autogenerated spam and approving the other ones. Just for the record, every real comment has been approved, with the exception of a handful of comments that were plainly offensive and contained swearing. You might have gotten the impression recently that we didn’t publish criticizing comments, but we just haven’t been publishing any comments… We might become a bit more strict in our moderation, though, more about that soon. For now, please keep to on-topic comments, and use the proper channels (forums, IRC, trac) for other things you want to share.

There’s also the trac, which is full of tickets. Some of these address very real bugs, a lot more suggest very useful features, but there is also a lot of duplication and some (spam) polution in there. To turn the trac into a useful development tool again, I’ve started reviewing tickets. The first goal is to filter out duplicate issues, remove useless tickets (that need more information but have not contact information, or that are really configuration problems instead of real bugs), sort the issues into different components, firmware versions, etc. and sometimes even try to confirm the bug or even fix it. So far, I’ve looked at over 150 tickets and there’s still over 250 to go.

To improve the quality of (new) tickets, we’ve also cleaned up the ticket metadata a bit. There is now a hardware field to choose either 2.0n or 2.0g, the list of versions and components is more complete and some useless fields have been removed or hidden from anonymous users.

We have also enabled anonymous commenting for tickets. If you report a problem, you can now supply additional information, or answer our questions in a comment. To improve communication, we have also enabled email notifications of tickets: You will now get notified about all changes and comments to tickets you’ve reported (but only if you filled in your email address in the reporter field). So, if you’ve created a ticket in the past and didn’t fill in your email address, feel free to leave your address in a comment so we can contact you with questions and updates. Note that trac will not make your address public, even when it’s a comment.

This option for feedback on the trac has already payed off: A lot of bug reporters have been supplying extra information and we even managed to nail a few bugs because of that. Thanks for that, reporters!

Finally, I’ve also been doing some early testing with the most recent firmware on 2.0g hardware. There has been a focus on getting 2.0n stable in the last few firmware releases, but now it is really time to get 2.0g up to speed again. I hope to have the next release support 2.0g again (though there might be one more bugfix release for 2.0n first, to fix some import bugs, more about that soon). Note that the next 2.0g release will probably not have bridge mode yet, due to different hardware capabilities…).

Hi

After a looooooong time of silence (forced silence… we were working, not playing XD) We’re coming with great news for you. The 2.3.0.0 version of the firmware will be soon available for your foneras 2.0g!!

No, we haven’t forgot or let down our loyal fonera 2.0g users. We want to make them as happy as possible and we’re doing 2 things for them:
1) Improve the firmware as much as possible. This 2.3.0.0 has all the improvements we’ve developed during these months. The Fonera 2.0g will have as much as possible the same firmware as the Fonera 2.0n.
2) Give discounts for those who are willing to upgrade their 2.0g to 2.0n. We know you spent money on the 2.0g and now we have a new device that is more powerful (and also more expensive). This is not common in all companies, but hey, we try to make you happy, you help us with the feedback too, after all. So we have announced great discounts (we mean great, not small) for those who have bought a Fonera 2.0g and are willing to upgrade it! Please stay tuned to your mail!
New features:

• The web interface over WAN has been moved to port 443 for security
• Transmission has been integrated into the FON WebUI. You can still access it in the traditional way!
• Added QoS support!! Make sure you set realistic up and download values of your line on the configuration. Otherwise it doesn’t work…
• Twitter!!! Yes, your fonera will tell you when it has finished uploading videos or someone connects to your signal and much more! (Not available for Torrents yet, sorry)

So, what is the bugfix list for this RC1? Here it goes (hold to your chair):

• Optional Manual DNS server on DHCP mode.
• Pop up to prevent unwilling reset/rebooting on the systems menu.
• ALL configurations are saved now from upgrade to upgrade (except for firewall, coming in the next!).
• Sending files to the correct folder over samba triggers the upload to the corresponding service.
• Samba works fine now on Windows XP.
• NTFS is handled slightly better now. Actions won’t happen till the disk is properly mounted (source of many bugs).
• More robust upload management.
• Filenames starting with ‘.’ are ignored by the service uploades (picasa, flickr etc). Good for Macs ;)
• Both \\fonera\Media and \\fonera\disc-a1 work now (better use the first)
• Many, many, many, many more bug fixing. All boring and internal, but will improve the overall experience!

Please, test it and report back. We are only looking for compatibility bugs.

*IMPORTANT NOTE* This is a Release Candidate. It is not an stable firmware. Most of the things should work fine and it’s probably safe to install. But if you are not very skillful or feel not confident about it… please wait for the release or until you read enough feedback from other users. We are happy to help everybody with any problems they experience but sometimes are overloaded of work… ;)

*ANOTHER ONE* After upgrading, the torrent application might be broken. This is due to changes in the very interior of the fonera. The way to fix it is to remove the “FoneraApps” from the disc where it is installed and reinstall.
Enjoy!

Web upgrade image (do NOT uncompress):
Enduser
Developer

RedBoot / Ssh upgrade image:

Md5sum: 5d43a2ba405627975f09741e3d506681

http://download.fonosfera.org/RC/20090922_FON2202_2.3.0.1_RC1.image

OldMan released a pre-beta version of his plugin. He ported Motion software to the Fonera 2.0!

With the application installed and a webcam connected to your Fonera 2.0, you will be able to trigger events when motion is detected. A built in functionality is for example to save the images captured by the webcam when motion occurs. Needless to say with a bit of scripting the possibilities are endless.

Download the plugin Motion4fon_0.1beta.tar.gz
Draft version of the manual page on FON Wiki

Screenshot:

Hello all!

after a veeeeeery long time, we’re happy to announce a new Release Candidate: 2.2.6.0 RC4! Yes, we know the 3 comes after the 2 and not the 4, but RC3 was an internal release :P

Why did it take us so long to make a new release? Phew… LOTS OF CHANGES!!! Really, L O T S. And we hope this is going to be all for the good.

This is not a stable release or better said, not an official release, just a Release Candidate, but we think it’s much more stable and usable than previous versions. We’re closer and closer to the perfect device! LOL

Ok, no more boring info, here’s the Changelog:

• Upload service queuing: if you plug a disk with media to upload to different services (YouTube, Flickr, Picasa or Facebook) they will now be queued and uploaded serially and not in parallel (which caused the fonera to run out of memmory and crash).
• Applications know when another upload is in progress: if you’re uploading videos to Youtube and there are queued pictures for Flickr, the Flickr page will tell you: “Waiting for YouTube to finish the upload”. How about that? ;)
• Send files from samba and they will be uploaded to your applications. No need to unplug and replug the disk! More and more user friendly every time :P
• Prorgess bars for uploaders: so you konw when it’s gonna be finished. It also helps show that the fonera is working on something ;)
• Save configuration from flash to flash: no need to reconfigure all the settings again! Well, WPA password will be lost and the plugins you installed too… sorry. We’re working on it. But it’s already good progress, isn’t it? (this feature only works on web upgrade)
• Save and restore configuration: what’s this? well, some users like to have backups of their configuration. Now you can download it from the fonera and upload it again if you want to restore safe values… It’s not very tested yet, test it and let us know if it works fine!
• Better memmory management (processes stopped if unnecessary, less services running by default etc): ok ok, this is not a feature but an enhancement, but it’s important!
• More image and video types supported. every application is aware of what it can upload. They even check filesizes depending on the service. If a picture is too big for Picasa it will tell you ;)
• Videos are now supported on picasa and flickr too!
• Classic youtube accounts should work now: those without the @gmail.com - it’s not valid to have a gmail.com like account and just ommit it in the user field! Please, someone test it…
• Additional info on the dashboard: shows uptime, shows release candidate number…
• Disable FONSpot: yes… you can now disable the FON service. Why, you wonder. Well, we want to build the biggest wireless community in the world, but well, everybody is free to do whatever they want with their fonera, they payed for it after all. So, you don’t want to share? don’t share… but you are evil! mwahahahaha!
• And much more…

And let me finish with the most awaited the most critisized, the most conflictive, the most difficult bug we ever had… (NO IT IS NOT BRIDGING! LOL)… TORRENTS!!!

We removed the unworkable (thanks unworkable folks, it was a good try but didn’t fit our needs) and it’s been replaced with… TRANSMISSION! Transmission is the best torrent client out there and it’s opensource! It works really well and it’s been veeeery smooth to integrate in the fonera.

Thanks to pablo and john form FON and Charles from transmission and others, we have our first Transmission plugin for you guys to enjoy! It’s still the first version, we are already working on some improvements that will come in the future, but for now, it’s usable.

Don’t abuse… the Fonera 2.0 is still a limited device in memory and CPU. Please follow this recommendations:

• We suggest to limit download speed to 150KB/s-200KB/s for stability and responssiveness of the interface. This is the values we set by default, we know it’s not very high, but it’s kind of stable.
• Also, sometimes the interface seems to be freezed… it’s not common but sometimes it takes up to 30min to give a response, still it’s working in the background. If Transmission has proved something is that it’s very stable and very reliable, so just be patient. Really, be patient. Especially when starting or connecting while it’s been downloading for a long while.
• Do not add many torrents. Transmission right now does not support queueing. All torrents you upload to it will be added for parallel download and this kills la fonera. Well, it doesn’t kill it, just makes it totally unresponssive. IMPORTANT: adding torrents and pausing them does ALSO freeze the fonera, Transmission uses these files in background for something.
• Also, be aware that it does NOT work with NTFS so… windows users, use FAT32, linux users… you don’t need advice ;)
• DO NOT use it with a pendrive. The fonera uses the pendrive as RAM memmory (swap) and pendrives are too slow for that plus they deteriorate faster.
• DO NOT remove the disk before “shutting down torrent” from the fonera web UI. This is very important or you will have to uninstall and reinstall transmission. To extract a disk, you need to reboot (sotfware reboot) the fonera if you ran transmission first. This is a bug that will be fixed soon.

We are already trying to work with the Transmission guys to improve these problems, so stay tuned and ready for improvements in the future. Still, this is something already usable :P
I don’t want to extend on the incredible opportunities Transmission is bringing to the fonera (bandwidth control, seeding, access from other devices - Android, iPhone, Firefox plugins). You will get to know them by yourselves :)

I also want to thank the small betatesting team we’ve built. They are in great extent responsible of many of the improvements you see now and will see in the future. A big applause for them.
Ok, I think this has been the longes release candidate post I ever wrote so now I shut up.

Web upgrade: 20090708_FON2202_2.2.6.0_rc4.tar.gz

Web upgrade - developer mode: 20090708_FON2202_2.2.6.0_rc4_DEV.tar.gz
Console upgrade: 20090708_FON2202_2.2.6.0_rc4.image - md5sum f53f98adeeac9b9b5426d8a53cbd9db3

Yesterday we announced it, today, we release it!

In order to use foneradownloader-0.0.9 you need firmware 2.2.6.0-rc2 or later.

What you can do with is:

• click on a torrent and select to send it to the fonera 2.0 for download, instead of downloading it with the PC and then upload it to the fonera. Cool huh?
• select a set of plain text links (direct links or RS and MU links) and right click on them -> “Download with the Fonera”. YAY!!!! And you can select even normal text, it’s a smart plugin that will strip out only the proper links!!
• See the status of all your downloads in realtime on firefox, without needing to go to the fonera UI. You can see it all in a table like this (sorry about the Spanish):

hello

we’ve been quite busy lately. We are working on lots of things right now and soon you will know about some of them. But today, here you have a new release candidate for you to test.

As always, give us your feedback, it is very much appreciated.

Most of the changes are cleanups for the not-so-well working applications like torrent and rapidshare. So you, heavy-downloader… test it and let us know if it improved at all.  But there is a very nice new feature… the firefox plugin!!!!
You can expect

• a better handling of the RS and MU links: links are loaded without checking so it’s faster and are checked at download time so there’s no possible variation of temporary links. Summary: should work better and fail less :P
• torrent cleaned up: the torrent application is handled slightly differently and the different status are managed somehow better. even though the downloads won’t be perfect, it seems like you can now download some big files from time to time :)
• other cleanups…

OK, ok, you want to know about the firefox plugin. What does it do? well, it’s in beta state (lol) but the target is to detect whether you are connected to the fonera 2.0 and if so, it helps you send tasks to it. For instance, you can:

• click on a torrent and select to send it to the fonera 2.0 for download, instead of downloading it with the PC and then upload it to the fonera. Cool huh?
• select a set of plain text links (direct links or RS and MU links) and right click on them -> “Download with the Fonera”. YAY!!!! And you can select even normal text, it’s a smart plugin that will strip out only the proper links!!
• See the status of all your downloads in realtime on firefox, without needing to go to the fonera UI. You can see it all in a table like this (sorry about the Spanish):

Thanks Javier for the very good work and Steven for supporting with the APIs!

How do you install it? Unfortunately you need to wait till tomorrow so we can fix a small last minute bug :P
Enjoy and thanks!

The Firmware Team

• Firmware WEB image: USE THIS ON WEB
• Firmware CONSOLE image: use this on console (ssh/serial) - md5sum 21ed62df8adfaa858d61e52f7c41349a

Just got an update from our friends of the FonHome project. They made quite a lot of progress and expect to release a beta version before the end of the summer. The driver of the X10 USB controller they are using still needs a few fixes. But guess what, they have a google code repository, so you can give a hand or provide your expertise if you’d like to.

Noticed that they are good graphic artists too? I especially like the FonHome branded Fonera 2.0!

Hi,

After lots and lots and lots of impatient requests to make the plugin to switch from ENDUSER mode to DEVELOPER mode, it is now available on the “Applications” menu of your Fonera 2.0. Yes I put it there… one by one… I got into your houses and hacked your foneras!!! muahahahaha!!!!

What does this plugin do? It will basically change one configuration file (/etc/config/registered) so the “dev” option is changed from 0 to 1. That is all. Simple huh?

The effect is nice…

• the interface color will change,
• the ssh access will be available after 2 reboots (don’t ask why…)

There’s one more thing the plugin will do (please don’t be paranoid): it will connect to fon.com and tell us your MAC address. Why? Because we want to know how many people switched to developer mode. We promise not to tell anybody what you did, ok? Actually we’re not even storing this info in a database, but a simple log.
What are we working on?

• New torrent application -> we hope it will fix the issues we’re having now
• Fix RapidShare bug: some files could not be downloaded. It’ fixed and will be pushed in the next upgrade.
• Improved audio plugin to listen to shoutcast streams… etc.

Hi all freaks!

We’ve got a new animal in our very own personal zoo: Flipper! < -- Check it, it's fun!

And here is the last pic you took of it:

As you can see it’s a Dolphin (yeah, I know you guessed by the name, smartass!) and is here to help you and play with you. Flipper does already include all the features we want in the Fonera 2.0 (for now :D). Here is the list of the new features compared to old good Platero:

• Facebook Uploader: wanna share the pics of the weekend with all your mates? Put them in a pendrive, “facebook” folder and plug it in the Fonera 2.0. Everybody will see you drunk! (No, no, calm down. All the pics and videos are always uploaded in PRIVATE mode :D)
• Flickr Uploader and Picasa Uploader were already added in the Release Candidates.
• Install new versions from the Applications menu! From now on, a single click will separate your Fonera 2.0 from the next firmware… no need to visit blog.fonosfera.org anymore :( But please, come back or we will be sad!
• Nintendo DS works.
• Freed space for more plugins! We now have 1,5MB instead of 1,19MB
• Samba and FONBackup have a separated firewall option.
• Fixed IE visualization of the Wizard (yes, IE users, now it works… dunno why we fixed it though, lol).
• Fixed Torrent crashing problem with files that have many seeds.
• Torrent downloader now lets you chose the port and will be automatically opened on the firewall.
• The partitions on multi-partition disks can be now labeled as well.
• Polish has been added (thanks Łukasz!).
• You can now assign static DHCP leases and domain names inside your local network.
• 3G connectivity reworked: a long list of providers is preloaded so you need not to configure any value.
• And many more things… if you’re interested, check previous posts. I’m not writing all we did again :D

Bugs: yeah… as always. We will fix them, please report them!

Once again, and after having released the HW to the public, thanks to all involved! Martin, Jordi, John, Pablo, Javi, Steven, Alex etc etc etc etc etc etc etc (yeah, lots of people :D)

Images:

• Web Interface image: DEVELOPER Version (includes ssh access)
• Web Interface image: ENDUSER Version (without ssh access)
• Firmware image: DEVELOPER Version (includes ssh access) - md5sum bf12bbd3a006ff6f22fec6cdeb69a15f
• Firmware image: ENDUSER Version (without ssh access) - md5sum 1ad43c52cff0595c951af010421946f2

Your feedback was so useful and that’s why we’re releasing fon-ng 2.2.5.0 RC2. It’s gonna be, very likely, the last release candidate. But this time we want to make sure it works as good as it can, because the Endusers are coming! yes, Arpil 21st is the date!

This is the bugfix / new features list:

• Facebook uploader is here! You can now add as many pictures as you want to facebook. I used it 2 and I’m already the biggest image uploader of all my friends!
•  Picasa uploader fixed! it used to crash with many pictures to upload. Not any more!
• Static DHCP leases…
• All icons are now alligned and look better :P We also like design ;)
• 3G connectivity has been reworked and has more options now.
• Picasa and Youtube applications now check your password and let you know if it’s wrong
• The FONBackup page has been redesigned. Now you can browse the content of your backup to make sure it’s all in there!
• The password bug has been fixed, yes.
• Added nice icons on the File browser to directly upload pictures and videos to picasa, flickr, facebook and youtube. Nice hack
• WiFi-WAN now works better. It didn’t work with some routers before…

Give us any feedback you can think of: we’re happy to get more than we need and filter it ;)

We hope you enjoy this image during easter!

The images

• Web upgrade image: 20090407_FON2202_2.2.5.0_rc2.tar.gz (DO NOT untar or unzip it, use as is)
• Command line upgrade image: 20090407_FON2202_2.2.5.0_rc2.image - md5sum e8cbcacff7a3c51a0b124822ed85da28

P.S.: once again, thanks to all the team, especially John ;)