From A110 Wiki

The One A110 and similar "netbooks" can be used for many different purposes and usage scenarios.

This page collects a list of how the A110 is (or can be) used in practice.

Contents 1 Web browsing 1.1 Ethernet 1.2 Wireless 1.3 Modem 1.4 GPRS / UMTS via bluetooth and mobile phone 2 Office 2.1 Presenting 2.2 Word processing 2.3 Spreadsheet 2.4 Image manipulation 3 Audio / video 3.1 Listening to music 3.1.1 Streaming Internet Radio 3.2 Podcasts 3.3 Watching videos 3.3.1 Video files 3.3.2 Watching video streamed over WLAN 3.4 Watching TV 3.4.1 DVB-T 3.4.2 Zattoo 4 Portable E-book reader 5 Accessibility 6 Development: security server 7 Gaming 7.1 Multiplayer games 7.2 Vintage games 8 GPS Mapping 8.1 Software-Requirements 8.2 Getting Started 8.3 Mapping for openstreetmap.org 9 Car PC 10 House automation

Web browsing

Ethernet

Wireless

Modem

GPRS / UMTS via bluetooth and mobile phone

Office

Presenting

Word processing

Spreadsheet

Image manipulation

Audio / video

Listening to music

Streaming Internet Radio

You can easily listen to streaming online radios, e.g. Radio Paradise, using various Linux music players, for example mplayer:

$ mplayer http://scfire-chi0l-1.stream.aol.com:80/stream/1048

Other alternatives include streamtuner, xmms, and so on.

For recording streams you can use streamripper for instance.

Podcasts

Watching videos

Video files

VLC plays .iso images of DVDs very nicely from a USB pen drive.

Watching video streamed over WLAN

I use VLC to stream videos over a 54 MBit/s WLAN, with the default streaming settings (MPEG TS, video codec mp4v with 1024 kb/s, audio codec mpga with 192 kb/s stereo).

With VLC as client on my A110, the fullscreen video quality with 640x800 resolution is as clear as one would expect from a small DVD player — at least as long as the power supply is plugged in. When the A110 runs on battery power, I have to reduce the bandwidth if I want to avoid frequent sound drop-outs.

Watching TV

DVB-T

You can watch TV (using an external DVB-T USB device supported by Linux) quite easily using kaffeine:

$ apt-get install kaffeine

After the installation configure kaffeine's DVB-T settings and scan for available TV stations.

Watching TV on the A110 is even more interesting when you're not at home (e.g. in a park or in a cafe), of course. The user experience is quite ok (no audio/video distortions), even when on battery. Also, the battery life-time is still quite good despite watching TV...

Zattoo

I installed zattoo 3.20 beta (a live TV streaming service using proprietary P2P software) on the Ubuntu 8.04 version of the OS.

When the application is started, it complains that it cannot find OpenGL/MESA on the system and warns that this might result in low image quality.

This is actually the case; I observed an estimated 4 fps in the windowed video, 1-2 fps in fullscreen mode, and only the tiny half-sized window displays rather smooth movements. In all cases, there are annoying sound gaps.

I will try again with the announced vendor OS as soon as my USB thumb drive arrives.

Portable E-book reader

Accessibility

The pre-installed Ubuntu 8.04 includes orca, which can act as a a screen magnifying glass or a screen reader (with a German voice as default) and also supports refreshable braille displays.

Development: security server

the VIA Padlock C++ & Java SDK support is pretty easy to handle. you get almost working sources right away. just rename your LIBCMT.LIB to LIBC.LIB to compile with ms c express. then everything does compile and runs nicely here on winXP under USBoot. there also is a nice performance benchmark berween VIA CSP (crypto service provider) and that from microsoft, basically just a DLL. using crypto functions that way is very "right out of the box" & simple.

Gaming

Multiplayer games

There are various nice games shipped with any Linux distribution you choose to use, of course.

Some of them are even multiplayer games, e.g. frozen-bubble. and are thus well-suited for usage on the A110 on-the-go (for playing with a friend in the subway/bus/train, for instance).

Vintage games

I tried Monster Bash and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade using dosbox and Flight of the Amazon Queen using scummvm. There were no problems, and all three games ran very smoothly.

GPS Mapping

The A110 is a wonderful GPS Logger with a USB-GPS-Mouse.
I wanted to create GPS tracks for OpenStreetMap, the only thing left to do was to buy a USB-GPS-Mouse for about 30 EURO.

Software-Requirements

- gpsd
- gpsd-clients

Getting Started

gpsd is a server application which opens a port 2947 on 127.0.0.1, this is where the client applications expect to receive the GPS data. Normally, a USB-GPS-Mouse acts like a serial device. So dmesg should show you something like "Prolific 203 USB-to-serial adapter" once it's plugged in and you should have a new device "/dev/ttyUSB0" (I'll paste the dmesg later).
This is the device gpsd needs to read the GPS NMEA data. What gpsd needs else is a socket file. So create a file /home/nutzer/gpsd.sock" for example and call gpsd like that:

gpsd -F /home/nutzer/gpsd.lock /dev/ttyUSB0

gpsd is launched at startup, you can put the parameters into /etc/default/gpsd, so gpsd knows the parameters when the A110 is booted and you can restart gpsd without giving it the parameters with "/etc/init.d/gpsd restart", if you "hot"-plug your GPS device.

You can try your setup with "cgps" on console, or "xgps" in X. This application shows you the data it receives from gpsd if it receives any. If something went wrong you'll notice this by not getting any data in these apllication (I'll paste screenshots later). Remember to put the GPS receiver where it can "see" any satellites, means: "get off the couch and go outside!".

Mapping for openstreetmap.org

The native format for openstreetmap-Tracks is GPX, an XML format for GPS data. gpsd-clients has a program called "gpxlogger", which is exactly what it does, logging your gps track in GPX. Just call:
gpxlogger >> test.gpx

And stop it with CTRL-C once you've finished your track.
Now you can upload your trace to OSM and mark the streets or leave this to other users who know the location but don't have a GPS logger. Anything helps :-)

Car PC

Everyone who knows about the eeepc-touchscreen-mod by jkkmobile might wonder if this could be done with the One A110, too. And what if? Well, you might be able to build one of the cheapest car PCs.

To the right is a picture of an A110 running cPOS.

So what could be done? You could plant an external TFT on your car's dash, connect it to the VGA port and put the whole netbook into the glove compartment. Or, you could do the touchscreen mod, lengthen the monitor cable and plant the A110 display on your dash. This might be done with an flexprint cable, for the monitor cable is attached to the LCD by flexprint. Pictures of the dissected display can be found here.

Maybe someone has an idea for the display, the power supply in the car or how to manage getting the netbook to boot by starting the car.

By the way: attaching a webcam and using it as a backup camera worked out-of-the-box...

House automation

Low power consumption (under 10 Watts) and no moving parts (except the cooling fan) makes the A110 a good choice for a 24/7 house-automation server.

Following applications are imaginable:

1. Log temperatures via Dallas 18S20 temperature sensors (via One-Wire USB-Dongle DS9490R)
2. Send and receive signals via FHZ1300 device (Conrad, ELV) from temperature sensors (TFS100), actors (AS4), etc.
3. Control a relay-card (RK10-USB)
4. Send sound-data via WLAN to your hi-fi system

and many other things...