The lovely folks at Make — who do the one thing in life we think everyone should do more of, i.e., make stuff — have a teardown of Peek.
Thanks for the compliments guys!
If you have ideas for us, we’re all ears. Post here to the comments.
{ 2008 09 15 }
spike | 15-Sep-08 at 8:05 pm | Permalink
I’m interested to follow the Maker’s progress in attaching a micro USB. Not sure if it’s possible, but I like the idea of the Peek being UPDATEABLE. Also, I like the idea of being able to download email attachments directly to my computer from the Peek.
By the way, I am very pleased by Amol’s attitude towards people actually owning their Peeks. “Hack away” thank you.
John Maushammer | 15-Sep-08 at 9:56 pm | Permalink
Wow, thanks Amol for letting me inaugurate your blog!! You guys have done an amazing design on the hardware … I’m looking forward to playing with the software.
Spike – The Peek didn’t identify itself when I hooked it up via USB, but the wires seem connected to something. I suspect that the Peek’s software isn’t turning the USB on yet.
- John (a.k.a. The Hammer to my friends at Make)
amol | 16-Sep-08 at 7:50 am | Permalink
Hey John – correct. We didn’t design it for your typical user to update it themselves (think of your average Target shopper). But maybe you guys know things that typical users don’t know.
The Peekster from TN | 16-Sep-08 at 5:43 pm | Permalink
FYI for PHP app writers (off the device)
It uses 7bit encoding and not quoted-printable… also it is HTML based and not text only … I think I have it but wish for NO HTML in email period…
I will post the code that I am working with on my blog for everyone to use when I get it working correctly…
The Peekster from TN | 16-Sep-08 at 5:49 pm | Permalink
Think of the Peek as this… It is not what the Peek can do, it is what you can do with your Peek…
Gavin
The Peekster from TN | 16-Sep-08 at 7:56 pm | Permalink
Well I was wrong… Thanks to Ellen for pointing this out. GMail is broken… they are use’n 7bit encoding on all emails so it messes up Wordpress and B2 posting via email to a blog…
The Peekster from TN | 17-Sep-08 at 7:48 pm | Permalink
GMail again, no cookie for you… FWDing attachments via gmail breaks them because of the 7-bit mess… :~|
PanicOpticon | 19-Sep-08 at 5:26 am | Permalink
What OS are you running on this thing? OSE? VxWorks? Nucleus? Some type of Linux..?
amol | 19-Sep-08 at 5:52 am | Permalink
Nucleus is under the hood
spike | 19-Sep-08 at 6:25 am | Permalink
Not sure if you all are aware of the possible USB jumper locations shown here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8728129@N05/2861989140/in/set-72157607274454694/
PanicOpticon | 19-Sep-08 at 6:59 am | Permalink
Would you consider releasing a flashing utility driver for it? I realize this is probably a no go if its 3rd party proprietary…
In future if you could have MFR in jtag port out that would be cool for us, same with the pins for the sd host and serial…
amol | 19-Sep-08 at 7:34 am | Permalink
That’s kind of a three-part question
1. There is some stuff you are just going to figure out yourself: as far as that goes, of course we’d rather make it easier rather than harder. It will be fun to see what you can do
2. There is some other stuff that would be pretty hard to get your hands on but it’s publicly available: on that as well, we’d like to be helpful
3. Then there is proprietary IP and manuals and code etc etc that our vendors own and we don’t: we definitely can’t share that stuff or else even we will get in trouble!
Soooo……we have to think about whether a flashing utility is something we are allowed to release. I’ll ask the guys.
But apart from that, what would people say about a “developer program” where you agree not to do any bad stuff and then get some tools so you can play around and have fun?
PanicOpticon | 19-Sep-08 at 7:42 am | Permalink
What are your feelings on unlocking? My suspicion is that you’re probably not taking a loss on your hardware, or if so its quite a minimal one.
A dev kit is an interesting idea, that sort of openness is unusual in this industry. I assume you would be providing an application level API as something more along the lines of an OS dev kit?
amol | 19-Sep-08 at 10:33 am | Permalink
Unlocking isn’t our favorite thing. But for development purposes we’d be OK with it.
It’s not really worth it for us to be in business to sell lots of Peeks that nobody uses with the service.
But a few Peeks for use with the network of your choice for “development” or other fun stuff would probably be OK.
It kind of brings me back to the “developer program” question. If you promise to be reasonable and not do bad stuff, then we could probably be more supportive.
Of course you can figure out how to remove the network lock if you really want…
Dakota | 19-Sep-08 at 10:50 am | Permalink
I’d love a development kit for Peek! It’d be fun to, well, poke at Peek.
And maybe an unlock, too – I’m in an area that 2 (well 3) carriers fight for – AT&T, Verizon, and Nextel iDEN, bringing along all its MVNOs.
I have a bit of development abilities and I’d love to peek around the device. I’d love to make something new for it.
-D
Mike | 20-Sep-08 at 7:55 pm | Permalink
Does the device/OS support OTA’s? (over the air updates)
amol | 21-Sep-08 at 8:55 am | Permalink
We aren’t using an OTA app on the Peek at the moment. But it does “support” OTA in some ways…we can send lots of configuration stuff. It would be neat if we could replace the entire firmware every 2 days (a la apple
. But we can’t. By all means, build such an app if you can…
John Maushammer | 21-Sep-08 at 4:13 pm | Permalink
I’d be up for a developer program!
The reader has only 4 main interfaces – the keyboard, the screen, USB, and the radio. To me, the radio is off-limits because it is tied to a wireless service (other computers) and could cause legal problems – even if we’re not exceeding the bandwidth of a typical email connection. So, having only 3 of these interfaces available makes the device much less functional – official sanctioning of use of the radio for limited purposes would be very welcome.
amol | 21-Sep-08 at 7:06 pm | Permalink
Good to hear – maybe we can reach out to you to get your thoughts on what it should look like? As a little startup we don’t have the resources to do a proper Micro$oft-style program.
But we can try.
About the radio — why not go for it? It’s the app processor so that’s the only place to play around.
Not sure which legal problems you are referring to. There’s not much to sanction. Just try it out…
Chris Kelly | 22-Sep-08 at 6:07 pm | Permalink
Would this device support a web browser if one could be developed or is it too far outside the realm o the device? I feel that if this device was a true data device in addition to email if it had a browser of sorts and the ability to text then this device would rock. I do like the device and like the fact that the company is open to home brewing withing reason. That is more than can be said by many other companies. Kudos.
Grant | 22-Sep-08 at 6:10 pm | Permalink
Well, the way I see it, you could do a bit of damage to the network from the radios (changing IMEIs [which is illegal!], screwing with the towers, etc). Or kill the radio entirely a la flashing cellphones with new software. Which has happened to colleagues before.
I’d like to see some form of disaster-recovery feature, though – if we manage to hose the flash OS, radio, etc, there should be a way to recovery it all much like many smartphones with a “bootloader” mode. Or is there one already available?
Maybe some form of agreement that we wouldn’t do illegal stuff like that?
Also, what can currently be done over USB to the unit? Or what should it be able to do for us for development?
amol | 23-Sep-08 at 7:21 pm | Permalink
You are right – plenty of damage possible. Please don’t do damage!
Our other limitation is we can’t just give out the lower level stuff — it’s TI’s not ours.
http://focus.ti.com/pdfs/wtbu/ti_wireless_solutions_guide.pdf
There is more info about developing to that chipset here.
We are going to give some thought to a light dev program that lets us help you guys a bit without overcommitting to do tons of support (we don’t have the people…)
amol | 23-Sep-08 at 7:39 pm | Permalink
Web browser is possible. It’s only 104 MHz processor but that just means no super complex stuff. Simpler things for sure. Many equivalent or lower end phone processors have some kind of web browser
s†åç™ | 28-Sep-08 at 12:22 pm | Permalink
Love this little thing – and saying it’s not for hardcore geeks is something of a slam to us geeks who appreciate simplicity and stability in our devices. I bought one for my 9 year old daughter to use to keep in touch with me, and I’m hopeful she stays as excited about it as she is right now.
All that said, given the limitations on bandwidth, processor power, etc. that something like Dillo or Links (Lynx) would be a perfect complement to the email functionality. Dillo is super lightweight (though we’d have to overcome the lack of windowing). Being able to do simple Google searches would be awesome.
I’m definitely interested in an SDK/API that we might be able to use to compile something for this platform.
Peace All,
S†åç™
Hugh Gibney | 04-Oct-08 at 8:06 am | Permalink
I’m trying to find an even simpler email capture ONLY device. Do you know of one. An device to enter and store email addresses.
lkjzrnlt | 08-Oct-08 at 7:46 pm | Permalink
lkjzrnlt…
lkjzrnlt…
Dianthe | 28-Oct-08 at 8:48 pm | Permalink
Well written article.
Lewin A.R.W. Edwards | 03-Dec-08 at 5:14 pm | Permalink
You could open up all manner of third-party inventions by providing a third UI window (I believe you said elsewhere that you have two) which:
a) renders simple HTML including HTML forms (buttons, radiobuttons, text areas). Dillo can be massaged to achieve this inside a 500Kbyte RAM footprint.
b) allows the page to do a POST.
This way developers can build apps that run on a backend (like Google Apps).
You can limit bandwidth – if necessary – by capping the number of bytes POSTed per hour, or per transaction, or both.