I've had my N800s for 24 hours now and there are two areas I'd like to customise.

1. Three of them are being used as dedicated squeezebox remotes. Is it possible to launch a browser in full-screen mode when re-booting? It will make them more family freindly.

2. For some reason Nokia have decided that we don't use the 24 hour clock in the UK. Is there a file I can edit to alter the regional settings profiles?

Tim

1. You'd need to modify the initfs script, I'm not an expert on this but someone else may advise further. There's no easy way to accomplish this, it's a question that crops up from time to time in the newsgroup from users wanting to use the Internet Tablets in a "kiosk" mode. Try searching the newsgroups, or how about using the new "application launch" home page widget - perhaps it can be configured with an icon to load the Squeezebox URL so that starting the remote is only one button push away?

2. No - it's bug #303 and Nokia don't anticipate fixing it any time soon. The only solution appears to be to choose a region/locale where Nokia think the 24 hour clock *is* used, such as Germany or Netherlands. The current situation is, quite frankly, insnane but there's not a lot we can do about it (date formats are also stuffed up).

Speaking of the clock.... is there a way to have a small clock always in the "sidebar" ?

Hi Sam,

Yes, I read about a Statusbar clock around.

http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...tatusbar+clock

OR

https://garage.maemo.org/projects/statusbar-clock

Not sure if they work fine...have not tried them yet.


Luke

Thanks for the suggestions.

A shortcut on the home page isn't a problem as the remote control is just a web page.

On a completely different note does streaming mp3s over WLAN usually kill the battery? If I start streaming from my server expected battery life goes from 7 hours down to 1 within a couple of minutes.

I'm not quite looking for kiosk mode but if I can launch a web-page in full-screen mode as a startup item it is an easy way for users to bring the device back to their comfort zone - if you get lost just power down, and power back up.

It did make me titter to myself when I found out that the regional settings could not be adjusted by editing a text file. I thought that was the whole point of Linux over Windows - rather than a huge database which is unwieldy to manage (registry) that configuration items are all stored in easy to edit text files...

Tim

Streaming is pretty juice-happy. You probably could extend battery life by a bit by using external speakers. I generally use one of those battery-powered iZenPod-whatever speaker boxes, or a spare set of computer boxes. Don't expect to get your seven hours back though.

Another solution is one of those emergency cellphone chargers, the ones that take 4 AA batteries. The one I've got (loaded with 2.5 Ah Nimh rechargeables) effectively doubles the battery life of my N800 (for some reason, it doesn't work -- well -- with the 770). You'd have another box dangling from your Numpc, but at least the tunez keep coming...

This made me want to investigate, even though the problem does not affect me. Looks like the locale data is kept in a binary database in /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive. This file is generated by a tool called localedef, from locale definition text file(s).

I modified the default en_GB definition a bit, by removing all 12-hour format strings, and recompiled en_GB into the locale-archive file. The resulting file can be downloaded here (1.1 MB, 5.0 MB uncompressed). It seems to make the home screen clock use 24-hour format. You need to be root and copy an uncompressed version of the file over the original. It is probably a good idea to make a backup of the original first. After that, a reboot is necessary.

NOTE: It did not hose my N800 (firmware version 3.2007.10-7), but there's no telling what it does to your's! The file is larger than the original, so I suspect there's some extra unneeded stuff in there that could be pruned away. I just don't know enough about locale tools to do that.

Please report your findings, if you decide to use this file.

I'm struggling. I thought it might be a useful excercise to try to find the answers for myself but I fell at the first fence! I've tried downloading the .gz file and saving it in the documents folder and an sd card but I can't find the documents folder in xterm, can't find the file listed in the /media/mmc1 folder or using file manager. and have no idea how to extract it if I could find it. I'm finding my first foray into Linux a frustrating experience.

Tim

Now that I tested, Opera in N800 somehow messes up the download. I get files around 2 MB, different sizes every time. Looks like Opera tries to unpack the .gz file on the fly but fails for some reason.

Let's forget Opera and use wget to to download the file. Here are detailed instructions for installing the file on an N800. The following steps require a command line. Make sure you have OSSO XTerm installed. GNU wget and becomeroot are also required. And remember, you're doing this at your own risk!

• Copy this link to clipboard, by holding the stylus over it and selecting "Copy link location" from the pop-up menu.
• Open X Terminal from the application menu.
• Type: "wget", space, and then select "Paste" from the keyboard menu or the X Terminal application menu. Then press enter. This will fetch a file called "locale-archive.gz" to the current directory.
• Unpack the file. Type "gunzip locale-archive.gz". (Or just type "wget l" and press the tabulator key on the upper left corner of the on-screen keyboard. This will work as long as you don't have any other files beginning with "l" in the current directory.) Press enter. "locale-archive.gz" (1.1 MB) turns into "locale-archive" (5.0 MB).
• Backup original "locale-archive" and install the new one. You need to be root to do it. Type (you can use the tabulator trick shown above to eliminate a lot of typing):
  
  Code:

  sudo gainroot
  cd /usr/lib/locale/
  mv locale-archive locale-archive.orig
  mv /home/user/locale-archive .
  chown root:root locale-archive
  chmod u=rw,go=r locale-archive
  exit

• That's it! Now reboot.

Thanks!

I'll get on it. I've managed to find a decent on-line unix course. I'll spend some time going through it to remind myself of the shell commands. Things have moved on a bit since I last played with Unix though - System V used to come on a hand full of 5.25" floppies and most systems were standalone with at most a 14.4k modem...

Tim