herbeee

aka "Herbert Lite"

Herbert is a wonderful thing, but let's face it, it is not inexpensive.  I needed to send it in to Sony for a minor repair 1) So, I built “herbeee” to tide me over…

In April of 2008 I got an Asus eeepc with 4gig of flash and 512meg of ram.  In short order I installed eeeXubuntu on it.  I made this move because I wanted to install a number of pieces of software and also because it put the same os on the eeepc as  was using on herbert and the machine the looks down at me at home.

It was all quite straight forward.  At the end of the day I had a 7.10 xubuntu box with emacspeak and all the other essential software for me to try the eeepc out as a wearable.

The eeepc makes me a bit nostalgic.  My first linux based wearable was a gateway handbook back in 1994.  Like the eeepc it had a small screen and reduced size keyboard and like that rig back in 1994 I decided to run “herbeee” with no HMD.  The eeepc has a vga out connector, but for this device I am not using it to drive a display.

I messed with the settings in /etc/apci/lid.sh a bit so that the screen goes off and stays off when the lid is closed. “Out of the box” eeeXubuntu had the screen shut off on lid closed, but to my dismay I noticed one night that when typing with the lid closed (on my ) the light came back on!  I also bound hibernate and suspend to keys combinations I could do with the chorder.  I do have to open the eepc to bring it back from hibernate or suspend, but at least I can get it there without opening the device.

That was it.  So, the rig consists of an eeepc, a spiffchorder, a chunk of SDHC flash, and if needed a battery from batterygeeks if I'm wearing for more the a few hours.2)

Note: I installed UNR 9.10 on the eeepc late Nov. 2009. Installed simply and easily.

Things I'd like to figure out but have not had time

  1. Can the eeepc be made to respond to the power button when the lid is closed? I would use hybernate or suspend more if I did not have to open it up to turn it back on.
  2. Can it safely take 12v DC (not from a car, but a clean, regulated, 12v) as input or will that toast it?
  3. Is there and easy way to get it to notice when the wireless card has been turned back on? If I turn it off it does not usually see the card has come back unless I reboot. (But sometimes it does…) - This seems fine under UNR 9.10 -Greg

-Greg

1)
But wait you say, didn't you purchase it from Sony with the 72 hour on site service policy?  Yes, yes I did, good remembering! You must have been reading my posts.  But now 16 months into the 4 year policy, the first time I called them to use it, they informed me that the UX series Does not get on site service!.  “Then why did you sell it to me?” I asked, “We would not have done that” they said. “So how do I have this 72 hour on site policy with my UX serial number on it issued from Sony?” I asked, “You have to mail it in for service.” they say…  Yep, Sony customer relations agrees I was sold on site service, their extended warranty folks refuse to honor it as “we don't do on site for the UX”.  I was left having to mail my rig in and did not get it back for a few weeks! When I did, I had to send it right back as the reassembled is with a wire hitting the fan. Now you know,  as Paul Harvey use to say, the rest of the story.
2)
So far it looks like lid closed  working time is a little over 3.5hours.