Trouble with sipdroid

So over the past few days I've been having issues with not being able to receive any calls with my gizmo account. I put in all my account information into ekiga/twinkle on my laptop and was able to receive and make calls again. But I was unable to transmit any voice. So I fired up the ekiga account, that worked just fine. So at least I still have a work around for service...... sometimes. I don't like receiving calls through ekiga as the service to my android device is spotty. I don't want to walk around with my laptop all the time. That's just cumbersome. I installed the guava package from gizmo to see if that helped anything. It didn't. So for now, gizmo is dead to me. I'm still not sure if it's the actual install of sipdroid or if it really is just gizmo being a royal pain. 

BTW: my setup was. google voice > gizmo

It's now, google voice > ipkall > ekiga account. 

Aircrack for Droid

I installed Debian onto a 4GB partition of my 16GB sdcard in my Moto Droid. This was quite the fun little adventure. I'll have to go more into it sometime later. While I was messing around with different packages and programs. I decided to pull down the aircrack-ng suite. After a lot of testing and playing, I found out that the Droid hardware just doesn't want to go into monitor mode. You can KINDA get it to work, but it's not reliable. The interface will just continue to disappear and your capture will not have amounted to anything. It also doesn't support injection as far as I can tell which limits much of what you can do with it. About the best that I could do was to have a script run every 30 seconds or so that would restart the interface to begin captures again. I walked around the neighborhood a few times while it was doing this. I was amazed to find that it did work a little. I'm wondering though if maybe using tcpdump wouldn't be a better solution to the aircrack-ng tools. I'll give it a test soon and write back here.

EDIT: Found out today that the wireless card in the Droid supports injection.
10/31/2010

Another way to use Ekiga with google voice on your android phone.

I've already gone over once of how to get your ekiga account to receive phone calls in sipdroid. This will just be a slightly different method of getting an ekiga account to receive phone calls also using sipdroid. This method allows you to either use a Google voice account if you have it.


OK, fairly simple process here. The first thing that you need to do, and the most obvious, register for an ekiga sip account at ekiga.net. if you do not have one already. Write down the sip address that you pick, 'black@ekiga.net' Now run over to ipkall.com and register for their free service. It can take up to a few hours for ipkall to email you back your new US based  DID, but most of the time it's within a few seconds. Log into your new ipkall number. Under 'SIP Phone Number' put in your ekiga username, everything up to the @ of your sip address 'black'. And under the 'SIP Proxy' put in 'ekiga.net' or whatever is after the @ in your sip address.

If you don't have a google voice account just go ahead and stop here. You can now receive normal phone calls through sip with ekiga. Go ahead and give it a test. Just call the ipkall number from any phone that has long distance service.

For adding the number to your google voice account, it's fairly simple. Just add the number and have google call to verify the number. When your phone rings, slide up to answer and then slide the number pad up to punch in the verification code. I've noticed a good bit of lag sending the touch tones back to google. Keep this in mind in case you get into a hurry and google doesn't seem to be accepting the code. Now you can receive calls from google voice over sip without having a gizmo5 account.

As an added little bonus, there is an app in the market called 'GVoice Callback' which allows you to make normal calls with your phone and tells google voice to 'ringback' your ipkall number. So with this work around you can also make as well as receive calls with ekiga. This is the method in which I receive and make ALL my calls now that I'm located in Canada.

NOTE: Ekiga really likes STUN servers. So I'd advise using one if your going to be jumping from network to network making sip calls.

Installing Sapphire 1.0 with google aps on moto droid with SPRecovery

Well yesterday, a new release of sapphire for the Motorola Droid hit the Internet. I installed it [link to screenshots]and was VERY impressed. [Sapphire is a from source android build, similar to cyanogen.] So I'll walk through the process that I used to install this awesome rom. Seeing as I am a Linux user, I'm going to go about installing this rom from Linux using only the CLI. This guide assumes that you have root access.

First off, install SPRecovery (if you don't have it).  Next, grab the sapphire rom, the google apps, and the black bar theme (you only need this if you want to have the same setup as my droid). OK, here comes the fun part. Mount your Droid and copy the files to the root of the sdcard. Rename the sapphire rom to 'update.zip' and reboot your Droid into SPRecovery [hold x on the physical keyboard while booting up]. Use the volume up and down buttons to navigate the menus, camera to select, and the power button to go back to the previous menu.
1. Move down one option to 'wipe data/factory reset' and click the camera button.
2. Move up 4 times to select 'yes' and hit the camera button.
3. Then move down to 'install', hit the camera button, move to allow update.zip installation, hit camera again.
4. move down to Install and hit the camera button again.
5. Hit the power button to return to the main menu.
6. select mount options and hit the camera button
7. select enable usb mass storage and mount phone.
8. rename sapphire update to something else and rename sapphire google apps to update.zip and unmount
9. select disable usb mass storage and click the camera button
10. press the power button to return to main menu and repeat steps 3-7
11. rename google apps update to something else and rename black bar theme to update.zip and unmount
12. select disable usb mass storage and click the camera button
13. press the power button to return to main menu and repeat steps 3 and 4

Here are the CLI commands that I used. Enjoy

$ cd ~/src/
$ wget http://files.ccroms.net/download.php?q=sapphire/froyo/1.0.0/release/sapphire-1.0.0-update.zip
$ wget http://files.ccroms.net/download.php?q=sapphire/froyo/1.0.0/release/sapphire-1.0.0-gapps-update.zip
$ wget http://files.ccroms.net/download.php?q=sapphire/froyo/1.0.0/themes/spr/sapphire-1.0.0-black_bar-theme.zip

# mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/phone
$ cp ~/src/sapphire-1.0.0* /mnt/phone/
$ mv /mnt/phone/sapphire-1.0.0-update.zip /mnt/phone/update.zip
# umount /mnt/phone

# mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/phone
$ mv /mnt/phone/update.zip /mnt/phone/sapphire-1.0.0-update.zip
$ mv /mnt/phone/sapphire-1.0.0-gapps-update.zip /mnt/phone/update.zip
# umount /mnt/phone

# mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/phone
$ mv /mnt/phone/update.zip /mnt/phone/sapphire-1.0.0-gapps-update.zip
$ mv /mnt/phone/sapphire-1.0.0-black_bar-theme.zip /mnt/phone/update.zip
# umount /mnt/phone

So you bricked your Moto Droid.

Ok, so I have this really bad habit of bricking my Droid or loosing root.... you name it, it's probably been inflicted upon my device. So in an effort to keep me from loosing my notes on the subject, here is my Linux based process for un-bricking my Droid. I'm not sure how legal it is to link to roms and such but I don't need those I already have my nandroid backups.

Needed files, SBF_flash and SPRecovery_ESE81.sbf
This is a retarded simple fix. (you can still damage your phone beyond repair blah blah blah...)

Download SBF_flash and SPRecovery_ESE81.sbf [these are the links from CyanogenMod Wiki] Plug in Droid while turned off and then power on while pressing up on the d-pad. This will dump you into the boot loader. Then run './sbf_flash SPRecovery_ESE81.sbf' This will flash the recovery image to your Droid. And now you are done. Congrats you just un-bricked your phone. Now install the Nandroid backup of your choice or install the rom of your choice. Enjoy.

Android applications that I use

Well everyone else has done it to some extent or another. I'm just going to list the apps that I love, like and just can't live without. As far as the apps that I can't live without, I'll denote those with an (*). I've got a rooted Motorola Droid running the DroidMod rom and a custom kernel.

So here they are in no particular order:

*Appmonster - what I use to backup and store different versions of the apps that I have installed.

*ASE (android scripting environment) - python, perl, and a few other scripting languages on the android platform. It's not python3, but it has run parts of snkmchnb's getcast before. Who needs a GUI pod catcher on android when you have the CLI?

*sipdroid - FOSS VoIP client. It only supports one account at a time, but this is the program that I use for free calling via googlevoice+ipkall+ekiga.

*Bible - online translations of the Bible, newer versions are very bloated. Until an offline version is installed, I run version 1.2

*terminal - does not require an explanation, it's the CLI.

*ConnectBot - SSH client. Allows for more than one ssh session at a time. More control than just terminal.

*drocap2 - root only application that allows for taking screenshots of the device at any time. Can be set to run with a timer or just simply shaking the device. I use it to take all the screenshots that are found on unixporn.

*home++ - replacement home screen that removes the need for the notification bar and has that cool little launcher bar as seen in the above screenshots.

*Google Voice - must have for my free SMS abilities.

*ES File Explorer - file and ftp access, handy for uploading recordings to the ftp directly from the android device.

*G-MoN - war driving

*Maps(-) - openstreetmaps, google maps, opencyclemaps all rolled into one. NO
NAVIGATION. But who needs that anyway?

*overclockwidget - allows me to under and over clock my cpu.

andchat - IRC

audiomanager - for those times when the default audio button just won't cut it.

barcode scanner - yeah

blogger-droid - it's installed but I've never had a reason to use it yet.

Chess - one of the 2 games that have ever been installed on this device.

opensudoku - the other game that's installed.

dPod - *cast catcher until I get getcast or bashpodder working via ASE

DroidLight - use the LEDs like a flashlight.

Dropbox - allows to download stuff from my dropbox account. Does not download folders, which is very annoying.

FBreader - FOSS book reader

mapdroyd + contentdroyd - openstreetmaps cached on the phone. not as up to date as Maps(-) but still useful for area's that you do not have cached.

mustard - identica client

Netcounter - just something that I use to monitor my bandwidth usage of the 3G connection. If you use SIP for your phone calls, this is a MUST.

shopsavvy - bloated app that is kinda fun to play with.

the weather channel - weather... like we need to know anything else about the weather.

wifinder - handy gui for connecting to different access points.


Well that's pretty much everything that I meant to go on about today. If you should happen to read this and have a useful application that I've not listed here, please send me an email at cobra2 {at} unixporn [dot] com. Thanks in advance.

Blocking ads and other various websites

Have you ever been to a site that had one of those very annoying embedded ads that just hung at the top or bottom of the page. This 'banner' was just in the way no matter what you did. Have you ever wanted to get rid of it?

I use various browsers when browsing the web, some support adblock and others do not. I'm not a fan of browser plugins. I'm under the firm belief that a browser is a browser and should only deal with the I/O of html. That being said, I don't use adblock, noscript or anything else like that. I use settings in /etc/hosts to block my ads.

So for today's example, turn off your adblock utility and navigate over to www.unixporn.com. Now you should see a very annoying banner ad on every single page, even on the pages where your viewing a screenshot full screen. Lets get rid of this ad.

OK, from the information in the ad, we know that it is hosted by godaddy. So we'll try the easiest thing first, open up the page source, and search for the term 'godaddy'.

lynx -source www.unixporn.com | grep godaddy

this will give you this line:

script language="javascript" src="https://a12.alphagodaddy.com/hosting_ads/gd01.js">

Now that was pretty easy. Lets add this to /etc/hosts.

# echo '127.0.0.1 a12.alphagodaddy.com' >> /etc/hosts

Restart your browser, and navigate back to unixporn. Tada... the ad is gone. Lets add a site to block. I'm not a fan of social networking so this seems appropriate to me. 


# echo '127.0.0.1 myspace.com' >> /etc/hosts
Restart the browser, and navigate to myspace. If all went well, you should get an error about not being able to load the page. Wonderful isn't it?




You can get a head start on adding lists like this to /etc/hosts by browsing through your adblock lists. The really nice thing about blocking ads/websites this way is that unlike using an adblock plugin inside a browser such as firefox or chromium, this is a system wide setting. You no longer have any need to run adblock.

Using Google Voice through Ekiga on Android

Well I am the proud owner of the Motorola Droid. I have a Google Voice (GV) account, a gizmo5 account and an ekiga account. I wanted to be able to receive calls over SIP from GV to ekiga. But GV does not provide any ties to any sip service other than gizmo5. I found that I could forward calls coming into gizmo to another sip service. This is how I made Google Voice work over sip on my Droid.

I found a sip client called Sipdroid that has worked the best for me on my Droid. The developers of this application add in a lot of support for the sip services offered by PBXes. I find this to be needless for my uses of a sip client, but some people may find it easier to use.

First, your going to need to log into your Google Voice account. Go into settings and add a phone. This phone will be your gizmo5 number [the 1-747-***-**** number] and you should select gizmo5 as the type of phone. Do not verify the new phone yet. Now, you need to log into gizmo5 and forward all calls to your *@ekiga.net.

Now, you need to download and install sipdroid from the android market. Open the program. Tap the menu button and go into settings. Go into 'Sip Account Settings' and enter your ekiga log in information into the user name and password spaces. For the 'Server' enter 'ekiga.net' leave Domain blank. The Port should be 5060 and protocol should be UDP as TCP will not authenticate with ekiga yet. Now, hit back and go into 'Call Options' and make sure 'Use Wlan' and 'Use 3G' are checked. I don't advise using EDGE as the call quality is very poor. For 'Preferred Call Type' select 'phone'.

Under 'Advanced Options' you can adjust the gain. Settings higher than the defaults can cause significant problems for the person(s) on the other end of the call. Be wary when setting them and also consider heavy testing from multiple locations before setting on your preferred settings here.

Now, go back to the settings in Google Voice and verify your gizmo5 phone. Your android phone should ring, slide up to answer the call, then slide the arrow at the bottom of the screen to bring up the dial pad and enter the verification code from GV.

Presto!! Your now receiving GV phone calls over SIP on your android.