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Electronics

Why the Apple iPhone may not fail

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Reading an article in The Register by Bill Ray, he thinks the Apple iPhone will fail, actually, fail badly. I somewhat doubt his conclusions.

The main argument to support his analysis is that since network operators have to like the phone, then Apple has to do a good job convincing them. Remember the ROKR? It was rather a failure due to the fact it could only be loaded with iTunes music over cable, and thus mobile operators were left out of attractive data chargers levied when buying music directly from the phone. There was even speculation that Apple allowed it to launch on purpose, to protect their audio player market.
Where Bill goes wrong in my opinion is that the handset market is heavily controlled in the US, but not in Europe – go to any shop in the latter and you will have a very large variety of handsets to buy unsubsidized. Why? Because a lot of people value the ability to switch operators as they see fit, without having to enter into contracts involving their soul. In the US, there isn’t a culture of operator hopping, but rather of staying with one just to get a phone $50 or $100 cheaper.

One thing I have never understood is why people get themselves tied into a two year contract for a $50 saving. If they worked out how much they could save by moving operators taking advantage of special offers, they may think twice.

There is a very large number of paths Apple could follow, first, they have a nice distribution network with excellent shops placed in key areas, second, they have a large and loyal crowd of followers, who would probably not mind paying an unsubsidized device, and third, there are already a number of MVNOs and fixed-line operators that are willing to take a bite from the large networks. As for the subsidy, I wonder…are iPods subsidized by anyone? Apple costumers are used to pay for quality, and in my view, the iPhone will be no different.

Vodafone HSDPA with the Huawei E220 USB modem

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Went to my local Vodafone store to pick up the new Huawei E220 HSDPA USB modem, which with a 49 Euro monthly contract gives you 1GB of transfer at 1Mbps maximum, and free mobile to fixed landline calls – pretty good deal if you ask me. For 59 Euro you get 5GB of transfer, at the full 3.8Mbps that HSDPA offers. These are theoretical rates, as they will depend on a number of factors, such as how many people are also using the same cell, your coverage and the quality of the link.
We can argue all we want about how convenient WiFi is, being omnipresent et al, but in reality, it’s rather hard to get connected while on the road. Let’s examine the following scenarios, and you tell me the chances of getting connected over WiFi:

  • Riding the train or bus home.
  • Getting a lift from a friend in his/her car.
  • Opening your laptop at a random location (cafeteria, bar, etc. that you haven’t before scouted for open WiFi).
  • On a plane, waiting for the next free takeoff slot that you hope the pilot won’t miss because he was checking the fatness of his wallet.

Let’s be honest – free open WiFi is great once you have identified the locations where you can get connected, such as a friend’s house or the local coffee shop. Other solid commercial alternatives make it easier to find WiFi, as they tend to be present at well-known locations. Walk into any Starbucks or hotel, and you’re bound to find at least for-pay wireless.
For me, on the 30 minutes to 1 hour it takes to get home on the train or bus, being able to get connected is great. The convenience of simply opening the Mac and getting online beats the guesswork of WiFi. I tried getting the Mac working with my Nokia N93 over Bluetooth, but it was just too unstable – one day it worked, the next simply refused to even connect. A more in-depth review of the device is coming, once I get a chance to roam about with it for a while.

So far, installation on the Mac was pretty straightforward, download the setup package from Vodafone’s site (they don’t tell you this in the manual), which then enables the modem as a networking device. If you don’t follow this step, it can get recognized as a storage device, which is not particularly useful for a modem. The one thing I don’t understand is why it comes with a miniUSB cable that ends in two USB connectors, my guess is it’s power-related (some USB ports don’t provide the full 500mA they are supposed to provide).

Autopsy of a Fonera

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Yesterday, I posted a few pictures of the opened Fonera, with a few initial views on the device. When I tried to plug it in, it failed to work, only the power LED lighting up. Neither the WiFi signal was coming up, nor the ethernet port was tickling the switch.

The only course of action? To open it up even more. So, the aluminium chassis came off, and that’s when I realized I had seen this before. The WiFi section, which includes the Atheros AR2315, crystal, filters, power amplifiers and ancilliary circuitry are housed inside this casing, and correspond to a reference design provided most likely by Atheros themselves. Check out the Meraki Mini router. For reference, I provide a side-by-side picture below (click for large image).

Meraki Mini vs Fonera

There is nothing wrong with using reference designs per se, as it is the fastest and easiest way to bring a product to market. If you don’t need to customize your design much, simply use what the manufacturer suggests, and you will be playing on the safe side. A perfect example is Bluetooth headsets, where CSR dominates the market. Virtually all headsets in the market use their reference design, with very little changes between them, other than physical placement of LEDs and buttons.

Block-by-block, here is an overview of the Fonera.

Power

Power is supplied to the Fonera via jack SK1, and is fed through a rapid fuse (Polychem type) to a simple drop-down regulator, which drops voltage from around 5V (4.85V as measured on the wall power supply, using a Fluke 179 multimeter) to 3.3V. The regulator appears to be an AME1117 (though the package markings read AME117), in its CCCT configuration, TO-252 form factor. The regulator is stabilized using three electrolyic capacitors. In these types of regulators, ESR (equivalent series resistance) of the input decoupling capacitors is very important, and this can usually be controlled nicely with tantalum capacitors. These are very expensive compared to electrolytic, however.

There is a second stage of regulation, this time done by an Anpec APL1117, which further drops the voltage to 2.5V. This supply appears to be used by the wireless subsection. Two ceramic capacitors stabilize the regulator.

Without the Atheros chip in place, the PCB drew 90mA at 5V, or 450mW. Since the device was not functioning, the total supply current with WiFi active could not be determined.

Memory

Two memory ICs are available on the Fonera, the first is an ST M25P64 serial flash, with a 50MHz SPI bus and 64Mbit capacity (8MB), in 300mil SO16 format. The fact that SPI has been chosen has the advantage that extra memory devices could be attached to the bus, but it has the caveat that it is slower than a parallel bus. Thus, flashing a new firmware could take a rather long time. Interestingly, there are two footprints on the PCB, presumably to fit a different size and format memory IC, one SO16 and one SO8.
The second memory IC is a Hynix HY57V281620E synchronous DRAM, with a capacity of 128Mbit organized in 16bit blocks. In practice, this results in 16MB of RAM available to the processor.

Ethernet

At the heart of the wired ethernet subsystem is an Altima AC101 ethernet transceiver, capable of 10/100 full duplex operation. The IC is placed on the bottom layer of the PCB, and runs off a 25MHz crystal, strangely placed next to the main power regulator, where it could absorb electrical noise. Usually, crystals are placed well away from sources of interference. Nothing else too exciting here, the transceiver is connected to a standard RJ45 socket, TP1.

Wireless

The wireless section is the most interesting. This is where the Atheros AR2315 single-chip WiFi processor lives. Little public information is available about this or any other Atheros chipset, so it is hard to figure out exactly how it is put in place, but a few details are clear.

First, the chip gets hot. This is why a double heat-conductive adhesive tape bonds the surface to the metal cover, and in turn to the heatsink placed on top. The processor runs from a 40MHz clock source. After the Atheros core, come a couple of filters, and a power amplifier stage. This then runs off to the two antenna tracks. The first antenna exits the aluminium cage and runs up to a test connector. This connector breaks the antenna track when the right mating plug is inserted, which is then fed into a dedicated RF analyzer, which validates that the device is within constraints.

After the antenna test point, there is a split, which can be configured using a zero-ohm resistor, to run to an internal solder pad, or to a PCB-mounted right-angle SMA connector. It is unclear why they chose to use the solder pad, as an in-place soldered connector needs less handling than soldering a pigtail by hand. Besides, my intuition tells me the losses would be lower – I will test this when I get a working Fonera. Both tracks run through an impedance matching network, consisting of two capacitors to ground from the RF track, and an inductor between the capacitors . The purpose if this small circuit is to get the impedance of the PCB track as close to 50 ohms as possible. If the track impedance is mismatched to the antenna, losses take place.

The second antenna runs straight to a PCB pad, where a pigtail may be soldered, also passing a matching network. Below is a picture showing the details of this subsection.

Fonera - WiFi subsystem in detail

Interfaces

There are two IDC-style connectors on the PCB, one 2×5, and one 2×7 but unpopulated. The 2×5 looks like a serial connector, as only power, ground and two tracks lead out from it. The layout has to be studied in more detail to confirm this assumption.
It can be speculated that this is in fact a serial port, but without the AR2315 pinout, this cannot be determined for sure. The 2×7 header seems to be a JTAG interface, possibly compliant with MIPS EJTAG 2.6. The mapping of the header pins to the AR2315 BGA balls is shown below (thanks for adding a row/column silkscreen for the Atheros chip, and thanks to the OpenWRT project wiki for the JTAG information!):

Fonera - JTAG connector

Between the Ethernet jack and the empty SMA footprint, there is a footprint of 6-way header, which needs a bit more study to determine where it leads internally [I will update the post when I find out –Mike].

Conclusion

This is a very compact and simple WiFi router, designed not for being easy to hack, but for lowest cost. The cheap power regulator, use of large SMDs and choice of pigtail rather than board-mounted SMA connector point in this direction. There is only one port which could be used for something useful, if it is indeed a serial port, the only two GPIOs available being the WLAN and Ethernet LEDs – as long as the Ethernet LED is not controlled by the Altima but by the Atheros. The power LED is on as long as there is power applied to the device, so there is no control over this by the Atheros processor. Power consumption is a bit high, considering the wireless device was not present. The PCB layout is very professional, except in a few particular cases such as the large crystal, but overall, quite nice.

In all, a very small device which could have a lot of potential, had it not been for its lack of I/O. It is unclear whether the router will accept custom firmware, as there are rumors that an encryption & signature system is used. The Fonera is probably OK for regular use by Foneros, but it does not have the hackable edge of the Linksys WRT54Gx. The only suprise could come from the edge connector, as of yet of unknown usefulness.

References

Atheros AR2315 chipset website section and product brief.

The naked Fonera

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After a few days of silence, digesting the hubbub created by my analysis of Fon’s status, I’ve put my head back into more useful things than answering hate mail and out-of-line comments (thanks to those who provided balanced views, either for or against!). So, I decided to open a Fonera and see what lives inside.

A full review is coming, but first impressions:

  • The plastic casing looks and feels very nice, the molds must have been expensive, as the different parts mate very well.
  • Inside lives a single PCB, with components on both sides. The top holds the bulkier components, such as power regulator, RAM and WiFi section, inside an aluminium RF shield.
  • The PCB looks professional and well laid out on first inspection.
  • Components used (I haven’t opened the aluminium chassis yet) are older SOIC and TSSOP, thus cheaper to handle and solder. Balled components require from special handling, such as baking in hydrogen for 24 hours to dry them before soldering, etc.

Here are some pics (click each photo for bigger views on Flickr) I have taken with a Nokia N93 (really nice phone btw, mini-review coming):

Fonera - underside of casing

The underside of the case, with screws off.

Fonera - perspective view

Perspective view of the top PCB.

Fonera - Bottom PCB

Bottom side of the PCB.

Fonera - firmware version

Sticker on the flash IC showing the firmware version.

The Chumby – alarm clock? GPS navigator? no – WiFi device for $150!

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Yesterday I read some news about Chumby, a new WiFi device being released soon, costing $150, and which looks like an alarm clock on steroids. It features a color screen, the ability to run widgets, hackable hardware, and a squishterface (just made that up, to try to describe the squeeze sensor that the soft case uses to provide user input).

The company behind the Chumby actively promotes hacking the product in any way you want, so this could become another Roomba, albeit cooler (yes, I know, the Roomba moves, so what!). I have signed up to try and get an early sample, let’s see if they consider my arguments.

A few words of constructive criticism – when creating an account, the country drop-down list is not in alphabetical order, so you spend quite a bit of time trying to find yours (US users will have it easy, as it is the default). Additionally, once the steps are completed, you are asked to enter the device ID and give it a name, after which you end up staring at a white page with the big black words: “Application error (Rails”. Whatever that means.