Android 5 POC Radio

[helmick43270]

I’m trying to see if I could build a lean version of Sideband to use on the $50 Android 5 POC radios that Zello is leaving on the recycle heap. After configuration, keying up could send a codec2 voice message over an rnode, wifi, or TCP or I2P (with data-only sim card.) Screen is too small for text messages. I think device resources are not sufficient for upgrading OS. Is building for Android 5 a bad idea or impossible?

[markqvist]

Maybe better to start "from scratch" and use the parts of the code that is needed for that specific functionality. Sideband is a pretty big and complex program by now, with a lot of features and functionality, and as a result, it's a bit heavy for very low-end devices.

You are going to have trouble with multimedia stuff on Android 5, though. The primary reason that Sideband targets Android 8+ is that the audio APIs below that are so bad and archaic that it's almost impossible to get voice/PTT/codec2 stuff working.

[helmick43270]

Maybe LXST adapted for Android POC. Spent a few evenings on it already. Very little progress. I learn slowly, but it’s fun.

[helmick43270]

Saw a little progress on rnphone in LXST. My goal is first to make this work on two Linux computers. After two clean installs using pip in virtual environments, pulseaudio.py kept having an error about a nonexistent attribute for np.ndarray called tostring(). Found out tostring() is deprecated in recent versions of numpy, so I tried tobytes(). This succeeded in connecting the call, so now it produces constant hissing and two errors in Opus.py, lines 136 and 137. I’ll just keep messing with it for a while. Thanks!

[helmick43270]

Okay, that’s the SoundCard package that is a little behind, I guess. You’re already up to speed with .tobytes() in your code.

[helmick43270]

Problem solved by turning mic level down.

[helmick43270]

The Rust version of a Reticulum TCP server builds to a target of armv7-androideabi and runs well in legacy Termux on the POC radio. Fulguris Browser runs javascript on the radio. Paste-and-hack javascript experiment handles PTT voice recordings. I figure the Rust version of Reticulum TCP client, working with the browser, could close the gap between idea and proof of concept. Following @liamcottle ‘s idea from Meshchat.