BenOwner

Ben Nanonote Owner's Entry Point

This page is intended to serve as entry point for (new) owners of a Ben Nanonote.

It has been established by a new owner, who found that such a page was missing.

For the time being it will start to accumulate questions that I think such a page should answer. I hope other new users will contribute questions, and those in the know will take over and produce answers, links, and additional guidance. ;-)

LCD Covering

The Ben Nanonote, as shipped, has its LCD covered by a plastic sheet. Is this meant to be removed? Can it be replaced?

This film is only for protection in manufacturing manipulation and transport; it is not intended to be on the device for normal use. It is usually removed by the costumer once arrives at his hands as you can see it becomes ugly quickly with normal use.

Power state transitions

What does opening/closing the lid do, and under which circumstances?

How long do I need to press the power button to switch Ben on?

Apparently three seconds.

How long do I need to wait until I see any reaction to switching Ben on?

Apparently about one second. Then some pre-boot messages scroll by for about two seconds until it says “Starting kernel...” and switches to the OpenWrt welcome screen. That screen then sits there for about 20 seconds before it offers you “Please press Enter to activate this console”.

What is the proper way to switch Ben off?

(There is no shutdown command, and “init 0” seems to be doing nothing.)

Does it come with any suspend mechanism installed?

How unintended is it to have to use the power button to switch Ben off?

How long do I need to press the power button to switch Ben off?

Apparently four to five seconds.

Does switching it off with the Power button properly unmount the microSD card?

How can I switch Ben off while it is in USB_BOOT_mode, with no usb_boot tools on the host side?

(I ended up taking the battery out.)

The “Please press Enter to activate this console” sometimes disappears. What kind of state is that?

When I insert the battery, it at least sometimes starts up even if I don't press the power button. Is this intentional?

Other

The OpenWrt greeting picture hides most of the console — how do I get rid of it?

After you activated the console with Enter, at any time in the shell: Ctrl-L.

How do I get the wireless working?

There is no wireless device built in — it only greets you with “Wireless Freedom” since it is shipped with the embedded linux distribution OpenWrt installed, which has its origins as open firmware for wireless routers.

What are the most exciting, useful, or impressive applications installed on Ben as it ships?

Apparently vim.

What is vido? Looking at its strings reveals use of gtkmm, but running it only produces a dead white screen.

vido is an offline wiki viewer based on OpenZIM and GTK2, mentioned in the announcement of new images on 13 March.

Is there a way to get Ben to appear as a USB mass storage device?

Adding Software

How do I add software?

See the Building Ben NanoNote software page, and Nanonote_Software_Demos.