Ben NanoNote New User Guide

So, you've got you spanking new NanoNote, booted it up and played around with it.

Marveled at the screen and tiny keyboard. Showed it to friends and colleagues (to much 'Oooh!' and 'Aaah!').

Now what?

This page is a short guide for the new NanoNote owner, describing how to do the basic initial setup and where to go next. It assumes a certain familiarity with Linux or OSX.

Feel free to add content to the guide.

Power state transitions

What does opening/closing the lid do?

Nothing — it cannot be detected.

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

As shipped, 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?

halt

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

Apparently not really unintended — it is the main method to switch off besides halt.

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

Apparently four to five seconds.
However, according to Issue 27, it should take less than one second.
The power button has also been seen not working at all, while halt still turned the device off without a problem.

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

Taking the battery out is one way.
There is also a “reset” button at the back of Ben.

For Linux users

Some things that are good to know about your NanoNote:

• The default shell is ash
• You can switch between consoles using Ctrl+Alt+<any F-key>
• Editors: vim, nano and joe are installed by default.

Updating to the latest Firmware

The first thing you want to do is probably to upgrade your NanoNote to the Official Software Image. This procedure can seem a bit daunting, but it's really not that complicated. Please note that any customizations (installed packages, customization changes to /etc) stored on the root partition will be lost.

• Updating Ben NanoNote software (official HOWTO)
• Qi-Hardware Ben Nanonote reflashing (illustrated with lots of photos)

Breaking out of gmenu2x

The most recent software images has gmenu2x activated by default. While being a pretty nice menu system for handheld devices, it is not (yet) particularly useful. So, you may want to disable Gmenu2x autostart.

Formatting the Data Partition

Although the NanoNote has a 2GB flash memory built-in, you will notice that the root partition is only about 225MB or so. You need to format the data partition to access the rest of the memory.

Configuring networking

In order to do anything remotely interesting with your NanoNote you probably need to set up networking.

• This wiki page has instructions for Linux users.
• agrajag has some pointers on how to get network sharing working with OSX (you need to scroll down a bit on the page)

Making GMU play MP3-files

Since MP3 is not an free format the Ben is not shipped with MP3 codecs installed.

Too make it play MP3 just download the Dingoo Version of GMU here and extract it.

Copy the mpg123.so found in the decoders directory to /usr/share/gmu/decoders/ and libmpg123.so.0 found in libs.dingoo to /usr/lib on your NanoNote.

GMU will now see and play MP3-files after restart!

Installing OpenWRT packages

The NanoNote uses a package manager called opkg. Once you've got a network connection from your maching you can use it to install and remove software packages, or upgrade your existing packages to newer versions.

• This page has a nice (but short) guide on networking and opkg.

Using Dingoo software

Ben Nanonote is fully compatible with Dingoo A320 binaries. That means it is able to load the majority of dingoo games (some don't work because of cpu differences, or different location of root filesystem).
You can download Dingoo software here.

Key Bindings:
D-pad up: KEY_UP
D-pad down: KEY_DOWN
D-pad left: KEY_LEFT
D-pad right: KEY_RIGHT
A button: KEY_LEFTCTRL
B button: KEY_LEFTALT
X button: KEY_SPACE
Y button: KEY_LEFTSHIFT
Left shoulder: KEY_TAB
Right shoulder: KEY_BACKSPACE
START button: KEY_ENTER
SELECT button: KEY_ESC

Setting date/time

• Ben NanoNote TimeZone Date and Calendar HOWTO