269 - Datawind To Go Hiring For India Tablets

Datawind To Go Hiring For India Tablets 

Biz April 30, 2014 by Jatinder Singh Comments(0) Post a Comment Print | Reprint | | Email This | RSS Rate this item  (0 votes) 

Canada-based tablet manufacturer Datawind plans to increase its manpower in the country to go aggressive with its tablet offerings. Sources close to the developments revealed that the company is on a hiring spree and plans to hire around 100-125 people across various roles in key metros, according to industry sources.  "Majority of the hiring is happening in the sales function where the company is recruiting talent to spearhead its sales pitches," according to the sources. Datawind, the former supplier of Government's Aakash tablet seems to be gearing up to tap into India's mushrooming low cost tablet market. (See: Could Aakash Rise From The Ashes.) 

Apart from Aakash, Datawind also offers tablets in the commercial market under the Ubislate brand. It is understood that with a larger sales presence in India, the company will be better placed to increase the reach of Ubislate devices across its targeted customer segments.  In the past, Datawind has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. The use of some Chinese parts in the final product led to a major controversy about two years ago. Datawind announced the completion of 100,000 Aakash low-cost computing access devices for IIT-Bombay last year.   

Read more at: http://www.lightreading.in/lightreadingindia/news-analysis/295644/datawind-hiring-india-tablets-biz?utm_source=referrence_article

268 - DataWind joins Business Call to Action to bridge the digital divide

DataWind joins Business Call to Action to bridge the digital divide

By Telecom Lead

April 16, 2014

Data Wind, the manufacturer of the world’s lowest cost android tablet PC, has joined Business Call to Action (BCtA), to help bridge the digital divide among millions of people in India.

The company aims to harness the potential of ICT technologies for a positive developmental impact on quality of education through its range of UbiSlate/Akash Tablets. As part of this initiative the company has expanded the rollout of Aakash tablets.

By 2017, DataWind has set a target to distribute five million tablets in India and expects that more than 80 percent will reach individuals who live at the base of the pyramid– living on less than $8 dollars a day.

“We are greatly encouraged to have DataWind join the BCtA with their unique technological approach to help reach new communities and improve access to education and technology. The impact of affordable and connected devices cannot be underestimated,” said Sahba Sobhani, acting program manager, Business Call to Action.

Working to help low-income communities readily adopt the new technology, and in an effort to provide continued quality education and Internet access to help empower students and teachers, the Indian government has subsidized the costs and the planned expansion of the mobile tablet.

DataWind is also working with service providers and network operators to provide much needed access to the Internet through these web access devices. The company has patented a unique delivery system to provide low-income consumers valuable data services at the lowest cost possible.

“DataWind is pleased to be in the company of like-minded organizations and initiatives such as the Business Call to Action that are working towards a common goal of social development by providing tools and empowering individuals and communities globally,” said Suneet Singh, CEO, DataWind.

DataWind is working with several governments and not-for-profit organizations to help them achieve their goals of elevating the quality of education and bridging the digital divide. The company is looking to expand in Thailand and a number of other regions.

editor@telecomlead.com

267 - GNU /Linux on Aakash by Sachin Patel and Srikant Patnaik

GNU /Linux on Aakash by Sachin Patel and Srikant Patnaik

Sachin Patil* and Srikant Patnaik**
*Linux System Administrator in Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay **Research Assistant, FOSSEE, IIT Bombay 

GNU/Linux on Aakash

Article

Introduction
In the January 2013 issue of Communications of CSI, the article "Genesis of Aakash" had explained the events leading to the creation of Aakash this has been explained by Moudgalya, Phatak, Sinha, and Varma. In this article, we will explain the work that we undertook to port GNU/Linux in native mode on Aakash.

Android is a great platform, it’s free, and easy to learn. Most of us will acknowledge the use of Google’s Android on Aakash. The reason is that Android is not designed to run GNU apps, although it is based on Linux Kernel. This means that one has to rewrite all useful apps on a new platform, using only Java programming language. Beside these restrictions, Android also tracks user activity, and apps may contain ads which are difficult to manage.

The first version of Aakash that we worked on came with the Android Ice- cream sandwich version. It looked nice with a visually pleasing user interface. It had multiple desktop support, efficient menu applications, perfectly suited for any touch based device. On scanning through, we came across the picture gallery, calendar, messaging, contacts, clock, etc. These applications come by default with any Android device. The first question that came to our mind was, 'Is this what will go to our students? What will they do with it?’ Most school going children would be unaware of how to use these apps, and instead would play around with drawing tools, games, and other items, which they are familiar with. Sadly no Android device comes with preinstalled educational applications by default.

Furthermore, Android was not intended to serve educational purposes. It was created to serve as a mobile operating system. An operating system with GUI specially designed for calling and messaging, which improved as it evolved. Several applications in android were written by developers across the world. With time, its user interface was optimized, making it easier to use. Until now, Android was largely used as an entertainment operating system. It is well suited for those who just want their work to be done without knowing what goes within. In contrast, Aakash is specially meant for education: we don't want our student to stop with playing games; nor do we want to restrict them to the development of another `Angry Birds' kind of game. We want them to learn, read, write, and carry experiments on their device. This device should be considered equivalent to any desktop we use today. We aimed to give them a full fledged device to help, play, and experiment without any limitations.

Why GNU/Linux (where
Android lags)
Android uses the same Linux kernel optimized for embedded devices and excellent memory management. Though it has an easy to use GUI, it is generally not suited for everyone, especially students, as explained above. This serves strong motive to port GNU/Linux on Aakash. Although GNU/Linux uses the same Linux kernel, its file system differs completely. It gives us complete freedom to explore every part of software as well as hardware. The best part is, the GNU applications allow the curious learner to read the code and find out the way the applications work. If one is dissatisfied with the application, one is free to download the source code and modify it accordingly. He or she can even go on and share their modified code with the

community, provided they acknowledge the original authors and attach the same GNU license with the code. This is where Android lags behind Aakash: most of the popular free apps are closed source in nature.

Moreover, because of the licensing restrictions, it is not possible for us to distribute useful Android Apps with Aakash, since we have to get permission from the creator of each App individually. Each one may want different agreement forms to be signed. A bigger problem is that most creators of popular Apps are difficult to locate and hence, the mails to them will go unanswered. GNU/Linux, on the other hand, is especially designed for such campaigns.

Porting
On exploring the hardware of Aakash tablets: we realized that this relatively new SoC from All-winner has support for GNU/Linux, which although limited, was sufficient enough to start our work. In pursuit of a development board needed to start our work, we looked around and finally decided to open the device itself. We asked the vendor for pin numbers that were needed to obtain the transmit data(Tx) and receive data(Rx) pins out from CPU. This information is required for debugging. With the help of a USB to serial converter, we connected the pins to a computer using an USB port. Our hardware team managed to get those

CSI Communications | June 2013 | 30

www.csi-india.org

pins out, after which and our development device was ready. Without the serial out, it is difficult to track the booting process.
We had two choices, either to let the GNU/Linux boot from its internal memory(NAND flash) itself or to let the complete OS boot from an external SD- card. Fortunately the All-winner chip has a facility to boot the OS from the SD-card. Interested learners can boot GNU/Linux from SD-card without touching any part of Android.

We started compiling the boot loader. The boot-loaders on embedded system are different, and in Aakash the complete OS has to boot from the SD-card. Then we went on to compile U-boot. It is the uboot binary file on SD-card, which makes the SD-card bootable. After successfully loading, the uboot finally calls on the kernel to initialize hardware. We used minicom to view all booting processes. The next major challenge was the Linux kernel. It is the most important part, as all the hardware and applications ultimately depend on it. If the kernel successfully detects all the hardware, then we can proceed further to test the file system. If not, we need to fix it by analyzing Android kernel logs, keeping in mind all the hardware and configuring the same in our present kernel. Thanks to the open source community, we found forked versions of original Linux kernel maintained by All-winner team.

We used the default cross-compiler as suggested online. It gave compilation errors and the compilation process failed frequently. This is the same cross- compiler that is readily available in Ubuntu's repository. After many trial we decided to use the Codesourcery's cross-compiler tool-chain. We have used these tool-chains in the past. To set up Codesourcery's tool-chain, one has to register before downloading its binary. After downloading, it has to be installed and a custom path to the tool chain has to be set in order to compile the kernel. We first used the Debian root file-system, which we got online. The script.bin file was not fully compatible with Aakash. It took us some time to extract Aakash's own script.bin file and to change its default parameters to make a running kernel and root file-system. Merely modifying script. bin file was not enough, some kernel modules like WiFi and touch have to be auto-loaded while booting. These changes have to be made in the file-system path / etc/modules to make them work. With all those changes, we had basic version running in a week.

On Aakash, GNU/Linux boots from micro SD-card and the file-system reside within the SD-card. Both Android and GNU/Linux operating systems are completely isolated from other. The good part is that we can access all the Android's content from GNU/Linux.

Enabling touch was a major challenge, as we have never worked on touch before. Initially when tried to interact with the tablet using touch on Debian, it didn't respond. We had to go through Android's log-cat and dmesg to identify the touch screen driver, which we found out was focal-touch(ft5x_ts). When it was enabled as a module, it worked but we had to disable the multi-touch feature in the file. Currently Aakash has three touch screen drivers, of which two work.

For an application like ExpEYES (explained below) and Arduino, which uses an USB-to-serial interface for interacting with the hardware, we had to enable kernel support for Communication Device Class(CDC) ExpEYES as ACM device. On the device level, it is detected as Abstract Control Model(ACM) drivers. The Linux kernel detects /dev/ttyACM0. Also for ACM to work, generic USB support should be enabled in the kernel.

On the desktop, we can pass arguments to the kernel, ask kernel to load some modules, disable misbehaving modules and so on. Similarly we can pass arguments to kernel on an embedded device using script.bin file. On Aakash, pre-customization, module loading for wireless networks, setting display resolution, loading touch drivers, etc., can be done using script.bin. Although Script. bin is a binary file, actual editing can be done by converting it to fex format.

Ubuntu as GNU/Linux Distribution
With the Linux kernel in place, now was the right time to decide upon file system . We tried Debian first, but due to lack of hard- float support in Debian Squeeze release, we dropped it. We also tried Debian Wheezy but we were uncertain about of pre-release versions. The best choice left to us was Ubuntu, which is known for being easy to use amongst newcomers and advanced developers alike. It has a great package-manager, using which one can install required packages both from command line and using graphical interface. Hence we agreed to use Ubuntu.
We started with Ubuntu-12.10 core arm hard-float distribution. When uncompressed, it consumes around 100MB only. We used the ch-root environment to configure package-manager, basic network tools, user applications and a desktop environment.

Before putting the file-system to actual use, the compiled kernel and its modules were placed in /lib/modules directory of the file-system, where all kernel modules reside.

The next challenge was the Desktop environment. We tried Unity, KDE Plasma, XFCE, MATE, enlightenment (e17), and Gnome-3, all of which need around 120 MB RAM with some hardware acceleration, except e17. After considering the options we finally decided to go with LXDE(not Lubuntu).
The Ubuntu-core file-system includes only basic utilities and a package-manager (apt-get). Comparing with a Desktop version, it does not even have a basic networking tools like ping or root user utilities, such as sudo. Ubuntu Boot-splash screen, Desktop-Environment, screen savers, UbuntuOne sync, daemons, etc., consume a lot of memory. We compared memory consumption of each process before installing one in core file-system. For example, Ubuntu's default Desktop- Environment(Unity) consumed much more memory than LXDE. By discarding these overheads, we finally managed to boot Ubuntu in less than 50MB RAM. We also made a few customizations on open- box and gtk2.0 to make it touch friendly.

Applications
We focused largely on educational applications. With repositories in the path, one can easily install any application of one's choice. We pre-installed some popular and useful applications. The first application we installed was Onboard, to serve as the virtual keyboard. Next we installed the LibreOffice pack. Although it’s a bit heavier than AbiWord, its features make it worth installing. Scilab-5.3.3 was also installed and tested. Both numerical and graphical calculations are executed much faster than on Android(https://github.com/androportal/ APL-apk). More than 150 Scilab textbook companions (http://scilab.in) are now available in our latest builds. A Scilab textbook companion is a listing of code that implements worked out examples in standard textbooks. Arduino, an open source hardware with Gnoduino IDE, has also been tested and included.

ExpEYES is a hardware and software tool for learning and exploring science experiments. It supports 50 experiments for high-school and above. For interacting with the hardware, we have a Debian package called ExpEYES Junior. This is a tablet version alternative for ExpEYES in desktop.

OSCAD is another open source EDA tool, acronym as Open Source Computer Aided Design. It has been developed using several open source tools like KiCad, Ngspice, and Scilab at IIT Bombay. Python- TKinter is used to program its front-end. Since tools such as KiCad, Ngspice, and Scilab already run on Aakash, OSCAD's installation procedure was similar to any other desktop running GNU/linux. Aakash's capability to run Electronic design tools is demonstrated by the fact that OSCAD runs on it.
We also installed iPython-notebook for scientific computing, and Mayavi2 for 3D visualization of data.

Conclusion
After these customization process, we now have Ubuntu 12.10 with Linux kernel version 3.0.57 working on Aakash. It is suitable for educational as well as entertainment purposes. For programming and development one can attach an external keyboard and mouse, if one is not comfortable with virtual keyboard. One can see all the features and application of a typical desktop computer on Aakash. With ExpEYES and Arduino working, one can perform hardware interfacing with any other hardware. GNU/Linux on Aakash provides opportunities to experiment on a portable device. With 1 GHz processor and 512MB memory, it has the potential to run any other GNU applications. Currently we have image targeted for 8GB SD-card of which first 16M FAT partition is dedicated to bootloader (uboot.bin) and script.bin file. 1GB is used as swap file-system in case if the actual RAM gets used up. The entire file-system along with install applications and other utilities consumes around 3GB space. Approximately 3.5 GB is left free for storage and other installation to user. The capacity of the SD-card can be expanded up to 32GB.

Contributing to Project
We look forward to seeing GNU/Linux enthusiasts contribute to this project. Please visit our github page for detailed documentation on porting of Aakash. There are many open issues, such as, brightness control, sleep mode, touch drivers, etc. We have documented our work at http://androportal.github.com/ linux-on-aakash/.

Aakash Application Development Competition
In January 2013 issue of Communications of CSI, we had announced a competition based on Aakash, for both Android and GNU/Linux operating systems.

This competition aimed to encourage students and individuals across the country to come up with innovative applications that could be used on Aakash. The source code of each application will be released as free and open source. The Application can be Android or GNU/linux based.

More that 1600 participants registered for the Aakash application development competition. These participants are from various engineering colleges and universities across India. We asked those participants to re-group in teams consisting of maximum 5 people, and re-submit their project proposal. On the basis of project description, we have shortlisted 140 teams, whose work will be developed further. Any updates related to competition will be posted on http:// aakashlabs.org/compete.

Traditionally all applications running on GNU/linux desktop should also run on GNU/linux on Aakash. But one must ensure that the application is touch friendly and consumes minimum RAM. The Aakash team at IIT Bombay is willing to help the participants: for example, the participants: for example, the participants can send their application to us for testing.

We still have many open issues on GNU/linux port. Before contributing, we expect the participants of the competition to go through our GNU/linux porting documentation on github page http:// androportal.github.io/linux-on-aakash/.

We are in need of developers who are interested in GNU/Linux system. They must have sound knowledge of Linux kernel and working of various GNU/linux distributions.

# LocalWords: bootable uboot minicom online Codesourcery's Aakash # LocalWords: Aakash's WiFi NAND Bootloader dmesg multi ExpEYES USB # LocalWords: Arduino ACM linux github pre onboard LibreOffice # LocalWords: AbiWord Scilab n

Srikant Patnaik He is a developer, teacher and motivator. His first contribution to FOSS came as a simple 8051 Programmer for Linux, available at sourceforge. He served as a Lecturer at Loyola academy, Hyderabad. Later joined IIT Bombay as a Research Assistant in FOSSEE project. He contributed in Porting of GNU/Linux on Aakash and also associated with Android app to run Scilab and other programming languages. His interests include blogging, designing circuits, bridging software and hardware.

Sachin Patil is currently working as a Linux System Administrator in Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. Apart from System Administration, he has also gained some experience in Android and embedded systems. He, along with Srikant Patnaik, has ported Scilab — a software for Numerical Computation on ‘Aakash’, a low cost access device project funded by NMEICT, Govt. of India. He is also interested in customising GNU/linux distributions. Beside Ubuntu, his other favourite GNU/linux distro is Slackware, which he likes to work on because of its 

266 - Low Price Tablet: Capturing the Market andthe Hearts - Datawind

Low Price Tablet: Capturing the Market andthe Hearts

on APRIL 10, 2014 · LEAVE A COMMENT · in LOW PRICE TABLET

The concept of low price tablet computers was virtually unheard of a couple of years back, most companies were busy dishing out expensive models for an elite clientele. A low price tablet named Akash, a government of India initiative for enhancing the quality of education in the country, however, changed the perceptions and started a new trend. It gave a big boost to the low cost computer industry as manufacturers realized the enormous potential such devices had. Fact is that more than half of the world population still lives below poverty line and expensive devices are out of their purchasing capacity. Yet these people badly need to have their own computers as the twenty-first century belongs to the computer savvy, there is no place in this age for computer illiterates. The Akash experiment showed that it was possible to empower the students by using computing and internet access in a blended learning environment, and that this could be done by providing them with low price tablet computers like Akash.

DataWind, a leading provider of wireless products and services, played a vital role in designing, developing and manufacturing Akash. DataWind also launched its UbiSlate series with a vision to empower the next three billion people across the world with computing and internet access. The low price tablet computers like UbiSlate 7CX, UbiSlate 7C+, UbiSlate 7CZ, UbiSlate 3G7 etc have redefined the comcept of affordability and connectivity by providing excellent alternatives to the consumers at very cheap rates. These tablets have become very popular among the consumers, especially the younger generation, and have captured a big share in the computer market that was previously held by personal computers and laptops.

265 - Aakash Tablet to hit the Market soon - TNN

Aakash Tablet to hit the Market soon

NAGPUR: Under the ministry of human resource development, government of India's one laptop per child (OLPC) project 'Akash tablet' will be available in market in 3-4 months at a cost of around Rs 2,500. The tablet which will be the first of its kind to have a dual book and dual board as it will use both Android as well as Linux operating systems will perform the job of both, a tablet and a computer. It will be the cheapest tablet in the world.

The main man behind the project, professor Deepak Phatak from department of computer science and engineering at IIT, Bombay told TOI that four vendors have been shortlisted for the sales and the tablet would soon be available in market.

Phatak was in city to deliver the concluding key-note address at the two-day industrial symposium of Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology (VNIT). Known for his revolutionary work in transforming engineering education by training teachers for which he bagged the Padma Shree award in 2013, Phatak took the Akash tablet project as a challenge. Education apps and content was developed first for 1,000 devices for testing. The project aims at reaching 300 colleges and 1 lakh students. It is also being tested at four schools in Pandharpur for use in science and mathematics.

"Tablet has limited use. But we wanted to add computing to it so that it can be of use to every student who uses it. Hence we added the Linux system into it. An experiment is also on in Bhikamgaon in Khargon district in Madhya Pradesh for Standard IX students. Each tablet will be preloaded with all educational applications whether the user wants it or not to serve its basic purpose," said Phatak.

In an effort to improve engineering education, Phatak conducted a sabbatical experiment and surveyed 67 smaller engineering colleges in the country. He found that though the standard of education was pathetic in these colleges each of them had at least a handful of students who were sharp and hardworking. They were there not by choice but by chance. These students he thought should have been in IIT. Similarly, he also found brilliant teachers who were forced into the routine teaching methodology of lecturing. It was here that he decided to train these teachers to change the education standard.

Phatak switched the teaching into a 'flip' type where instead of listening to a teacher in class and doing the homework the students were asked to listen to a lecture at home and engage into interaction and only question answer sessions, problem solving in class. It brought totally unexpected but very positive results. He has already trained 36,000 teachers to use this method and will be training total 1.5 lakh teachers.

264 - Datawind Innovations - Aakash Tablet - Cheaters - Consumer Complaints

Datawind Innovations - Aakash Tablet - Cheaters

3 Reviews

Add a Comment   Shahid Syed on Apr 4, 2014

ar sir i purchased datawind tablet in january 2014 after one week of purchasing my tablet display gone dead automatically. i called customer care and booked complain, they have given me the address of service center named as Muskan enterprises, Indore. i have given my tablet to muskan enterprises on 17/01/2014. Muskan enterprises promised me to deliver my tablet maximum after one month. today more than two months completed, when i am calling to muskan enterprises they always says me that "whenever your tablet come we will let you know". But still i didn't receive any response from there side. I hope you will help me in this case or else please tell me how to get refund my money. [Updated by Shahid Syed Apr 03, 2014] I am Shahid Syed, resident of Burhanpur In January 2014 i have purchased a Datawind tablet But after 10 days of purchasing date i found a problem related to Display The display of Tablet Mobile is Totally dead For solving this problem i gave my Tablet to Muskan Enterprises situated 208 Sunrise Tower 579 MG Road Indore who are the authorised service centre of datawind tablets they told me that we will give you this tablet within a month after repairing because it is under warranty Today Three months completed when i asked the representative of their company she told me that still it will take time because we dont have display for your tablet From that Day to till today i havent received my Tablet phone They kept telling me we we are not finding the display of your tablet and we r trying for this For this i have made a N number of phone calls to their representative She is the person whos handling all these things whenever me and my father called them every time she said give me 4 to 5 days Display is coming from our Head Office Instead of solving the problem quickly they have completed 3 months and the problem is still their and they are saying the same thing again n again to me. My only question to them is that - Am i done any mistake by purchasing the product of Datawind Tablet instead of other company's product. When they are not in a position to provide proper and quick services to the customers, then why the hell company is selling her product in market? i have already wasted my time for this and i am not in a position that i can argue anymore with them. Thats why i am taking the help of you and i have a faith on our law, that portal will definitely provide me compensation against mental harassment and the time which i have wasted already. I am hoping that this portal will set a benchmark for every other company's, by punishing them and giving justice to me. So that in future the customers like me will not be cheated like this, what they r doing with me right now. Thanking you Shahid Syed 9009471414 9967306699 shahid.bem@gmail.com