fidzu : smartphone

Posted by Robbie McLachlan, Developer Marketing

In our latest #WeArePlay film, which celebrates the people behind apps and games on Google Play, we meet Mikkel - the founder and CEO of Miksapix Interactive. Mikkel is on a mission to share the rich stories and culture of the Sámi people through gaming. Discover how he is building a powerful platform for cultural preservation using a superheroine.

You went from a career in broadcasting to becoming a founder in the games industry. What inspired that leap?

I've had an interest in games for a long time and always found the medium interesting. While I was working for a broadcast corporation in Karasjok, I was thinking, "Why aren't there any Sámi games or games with Sámi content?". Sámi culture is quite rich in lore and mythology. I wanted to bring that to a global stage. That's how Miksapix Interactive was born.

Your game, Raanaa - The Shaman Girl, is deeply rooted in Sámi culture. What is the significance of telling these specific stories?

Because these are our stories to tell! Our mission is to tell them to a global audience to create awareness about Sámi identity and culture. Most people in the world don't know about the Sámi and the Sámi cultures and lore. With our languages at risk, I hope to use storytelling as a way to inspire Sámi children to value their language, celebrate their identity, and take pride in their cultural heritage. Sámi mythology is rich with powerful matriarchs and goddesses, which inspired us to create a superheroine. Through her journey of self-discovery and empowerment, Raanaa finds her true strength - a story we hope will inspire hope and resilience in pre-teens and teens around the world. Through games like Raanaa - The Shaman Girl, we get to convey our stories in new formats.

How did growing up with rich storytelling affect your games?

I was raised in a reindeer herders family, which means we spent a lot of time in nature and the fields with the reindeers. Storytelling was a big part of the family. We would eat supper in the Lavvu tent sitting around a bonfire with relatives and parents telling stories. With Miksapix Interactive, I am taking my love for storytelling and bringing it to the world, using my first hand experience of the Sámi culture.

How has Google Play helped you achieve global reach from your base in the Arctic?

For us, Google Play was a no-brainer. It was the easiest part to just release it on Google Play, no hassle. We have more downloads from Google Play than anywhere else, and it has definitely helped us getting abroad in markets like Brazil, India and the US and beyond. The positive Play Store reviews motivated and inspired us during the development of Raanaa. We use Google products like Google Sheets for collaboration when we do a localization or translation.

What is next for Miksapix Interactive?

Now, our sights are set on growth. We are very focused on the Raanaa IP. For the mobile game, we are looking into localizing it to different Sámi languages. In Norway, we have six Sámi languages, so we are now going to translate it to Lule Sámi and Southern Sámi. We're planning to have these new Sámi languages available this year.

Discover other inspiring app and game founders featured in #WeArePlay.

08 Dec 2025 10:00pm GMT

Posted by Matthew McCullough - VP of Product Management, Android Developer

Today, during The Android Show | XR Edition, we shared a look at the expanding Android XR platform, which is fundamentally evolving to bring a unified developer experience to the entire XR ecosystem. The latest announcements, from Developer Preview 3 to exciting new form factors, are designed to give you the tools and platform you need to create the next generation of XR experiences. Let's dive into the details!

A spectrum of new devices ready for your apps

The Android XR platform is quickly expanding, providing more users and more opportunities for your apps. This growth is anchored by several new form factors that expand the possibilities for XR experiences.

A major focus is on lightweight, all-day wearables. At I/O, we announced we are working with Samsung and our partners Gentle Monster and Warby Parker to design stylish, lightweight AI glasses and Display AI glasses that you can wear comfortably all day. The integration of Gemini on glasses is set to unlock helpful, intelligent experiences like live translation and searching what you see.

And, partners like Uber are already exploring how AI Glasses can streamline the rider experience by providing simple, contextual directions and trip status right in the user's view

The ecosystem is simultaneously broadening its scope to include wired XR glasses, exemplified by Project Aura from XREAL. This device blends the immersive experiences typically found in headsets with portability and real-world presence. Project Aura is scheduled for launch next year.

New tools unlock development for all form factors

If you are developing for Android, you are already developing for Android XR. The release of Android XR SDK Developer Preview 3 brings increased stability for headset APIs and, most significantly, opens up development for AI Glasses.

You can now build augmented experiences for AI glasses using new libraries like Jetpack Compose Glimmer, a UI toolkit for transparent displays , and Jetpack Projected, which lets you extend your Android mobile app directly to glasses. Furthermore, the SDK now includes powerful ARCore for Jetpack XR updates, such as Geospatial capabilities for wayfinding.

For immersive experiences on headsets and wired XR glasses like Project Aura from XREAL, this release also provides new APIs for detecting a device's field-of-view, helping your adaptive apps adjust their UI.

Check out our post on the Android XR Developer Preview 3 to learn more about all the latest updates.

Expanding your reach with new engine ecosystems

The Android XR platform is built on the OpenXR standard, enabling integration with the tools you already use so you can build with your preferred engine.

Developers can utilize Unreal Engine's native Android and OpenXR capabilities, today, to build for Android XR leveraging the existing VR Template for immersive experiences. To provide additional, optimized extensions for the Android XR platform, a Google vendor plug, including support for hand tracking, hand mesh, and more, will be released early next year.

Godot now includes Android XR support, leveraging its focus on OpenXR to enable development for devices like Samsung Galaxy XR. The new Godot OpenXR vendor plugin v4.2.2 stable allows developers to port their existing projects to the platform.

Watch The Android Show | XR Edition

Thank you for tuning into the The Android Show | XR Edition. Start building differentiated experiences today using the Developer Preview 3 SDK and test your apps with the XR Emulator in Android Studio. Your feedback is crucial as we continue to build this platform together. Head over to developer.android.com/xr to learn more and share your feedback.

08 Dec 2025 6:00pm GMT

Posted by Matthew McCullough - VP of Product Management, Android Developer

In October, Samsung launched Galaxy XR - the first device powered by Android XR. And it's been amazing seeing what some of you have been building! Here's what some of our developers have been saying about their journey into Android XR.

Android XR gave us a whole new world to build our app within. Teams should ask themselves: What is the biggest, boldest version of your experience that you could possibly build? This is your opportunity to finally put into action what you've always wanted to do, because now, you have the platform that can make it real.

• Kristen Coke, Calm, Lead Product Manager

You've also seen us share a first look at other upcoming devices that work with Android XR like Project Aura from XREAL and stylish glasses from Gentle Monster and Warby Parker.

To support the expanding selection of XR devices, we are announcing Android XR SDK Developer Preview 3!

With Android XR SDK Developer Preview 3, on top of building immersive experiences for devices such as Galaxy XR, you can also now build augmented experiences for upcoming AI Glasses with Android XR.

New tools and libraries for augmented experiences

With developer preview 3, we are unlocking the tools and libraries you need to build intelligent and hands-free augmented experiences for AI Glasses. AI Glasses are lightweight and portable for all day wear. You can extend your existing mobile app to take advantage of the built-in speakers, camera, and microphone to provide new, thoughtful and helpful user interactions. With the addition of a small display on display AI Glasses, you can privately present information to users. AI Glasses are perfect for experiences that can help enhance a user's focus and presence in the real world.

To power augmented experiences on AI Glasses, we are introducing two new, purpose-built libraries to the Jetpack XR SDK:

• Jetpack Projected - built to bridge mobile devices and AI Glasses with features that allow you to access sensors, speakers, and displays on glasses

• Jetpack Compose Glimmer - new design language and UI components for crafting and styling your augmented experiences on display AI Glasses

Jetpack Compose Glimmer is a demonstration of design best practices for beautiful, optical see-through augmented experiences. With UI components optimized for the input modality and styling requirements of display AI Glasses, Jetpack Compose Glimmer is designed for clarity, legibility, and minimal distraction.

To help visualize and test your Jetpack Compose Glimmer UI we are introducing the AI Glasses emulator in Android Studio. The new AI Glasses emulator can simulate glasses-specific interactions such as touchpad and voice input.

Beyond the new Jetpack Projected and Jetpack Compose Glimmer libraries, we are also expanding ARCore for Jetpack XR to support AI Glasses. We are starting off with motion tracking and geospatial capabilities for augmented experiences - the exact features that enable you to create helpful navigation experiences perfect for all-day-wear devices like AI Glasses.

Expanding support for immersive experiences

We continue to invest in the libraries and tooling that power immersive experiences for XR Headsets like Samsung Galaxy XR and wired XR Glasses like the upcoming Project Aura from XREAL. We've been listening to your feedback and have added several highly-requested features to the Jetpack XR SDK since developer preview 2.

Jetpack SceneCore now features dynamic glTF model loading via URIs and improved materials support for creating new PBR materials at runtime. Additionally, the SurfaceEntity component has been enhanced with full Widevine Digital Rights Management (DRM) support and new shapes, allowing it to render 360-degree and 180-degree videos in spheres and hemispheres.

In Jetpack Compose for XR, you'll find new features like the UserSubspace component for follow behavior, ensuring content remains in the user's view regardless of where they look. Additionally, you can now use spatial animations for smooth transitions like sliding or fading. And to support an expanding ecosystem of immersive devices with diverse display capabilities, you can now specify layout sizes as fractions of the user's comfortable field of view.

In Material Design for XR, new components automatically adapt spatially via overrides. These include dialogs that elevate spatially, and navigation bars, which pop out into an Orbiter. Additionally, there is a new SpaceToggleButton component for easily transitioning to and from full space.

And in ARCore for Jetpack XR, new perception capabilities have been added, including face tracking with 68 blendshape values unlocking a world of facial gestures. You can also use eye tracking to power virtual avatars, and depth maps to enable more-realistic interactions with a user's environment.

For devices like Project Aura from XREAL, we are introducing the XR Glasses emulator in Android Studio. This essential tool is designed to give you accurate content visualization, while matching real device specifications for Field of View (FoV), Resolution, and DPI to accelerate your development.

If you build immersive experiences with Unity, we're also expanding your perception capabilities in the Android XR SDK for Unity. In addition to lots of bug fixes and other improvements, we are expanding tracking capabilities to include: QR and ArUco codes, planar images, and body tracking (experimental). We are also introducing a much-requested feature: scene meshing. It enables you to have much deeper interactions with your user's environment - your digital content can now bounce off of walls and climb up couches!

And that's just the tip of the iceberg! Be sure to check out our immersive experiences page for more information.

Get Started Today!

The Android XR SDK Developer Preview 3 is available today! Download the latest Android Studio Canary (Otter 3, Canary 4 or later) and upgrade to the latest emulator version (36.4.3 Canary or later) and then visit developer.android.com/xr to get started with the latest libraries and samples you need to build for the growing selection of Android XR devices. We're building Android XR together with you! Don't forget to share your feedback, suggestions, and ideas with our team as you progress on your journey in Android XR.

08 Dec 2025 6:00pm GMT

Some years ago I had mentioned some command line tools I used to analyze and find useful information on GStreamer logs. I've been using them consistently along all these years, but some weeks ago I thought about unifying them in a single tool that could provide more flexibility in the mid term, and also as an excuse to unrust my Rust knowledge a bit. That's how I wrote Meow, a tool to make cat speak (that is, to provide meaningful information).

The idea is that you can cat a file through meow and apply the filters, like this:

cat /tmp/log.txt | meow appsinknewsample n:V0 n:video ht: \
ft:-0:00:21.466607596 's:#([A-za-z][A-Za-z]*/)*#'

which means "select those lines that contain appsinknewsample (with case insensitive matching), but don't contain V0 nor video (that is, by exclusion, only that contain audio, probably because we've analyzed both and realized that we should focus on audio for our specific problem), highlight the different thread ids, only show those lines with timestamp lower than 21.46 sec, and change strings like Source/WebCore/platform/graphics/gstreamer/mse/AppendPipeline.cpp to become just AppendPipeline.cpp", to get an output as shown in this terminal screenshot:

Cool, isn't it? After all, I'm convinced that the answer to any GStreamer bug is always hidden in the logs (or will be, as soon as I add "just a couple of log lines more, bro" 0 0

05 Dec 2025 11:16am GMT

• Release announcement on itch.io

1 0

15 Oct 2025 11:31am GMT

This blog has been running more or less continuously since mid-nineties. The site has existed in multiple forms, and with different ways to publish. But what's common is that at almost all points there was a mechanism to publish while on the move.

Psion, documents over FTP

In the early 2000s we were into adventure motorcycling. To be able to share our adventures, we implemented a way to publish blogs while on the go. The device that enabled this was the Psion Series 5, a handheld computer that was very much a device ahead of its time.

The Psion had a reasonably sized keyboard and a good native word processing app. And battery life good for weeks of usage. Writing while underway was easy. The Psion could use a mobile phone as a modem over an infrared connection, and with that we could upload the documents to a server over FTP.

Server-side, a cron job would grab the new documents, converting them to HTML and adding them to our CMS.

In the early days of GPRS, getting this to work while roaming was quite tricky. But the system served us well for years.

If we wanted to include photos to the stories, we'd have to find an Internet cafe.

• To the Alps is a post from these times. Lots more in the motorcycling category

SMS and MMS

For an even more mobile setup, I implemented an SMS-based blogging system. We had an old phone connected to a computer back in the office, and I could write to my blog by simply sending a text. These would automatically end up as a new paragraph in the latest post. If I started the text with NEWPOST, an empty blog post would be created with the rest of that message's text as the title.

• In the Caucasus is a good example of a post from this era

As I got into neogeography, I could also send a NEWPOSITION message. This would update my position on the map, connecting weather metadata to the posts.

As camera phones became available, we wanted to do pictures too. For the Death Monkey rally where we rode minimotorcycles from Helsinki to Gibraltar, we implemented an MMS-based system. With that the entries could include both text and pictures. But for that you needed a gateway, which was really only realistic for an event with sponsors.

• Mystery of the Missing Monkey is typical. Some more in Internet Archive

Photos over email

A much easier setup than MMS was to slightly come back to the old Psion setup, but instead of word documents, sending email with picture attachments. This was something that the new breed of (pre-iPhone) smartphones were capable of. And by now the roaming question was mostly sorted.

And so my blog included a new "moblog" section. This is where I could share my daily activities as poor-quality pictures. Sort of how people would use Instagram a few years later.

• Internet Archive has some of my old moblogs but nowadays, I post similar stuff on Pixelfed

Pause

Then there was sort of a long pause in mobile blogging advancements. Modern smartphones, data roaming, and WiFi hotspots had become ubiquitous.

In the meanwhile the blog also got migrated to a Jekyll-based system hosted on AWS. That means the old Midgard-based integrations were off the table.

And I traveled off-the-grid rarely enough that it didn't make sense to develop a system.

But now that we're sailing offshore, that has changed. Time for new systems and new ideas. Or maybe just a rehash of the old ones?

Starlink, Internet from Outer Space

Most cruising boats - ours included - now run the Starlink satellite broadband system. This enables full Internet, even in the middle of an ocean, even video calls! With this, we can use normal blogging tools. The usual one for us is GitJournal, which makes it easy to write Jekyll-style Markdown posts and push them to GitHub.

However, Starlink is a complicated, energy-hungry, and fragile system on an offshore boat. The policies might change at any time preventing our way of using it, and also the dishy itself, or the way we power it may fail.

But despite what you'd think, even on a nerdy boat like ours, loss of Internet connectivity is not an emergency. And this is where the old-style mobile blogging mechanisms come handy.

• Any of the 2025 Atlantic crossing posts is a good example of this setup in action

Inreach, texting with the cloud

Our backup system to Starlink is the Garmin Inreach. This is a tiny battery-powered device that connects to the Iridium satellite constellation. It allows tracking as well as basic text messaging.

When we head offshore we always enable tracking on the Inreach. This allows both our blog and our friends ashore to follow our progress.

I also made a simple integration where text updates sent to Garmin MapShare get fetched and published on our blog. Right now this is just plain text-based entries, but one could easily implement a command system similar to what I had over SMS back in the day.

One benefit of the Inreach is that we can also take it with us when we go on land adventures. And it'd even enable rudimentary communications if we found ourselves in a liferaft.

• There are various InReach integration hacks that could be used for more sophisticated data transfer

Sailmail and email over HF radio

The other potential backup for Starlink failures would be to go seriously old-school. It is possible to get email access via a SSB radio and a Pactor (or Vara) modem.

Our boat is already equipped with an isolated aft stay that can be used as an antenna. And with the popularity of Starlink, many cruisers are offloading their old HF radios.

Licensing-wise this system could be used either as a marine HF radio (requiring a Long Range Certificate), or amateur radio. So that part is something I need to work on. Thankfully post-COVID, radio amateur license exams can be done online.

With this setup we could send and receive text-based email. The Airmail application used for this can even do some automatic templating for position reports. We'd then need a mailbox that can receive these mails, and some automation to fetch and publish.

• Sailmail and No Foreign Land support structured data via email to update position. Their formats could be useful inspiration

0 0

05 Jun 2025 12:00am GMT

I've mentioned some of my various retronetworking projects in some past blog posts. One of those projects is Osmocom Community TDM over IP (OCTOI). During the past 5 or so months, we have been using a number of GPS-synchronized open source icE1usb interconnected by a new, efficient but strill transparent TDMoIP protocol in order to run a distributed TDM/PDH network. This network is currently only used to provide ISDN services to retronetworking enthusiasts, but other uses like frame relay have also been validated.

So far, the central hub of this OCTOI network has been operating in the basement of my home, behind a consumer-grade DOCSIS cable modem connection. Given that TDMoIP is relatively sensitive to packet loss, this has been sub-optimal.

Luckily some of my old friends at noris.net have agreed to host a new OCTOI hub free of charge in one of their ultra-reliable co-location data centres. I'm already hosting some other machines there for 20+ years, and noris.net is a good fit given that they were - in their early days as an ISP - the driving force in the early 90s behind one of the Linux kernel ISDN stracks called u-isdn. So after many decades, ISDN returns to them in a very different way.

Side note: In case you're curious, a reconstructed partial release history of the u-isdn code can be found on gitea.osmocom.org

But I digress. So today, there was the installation of this new OCTOI hub setup. It has been prepared for several weeks in advance, and the hub contains two circuit boards designed entirely only for this use case. The most difficult challenge was the fact that this data centre has no existing GPS RF distribution, and the roof is ~ 100m of CAT5 cable (no fiber!) away from the roof. So we faced the challenge of passing the 1PPS (1 pulse per second) signal reliably through several steps of lightning/over-voltage protection into the icE1usb whose internal GPS-DO serves as a grandmaster clock for the TDM network.

The equipment deployed in this installation currently contains:

• a rather beefy Supermicro 2U server with EPYC 7113P CPU and 4x PCIe, two of which are populated with Digium TE820 cards resulting in a total of 16 E1 ports

• an icE1usb with RS422 interface board connected via 100m RS422 to an Ericsson GPS03 receiver. There's two layers of of over-voltage protection on the RS422 (each with gas discharge tubes and TVS) and two stages of over-voltage protection in the coaxial cable between antenna and GPS receiver.

• a Livingston Portmaster3 RAS server

• a Cisco AS5400 RAS server

For more details, see this wiki page and this ticket

Now that the physical deployment has been made, the next steps will be to migrate all the TDMoIP links from the existing user base over to the new hub. We hope the reliability and performance will be much better than behind DOCSIS.

In any case, this new setup for sure has a lot of capacity to connect many more more users to this network. At this point we can still only offer E1 PRI interfaces. I expect that at some point during the coming winter the project for remote TDMoIP BRI (S/T, S0-Bus) connectivity will become available.

18 Sep 2022 10:00pm GMT

Almost one year after my post regarding first steps towards a V5 implementation, some friends and I were finally able to visit Wobcom, a small German city carrier and pick up a lot of decommissioned POTS/ISDN/PDH/SDH equipment, primarily V5 access networks.

This means that a number of retronetworking enthusiasts now have a chance to play with Siemens Fastlink, Nokia EKSOS and DeTeWe ALIAN access networks/multiplexers.

My primary interest is in Nokia EKSOS, which looks like an rather easy, low-complexity target. As one of the first steps, I took PCB photographs of the various modules/cards in the shelf, take note of the main chip designations and started to search for the related data sheets.

The results can be found in the Osmocom retronetworking wiki, with https://osmocom.org/projects/retronetworking/wiki/Nokia_EKSOS being the main entry page, and sub-pages about

• Node Control Unit

• 16x BRI Uk0 Line Card

• 32x POTS Line Card

• Line Measurement Unit

• Shelf

In short: Unsurprisingly, a lot of Infineon analog and digital ICs for the POTS and ISDN ports, as well as a number of Motorola M68k based QUICC32 microprocessors and several unknown ASICs.

So with V5 hardware at my disposal, I've slowly re-started my efforts to implement the LE (local exchange) side of the V5 protocol stack, with the goal of eventually being able to interface those V5 AN with the Osmocom Community TDM over IP network. Once that is in place, we should also be able to offer real ISDN Uk0 (BRI) and POTS lines at retrocomputing events or hacker camps in the coming years.

08 Sep 2022 10:00pm GMT

If you have ever worked with Digium (now part of Sangoma) digital telephony interface cards such as the TE110/410/420/820 (single to octal E1/T1/J1 PRI cards), you will probably have seen that they always have a timing connector, where the timing information can be passed from one card to another.

In PDH/ISDN (or even SDH) networks, it is very important to have a synchronized clock across the network. If the clocks are drifting, there will be underruns or overruns, with associated phase jumps that are particularly dangerous when analog modem calls are transported.

In traditional ISDN use cases, the clock is always provided by the network operator, and any customer/user side equipment is expected to synchronize to that clock.

So this Digium timing cable is needed in applications where you have more PRI lines than possible with one card, but only a subset of your lines (spans) are connected to the public operator. The timing cable should make sure that the clock received on one port from the public operator should be used as transmit bit-clock on all of the other ports, no matter on which card.

Unfortunately this decades-old Digium timing cable approach seems to suffer from some problems.

08 Sep 2022 10:00pm GMT