Jayson Falkner's Blog

Java and the Nokia n810

The Nokia n810 is pretty fantastic, but I'll let you look that up elsewhere. Plenty of places do a good job showing it off. I'll focus on how easy it was to set up and make a graphical Java program.

Before getting started, I must thank both the developers at the Jalimo project for porting a JVM and the Eclipse SWT developers. Those two projects really do all of the work. Hopefully I can help the Jalimo folks update their wiki a bit.

Here is how you can start hacking out your own Java apps on the Nokia n810.

1. Install Jalimo using Maemo's point-and-click installer.
1. Add the Jalimo repository to Application Manager. Use the following info:
• Catalog Name: Jalimo
• Web Address: http://jalimo.evolvis.org/repository/maemo/
• Catalog Name: chinook
• Catalog Name: user
2. Browse your installable applications and install the ones that say'Jalimo'.
2. Drop to command-line and type 'cacao'. You'll see the familiar JVM options scroll by. At this point you can run Java apps, but if you want to run Graphical programs, you'll have to include the SWT/GTK libraries in the '/usr/share/java/' folder.
3. Edit and test code under your favorite IDE. I used Netbeans, and here is what I did.
1. Created a new Java Application project.
2. Added 'swt.jar' from the Eclipse SWT release (can also copy from the n810 directly).
3. Copied and pasted the Jalimo SWT example code.
4. Finally, compile your code and copy it over to the n810 via the USB cable. It appears as a regular USB disk, and this step is as easy as copying and pasting.

That is it. Sorry not to include some screenshots, but I'm a bit to excited to hack out some serious code. Perhaps I'll port Tranche to the n810 or maybe I'll try to figure out how to play around with the GPS....

Comments

• Hi Jayson, a couple of question as my Treo 650 is near to die and I want to be prepared for buying the best option. :-) And the n810 was already on my radar.

  Apart from Jalimo, does the n810 has J2ME support out of the box? Of course the full J2SE stack is better for most things, but my question is about the possibility of using the usual JSR- stuff such as BlueTooth and Location APIs.

  Thanks.

  Posted by: fabriziogiudici on January 03, 2008 at 10:36 AM

• Thanks you very much for this. Perfect.

  Mark

  Posted by: medgington on January 04, 2008 at 03:33 AM

• Hi, nice to hear that it works that smoothly!
  Of course, any contributions are kindly desired. We would need some good and useful example applications, for example.

  
  About J2ME: Some time ago we have packaged MidPath together with a cldc cacao configuration. The packages are experimental and only tested with IT OS 2007. They are available here here

  
  -- Sebastian

  Posted by: smancke on January 06, 2008 at 02:29 AM

• Fabriziogiudici,

  The n810 is awesome, but does not have J2ME support on it. I found no Java support whatsoever in the default Maemo install. Note that installing Jalimo is free and isn't tough at all.

  Posted by: jfalkner on February 02, 2008 at 08:47 PM

• I do not currently have a N810, but am very seriously looking into it. You mention you might play around with GPS. The main issue with buying one at the moment if it is possible, and easy, to access GPS functions from Java? Have you found any projects or libraries that allow this?

  Posted by: grahamjenson on February 14, 2008 at 05:11 PM

• grahamjenson,

  I've yet to get a chance to try and play with the GPS using Java; however, I have played a little with the existing maemo bindings using C. Even in the worst case if no Java bindings exist, some JNI code could be created.

  I'll do some digging around to figure out if someone has made such bindings already. If not, that might make for a good blog post.

  Posted by: jfalkner on February 23, 2008 at 11:38 AM

• I agree, it would be a very useful post.
  Cheers

  Posted by: grahamjenson on February 24, 2008 at 03:07 PM

• Hi.

  As of March 2008, "chinook" must be replaced by "maemo4.0" in Application Manager configuration.
  Complete installation instructions are available on Jalimo's website.

  Posted by: ggrussenmeyer on March 20, 2008 at 05:58 AM

• Catalog Name Updated

  Hiello, just waned to mention that the most up-to-date Jalimo repo. catalog name is: maemo4.0

  Thanks for the original info

  Posted by: gimmal on May 26, 2008 at 12:40 AM

• ...was: chinook

  (the cat name)

  Posted by: gimmal on May 26, 2008 at 12:42 AM

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