* increase the volume of calls on freerunner
Posted on April 17th, 2009 by Alex. Filed under openmoko.
In all distributions available for the Freerunner of Openmoko, I experienced calls at a very low volume making it impossible to understand the one at the other end in loud environments. I am not talking about very loud environments like a Heavy Metal concert or the platform at the train station. In normal surroundings the voice of the caller simply vanished into the noise sometimes.
Fortunately on FSO based distributions such as the SHR, there is a solution. I know that also Openmoko 2008.12 offers this option as a comfortable regulator during the talk, but I do not know, hoe and if it works. It is possible to access the amplifier of the GSM chip boosting the audio signal. In FSO you can access it through this simple python example:
#!/usr/bin/env python
import dbus#– access dbus
bus = dbus.SystemBus()gsm_device_obj = bus.get_object(“org.freesmartphone.ogsmd”, “/org/freesmartphone/GSM/Device”)
device_iface = dbus.Interface(gsm_device_obj, “org.freesmartphone.GSM.Device”)
print device_iface.GetSpeakerVolume()device_iface.SetSpeakerVolume(80)
print device_iface.GetSpeakerVolume()
This script sets the volume to 80 (from the default of 68) which was sufficient for me. Valid values range from 0 to 100. With the amplification set to maximum in the GSM chip and alsamixer, the speaker is so loud that everybody can hear that someone is talking at the other end in a range of 2 meters and in quite environments. The Freerunner also starts vibrating a bit. 
I do not know, if the volume is reset, if the Freerunner is restarted. But starting this script at every boot cycle is the least problem (see this post)
[Update 19/04/2009]
The volume is reset with every restart. Unfortunately it is not that easy to start the script mentioned above automatically with every restart. The resource (namely the GSM chip) is not available at that time and the script fails. As long as I do not figure out a more comfortable way for this script, I made a button so that I can execute the script by hand after boot and after the chip came up. Let me know any better ways…
April 17th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
Nice post. Which also mixer settings did you set to max to increase the sound (I have a GTA02).
[REPLY]
jitu Reply:
April 18th, 2009 at 7:04 am
Currently the volume of the GSM chip is set to 80.
The settings in the alsamixer are:
Mono 87
Mono Sid 86
Bypass 100
Speaker 98
Everything else is set to 0. Most important are the Bypass and Speaker. I forgot what the “Mono” controls are for. Speaker and Bypass can be found on the utmost right side of all controls.
With these settings, the caller might sound a little bit overtuned. However for me it is easier to reconstruct the said word, if a syllable is missing than if the whole word is swallowed in the noise. So I can live with that and do not need quality in hifi
[REPLY]
jitu Reply:
April 18th, 2009 at 7:07 am
Oh, one more thing: I am trying to increase the volume for the speaker in the body, but I did not find any controls for that. I am not talking about the speaker that is used for the ear in the handset. Any ideas? What the proper name for that speaker so that I can google for it?
[REPLY]
April 18th, 2009 at 10:26 am
I also tried to look up the FSO device setting for speaker phone but there was nothing like that in FSO docs.
[REPLY]
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:27 am
[...] Volume of caller is too low. Have a look into this post. [...]