Jawbone UP24 App Crashing After Personalization

Recently I got a nice large persimmon Jawbone UP 24 after seeing how useful my wife's was for fitness and sleep tracking, and the persimmon color is pretty cheap and looks good on either sex. Unfortunately, I was very frustrated trying to get it to work with my Android-based Oneplus One due to app issues preventing me from completing the setup. After lots of trial and error, I finally figured out an odd set of steps that got it working:

1. If you haven't signed up for an account already, sign-up in the app. During signup the app may become non-responsive and crash. This is fine.
2. Now sign-up again with the same account information and uncheck the e-mail notifications before proceeding. If you are getting a message about the account already existing, something is different than what I ran into and my solution probably won't work.
3. When you hit next/okay at this point it may just return you to the e-mail/password screen. Keep at it, eventually it will move on. I theorize that something at this stage causes the problem to be resolved.
4. Run through personalization, and you will be rewarded by it completing successfully.

The Android-based Car Stereos You Can Buy NOW

Move over Parrot Asteroid, there are several android-based dual din car stereos shipping now from Asia.

1.The Easy Rising ES666 is available direct here for under $400 USD.  This device features a fully removable android tablet which can operate all stereo functions and low profile hard controls for when the tablet is undocked.  It has TV tuning, bluetooth, RDS, wifi, 3g, GPS, and DVD.  The included tablet is a nice bonus prize. 


2.If you paid too much for your car, you can snag a Dynavin. It looks like you can get the DVN-E46 for your BMW, but they don't make generic DIN units.  This unit runs android 2.2. 

3.Another Chinese manufacturer is trying to sell a pretty sleek model.  However, I couldn't find anyone reselling this in the US yet, and a 1000 unit minimum order is too rich for my blood.  That said, it is obtainable in bulk so it should be for sale  somewhere.


If you don't mind buying from a no-name Chinese company, you can be one of the first to grab one of these bad boys.  In contrast, the Parrot device is rumored to run a locked-down app store and an older version of android, and God knows when/if it is actually coming out.  I find it odd that major manufacturers are not producing these types of units when the after market is threatened by Ford Sync and the upcoming GM Intellilink systems.

HOWTO: Free VOIP on Android Phone #2

Previously, I showed you how to get free voip with a combo of pbxes, google voice, and some other tools.   I since discovered there is an easier way that eliminates pbxes altogether which is described below.  Even more recently, I wrote a guide to setting up a high-quality and reliable solution for free home telephone using only Asterisk, an ATA, and Google Talk/Voice.

1.Get a free EKIGA sip address

Sign up for a SIP account with EKIGA here.

2.Get a free IPKALL number

Sign up for a phone number here.  Enter your sip account info for the account you registered in step 1.

3.Get or use your google voice account, and set it to forward to your IPKALL number.  More detail on this can be found in step 4 of the previous guide.

4.Get the "google voice dialer" (not google voice) and csipsimple apps for android.

In csipsimple, you follow the wizard launched by going to menu -> accounts -> add account -> worldwide providers -> ekiga.   It merely requires your ekiga login and password.  Now you are ready to receive calls to your IPKALL number (which will ring your ekiga sip address which will ring csipsimple).

To make free outgoing voip calls you need to configure the google voice dialer app with your google voice account info.  You can then customize the dialing to select when you want to make your calls with google voice callback to your IPKALL number.  Do not dial out with csipsimple through Ekiga itself since it will not work.  More detail on google voice callback app use can be found in step 5 of the previous guide (just replace any references to sipdroid with csipsimple as you read).

There you have it.  Free voip calling on your android cellphone with a relatively easy setup.  Have fun.

Coming soon, I am going to show you how to set up your own Asterisk 1.8+ server and get free high-quality, seamless VOIP at home using only google voice+talk and an analog telephone adapter.

HOWTO: Free VOIP On An Android Phone

THERE IS A NEWER/BETTER WAY TO DO THIS DOCUMENTED HERE. It does reference some of the material below though since some steps are unchanged.  

FOR FREE HOME PHONE (best quality/reliability) HOWTO USING ONLY GOOGLE + ASTERISK + ATA, LOOK HERE.

Recently I wanted to replace my work cell phone with a good voice over IP (VOIP) solution that would work on my regular personal cell phone.  I work from home, so I have plenty of bandwidth through my wireless router (though it can work fine on 3G or better), and I don't like having to juggle multiple cell phones.

The solution I will provide you takes some fairly involved setup, but the end result is totally free incoming and outgoing calls which work fairly seamlessly on your Android smart phone.  This solution will let you talk up to 2000 minutes per month for no charge.

Required Tools:
Google Voice Account
PBXes.org Account
ipkall Account
SIPDroid Android App
Google Voice Callback Android App

1.Set up PBXes
Sign up for an account.  Then go to add extension and click SIP.  Pick any extension number you desire.  You can come back later to set up voicemail how you want.

Next, go to ring groups and create one for your extension (the number you used in the last step).

The final step in PBX setup is to configure the inbound route.  The trunk is your pbx account username and extension number separated by a hyphen.

I chopped out some unnecessary stuff here.

Note that PBXes free accounts are limited to 2000 minutes per month.

2. IPKALL setup
Ipkall provides a real telephone number where people can reach you.  This is free for you because IPKALL makes money off termination charges from incoming calls.  The numbers are based in various Washington state area codes.  Use the password from the pbxes sip extension information.

Make sure you enter the same info you used as the trunk name in the inbound route screen.  Pick any area code you like.  After you submit and they approve it, you will get your new phone number via e-mail.







3.Set Up SIPDroid
SIPDroid is free and works great with pbxes.  I am sure there are other SIP clients for Android which are quite good as well.

Menu -> Settings -> SIP Account:
username: username-200    
password:  password
server or proxy:  pbxes.org
     
Note the username and password are the same as those used for ipkall.  Other settings can be left at default.

You will also want to set the preferred call type to "Phone" in Menu -> Settings -> Call Options -> Preferred Call Type.  Otherwise your phone will try to use the SIP account to whenever you dial any number which won't work.

You may want to examine other settings to control how SIPDroid works depending on your data connection (wifi vs 3G), which audio codecs to use, etc.  If everything is working, SIPDroid will show a green dot in your status bar.

Now you are all set up to receive incoming calls, and you could stop here if that was all you wanted to do.  However, I assume most of you will want to call out.  If so, read on.


4.Configure Google Voice

Google voice is needed for outbound calling.  You have set up everything for inbound calling from that IPKALL number, but you have no way to place calls.  Google voice can do a web dial where it calls your ipkall number and then connects to the party you are trying to reach.  This sounds like a PITA, but it is quite transparent once set up. 

Sign up for google voice, and get a google voice phone number.  Then go to settings -> voice settings -> add a new phone.  Now enter your ipkall number (instead of 555-5555).

When you click save, a box will pop up for verifying your phone number.  It will contain a two digit code in a text box which you have to enter when google voice calls you.  If you are lucky, you won't have trouble using the dialer on SIPDroid to enter the code.  I was not so lucky, but I have had problems even on a real cell phone when trying to verify google voice.  The workaround is to put the phone on speakerphone mode and hold the mic up to your computer speaker where you play the appropriate tones.  You can go to this site to generate the tones into a sound file to play back, and this worked for me.  If you have no luck, cancel out of the verification pop up and then try saving again with another code.   Some people had luck holding a house phone up to the mic to generate the tones.  In any event, once it is done the number will be saved.

Now you can test everything out by clicking call and initiating a phone call on the google voice web interface (from a computer).  Obviously this isn't very practical since you can only initiate calls from the site.  If you aren't using the google voice app, don't bother installing it just for dialing.  It can initiate a web dial (like we just did), but it is only set up to work for incoming calls on your normal cell line and will fail if you are connecting with SIPDroid.  Luckily, an independent developer has made a very nice app that does just what we need called Google Voice Callback.


5.Google Voice Callback (please get the paid version if you like it)


After you get this Android app, it is pretty easy to set up.
1.Enter your google voice login information (or the app can obtain it from your google account info entered in the phone already).
2.Choose your ipkall number as your callback number.
3.This app will allow you to customize which calls should initiate a GV web dial to your SIP client instead of a normal call.  You can set all, none, or custom filter rules.

For me, I only wanted numbers starting with a certain area code to be dialed through SIPDroid.   So under the custom filter rules, I set a default action of "Do not use GV" and added a rule called "555" with action include and pattern 555*.  When I call out using the normal phone dialer, it will call normally or trigger a VOIP call when I call a 555 number.  This is all fairly seamless, and the only difference you will notice from a regular call is a little pop up while this app logs into google voice and initiates the call for a few seconds.  After that, your sip client will ring and you can enjoy your free SIP calls.

You can also set all US numbers, specific phone numbers, or ask on certain numbers.  Have fun.