First off I'd just like to say thanks to the Skype team for putting together a cutting edge app and all their hard work. I know how much of a slog it can be at the outset.

Just registering an issue that I have been experiencing. Symptoms are as follows

Echo service
- Connects to skype OK
- Echo service keeps ringing while brittish voice attempts to start talking
- quality degrades rapidly (i.e. first couple of seconds are ok then it worsens to the point where it becomes noise, almost as if the sound is being rendered over an extended period)
- during call UI frozen to the point where I am unable to hang up, start menu etc. Ejecting wi-fi card causes this to unhang, backlogged commands executed rapidly, some of the conversation will then be played at normal sounding rate.

Other users
- Rings as would be expected.
- Connects to other skype users OK
- However either my voice is unintelligable or their voice is unintelligable. In either case, the opposite direction will be clear. Seems to be largely that incoming sound is unintelligble
- Again quality degrades rapidly, first couple of seconds might almost be ok. Then either silences, damaged/uninteligible clicks an noises
- Chat works fine
- during call UI frozen to the point where I am unable to hang up, start menu etc. Ejecting wi-fi card causes this to unhang, backlogged commands executed rapidly, some of the conversation will then be played at normal sounding rate.
- More frequently need to ask other party to hang up to terminate conversation.

General
- Skype connects to main service but does not work over activesync usb connections. Not sure if its intended to, very minor issue.

System
- iPaq 6515 (2003se)
- 33mb program ram free
- tried running skype from main mem, sd card and file store, symptoms dont change
- skype version 1.2.0.91
- spectec SDIO wifi card running 1.25.0.3 drivers
- Soft reset done immediately prior to skype being run. No programs started outside of stock HP suite.

I have exactly the same issues, i am a little disheartened to be honest especially since i have been scouring the web and found many people talking about skype working ok on the hw6515, even some people using the full CPU version!!!

Maybe this is an issue with the 312mhz version, i may try the other one.

Dave

Hi,

To use Skype with external wifi card you need at least 400Mhz processor, cause external wifi card uses lot of CPU and that decreases Skype call quality.

[quote=hannesL]Hi,

To use Skype with external wifi card you need at least 400Mhz processor, cause external wifi card uses lot of CPU and that decreases Skype call quality.[/quote]

EXACTLY the same symptoms on Qtek 9100 with built-in Wi-Fi (200mhz however)

I think 200mhz is not justification for skype not to work, other VoIP software for PPC WORKS smoothly, no reasonable explanation so far..

if its such a problem why cant they make a gateway server application which u can install on a standard pc??
the "gateway" app could decompress the skype stream and foward it to the mobile client in a cpu friendly format.

to be honest i dont think it is beause of the wifi cpu usage i tried it using the pass throrugh and got exactly the same result

Are there even any 312mhz devices with built in wifi? i havent seen one and in which case what is the 312mhz version for then???

dave

in fact i know its not the wifi. without the wifi it still completely hogs my poor little CPU during a call to the point were it takes several attempts to hang up the call due to unresposiveness!!

I just tried it using GPRS. The performance is very significantly better... It is actually somewhat usable, both parties can hear each other and I can hang up.

Hard to believe that the wifi stack should take up so much processing power though. Does the PPC version of skype have different network adapter patterns implemented for gprs vs wifi - i.e. does it try to make higher quality (higher bandwidth) calls over wifi as compared to gprs? Maybe this would explain the difference.

Is it possible to add in a quality option or some sort of optimisation for wifi? Using skype over GPRS is probably more expensive than making regular calls due to GPRS charges.

Ok I have done some more experimentation. Seems that GPRS works ok inbound to the mobile device, but the outbound sound is really bad almost all the time.

Additionally I have tried scaling to 416mhz. This did not improve the GPRS performance at all.

It did make the wifi calls almost as good as GPRS, though it often still had the overlapping ring tone and gabling with the echo service.

Another think I noticed is that the garbling happens much more often with both GPRS and wifi when the echo cancellation option is turned on. Echo cancellation did not appear to increase the cpu usage significantly when at 416 on gprs so I believe that there is a bug in the echo cancellation feature.

When using wifi cpu usage peaked at aroun 96% @ 416
When using GPRS cpu usage peaked at 87% @ 416

WIFI
More testing still has been done. It works nicely over wifi @ 520mhz.
Peaks at about 85% usage and sits around 77-80% with sound both ways.
Both directions are coherent and understandable.



GPRS/EDGE
Works a little better than it used to but not much, probably bandwidth related.
Peaks at about 82% mid call, sits about 5-15% (i.e. around 67%?? which seems to be the same as at 416?) lower on average. Outbound seemed to use alot less cpu than inbound, but the outbound sound wasnt nearly as intelligble. The GPRS cpu usage is a bit confusing, but due to GPRS costs I dont feel inspired to test it that much more till it works better.


Seems like if you can cut down the cpu usage around 30-50% it would work over wifi @ 312.

Really seems like the min specs should be 500mhz cpu for wifi to me.

Your absolutly right!! I just tried it on my pocketpc using a scaler and it works fine @ 520mhz, although shortly after testing my hw6515 crashed and needed a hard reset, not good

Dont think its worth hard resetting just for skype. Might look for an alternative VOIP service, ive herd there are others that work better with pocketpc, to be fair i guess this is a BETA.

Dave

just been browsing these 6515 posts and wondered in anybody here using the 6515 had seen any improvements since there's specific software now for the processor speed that the 6515 uses??

and another question - how do you get the 6515 to 'choose' wifi instead of gprs please when logging onto skype and how on earth did you increase processor speed???

thanks!