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OSHUG #42 — Chips Pt. 3, Thursday 18th June.
by Andrew Back 29 May '15

29 May '15

Hello, Registration is now open for the June meeting, details of which can be found below. Cheers, Andrew // Event #42 — Chips Pt.3 (BERI, Do we need separate Hardware Construction languages? OpenTransputer) 18 June 2015, 18:00 - 20:00 at BCS London, 1st Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA. Registration: http://oshug.org/event/42 This will be the third OSHUG meeting exploring the topic of silicon chip design, with talks on the Bluespec Extensible RISC Implementation, another asking whether we need separate hardware construction languages, and a third talk on an open source implementation of the Transputer. — BERI: An open RISC softcore for research and experimentation BERI (the Bluespec Extensible RISC Implementation) is a softcore processor jointly developed by SRI International and The University of Cambridge. It implements a superset of the MIPS III ISA in Bluespec, a high-level HDL and supports a fully open source, permissively licensed, software stack comprising the FreeBSD operating system and the LLVM compiler suite. This talk will describe the design of the BERI processor and its use. BERI was created to facilitate experimentation at the boundaries between CPU architecture, operating systems, and programming languages. It runs in Altera and Xilinx FPGAs, including the NetFPGA 10G board. At 100MHz, it is fast enough to use as a real computer (albeit a fairly slow one). The talk will discuss the BERI softcore, jointly developed by The University of Cambridge and SRI International and the associated open source software stack. BERI, the Bluespec Extensible RISC Implementation, is a 64-bit MIPS implementation in Bluespec, a high-level hardware description language. It implements the instruction set that debuted in the MIPS R4000 core in 1991, and therefore a set that is free of patents owing to its age. In spite of this, it is a relatively modern 64-bit architecture and is well supported by open source systems. The FreeBSD port to BERI required minimal changes, which were shipped as part of the FreeBSD 10.0 release, and runs unmodified userland 64-bit MIPS code. BERI can run in simulation at a speed acceptable for testing but not for general usage or in an FPGA at 100MHz. The BERI design supports multiple cores on a single FPGA and work is ongoing to support multicore across boards connected with a low-latency interconnect. Jonathan Woodruff received his undergraduate degree from the University of Texas, and Masters and PhD from the University of Cambridge. Jonathan is a key developer of the BERI open-source research processor and its CHERI extension for memory safety. Jonathan is interested in hardware prototyping in FPGA to support full-system design exploration and has implemented a variety of flexible hardware components, including a many-core cache emulator, a multi-threaded ARM core, and many components of the BERI ecosystem. — Do we need separate Hardware Construction Languages? Modern Hardware Construction Languages, including Chisel, HML and the functional subset of Bluespec, provide powerful circuit description facilities for netlist printing in the style of the generate statements found in RTL. The earliest mainstream example was perhaps Lava. They do not support data-directed control flow, and so differ greatly from both conventional RTL and C-to-gates or scientific acceleration HLS (high-level synthesis) tools such as LegUp and Kiwi. In this talk, Greaves will illustrate the essential differences between these styles and discuss the motivation for separate languages, which is a surprising departure when one considers that a major selling point of Verilog and VHDL was they almost seamlessly integrated simulation, generative constructs and algorithm expression. He will also discuss the need for higher-level concurrency primitives and how they might be provided in hardware construction languages. David Greaves, PhD, MIET, is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Cambridge with interests in compiler and hardware design. He has considerable industrial experience at the CTO/Chief Scientist level and has led the design of many hardware systems in areas such as professional audio and broadband access. His current research area is tooling for high-level simulation and energy instrumentation for system-on-chip based on transaction-level modelling (TLM). These enable new hardware architectures to be rapidly explored under real-world workloads, including accelerators for scientific workloads. — OpenTransputer: Reinventing a parallel machine from the past The OpenTransputer is a re-implementation of the Transputer, a pioneering microprocessor architecture first released in the 1980s. The original Transputer was considered revolutionary at its time for its integrated memory and serial communication links intended for parallel computing. Including memory and external links on the same chip made the Transputer essentially a computer on a chip. This allowed information systems to be designed at a higher level – the Transputer functioning as a building block for parallel computing networks. Over the last few years, with the shift to cloud computing there has been a trend in the world of computing of building large clusters of powerful computers that serve data to an ever-growing number of client devices, which themselves only feature tiny and low-power processors. These include mobile phones and tablets, but will soon also comprise every other device that connects to the internet, ranging from washing machines to cars. We think that the Transputer and its unique feature set make it an excellent processor for the emerging Internet of Things (IoT), specifically for the connected homes and wearable computing applications. The OpenTransputer maintains all the ideas of the original device for concurrency management and interprocess communication. However, the serial links that were used to connect multiple Transputers are replaced by a switch that routes messages between cores. Furthermore, we introduce a new I/O interface that is compatible with the vast majority of hardware components such as accelerometers and gyroscopes. Note: Please aim to arrive by 18:15 as the event will start at 18:30 prompt.

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OSHUG #41 — Wiring the Internet of Things with Raspberry Pi & Node-RED, Thursday 21st May.
by Andrew Back 23 Apr '15

23 Apr '15

Hello, Registration is now open for the May meeting, which will take the form of an afternoon workshop providing an introduction to Node-RED. if you are planning on attending, registering sooner rather than later is highly recommended. However, please don't register if you there is a chance you won't make it, as spaces are limited and it would be a terrible shame if some miss out due to the event being booked up, then on the day we end up with empty chairs. Cheers, Andrew // Event #41 — Wiring the Internet of Things with Raspberry Pi & Node-RED 21 May 2015, 12:30 - 18:30 at Fab Lab London, Off Old Jewry, 1 Frederick’s Place, London, EC2R 8AE. Registration: http://oshug.org/event/41 Node-RED is a visual tool for wiring together hardware devices, APIs and online services in new and interesting ways. Used together with Raspberry Pi it provides a compact, powerful platform that is able to read sensors, control outputs, and send and receive data to and from the Web and other systems. This workshop will provide an introduction to Node-RED and integrating simple sensors and outputs, applying basic processing and publishing data to the Web. No prior experience with either Node-RED or electronics is required. However, while not strictly necessary, some experience of JavaScript would be beneficial as this is used to implement custom functionality within Node-RED. The introduction to Node-RED will be presented by Andy Stanford-Clark. Andy Stanford-Clark is a Distinguished Engineer in IBM's global Internet of Things team. He is an IBM Master Inventor with more than 40 patents. Andy is based at IBM's Hursley Park laboratories in the UK, and specialises in the Internet of Things, remote telemetry, energy monitoring and management, Smart Metering and Smart Grid technologies. He has a particular interest in home energy monitoring, home automation and driving consumer behaviour change. Andy has been working on what we now call the Internet of Things for more than 15 years: he co-developed the MQTT messaging protocol in 1998. Andy has a BSc in Computing and Mathematics, and a PhD in Computer Science. He is a Visiting Professor at the University of Newcastle, an Honorary Professor at the University of East Anglia, and a Fellow of the British Computer Society. Please bring a laptop and, if you have a Raspberry Pi, bring this along with any useful sensors and LEDs. However, note that boards and sensors etc. will also be made available for use by those who do not have these. An SD card image will be provided with Node-RED and associated software pre-installed. Note: Please aim to arrive by 12:15 as the workshop will start at 12:30 prompt. Jointly hosted by the BCS OSSG, IBM UK and OSHUG. With support from the Knowledge Transfer Network and hardware sponsored by RS DesignSpark.

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OSHUG #40 — Hackerspace/makerspace/fablab panel discussion, Thursday 16th April.
by Andrew Back 22 Mar '15

22 Mar '15

Hello, Registration is now open for the April meeting, details of which can be found below. Cheers, Andrew // Event #40 — Hackerspace/makerspace/fablab panel discussion 16 April 2015, 17:30 - 20:00 at BCS London, 1st Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London,WC2E 7HA. Registration: http://oshug.org/event/40 For the fourtieth meeting we will be hosting a panel discussion which will explore the organisation, operation, challenges and benefits of creative spaces known as hackerspaces, makerspaces and fablabs. There will be representatives from Makespace Cambridge, South London Makerspace, So Make It (Southampton), Fab Lab London, London Hackspace and the UK's innovation agency, Innovate UK. — Makespace Cambridge Dr Laura James is co-founder and Director of Makespace Cambridge, a non-profit community inventing shed and hackspace. She is currently consulting on a variety of technology and innovation activities. Laura has worked in technology and leadership roles in a wide variety of organisations. After R&D work at AT&T Labs in both Menlo Park and Cambridge, Laura developed high speed optical networks with Intel Research for her PhD. She was the first employee and VP Engineering at AlertMe.com, developing an easy to use innovative connected home platform and security system. At True Knowledge, Laura was part of the senior management team leading the company through a pivot, to apply their unique semantic technology to next generation search, creating Evi, a revolutionary conversational search app. Laura has also worked as Chief Operating Officer at CARET, a dynamic innovation department of the University of Cambridge, developing open source systems to support teaching and research. Most recently, Laura was CEO of Open Knowledge, a civil society organisation dedicated to opening up knowledge to empower people. Laura is an advisor to Open Knowledge, Product Health, Good Night Lamp, and the ContentMine. Laura holds Masters and PhD degrees in Engineering from the University of Cambridge, received the Royal Academy of Engineering Leadership Award and a NESTA Crucible Fellowship, and is a Chartered Engineer. — South London Makerspace Tom Lynch is a Designer/Maker based in London, after completing his MA at the Royal College of Art he went on to start Elephant & Castle Mini Maker Faire at the London College of Communication where he now works as a Physical Computing Specialist Technician. Living in South London, Tom is a founder and trustee of South London Makerspace, a social, community workshop in Herne Hill. — So Make It Jem Gillam is an iOS programmer turned stay at home mum, and a trustee at So Make It. She has always had an interest in programming and hardware hacking, her first projects involving circuit bending and wearable electronics. Her current project is working with a large team to build a life size remote control Dalek, which meant finally learning to use the power tools at the makerspace! — Fab Lab London Tony Fish is co-founder of Fab Lab London, investor, entrepreneur and an author with a background in electronics, computing and design. — London Hackspace Jonty Wareing is co-founder and trustee of London Hackspace, and co-founder of Electromagnetic Field. He is currently hacking on IRC Cloud after three years at Lumi, and five years at Last.fm. — Innovate UK Nikos Pronios is Lead Technologist for Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) at Innovate UK which he joined in early 2014. He has a diverse background in the ICT sector with experience in US and Europe, both in the industry and academia. After obtaining his PhD from the University of Southern California, he worked for Bell Communication Research in New Jersey, before moving to INTRACOM in Greece. Nikos has worked in various industry positions covering before moving to INTRACOM in Greece. Nikos has worked in various industry positions covering civilian and defence sectors, and he is currently using his diverse experience of more than 20 years to help organisations innovate and compete. — Chaired by: Dr Jeremy Bennett is Founder and CEO of Embecosm, an open source compiler and silicon chip modeling consultancy, that are a strong supporter of the makerspace movement as sponsor of So Make It, Chip Hack and regular workshops that serve to introduce people to embedded computing. Note: Please aim to arrive by 18:15 as the event will start at 18:30 prompt. //

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OSHUG #39 — Radio Pt. 3, Thursday 19th March.
by Andrew Back 24 Feb '15

24 Feb '15

Hello, Registration is now open for the March meeting, details of which can be found below. Cheers, Andrew // Event #39 — Radio Pt. 3 (OpenBeacon, HPSDR, Building Things) 19 March 2015, 17:30 - 20:00 at BCS London, 1st Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA. Registration: http://oshug.org/event/39 The thirty-ninth meeting will feature an update on the HPSDR project, which we first heard about back in October 2010 at OSHUG #5. There will also be talks on Bluetooth Low Energy programming and OpenBeacon, and Building Things. — Low Power to the People - take back Bluetooth Low Energy control! ** Programming BLE the hard way: bare metal programming of nRF51 BLE tokens for fun and profit. The talk will start with a brief overview of the Bluetooth Low Energy advertisement protocol and how to implement bare-metal BLE on top of the ARM-based nRF51 chip — without using the manufacturer provided Bluetooth stack. The general development flow will be explored along with some useful examples, closing with some mischief that can be caused using this knowledge :-) The latest version of the OpenBeacon tag design is supposed to be the ultimate hacking, fuzzing and pen testing tool for Bluetooth Low Energy. The hardware schematics and the PCB layout were released under the CC attribution license. We strongly believe that the future of the Internet of Things can be privacy enabled and can work distributed, without selling your soul to large cloud services. Milosch Meriac has over 20 years experience in the information security business and hardware design. He is currently living in Cambridge where he works for ARM on securing the Internet of Things. In his private time he loves making and grokking things. He is currently playing with RGB strips to create light paintings. Milosch is the co-founder of active and passive RFID open source projects like Sputnik/OpenBeacon, OpenPCD and OpenPICC, and is committed to RFID related security research. He broke the iCLASS RFID security system and was involved in breaking Mifare Classic security. As a member of the Blinkenlights Stereoscope Core Team Milosch designed the 2.4GHz OpenBeacon-based dimmmer/Ethernet dardware that was used in the Toronto City Hall Installation. As one of the three maintainers of the former Xbox-Linux Project he helped to break Xbox security and to port the first Linux system to the Xbox. His focus is on hardware development, embedded systems, RF designs, active and passive RFID hardware development, custom-tailoring of embedded Linux hardware platforms, real time systems, IT-security and reverse engineering. — OpenHPSDR Update A review of hardware and software progress of the High Performance Software Define Radio, an open source hardware and software project being developed by an international group of ham radio enthusiasts. John Melton has held a ham radio license since 1984 and has developed several open source Linux applications, including ground station software for working digital satellites and software defined radios. He is a retired software engineer after 48 years developing software for several computer manufacturers including Burroughs Corporation, ICL, Sun Microsystems and Oracle Corporation. — Building Things Creative communities are having an ever increasing influence on the way in which global companies like Microsoft, Samsung and Google go about developing new products. Access to open source technology creates new ways for inventors, makers and coders to turn ideas into things others want to use or buy. Embarking on the journey of turning an idea into a product comes with numerous hurdles, including: access to expensive machinery, technology, or skills which just aren’t readily available to many. Miles and Will from Wireless Things (formerly Ciseco) will describe how ‘Building Things’, their latest open source hardware, will help people build their own cool wireless devices. Current CEO of Wireless Things, Miles Hodkinson previously made a living selling and supporting scalable IT infrastructure. Whilst Head of Software Security for Egg PLC he always harboured a passion for tinkering. Miles has transformed his passion from a hobby in his garden shed, to one of the ‘go-to’ companies for people building IoT solutions, all manufactured in his home town of Nottingham. Head of Channel Strategy for Wireless Things, Will Stone has spent the last decade between running an outsourced sales company and in engineering recruitment. Will teamed up with Miles at the beginning of 2014 and is responsible for commercial aspects of the business, including the management of their rapidly expanding chain of partners and distributors. Now with 40 recognized distributors across 21 countries, Wireless Things has a growing presence and reputation in the Internet of Things. Note: Please aim to arrive by 18:15 as the first talk will start at 18:30 prompt. //

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OSHUG #38 — Energy, Thursday 19th February.
by Andrew Back 28 Jan '15

28 Jan '15

Hello, Registration is now open for the February meeting. Details below. Cheers, Andrew // Event #38 — Energy (Exploring "open" in energy, Electricity from Woodchips, OpenTRV) 19 February 2015, 17:30 - 20:00 at BCS London, 1st Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA. Registration: http://oshug.org/event/38 The thirty-eighth meeting will take a look open source technologies in support of the generation and efficient use of energy. — Exploring "Open" in Energy Arcola Energy builds energy systems using fuel cells powered by hydrogen. Fuel cells are one of those great ideas that has yet to gain much traction in real markets. They put men on the moon, but since then commercial progress has been slow. One way of opening up uses of fuel cells is to involve a much wider developer community. To explore this Arcola has developed a fuel cell developer kit and started on the road to working with open source groups. This talk will look at our journey, the success to far and the challenges ahead. Richard Kemp-Harper is a former research scientist who spent several years managing web development, including open source systems at Oxfam. He then moved into technology and innovation, working at Innovate UK running innovation programmes in intelligent mobility, rail and energy. He specialises in not being a specialist. — Electricity from Woodchips — An Edwardian Idea — Tamed with 21st Century Microelectronics First studied in the 1820s, gasification is the process of converting a hydrocarbon solid fuel, such as coal or wood, into a low calorific value gas suitable for running an internal combustion engine. Used for vehicle transportation during World War 2 — gasification has enjoyed a renaissance at the start of the 21st Century. Low cost, open source microelectronics are used to tame this technology, from a labour intensive manual process, to a fully automated turnkey system. In January 2012, Ken Boak quit his UK electronic design job and travelled to Berkeley, California, to work on a new biomass energy project — an open source, microcontroller based control system for a wood chip fired CHP system. The company — an East Bay area start-up — "All Power Labs", had a compact, self-contained biomass gasification system, close to commercialisation. In the 6 month contract, Ken productionised the open source, control and automation system, using standard, globally available components and rationalised the wiring loom so that low cost, modular assembly was practical. Ken started his career at BBC Research Department in 1986 working on digital signal processing systems for HDTV - and subsequently over 30 years, a mix of 10 other technology companies, both UK and US based, in the fields of instrumentation, automation, telemetry and telecomms. Ken tries to live a low impact lifestyle in a modest Edwardian house in Surrey, with a little help from modern electronics. — Scratching the itch: saving the planet When BigCo and .gov are not sorting your problem then open everything makes it easier for you to scratch your own itch, especially with the very positive innovation support around right now, possibly the best for 30 years. And when you can save the planet, be your own boss, and meet and work with lots of fabulous interesting people, what’s holding you back? Damon Hart-Davis is lead on the OpenTRV open source project created following his 2012 presentation to DECC's smart heating workshop. He has freelanced in technology for over 30 years, delivering mission-critical products from design to BAU in the City for more than 20 of those, and has founded and been involved in several start-ups over that time with his creations seen on TV, the Web, and his pioneering Internet Service Provider helping crack open that market more than 20 years ago. A previous virtual/on-line credit-card company start-up that he co-founded as CTO, Ixaris, turns over ~£10m. Mark Hill spent 15 years in the City after a solid grounding in IT at the chip level at the microprocessor manufacturer Inmos, designing and delivering highly complex systems. Project management, direction and governance are all part of his toolkit. He now speaks regularly about innovation, collaboration and IoT. Recently he founded a mobile phone software start-up and is now OpenTRV Ltd's co-founder. Note: Please aim to arrive by 18:15 as the first talk will start at 18:30 prompt. //

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OSHUG #37 — Open Source in Business, Thursday 22nd January.
by Andrew Back 06 Jan '15

06 Jan '15

Registration is now open for the first meeting of 2015, which will be hosted at Sheffield Hallam University and in conjunction with the BCS OSSG. Details and a link to registration can be found below. In February we will return to hosting meetings at the BCS offices in Covent Garden. Regards, Andrew // Event #37 — Open Source in Business 22nd January 2015, 17:30 - 20:30 at Owen Lecture Theatre, 1028 Owen Building, Sheffield Hallam University, Howard Street, Sheffield, S1 1WB. Registration: http://oshug.org/event/37 An evening of talks exploring different commercial aspects of open source — hardware and software — including crowdfunding an open hardware microenterprise, navigating licensing issues, trade associations, and building a business on free software. Hosted in conjunction with the BCS Open Source Specialist Group. — Open Source Consortium - an introduction OSC is a trade association which represents companies and individuals delivering solutions and advice based on Open Standards and Free & Open Source Software. As a trade association, OSC gives its members greater influence than they could achieve alone by providing a collective voice, and by supporting initiatives such as the implementation of open standards in public sector IT, the inclusion of open standards in school curricula and levelling the gender balance in the industry. At the core of its vision, OSC campaigns for the use of Open Standards in all aspects of public and commercial life, promoting the unique advantages of Free & Open Source Software and the independent expertise offered by members. Irenie White has been Chair of the Open Source Consortium since 2013 after working with the organisation for 3 years. This year she was appointed as MD of credativ, a free software consulting and services company, after running operations there for 6 years. As a STEMNET Ambassador and through her work with Advancing Women in IT, Irenie is committed to supporting bottom-up growth in the wider technology industry. Outside of work her family comes first, music a close second. — Notes from the first three months of an Open Source Microenterprise * How I learned to stop worrying and love the Kickstarter Starting an Open Source Hardware business is lot of work, even if you've spent 11 years running a different one. There are all sorts of things you've forgotten about and there are a whole host of new challenges as you try to do things the right way from the start. None of it is easy, but all of it beats having a 9-5. Benjamin Gray is a proponent of Open Hardware, founder of MeArm, an open source robot arm manufacturer and phenoptix a recently retired maker business. Ben graduated from the University of Exeter with a chemistry degree and a fledgling phenoptix before moving to Nottingham to complete a PhD in theoretical physical chemistry. With 11 years of Maker business experience under his belt he's set out on a new adventure manufacturing the MeArm, a pocket sized robot arm. — But I didn't mean *that* Accidents and incidents exploring relationships between corporations and the licenses they use to share, from Creative Commons to GPL. Paul Beech used his graphic and web design skills to co-found Pimoroni, a maker company that does Raspberry Pi and Arduino stuff. Code: open source. Hardware: less so. — Giving it away: Free Software as a business strategy Bytemark Hosting has been involved in building, fixing and publishing Free Software since its foundation in 2002. Back then, free Software was seen as an unquestionable part of a winning business strategy for big firms, but within years firms that bet too much on it were brought down to earth. Matthew Bloch, Bytemark's MD, narrates his own company's successes, profitability and changes in strategy around this important social movement. Matthew Bloch is MD and co-founder of Bytemark Hosting, one of the UK's oldest and best-respected hosting and cloud providers, with its own data centre in York and staff of 23. Previous to Bytemark Matthew worked as a programmer on several Java virtual machines, and the PC emulator for Acorn computers. Compered by: Gareth Halfacree is a freelance technology journalist and the co-author of the Raspberry Pi User Guide, alongside project co-founder Eben Upton. He also writes the maker-centric Hobby Tech column for Custom PC Magazine, as well as numerous features in magazines including PC Pro, Linux User & Developer, Micro Mart, Computeractive and others. Formerly a system administrator working in the education sector, Gareth's passion for open source projects has followed him from one career to another and he can often be seen reviewing, documenting or even contributing to projects including GNU/Linux, LibreOffice, Fritzing and Arduino. He is also the creator of the Sleepduino and Burnduino open hardware projects and numerous small software tools, all released under permissive licences. Note: Please aim to arrive by 17:45 as the first talk will start at 18:00 prompt.

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Superoptimization and supercomputing talks, Wed 26th November at The RSA.
by Andrew Back 13 Nov '14

13 Nov '14

Hello, There are no hardware talks this month, but the BCS OSSG is hosting two talks on open source software with a "super" theme — supercomputing and superoptimization. Details and a link to registration are below. Also note that this month the venue is the Royal Society of Arts on The Strand, and not the BCS! Cheers, Andrew //// Location: The Prince Philip room Royal Society of Arts 8 John Adam Street London WC2N 6EZ Date: Wednesday 26 November Time: 6:00pm for 6:30pm start Price: Free for BCS members and non-members Booking link: https://events.bcs.org/book/1320/ (Please remember to book your place.) N.B. Note the change of venue, due to a double booking at the BCS. The RSA is just the other side of the strand from the BCS. map: RSA, 8+John+Adam+St,+London+WC2N, This month we have two talks on a "super" theme. Talk 1: Superoptimization: How fast can your code go. Speaker: James Pallister, University of Bristol Modern compiler optimization can take almost any code and produce a reasonably efficient binary at the end. However compiler "optimization" doesn't make your code "optimal", just better. In contrast, superoptimization can produce perfect code - the fastest, the smallest or the most energy efficient code. The technique, first introduced in the late 80s found in some cases it could do 25% better than the best assembly programmer, and 40% better than the best compiler at the time. Free software has always played a central role in superoptimization research, with the GNU Superoptimizer being one of the very first tools constructed. However there is a downside. Superoptimization today is incredibly demanding of compute time, so currently it is limited to short instruction sequences. At present it is most valuable in optimizing code hotspots and key library routines, and can also be a valuable aid to the compiler writer for peephole optimization. Recent research has developed new techniques that can make superoptimization more applicable to general code. In this talk I will introduce superoptimization and give some examples of the weird and wonderfully short sequences of code it produces. I will introduce the GNU superoptimizer and show how it is used, including some of the recent improvements I have contributed. The final part of my talk will look at the latest research including machine learning and constraint solving, and show how in future superoptimizers may be able to optimize much larger programs. Talk 2: Open-source Software in UK Scientific HPC Speakers: Neil Morgan and Phil Ridley, Hartree Centre, STFC Daresbury There are hundreds of scientific applications, libraries and tools that are used within the UK's academic HPC community and a large number of these are open-source. To demonstrate this usage and the benefits of open-source to this community, a short review of some of these will be given. Applications will be included which are used for performing atomistic and molecular simulations, computational fluid dynamics, and statistics for bioinformatics. All of these are able to utilise the capabilities of high end computing architectures with thousands of cores to facilitate new science. Furthermore, since efficient object code is of greatest importance in HPC, the use of open-source in compilers, tools and libraries will also be described. N.B. Note the change of venue to the RSA. Booking link: https://events.bcs.org/book/1320/ (Please remember to book your place.)

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OSHUG #36 — Chips Pt. 2, Thursday 23rd October.
by Andrew Back 07 Oct '14

07 Oct '14

Hello, Registration is now open for the meeting October meeting. Details below. Regards, Andrew // Event #36 — Chips Pt.2 (Chip Design for Teenagers, Cocotb, lowRISC) 23rd October 2014, 18:00 - 20:00 at BCS London, 1st Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA. Registration: http://oshug.org/event/36 Back in April 2011 we had our first meeting on the theme of open source chip design, and then around one year later we took a closer look at the OpenRISC Reference Platform System-on-Chip. The thirty-sixth meeting will feature talks on chip design for teenagers, an open source verification framework, and a fully open source system-on-chip that will be manufactured in volume. — Silicon Chip Design for Teenagers These days we expect school students to learn to write code, and teachers are turning to tools like Scratch (for primary education) and Python (for secondary education). But why stick to software languages. Why not teach coding in Verilog and get children to design silicon chips. Earlier this year Dan Gorringe attended Chip Hack II in Cambridge. Inspired by this he spent two weeks work experience at Embecosm in August 2014 modifying the Chip Hack materials for use by Year 9-11 students. His resulting application note, "Silicon Chip Design for Teenagers", is to be published very shortly by Embecosm. In this talk, Dan will share his experience of learning silicon chip design, using Verilog for his first serious attempt at coding and encountering Mentor Graphics EDA tools for the first time. Dan Gorringe has just started year 11 and faces the horrors of GCSE exams in 8 months time, so silicon chip design is just light relief. He has aspirations to a career in computing. — Cocotb, an Open Source Verification Framework Verifying hardware designs has always been a significant challenge but very few open-source tools have emerged to support this effort. The recent advances in verification to facilitate complex designs often depend on specialist knowledge and expensive software tools. In this talk we will look at Cocotb, an open-source verification framework, and explore whether Python is a viable language for verification. Chris Higgs has over a decade of experience working with FPGAs in various industries. His software background has shaped his approach to RTL design and verification and he now spends his time trying to bridge the divide between hardware and software development. — lowRISC — a Fully Open Source RISC-V System-on-Chip The lowRISC project has been formed to produce a System-on-Chip which will be open source right down to the HDL, implementing the open RISC-V instruction set architecture. Volume manufacture of silicon manufacture is planned, along with creating and distributing low-cost development boards. This talk will describe the aims of the lowRISC project, summarise its current status, describe some of the features that are being implemented, and give details on how you can get involved. Alex Bradbury is a researcher at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory where he works on compilation techniques for a novel many-core architecture. He writes LLVM Weekly, is co-author of Learning Python with Raspberry Pi, and has been a contributor to the Raspberry Pi project since the first alpha hardware was available. Note: Please aim to arrive by 18:15 as the first talk will start at 18:30 prompt. //

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Open Source Hardware Camp 2014, Sat 16 & Sun 17th August.
by Andrew Back 01 Jul '14

01 Jul '14

Registration is now open for OSHCamp 2014, this year we will have a total of 12 talks and 8 workshops and details can be found below. Details for the Wuthering Bytes Festival Day which will take place on the Friday before (15th August) are yet to be announced, but there are some fantastic talks lined up on topics ranging from development and testing of rocket engines, to experiences of being a computer programmer in the early 1960s. Speakers for the Festival Day include Sophie Wilson, co-inventor of the ARM processor, and Ruth Coustick-Deal of Open Rights Group. If you are considering attending Friday also, I wouldn't hang about as tickets are limited and likely to go fast once announced! Regards, Andrew // OSHCamp 2014 — 16 & 17th August at Hebden Bridge Town Hall, St. George's Street,Hebden Bridge, HX7 7BY. Registration: http://oshug.org/event/oshcamp2014 Open Source Hardware Camp will take place in the Pennine town of Hebden Bridge. For the second year running it is being hosted as part of the technology festival, Wuthering Bytes. However, this year OSHCamp will have the Waterfront Hall to itself on the Saturday and Sunday, with a separate Festival Day taking place on the Friday and with talks on a broader selection of technical topics. Details of the OSHUG talks and workshops can be found below and the Wuthering Bytes website will be updated in due course with details of the complete programme of events. Note that socials are planned for both the Friday and Saturday evenings, with the former being hosted at the Town Hall and where there will be a bar, food available and music and a live performance, and the latter will be hosted at a local hostelry that serves food. Hebden Bridge is approximately 1 hour by rail from Leeds and Manchester. Budget accommodation is available at the Hebden Bridge Hostel, with private rooms available and discounts for group bookings. Details of other local accommodation can be found at www.hebdenbridge.co.uk. — Saturday :: Talks * Linux bootloaders and kernel configuration Linux is popular in embedded devices, but most use it once the kernel has booted and don't consider how it was started. This talk explores just what happens when you first start an embedded device that is running Linux, and will look at common bootloaders, such as U-Boot, along with kernel boot options. Finally, we will look at useful kernel configuration options for embedded devices. Melanie Rhianna Lewis started a life long love of electronics as a child when her Dad helped her make a "crystal" radio with an ear piece, a coil of wire, a diode and a radiator! At the same time the home computer revolution started and she would lust after the "build your own computers" advertised in the electronics magazines of the time. She never got one but did end up the proud owner of a BBC Micro. Melanie learnt everything she could about the machine and including assembler, operating systems, drivers, interrupt, and, thanks to the circuit diagram in the Advanced User Guide, digital electronics. After the BBC Micro came the Acorn Archimedes and so started a long relationship with ARM processors. In the 90s Melanie became interested in Linux and then developed one of the first ARM Linux distributions running on an Acorn RISC PC. The hobby became a job and Melanie currently works for an embedded device consultancy near Bradford where a lot of her work is still with ARM processors. Recently Melanie became a sporty person and now spends a lot of her time hitting girls. She will probably bore you with tails of roller derby! * Open source archaeological geophysics - is it achievable? The advance of technology into Archaeology has allowed geophysical surveys to "peer into the ground" and direct the diggers to the most likely "targets". However, as anyone whose watched Time Team will know, using Resistivity and Magnetometry doesn't always guarantee results. Such equipment is not usually within the financial reach of most hobbyists. However, the recent explosion of the Arduino, Pi and other cheap electronics has meant making such surveying equipment may be possible. A small research project involving an informal collaboration between members of the Derbyshire Archaeological Society (DAS) & Derby Makers is exploring whether a high accuracy GPS unit, Magnetometer and a resistivity probe can be made and yield worthwhile results within a budget of £1,000. DAS has kindly funded this research and we are about 50% of the way through the GPS project. This talk will introduce the project and take a look at progress to date. Tony Brookes was firstly an engineer and then worked in IT for a while (!) Now working part-time, hobbies easily fill the time available. Drawn to archaeological and historical research by way of Time Team, he now tries to apply open source software (Scribus, Inkscape, Qgis) and hardware (Arduino, et al) to investigating parish history and other interesting topics. * An open source aquaponics control system Aquaponics is a closed system of food production that farms fish alongside vegetables, and this talk will look at the development of an open source aquaponics control system for the Incredible AquaGarden project in Todmorden, highlighting certain features of the design and exploring some of the difficulties encountered and how these have been addressed. A control and monitoring system with an event-driven 'flowchart' interface will be presented, where data about aspects such as pH, temperature and light level etc. are collected and logged in order to monitor the environment. The system responds dynamically to control the level of water in the plant growing bed, to maximise the yield. Some design decisions and technical aspects of the system will be demonstrated and discussed, together with the open source model for sustaining the project. Finally, we will look at the operational Node-RED installation in Todmorden, showing how the system is collecting readings and controlling the water level, and we'll talk about how MQTT has been used to loosely couple the code running on the Arduino with Node-RED on a Raspberry Pi. Gareth Coleman is a inventive hardware hacker who's talent lies in connecting diverse devices. Dr Naomi Rosenberg is a freelance software developer with a background in formal logic who works on a wide variety of platforms. They both get a especially enthusiastic about open hardware, free software and empowering humans. * From Idea to Finished Product: A Tale of DFM and CEM With numerous easily accessible embedded platforms around and concepts such as rapid prototyping and crowdfunding now being useful things as opposed to just buzzwords, designing the Next Big Thing without leaving your study is becoming a common story for makers and tinkerers. While it is true that going from an idea to a finished product has never been easier thanks to the abundance of design resources and affordable manufacturing services, designing for volume manufacturing requires a different mindset that usually does not apply to casual weekend hacks. From component choice to packaging and logistics, there are several elements that needs to be taken into consideration, as they may cause significant headaches otherwise. This talk will provide an overview of electronics manufacturing process, covering details such as managing design data, handling dependencies, component and process choices, testing and certification and several other aspects of DFM: Design for Manufacturability. Omer Kilic is an Embedded Systems hacker who likes tinkering, a lot. He also likes tiny computers, things that just work and good beer. * Driving milling machines with Linux Driving a milling machine with Linux is fairly easy and LinuxCNC (previously known as “EMC”) even provides a real-time distribution install disk. However, driving the machine is only half the story and gcode generation is at least as important. This talk will share experiences using a mill and a router with Linux, looking at PCB manufacture, engraving, 3D milling, casting, tool paths, materials, tools and parametric design. Matt Venn has run hundreds of creative science workshops for thousands of children and adults around the world. For the last year, he has been working with teachers in preparation for the computer science curriculum changes; creating and leading courses, workshops and projects. When he's not inventing new ways of getting people excited about science, Matt plays music, invents puzzle boxes, practices martial arts and maintains bikes. * Oxford Flood Network - easier to Apologise Than to Ask Permission Oxford Flood Network is a citizen sensing project which monitors water levels around the city, in streams, rivers and even under floorboards, sending water levels back to the Internet using low-powered wireless. The network explores the possibilities of a smart city that is created by its citizens, rather than a more typical top-down deployment. Sensor networks are generally used to collect data about us for reasons and agendas chosen by others, but we can build sensor networks too; crowd-sourced data can be gathered for your agenda — providing evidence for your issues. In this talk we will hear how Oxford Flood Network has developed an open source model for hardware and software, and the challenges of sticking mysterious boxes under bridges. Ben Ward is founder of Love Hz, promoting the use of white space spectrum for open innovation in the Internet of Things. A survivor of the dotcom bubble, subsea bandwidth glut and the UK broadband wars, he's still surprisingly optimistic about the future. * An introduction to writing applications for the Parallella board Parallella is a credit card-sized computer with a many-core accelerator that allows it to achieve high floating-point performance while consuming only a few watts. In this talk we will take a look at the Epiphany architecture and how to use the eSDK to write highly parallel applications for it, using hardware and software features to benchmark code and optimise performance. Simon Cook leads Embecosm's work on LLVM and is author of the standard guide to the LLVM assembler. He is also an expert on low-energy compilation and is lead engineer on the MAGEEC project. Simon holds a double first class honors degree in Computer Science and Electronics from Bristol University. * Radio Then and Pararchive: decentralised, pervasive, and open story telling Radio Then is a citywide cultural history experience, telling stories about Manchester’s jazz and popular music heritage using a small, Arduino-powered radio. Participants explore the city and tune in to archival broadcasts related to places, people, and events of note. In actual fact, the ‘radio’ contains GPS and audio breakouts to track its location and cue audio tracks depending on its coordinates. The project is being created to showcase findings from Pararchive, an AHRC project being conducted by the University of Leeds, in partnership with the BBC, National Media Museum, Science Museum Group, and Manchester Digital Laboratory, among others. Pararchive represents an opportunity for members of the public to engage with archives, decentralising the material from archive holders, and offering alternative and personal perspectives on events. James Medd is an artist, musician, and maker based in Manchester. He teaches all things digital in the north west of the UK, and creates whimsical, entertaining, and accessible interactive artworks. He currently leads Arduino Manchester, a community group for Arduino users in Manchester, and will be developing more interactive audio experiences at Watershed’s Pervasive Media Studio later this year, as a winner of their graduate and new talent competition. * Commercialising your ideas Whether you're taking the time to build something fun, or have a solution to a problem you have faced, you are 'in your own right' an inventor. One of the biggest challenges inventors face isn't making their product work, it's generating a living to continue inventing. Having spent over a decade in both sales and business development I have witnessed people use various methods to overcome this hurdle. I hope to share with you some of my experiences to provide you with some ideas you can take away and use when looking to turn a hobby or bright idea into a financial success. Our topic of conversation will take us from having a light bulb moment, to securing orders and reaping the rewards. William Stone is the Head of Channel Strategy for hardware manufacturer, Ciseco. He is responsible for various commercial areas of the business including the very familiar responsibility of growing Ciseco's rapidly expanding chain of partners and distributors. Now with 36 recognized distributors worldwide, Ciseco has a growing presence and reputation in electronics manufacturing and Internet of Things (IoT). * OpenTRV: energy technology that saves householders money The OpenTRV project aims to provide software, hardware designs and excellent interoperability to allow UK and EU householders to as much as halve their heating bills and carbon footprint with simple to fit hardware costing around £100 per house. Everything is freely available under liberal licensing — even our 3D printed enclosures — to enable adoption and cost savings. Damon Hart-Davis gets excited about electronics, parallelism, robotics, distributed systems and resource efficiency, and solar PV and halving space-heating carbon footprint with cheap microcontrollers (OpenTRV) are two of his current passions. Damon has been working on “mission-critical” systems in banking for most of the last 20 years and before that founded one of the first UK Internet Service Providers. * Interfacing with SPI and I2C SPI and I2C are industry standard methods of interfacing IO devices to micro-controllers and CPUs using just a few connections. SPI requires four wires and I2C just two. This talk introduces SPI and I2C. It describes how they work and how you use them. It will look at common IO devices that connect via SPI or I2C. Finally it will look at controlling SPI and I2C devices from two example controllers, the Arduino and the Raspberry PI, in languages such as C and Python. Speaker: Melanie Rhianna Lewis. * Concurrency in the real world with xCORE and XC There are many cases where a simple microcontroller won't cut it and the FPGA design route may be too drawn out and costly, particularly if your background is in software. With the XMOS multi-core microcontroller architecture and toolset it's now possible to tackle complex hardware problems using familiar software and algorithms, avoiding the need to work with Verilog or VHDL. The XMOS XS1 microcontrollers provide tens of nano second resolution and deterministic, predictable, real-time operation in software. The XMOS toolset enables designs to be simulated and analysed, and signals to be monitored and scoped all within the IDE. The XC extensions to C provide simple interfaces and tasks to write concurrent programs, taking care of nasty race conditions and parallel usage errors. xCORE open source libraries help break down complex domain-specific tasks, allowing you to focus on developing applications. While XMOS Links enable microcontrollers and boards to be chained together in a divide and conquer manner, allowing you to orchestrate your own hardware solutions. This talk will introduce the XMOS technology and explore a selection of real world applications. Alan Wood has been working with concurrent and distributed programming for over a decade. His recent work includes smart grid, control, and motion systems based on XMOS' concurrent technology. He is a long term advocate and moderator (aka Folknology) forxCORE and other SHW communities, such as TVRRUG, as well as a founder of hackspace, SHH. Compered by: Paul Tanner is a consultant, developer and maker in wood, metal, plastic, electronics and software. His day job is IT-based business improvement for SMEs. By night he turns energy nut, creating tools to optimise energy use. Paul graduated in electronics and was responsible for hardware and software product development and customer services in several product and service start-ups, switching to consulting in 2000. — Sunday :: Workshops Some workshops will provide tools, boards and components etc. However, subject to demand this may involve an element of sharing and please feel free to bring along equipment and components, but note that you must be able to take full responsibility for your own personal safety and that of others in respect to these. Common sense must be exercised! * Let's build a flood network for Hebden Bridge! Split into two teams, one will attempt to install flood sensors on the beautiful Hebden Water just outside the venue, while the other links these these to the Internet using readily available technology. Proven hardware designs will be used to show you how can send water levels back to the Internet using low-powered wireless links, and sustainable approaches to citizen sensing will be explored. Run by: Ben Ward. Workshop notes: you may want to bring wellies if you plan to join the sensor installation team! Also feel free to bring sensors and boards that you think may be useful. * Building applications that sense and respond to the real world Following on from their talk, Naomi and Gareth will be joined by Paulo Marini, the Tormorden project's resident aquaponicist. Together they will facilitate a hack session to help you build applications that respond to the real world. Run by: Gareth Coleman and Dr Naomi Rosenberg. Workshop notes: Bring your own hardware to work on, such as Raspberry Pi and Arduino etc. if you can, and they'll try to find ways to get your projects connected. * Do you want to build a robot? #meArm assembly workshop How about starting with an Arm? With just a screwdriver and enthusiasm you can build an Open Source Robot Arm. If you bring an Arduino or Pi with you, you're free to stay on with your meArm and tinker with the code too. The meArm is a project to get low cost robot arms into the hands of as many people as possible. Started in February this year it's made fast progress through open development. Already "home brew" (those not from the laser forges of phenoptix in Nottingham) versions have been spotted in the UK, Switzerland, the USA and Mexico! Ben Gray is a proponent of Open Hardware and founder of phenoptix, a maker business based in Beeston, Nottinghamshire. Ben graduated from the University of Exeter with a chemistry degree and a fledgling phenoptix before moving to Nottingham to complete a PhD in theoretical physical chemistry. Through the open hardware movement he has been able explore the wonderful world of electronics and take phenoptix from a pocket money project to the full time job it is today. Workshop notes: Bring along a laptop and, if you like, an Arduino or Raspberry Pi. * Introduction to Bus Pirate The Bus Pirate is a universal open source hardware device that can be used to communicate using various buses, such as SPI, I2C, UART and JTAG, with various devices. The Bus Pirate is, per the designers, intended to "Eliminate a ton of early prototyping effort with new or unknown chips." This tutorial will introduce the Bus Pirate. Describe how to configure it and install the software required to use it. It will then look at some basic interfacing to devices via SPI and I2C. It will work through how you can 'sniff' buses. Finally it will look at use the Bus Pirate as a simple frequency measurement and generator device. Run by: Melanie Rhianna Lewis. Workshop notes: bring along a laptop (Bus Pirate is supported under Windows, Linux and OSX) and, if you can, some hardware to debug. There will be a limited number of Bus Pirates available, but if you have one please bring it along. * Building your first Parallella application This workshop follows on from the previous day's talk and participants will build a simple project which targets the Parallella board and uses all 16 cores of the Epiphany floating-point accelerator. Run by: Simon Cook. Workshop notes: Please bring along a laptop and, if you have one, a Parallella board (a limited number of boards will be available for use by those who do not own one). The real world works concurrently and so can you This workshop will take you through the basics of embedded concurrent programming using an XMOS multi-core startKIT. We will cover basic parallel processing extensions to C (XC) using tasks, interfaces, timers and ports. We will also get some insight into our running code using xSCOPE, a real-time debugging system built in to the XMOS tools. In addition we will use software modules to drop in rich functionality from the open source xCORE libraries. Run by: Alan Wood. Workshop notes: bring along a laptop and any devices you would like to interface. * Design a PCB Shrimp and have it fabricated The Shrimp is a super low cost Arduino clone. It makes an excellent teaching resource, and is usually delivered as a 'breaded shrimp' - using a breadboard. For hackers, it's a great way to knock up a quick, cheap microcontroller circuit. In this workshop we'll make a PCB version of the shrimp — a more robust and Arduino shield compatible version — and you will be guided through the process of drawing the schematic, laying out the PCB and optionally placing an order with OSHPark for your very own PCB shrimp. Participants will be working in pairs. Boards will cost about £6 each. Kits of components can conveniently be ordered from shrimping.itfor £4. Run by: Matt Venn. Workshop notes: bring along a laptop. * OpenTRV build and getting started Kits will be available to solder and boards and cables to buy, along with valves that will be used to demonstrate how you can use Arduino-based technology to halve your heating bill. Run by: Damon Hart-Davis. Workshop notes: Please bring your own soldering iron, solder and AA batteries if you would like to build a kit to take away, and be aware that SMD soldering experience and a steady hand will be required to solder the TMP112 temperature sensor. NOTE: * There are separate tickets for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. * A light lunch and refreshments will be provided each day. * Please aim to arrive between 09:00 and 09:15 on the Saturday as the event will start at 09:20 prompt. With thanks to sponsors: * DesignSpark - http://www.rs-online.com/designspark/electronics/ * XMOS - http://www.xmos.com

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OSHCamp 2014 (16-17th August) CFP.
by Andrew Back 02 Jun '14

02 Jun '14

This year OSHCamp will be taking place over the weekend of 16-17th August and once again hosted at Hebden Bridge Town Hall (HX7 7BY). Proposals for talks and workshops are invited. There is no theme and topics may include, for example: * Open source hardware projects * Open development practices and principles * Novel/interesting/fun projects built using open source hardware * Tools (hardware and software) * Skills and techniques, e.g. PCB fab, DIY SMT assembly * Relevant technologies, e.g. SPI/I2C bus programming * ...something else relevant to the community! Please note that the deadline for submitting titles and abstracts is Saturday 14th June (yes, only 2 weeks away!) If you would like to give a talk on the Saturday and/or run a workshop on the Sunday contact arback(a)computer.org.

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