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OSHUG #16 — Manufacturing, Thursday 23rd February.
by Andrew Back 15 Feb '12

15 Feb '12

Hello, Registration is now open for the February OSHUG meeting and details are below. Regards, Andrew -- OSHUG #16 — Manufacturing (Breadboard to Finished Product, Arduino Shield, Modular RepRap Electronics) On the 23rd February 2012, 18:00 - 20:00 at Centre for Creative Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG (51.529049, -0.116436) Registration: http://oshug.org/event/16 At the sixteenth OSHUG meeting we will be hearing about first-hand experiences of taking an open source hardware design from being a project to a product. With insights into prototyping, some of the manufacturing options available and the challenges that may be encountered. — From Breadboard to Finished Product You have a cool project, people are sending you emails asking where they could get their hands on one and you find yourself googling "electronics manufacturing"... Should you get yourself a toaster oven and start a miniature production line in your living room or should you just outsource it? What challenges await you if you decide to go down the contract manufacturing route? This talk aims to give the audience an overview of the electronics manufacturing process, using a project recently completed by the speaker as a case study. Omer Kilic is theoretically still a research student at the University of Kent, although he intends to submit his thesis (which is about a reconfigurable heterogeneous computing framework) pretty soon. He likes tiny computers, things that 'just work' and beer. He currently works for Erlang Solutions in London, exploring the use of Erlang programming language in the Embedded Systems domain and develops tools and support material to help the adoption of this technology. — Arduino Shield: From Design to Manufacturing The Arduino CAN-Bus shield gives the Arduino CAN-Bus capability. In this presentation we will learn about the design process from PCB layout and prototyping, to testing with a simulator and eventually testing with a real car. And about the perils of using a simulator, small scale production and outsourcing. Sukkin Pang is a design engineer and a director at SK Pang Electronics Ltd. He graduated from the University of Hertfordshire and has over 20 years of industrial experience. He is passionate about open source hardware and has four Arduino shields published. He used to tinker in assembler on the Z80, 6502, PIC and AVR, but nowadays he mainly uses C and C++. — Design and Build of Modular RepRap Electronics After meeting at OggCamp 2011 a number of people decided to form a Thames Valley area group for those interested in using and building RepRap 3D printers, and Thames Valley RepRap User Group (TVRRUG) was born. Alan Wood offered to help out with the electronics side of printer builds, expecting that only a handful 3D printing geeks would join up. One month later the group were organising a build of 20 RepRaps and 30 complete sets of electronics! They had originally decided to go with a kit-based approach for this, but couldn't find a modular candidate that would meet their requirements. So they took matters into their own hands and Alan and the group designed a new modular kit [See: DSMM and OMC] that can be used both with RepRap and other Cartesian robotic platforms. In this talk Alan will go through the distributed design and build process they adopted, as well as covering details of the design itself. Alan Wood originally trained in systems engineering, got lost in software engineering and open source for a decade, before returning back to his hardware roots via the open source hardware and makers movement that has gathered momentum over the last few years. Note: Please aim to arrive for 18:00 - 18:20 as the talks will start at 18:30 prompt. Sponsored by: DesignSpark — http://www.designspark.com Registration: http://oshug.org/event/16

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OSHUG #15 — Wireless, Thursday 26th January.
by Andrew Back 09 Jan '12

09 Jan '12

Hello, Registration is now open for January's OSHUG meeting. Regards, Andrew -- OSHUG #15 — Wireless (Hacking Commodity Wireless, Practical Wireless, Contiki OS, CWIG) On the 26th January 2012, 18:00 - 20:00 at Centre for Creative Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG, (51.529049, -0.116436) ** Registration: http://oshug.org/event/15 ** At the fifteenth OSHUG meeting we'll be taking a look at wireless technologies. We will hear how you can repurpose low cost commodity equipment, we will be given an introduction to RF basics, we will learn about the Contiki operating system, and we will be introduced to Ciseco's new Wireless Internet Gateway. - Hacking Commodity Wireless Many people build their hacks from the ground up, but those short of time sometimes prefer to repurpose cheap off-the-shelf components that can be made to fit the bill. A good example being a wireless thermometer for external use, where an off-the-shelf device provides an inexpensive option complete with the requisite weatherproof packaging. However, such devices typically use proprietary protocols and good documentation is rarely available. This talk will look at how to interface such devices where a degree of reverse-engineering is frequently required. 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. - Practical Wireless Adding wireless connectivity to your latest open hardware project is not difficult, provided that you take the time to understand some of the principles of RF communication. In this talk we will learn about the basics of wireless propagation, and take a look at some of the low cost modules which now make adding wireless even easier. Ken Boak joined BBC Research Department after graduating and worked on digital picture processing of HDTV images, and coding algorithms for video distribution around studios. Since then, Ken has worked in laboratory instrumentation, telecommunications, low power wireless and consumer electronics produced in the Far East. With an interest in renewables, Ken now develops laboratory instruments to teach undergraduates the principles of photovoltaic and wind power. Outside of work, Ken is interested in smart wireless sensors, open source hardware and low cost solutions for the Internet of Things. - An Introduction to the Contiki O/S This talk is aimed to introduce the Contiki OS and some of the development hardware. We will learn about the process of bootstrapping the development environment and there will be a hands-on tutorial. Ilya Dmitrichenko was born in Soviet Latvia in 1985, grew up and attended a secondary school there, and moved to UK as soon as Latvia joined the EU. He attended the biggest university in London and was rather disappointed with the education, but nevertheless carried on and had fun working on a final year engineering project which served as an introduction to the topic of this talk. Ilya is interested in various aspects of hardware and software, spanning from WSN to DSP and several other random fields. - CWIG — The Ciseco Wireless Internet Gateway The CWIG is a new open hardware device that is designed to be the "one and only" platform you'd need for a wireless gateway. It employs the same ATmega328 microcontroller that is familiar to Arduino users and supports Ciseco's TI CC1110-based XRF module, XBee, Bluetooth, RFM12B, X10/HomeEasy, FRAM, SD, Ethernet and over-the-air programming with AVRDude. It's sized to be housed in a low cost, compact enclosure and to be cheap to build using through-hole components. In this talk we will be given an introduction to the CWIG and also to the XRF wireless UART and programmable RF module. Miles Hodkinson's twenty-odd year relationship with IT ended around six years ago when he decided that it was time to do something completely different. He had looked around without success for something to log and control his wind turbine, solar panels and Lister single cylinder engine, and found that nothing was flexible enough for the money he wanted to pay (tens of pounds per device), so he decided he would try and build it himself. After a number of years working on a human-focused method of networking originally built using XBee modules and now termed LLAP, his company developed the TI CC1110-based XRF module. Note: Please aim to arrive for 18:00 - 18:20 as the talks will start at 18:30 prompt. ** Registration: http://oshug.org/event/15 **

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OSHUG #14 — Open for Change Pt.2 (Hexayurt, O+S, Onawi), Thursday 24th November.
by Andrew Back 17 Nov '11

17 Nov '11

OSHUG #14 — Open for Change Pt.2 (Hexayurt, O + S Project, Onawi) 24th November 2011, 18:00 - 20:00 at Centre for Creative Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG (51.529049, -0.116436) Registration: http://oshug.org/event/14 Back in May at OSHUG #10 we heard about three projects concerned with effecting positive change. At the thirteenth meeting we'll be continuing with this theme, and hearing about the Hexayurt disaster relief shelter, documenting Appropriate Technology for the needs of others, and open renewables. - Free and Open Source Housing The Hexayurt is an award-winning replacement for the disaster relief tent which provides shelter at 20% the cost of a tent. It is designed to be manufactured anywhere in the world at any scale, from local materials, as Free hardware, to house humans in need. The Hexayurt Project maintains the designs and makes them freely available. An estimated $250,000 worth of Hexayurts were built at Burning Man this year. Vinay Gupta is one the world’s leading thinkers on infrastructure theory, state failure solutions, and managing global system risks including poverty/development and the environmental crisis. He works at both the theoretical level, building models and mapping tools and at the practical level, as the designer of the Hexayurt, he helped start the US National Defense University STAR-TIDES program on humanitarian assistance, consulted on urban resilience for Arup, and is an associate fellow of the UCL Institute for Security and Resilience Studies. - The Needs of Others One of the areas seeing heavy influence from the Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS) movement is Appropriate Technology, and the O+S Project is working from the perspective of its documentation. It is investigating the difficulty in translating from F/OSS to Appropriate Technology at both a practices and principles level, and how we must go further to meet the goals with the world’s poorest people. Al Razi Masri is a recent Manufacturing Engineering graduate and founder of the O+S Project. In addition to which he is working on documentation for the Hexayurt Project and instructional documents for other Appropriate Technology. - Open Hardware and Renewable Energy Onawi is a non-profit organisation promoting open hardware for the development of non-domestic wind energy systems. Open hardware is becoming increasingly popular, as we can see in the recent initiative by Facebook to open up the technology behind their data-centres. However, most open hardware projects are targeted at hobbyists or those looking for custom do-it-yourself alternatives to mass market products. While this is a very positive aspect, at Onawi we believe that open licensing and collaborative development could have a far reaching impact on industrial production. In particular, Open Hardware could provide the horizontal technology transfer of renewables required to fight climate change in developing countries. Javier Ruiz is a UK based digital activist and social entrepreneur promoting open data, open standards and open licensing as the basis for a better future based on transparency, participation and collaboration. His practical work cuts across various spheres ranging from citizen journalism, archives to renewable energy. His background is in anthropology and technology management, and you can normally find him at the Open Rights Group. Note: Please aim to arrive for 18:00 - 18:20 as the talks will start at 18:30 prompt. Registration: http://oshug.org/event/14

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Open Source Hardware Camp, Thursday 27th October.
by Andrew Back 04 Oct '11

04 Oct '11

Hello, Registration is now open for the inaugural Open Source Hardware Camp which will take place on Thursday 27th October. Further details will be added to the event page in due course. Cheers, Andrew -- Open Source Hardware Camp 27th October 2011, 09:30 - 18:00 at Centre for Creative Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG, (51.529049, -0.116436) http://oshug.org/event/oshcamp Join us at the inaugural Open Source Hardware Camp for a hands-on day of three parallel workshops, with short plenary sessions in the morning and afternoon. - Practical 3D Printing A hands-on session in which we will use OpenSCAD (an open-source, code-based, 3D parametric CAD software system to design simple 3-dimensional objects), and other freely available tools, to turn the resulting designs into files that can be used to drive a RepRap 3D printer, or similar rapid prototyping device. Further details TBD. Graham Klyne has been a software developer since the late 1970s, during that time having been involved in projects and products ranging from industrial process control, 3-D motion capture, network infrastructure, home automation, semantic web technologies and research data curation. He has also been involved in the development of IETF and Web standards. More recently, he has been pursuing a personal interest in 3D printing - which neatly complements his earlier work in motion capture - and has constructed a RepRap machine (which he hopes to use for making specialist parts for model aircraft) and has been learning a little about 3-D parametric CAD. As a member of the pif3D project, David Flanders helps coordinate the parts, materials, tools and skill required for people to build their own 3D printers. This is all done for free, so long as you promise to help someone else build their own printer as well! David enjoys hacking code in his spare time and working on designing new 3D models, currently he is working on prototype 3D models for: a rollerblade frame (for off road inline skating), a flowerpot that has a water reservoir (so it doesn't dry out when you are on holiday or forget to water it) and lighting fixtures (including translucent lamp shades, candelabras and chandeliers). David's day job is working with technology innovation projects in Universities throughout the UK. - Building the Internet of Things with Nanode and Pachube In this workshop we will be given an introduction to Nanode, the low cost open source Arduino-like board that has built in web connectivity, and Pachube, the web-based service "built to manage the World's real-time data". Following which the workshop will split into two groups and build a real world IoT application for the Centre for Creative Collaboration. With one group focusing on Nanode development and the other using Pachube to develop the online part of the application. Ken Boak joined BBC Research Department after graduating and worked on digital picture processing of HDTV images, and coding algorithms for video distribution around studios. Since then, Ken has worked in laboratory instrumentation, telecommunications, low power wireless and consumer electronics produced in the Far East. With an interest in renewables, Ken now develops laboratory instruments to teach undergraduates the principles of photovoltaic and wind power. Outside of work, Ken is interested in smart wireless sensors, open source hardware and low cost solutions for the Internet of Things. 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. - Collaboration in Open Source Hardware Whilst the development practices associated with open source software are now reasonably mature and understood by many, the same cannot be said of open source hardware and with it come specific challenges. For example, in terms of collaboration across design tools, managing contributions, licensing and project presentation. In this workshop we will be given an introduction to Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools and the process of documenting a project, licensing and other challenges, before looking at the current options available for presentation and collaboration. Further details TBD. Paul Downey is a doodler, a maker and a veteran communications software developer. He has been hacking embedded systems since the late 1970s. Formerly BT's Chief Web Services Architect, and lead W3C representative, he was until recently a member of Osmosoft — a small team building open source Web collaboration systems. Paul is co-founder of SolderPad, a place to share, discover and collaborate on electronic projects. Andrew Back is an artist, electronics hacker and open source advocate. He acted as BT's Open Source Strategist, establishing company-wide open source policy and process and representing them at a number of bodies including The Linux Foundation and ATIS. Andrew co-founded the Electron Club in 2006 — one of the UK's first hackerspaces, and is co-founder of SolderPad, a place to share, discover and collaborate on electronic projects. Note: * Please aim to arrive for 09:30-09:45 as the event will start at 10:00 prompt. * A light lunch and refreshments will be provided. Please ensure that you make any dietary requirements clear when registering. // With thanks to our sponsor, DesignSpark — http://www.designspark.com //

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OSHUG #12 — Practical Approaches, Thursday 29th September.
by Andrew Back 06 Sep '11

06 Sep '11

Firstly, an October date for the diary: on Thursday 27th October we will be hosting our first OSHCamp — a one day (likely 10:00 - 18:00, then pub) event to be held at the Centre for Creative Collaboration in Kings Cross. We're still working on the details but there will be a number of parallel workshops. Confirmed so far: building the Internet of Things using OSHW, practical 3D printing and documenting OSHW projects. But before then, later this month, we have OSHUG #12: -- Practical Approaches (Double-sided PCB Design, Controlling Power, 3W RGB LED Controller) On the 29th September 2011, 18:00 - 20:00 at Centre for Creative Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG (51.529049, -0.116436) Registration: http://oshug.org/event/12 Developing a solution to a problem is not simply a matter of whether it is technically possible, but can involve all manner of challenging constraints. This is particularly the case in DIY and small-scale manufacture contexts, as there may be limited access to tools, test equipment and costly fabrication processes. At the twelfth OSHUG meeting we'll be hearing about practical approaches that were developed in tackling three different problems. One is concerned with designing a double-sided PCB to accommodate 0.5mm pitch surface mount devices, that can be reliably built using low cost DIY methods. Another with safely controlling mains powered devices from the Internet, and the third with building a 3W RGB LED controller using all open source design and development tools. - DIY Double-sided PCB Design and Development for embedded ARM Inspired by the success of the Arduino platform and driven by a recognition that to go from raw materials to a working system is both exciting and empowering, a project was born to develop a powerful microcontroller board that can be built from scratch. With this came the challenge of designing a double-sided PCB that will accommodate a 64-pin LQFP package on 0.5mm pitch, and that can be built using low cost DIY techniques. In this talk we will learn about the rules which needed to be applied in order to ensure that construction of such a PCB is practical, and discoveries that were made in its development. Garry Bulmer gained his degree in Computer Science in the early 1980s and developed software for companies including ICL, before going on to teach Computer Science and Software Engineering at degree level and beyond. During the 1990s he was a co-founder of Parallax Solutions, a software services company with customers that included Rover Group and Rolls Royce, and that partnered with Sun Microsystems and delivered their Enterprise Architecture Blueprints. He's since held the position of Chief Architect at Keane, Aspen Technology and Caritor. More recently he has become involved in education, running Arduino workshops for local schools and at events including Howduino, DEV8D and fizzPop. - A Simple Approach to Controlling Power from Internet Apps Working with mains power can be a daunting prospect and requires due care and attention. In this presentation we will hear about a simple and safe way to control mains-powered appliances from the Internet using cheap wireless links. This will include a live demo based on MBED and an explanation of this approach, and there will be opportunity to discuss its pros and cons. 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. - Using Open Source tools to design and build a 3W RGB LED Controller in a month of Sundays There are many Open Source and freely available hardware designs but almost all of them are currently hosted by proprietary tool chains. Whether it's the EDA suite used to design the boards, the compilers used to build the firmware or the dongles used to flash the firmware, the chances are that at least one, if not all, are under a non-free license of some kind. In this talk we will hear about the experience of using an entirely open toolchain to develop a 3W RGB LED controller. Specifically, the the trials and tribulations in using Kicad: the GPL PCB Suite; AVR-GCC: the GNU Compiler Collection build that targets the Atmel AVR line of microcontrollers and a parallel port programmer that can be built in 5 minutes with minimal components. Andy Bennett is an Engineer that likes to inhabit the void between hardware and the software that runs on it. After graduating from Imperial College with a degree in Electronic & Electrical Engineering he joined Access Devices Digital Limited where he designed software and FPGA cores for the UK's first Dual Tuner Personal Video Recorders. He continued working on Advanced Product Development at Pace Micro Technology before leaving to become employee number 2 at GenieDB where he applies his finely honed ability to produce software on a shoestring. In his spare time he likes to design ambitious projects from scratch. In between prototyping designs for his own PDA, digital watch and bluetooth headset, he's currently building a two wheeled, actively balanced, robot. Note: Please aim to arrive for 18:00 - 18:20 as the event will start at 18:30 prompt. -- Cheers, Andrew

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Pre-OSHUG #11 activities.
by Andrew Back 15 Jun '11

15 Jun '11

Hello, Firstly, just a reminder that if you are planning to come along next Thursday (23rd June) to OSHUG #11 in Canterbury and have not yet registered: http://oshug.org/event/11 Also, our kind hosts at the University of Kent have made arrangements for us to have a tour of the university engineering and digital arts departments. With an optional pub lunch beforehand! If you'd like to join come along to this you will need to register separately: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1809228451/eorg Regards, Andrew -- Andrew Back mailto:andrew@carrierdetect.com

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OSHUG #11 - Goes to Canterbury! 23rd June 2011.
by Andrew Back 01 Jun '11

01 Jun '11

OSHUG #11 — Goes to Canterbury! (Collaboration, building communities, surface mount adventures) On the 23rd June 2011, 18:00 - 20:00 at School of Engineering and Digital Arts, Jennison Building, The University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NT, (51.298383, 1.064172) Register: http://oshugcanterbury.eventbrite.com/ Lanyrd: http://lanyrd.com/2011/oshug11/ For our 11th meeting, we are visiting the School of Engineering and Digital Arts at the University of Kent. Trains run regularly to and from central London and take approximately an hour. For anyone wishing to stay overnight please: http://oshug.org/other/canterbury-bnb-2605.pdf . - Open Source Hardware Collaboration An assessment of the current state of the art in hardware collaboration through a tour of a series of Open Source Hardware projects. How easy is it to discover projects, view and understand their designs, build your own version and contribute changes back? Paul Downey (psd) is a doodling software hacker, former member of Osmosoft--a small Open Source software team--where he represented BT at the W3C, a co-organiser of OSHUG and a co-founder of SolderPad, a collaboration platform for electronic design. - Building open, communicating communities The hardware engineering community is typically seen as fragmented, closed and conservative, shackled by the dependency on restrictive closed-source tools. Thankfully, we are now at a time where this is changing. In this talk, Saar Drimer will discuss his efforts to bring the FPGA community together so we can reach the level of sharing and project integration that the open source software community currently enjoys. The end goal is to reach a state where projects are integrated in a similar way to what Linux's package mangers enable: "sudo apt-get ddr2-controller". [Background reading]. Saar Drimer is an experienced hardware engineer. In the past he's hacked the UK's Chip and PIN payment system, and advocated reproducible research practices in the engineering sciences. Now he's working on boldport, an "IndieEDA" company that aims to make HW/FPGA easier. - Adventures in working with surface mount devices An ambitious open source hardware project--Amino--recently called for Alan Wood to uplift his home lab to support prototyping, testing and basic production using surface mount devices. Alan will be sharing with us some of the things he has learnt, and giving us a run through what you might require in order to tackle working with surface mount devices yourself. Rather than using expensive off-the-shelf tooling, Alan will be covering a number of affordable approaches that make this possible without breaking the bank. Alan Wood originally trained in systems engineering, got lost in software engineering and open source for a decade, before returning back to his hardware roots via the open source hardware and makers movement that has gathered momentum over the last few years. Note: Please aim to arrive for 18:00 - 18:20 as the event will start at 18:30 prompt. Parking is available at the Jennison Building, however, please ensure that you are parked within a bay. -- Andrew Back mailto:andrew@carrierdetect.com

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OSHUG #10 - Open for Change, Thursday 19th May.
by Andrew Back 03 May '11

03 May '11

Hello, For those who couldn't make it along to OSHUG #9, Skills Matter kindly recorded the event and the videos can be found at: http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/ajax-ria/a-brief-introduction-to-programmab… Registration for OSHUG #10 is now live. --- OSHUG Event #10 — Open for Change (Radiation Monitoring in Japan, 40 Fires, Bristol Braille Technology) On the 19th May 2011, 18:00 - 20:00 at Centre for Creative Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WV1X 9NG. Registration: http://oshug.org/event/10 A great deal of open source hardware is built by engineers for engineers, and comprises mostly electronics and/or computing technology. Which is not at all surprising given the origins of the movement and where we are on the adoption curve. However, a growing number of projects are seeking to tackle ever more challenging problems and working with an increasingly broader selection of technologies. At the tenth OSHUG meeting we will be hearing about the efforts of hackers in Japan to build their own open source radiation monitoring infrastructure. We will learn about the work of 40 Fires, a foundation that is building an open source hydrogen fuel cell electric car. And we will hear from Bristol Braille Technology about the need for an affordable refreshable Braille display, and the potential open source hardware opportunity. - Open Source Radiation Monitoring in Japan Hackers in Japan responded to recent nuclear plant radiation leaks by setting up their own monitoring infrastructure. In this talk we will take a look at some of the radiation monitoring devices they built, the technology they used to share and make sense of the data and the work that continues to be done. Nick Weldin initiated the first public Arduino course in the UK in 2005, because he didn't want to program PIC chips on the accounts computer at work after everyone else had gone home any more, and he couldn't get his boss to send him to the Arduino course that was running in Spain. When Tinker London started up he joined them and ran courses teaching Arduino wherever anyone was interested. He continues to run a course on Arduino, and is co-author of the recently released Arduino Cookbook. - An open source approach to developing energy-efficient technology Two years ago start-up company Riversimple unveiled a ground-breaking vehicle that has the potential to transform the auto industry. The Riversimple urban vehicle, due to be in production in 2014, is lightweight, powered by hydrogen and capable of 300 mpg (energy equivalent). As part of its strategy, Riversimple announced the establishment of an independent open source foundation, 40 Fires, that would make available the designs for the car on-line under an open source license. Two years on, the 40 Fires team report on the joys, trials and tribulations of working on a potentially game-changing project in one of the world's biggest industries. Patrick Andrews is project leader of the 40 Fires Foundation and a board member of eco-car company Riversimple. A former corporate lawyer with Kingfisher and Pratt & Whitney, he now spends his time pursuing an interest in social innovation, with a particular focus on alternative business models and governance structures. - Developing a revolutionary, affordable Braille Cell Display Braille usage has been shown to have a strong correlation with employment—and by extension independence—amongst the blind. However Braille usage is stagnating under a lack of technical innovation which has left it hugely expensive and uncommon. Bristol Braille Technology was founded on the 6th of January, 2011, when the first meeting of interested professionals met to discuss the need for more affordable refreshable Braille. We are currently designing our first prototype cell display. Our aim is to make a Braille cell display;that is a tactile 'screen' which connects to a computing device—which, unlike the current models, is affordable to the majority of blind individuals in the UK and, eventually, anywhere around the world. Ed Rogers is a Bristolian and recent graduate from the University of the West of England where he studied Animation and Interactive Design. During this course he first began to consider the issue of digital Braille. After leaving university he continued to pursue the goal of an affordable Braille cell display, eventually founding the not-for-profit Community Interest Company, Bristol Braille Technology. Note: Please aim to arrive for 18:00 - 18:20 as the event will start at 18:30 prompt. Registration: http://oshug.org/event/10

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OSHUG #9 - Chips, Thursday 21st April.
by Andrew Back 13 Apr '11

13 Apr '11

OSHUG #9 — Chips (Programmable Logic, Computer Conservation with FPGAs, OpenCores & OpenRISC 1000) On the 21st April 2011, 18:00 - 20:00 at Skills Matter, 116-120 Goswell Road, London, EC1V 7DP, UK (51.525335, -0.099056) Registration: http://oshug.org/event/9 Programmable logic, and in particular field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), is a topic that has frequently come up at OSHUG meetings, both in informal discussion and in presentations (see use of FPGAs in projects covered at OSHUG #5 & OSHUG #8). This is a particularly exciting technology in the context of open source hardware, as it presents an opportunity to realise performance gains approaching those that are associated with custom silicon – an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) - albeit without the enormous foundry start-up costs which make this largely the reserve of major industry. Furthermore, the design artefacts lend themselves to collaborative development and can be handled in a manner similar to that employed with the source code to computer software. At the ninth OSHUG meeting we will be given an introduction to programmable logic and the associated development cycle, we'll hear about applications in computer conservation, and we will learn about open source chip design, the OpenCores community and the MIPS-like OpenRISC 1000 CPU. // A Brief Introduction to Programmable Logic Programmable Logic Devices - mainly FPGAs – are frequently utilised in high speed and computationally intensive applications, and with modern devices containing several million transistors and many gigabits/second of connectivity they are becoming increasingly popular in the race to achieve exascale computing power. But what does this all mean and how can FPGAs achieve this processing power? How do they differ from the good old CPUs we have in our everyday computers? In essence, an FPGA is a device that contains configurable blocks of logic along with flexible interconnect between these blocks. They can be configured to contain exactly and only those operations that appear in the algorithms employed in a particular application, which can potentially give them quite a bit of an advantage in terms of throughput and efficiency when compared to static instruction set processors such as a traditional x86 CPU. In this short introductory talk we will cover the basics of programmable logic devices and talk about the design, synthesis, simulation, implementation and programming cycles associated with FPGA projects. Omer Kilic is a research student at the University of Kent working on dynamically reconfigurable architectures and embedded systems. When he is not busy working on his PhD project (a reconfigurable heterogeneous computing framework) or running lab classes, he enjoys tinkering and drinking good beer. // Computer Conservation with FPGAs Having acquired an IBM System/360 Model 30 mainframe whilst he was at university, Lawrence Wilkinson brought it back to life, then abandoned it when the rent and power costs became a drain, and has since felt very guilty. As they became obsolete in the early 1970s, very few IBM System/360s now exist in running order. To make amends he embarked on a project of re-creating the Model 30 as a gate-level simulation, using the original circuits and microcode. While the software-based Hercules emulator is available to run all 360 and 370 software, Lawrence's programmable logic-based solution faithfully replicates the Model 30 with its limited storage and I/O capability, and provides a front panel interface. The basic CPU is implemented in a Xilinx S3 FPGA and the VHDL is available for download under the GPL. Development of the project continues with the further addition of storage and I/O devices. Lawrence Wilkinson started out as an Electrical and Electronic Engineer in Auckland in the 1980s, transmogrified into an IT and Accounting support person in the late 80s, then went back to hardware and low-level software upon moving to England in the mid 90s. Eventually ending up with the new BAR Formula 1 team, he spent a few years writing and supporting on-car control software, won the World Championship with Brawn Grand Prix in 2009, and currently supports various factory test systems for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix in Northamptonshire. // OpenCores, Chip Design and the OpenRISC 1000 Opencores dates back to 1999 as a forum for open source chip designs, primarily intended for FPGA, but also used in ASIC. It now hosts several hundred designs, and has over 100,000 registered users world wide. This talk will look at what is involved in putting together an open source chip design. In particular the licensing issues represent a challenge, with standard F/OSS licenses having serious weaknesses when it comes to licensing hardware. It will finish with an overview of OpenCores' flagship project, the OpenRISC 1000. This is a 32-bit MIPS-like RISC processor, with a full reference SoC design. It comes with a GNU development tool chain, a number of RTOS ports and an up to date uClibc Linux kernel/BusyBox implementation. In recent years the entire front-end design flow has become open source, as open source electronic design automation (EDA) tools have become available. It has now reached the stage of maturity where some of its development is by commercially funded engineers, as well as a large community of volunteers. Dr Jeremy Bennett is Chief Executive of Embecosm Limited. Embecosmi provides open source services, tools and models to facilitate embedded software development with complex systems-on chip. He spends two days a month working as the Embedded Systems Champion for the Electronics, Sensors and Photonics KTN, which seeks to improve the flow of knowledge between academia and industry. He can be contacted via jeremy.bennett(a)embecosm.com. Note: Please aim to arrive for 18:00 - 18:20 as the event will start at 18:30 prompt. Registration: http://oshug.org/event/9

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OSHUG #8 - Performance (MilkyMist), Thurs 10th March.
by Andrew Back 15 Feb '11

15 Feb '11

Hello, Firstly, we would like to thank everyone who came along to OSHUG #7 last week, and to also thank BBC Learning Development for very kindly hosting us and for arranging two of the speakers. Those who would have liked to make it along but for whatever reason couldn't may be interested to know that all three speakers were interviewed for Outriders on Radio 5: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/outriders/2011/02/histories_stories_and_current.… There are also now a few photographs posted Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/oshug%3Aevent%3D7/ -- Event #8 — Performance (MilkyMist) On the 10th March 2011, 18:00 - 19:30 at Osmosoft, 1a Broadway Street, London, SW1H 0AY, UK. http://oshug.org/event/8 It stands to reason that hardware which is open to being studied, modified and improved would be well suited to performance environments, and just as F/OSS has proved popular in support of creative practices so is OSHW similarly gaining favour. With designs ranging from simple electronic instruments that make for an ideal first electronics project to vastly more complex processing and synthesis devices. At the eighth OSHUG meeting we'll be hearing about the Milkymist™ project which "develops a comprehensive open source solution for the live synthesis of interactive visual effects for VJs (video performance artists)". MilkyMist - An FPGA-based open-hardware video synthesis platform The MilkyMist project develops a stand-alone device in a small form factor that is capable of rendering MilkDrop-esque visuals effects in real time, with a high level of interaction with many sensors and using live audio and video streams as a base. The flexibility of the FPGA used as a central component enables advanced users to modify the design, and also permits compact integration of many interfaces (Ethernet, OSC, MIDI, DMX512, video inputs, GPIO, VGA output, USB, Irda ...), making Milkymist™ a platform of choice for the mobile VJ. But Milkymist™ is more than a visual synthesizer - it is also one of the leading open source system-on-chip designs. It is today the fastest open source system-on-chip capable of running Linux, and it comes with an extensive set of features and graphics accelerators. The IP cores that make up the system-on-chip are entirely written in open source synthesizable Verilog HDL and come with test benches and documentation, which makes Milkymist™ a great library of re-usable logic cores to serve as a base for other open source hardware. Yann Sionneau is a twenty two year old Frenchman and soon to be graduated from the telecommunication and networking engineering school Télécom SudParis. His current interests in the main are low level software development, FPGA design, embedded systems and networks. He read his first C language book when he was 12 and fell in love with the language. He met Sebastien Bourdeauducq (aka lekernel), leader of the Milkymist project, in 2008 while doing whilst an intern at a startup co-founded by Sebastien. He ported RTEMS to Milkymist as part of the Google Summer of Code 2010 program and has been following the project for some time. Note: Please aim to arrive for 18:00 - 18:15 as the event will start at 18:30 prompt. http://oshug.org/event/8 -- Andrew Back mailto:andrew@osmosoft.com http://carrierdetect.com

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