oshug January 2015

oshug@oshug.org

2 participants
5 discussions

OSHUG #38 — Energy, Thursday 19th February.
by Andrew Back 27 Jan '15

27 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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Live stream of this evening's meeting.
by Andrew Back 22 Jan '15

22 Jan '15

Hello, For those who are unable to make it along to Sheffield this evening, there are plans to stream it live via YouTube. The URL won't be known until nearer the time, but for details you can follow either of the hashtags: #oshug #bcsossg And also @UKOSHUG, of course. Hoping to take questions via Twitter also. Cheers, Andrew

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Feb meeting and energy scavenging.
by Andrew Back 18 Jan '15

18 Jan '15

Hello, The theme for the 19th Feb meeting will be "energy" and I wondered if anyone had any experience with energy scavenging projects and fancied giving a talk? Or for that matter, any other interesting energy related applications :o) Cheers, Andrew

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Hardware Freedom Day 2015 in Manchester
by Michael Dorrington 13 Jan '15

13 Jan '15

Manchester Free Software and ManLUG are holding a Hardware Freedom Day event as part of ManLUG's meeting this Saturday. It'll be from about 14:00 to about 15:00 but there is time available if people want do hardware freedom lightning talks and/or demos. http://wiki.hfday.org/2015/UK/Manchester Cheers, Mike. -- FSF member #9429 http://www.fsf.org/register_form?referrer=9429 http://www.fsf.org/about "The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a nonprofit with a worldwide mission to promote computer user freedom and to defend the rights of all free software users."

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OSHUG #37 — Open Source in Business, Thursday 22nd January.
by Andrew Back 05 Jan '15

05 Jan '15

Hello, 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. In February we will return to hosting meetings at the BCS offices in Covent Garden. However, should anyone have any suggestions for hosting a special meeting elsewhere in the country, please get in touch! Cheers, 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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oshug January 2015