oshug January 2017

oshug@oshug.org

3 participants
4 discussions

OSHUG 55 — FPGA projects past, planned and possible, Thursday 16th February.
by Andrew Back 05 Feb '17

05 Feb '17

Hello, Registration is now open for the February meeting, details of which can be found below. We also still have space for 1 or 2 more short talks of 10-15 minutes, so if you have an idea for a talk, get in touch! Cheers, Andrew // Event #55 — FPGA projects past, planned and possible On the 16 February 2017, 18:00 - 20:00 at BCS London, 1st Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA. Registration: http://oshug.org/event/55 The fifty-fifth meeting will feature a series of shorter talks that explore past, planned and possible projects which use FPGAs. — FPGA Projects - What would I build and why would I want to PLAs have been interesting ever since the 70s when digital logic often became complex, consuming unnecessary space and power. Back then the cost of PLA deployment was high and it has continued to be high until recently. Now that we have powerful, low cost development platforms and relatively cheap FPGAs the cost equation has shifted radically. * 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 FPGAs to solve realtime problems Microcontrollers a great platform to solve basic control problems in electronics, with simple motor drivers and sensors readily avaiable and easy to integrate. However, when the motor control becomes more complex with BLDC and FOC things get much more tricky. When you have to use multiple BLDC motors and more complex sensors with image processing the poor microcontroller quickly becomes to swamped to provide control in realtime. This is where adding FPGA technology makes a great deal of sense particularly in mutli-discipline projects like robotics where many sensors, motors and image processing will need to be managed and controlled concurrently. A robotics platform must therefore contain both concurrent hardware resources, algorithmic control through soft or hard cores along with communication protocols. * Alan Wood has been working with parallel distributed programming for several decades. His recent work includes smart grids, 3D printers, robotics, automation and biotec diagnostics. His current research is focused on machine learning, inference and image processing for embedded applications using FPGA and multi-cores. He is a long term advocate and moderator (aka Folknology) for xCORE and other opensource communities, as well as a founder of Surrey and Hampshire Makerspace and myStorm FPGA development boards. — FPGAs in the Cloud? It is no secret that FPGA based computing machines are great at dealing with certain types of workloads that conventional CPU based machines can not efficiently handle. These machines, alongside their GPU and even custom ASIC based brethren, have been filling up racks in large data centres all over the globe helping speed up systems that have components of machine learning, complex analytics and even video processing. This short talk will have a look at the state of FPGAs in the datacenter and discuss the recent developments around the availability of FPGA equipped computing nodes in commodity cloud providers. * Omer Kilic is an Embedded Systems Engineer who enjoys working with small connected computers of all shapes and sizes. He works at the various intersections of hardware and software engineering practices, product development and manufacturing. — Chip Hack 2017 & EDSAC Challenge This talk will introduce and issue a call for participation for two events that are being hosted as part of the Wuthering Bytes technology festival, that will take place in Hebden Bridge in September, in the week following Open Source Hardware Camp 2017. Chip Hack is a two day hands-on workshop that provides a gentle introduction to programming FPGAs and is aimed at novices with no prior experience of Hardware Description Languages (HDLs) or FPGAs. This will be followed immediately by a challenge event, during which a small team of experts will work to extend a basic functional FPGA model of EDSAC — the pioneering computer designed and constructed at Cambridge University, and which was operational by 1949. * Dr Jeremy Bennett is founder and Chief Executive of Embecosm, a consultancy implementing open source compilers and chip simulators for major corporations around the world. He is a author of the standard textbook "Introduction to Compiling Techniques" (McGraw-Hill 1990, 1995, 2003). Contact him at: jeremy.bennett(a)embecosm.com. Note: Please aim to arrive by 18:15 as the event will start at 18:30 prompt. // -- Andrew Back http://abopen.com

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Personal Privacy Online (The Dark Web, Investigatory Powers Act), Thursday 19th January.
by Andrew Back 12 Jan '17

12 Jan '17

Hi All, There are no hardware talks this month, but there will be an excellent series of 3 talks hosted by the BCS OSSG next Thursday, on theme of personal online privacy. Details below. Best, Andrew // Personal Privacy Online (The Dark Web, Investigatory Powers Act) On the 19 January 2017, 18:00 - 20:00 at BCS London, 1st Floor, The Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA. Registration: https://events.bcs.org/book/2408/ We explore the theme of personal rights and privacy on the modern Internet, with a talk on The Dark Web, covering insights on one of the larger anonymous marketplaces online and another on the new Investigatory Powers Act. — The Investigatory Powers Act: What is it? The Investigatory Powers Act also known as the Snoopers Charter is now law, find out what that means for you and your company. The Snoopers Charter would require metadata on every email, website visit and social media log to be recorded. It covers hacking and mass hacking performed by Government agencies. Its powers can be enforced across the world. It contains over 270 clauses and dwarfs the computer misuse act in terms of size, so this is going to be a speed run covering some of the high points. * Glyn Wintle is a security evangelist and software engineer. He has given evidence in Parliament, frequently gives technical talks about security and is well know for his work with the Open Rights Group. — The Dark Web Within the last years, governmental bodies have been futilely trying to fight against dark web hosted marketplaces. Shortly after the closing of “The Silk Road” by the FBI and Europol in 2013, new successors have been established. Through the combination of cryptocurrencies and nonstandard communication protocols and tools, agents can anonymously trade in a marketplace for illegal items without leaving any record. This talk will presents a research carried out to gain insights on the products and services sold within one of the larger marketplaces for drugs, fake ids and weapons on the Internet, Agora, and on new developments after the demise of Agora. The team behind the research included Andres Baravalle, Sin Wee Lee, Germans Zaharovs (research intern) and Mauro Lopez Sanchez (final year project). The work has been featured on the front page on The Times and on the Guardian, amongst other media. * Andres Baravalle works in the in the University of East London as Senior Lecturer in Computing. He has been working in academia since 2004 (University of Turin, University of Sheffield, Open University, University of East London), while also working as a contractor in industry. Andres has been developing in LAMP environments since 1999 and managing development teams since shortly after. In the past years he has been combining his expertise in web technologies with an interest on security and data science. “ He once made a student cry - by praising his work. Note: Please aim to arrive by 18:15 as the event will start at 18:30 prompt. -- Andrew Back http://abopen.com

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February meeting theme/talks?
by Andrew Back 11 Jan '17

11 Jan '17

Hello, Following the last meeting — and probably in the pub ... — I seem to recall a theme and/or talks being suggested for the meeting on the evening of Thursday 16th February. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Failing which, new suggestions welcome :o) Cheers, Andrew -- Andrew Back http://abopen.com

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Residencies in Shenzhen for UK makers
by marc barto 03 Jan '17

03 Jan '17

Happy new year all This call for makers might interest some OSHUG members: It a residency programme for UK makers to go to Shenzhen (arguably the electronics manufacturing capital of the world). All info here: http://creativeconomy.britishcouncil.org/blog/16/12/16 /calling-all-uk-makers-opportunity-travel-shenzhen/ One of the residency is with Makeblock to prototype a kit with their team. I have visited their office in Shenzhen, it's pretty much a mini-Legoland for hardware makers. Other residencies are around maker education, sustainability, 3D Printing etc. And generally this city is worth a trip to source components or discover how the Shanzhai <http://www.vam.ac.uk/shekou/from-shenzhen-shanzhai-and-the-maker-movement/> ecosystem works, that said don't go there if you can't stand air pollution! cheers -- Marc @marc_in_london <https://twitter.com/marc_in_london>

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oshug January 2017