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OT: Replicating functionality of existing blinds controller
by Chris Puttick 03 Oct '24

03 Oct '24

Hi all Seeking electronics expertise (when it comes to making I'm better at wood!). A few years ago we pushed the boat out while completing an "extension extension" and re-roof project by adding electrically operated between-glass blinds with solar-charged blind controllers to the windows. The controllers are starting to fail, mostly battery or charging circuit issues and without them the blinds don't work. I'd be not too bothered, except the manufacturer and their distributors are charging an eye-watering £135 for a replacement unit and the units are kind of flaky in use (need resetting often, which is done by plugging them to a (any) USB charger). The units consist of a USB charging port (for when the solar isn't enough to keep them charged), a 5 point connector and 2 touch sensitive areas with LED back lights, and a simple RF remote control, powered by a small battery (3.7V, 2700mAh). The most complex element is the ability to program (via reset and counting light flashes etc.) the units to respond to 99 different channels on the remote - I can imagine a commercial setup where that might be useful, or if you have the functionality in every room (though 99 is a lot of rooms...) but in practice we use the controller to raise/lower all the blinds at once, so only use one channel So the questions... how practical would it be to reproduce this functionality, with a similar physical form factor so they can attach to the window mounts (which are wired to the motors inside the window and the tiny solar panels on the outside), in part (no RF or simple RF controls all units) or in whole (99 channels does seem excessive...)? Given the price being charged for replacements, it might be feasible to replace the window mount and solar panel if that makes it more practical (requires popping the window from the frame but that's not a lot of work for someone who knows double glazing). At a simpler level, how easy is it likely to be to source suitably shaped batteries to replace battery units? All input welcome and if you need more info to provide better input please don't hesitate to request it. Cheers Chris -- @putt1ck Opinions in this email are my own and may not reflect that of my clients, past employers, associates, friends, family, pets etc..

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Thanks for a great weekend!
by Ken Boak 27 Aug '24

27 Aug '24

I would like to thank Andrew, Laura, Kevin, Shaun, the sponsors, the caterers, the Birchcliffe Centre, the IOU Hostel, the presenters, the attendees and everyone else involved with Wuthering Bytes Festival Day and OSHCamp 2024, for putting on such a great weekend. Hopefully there will be some videos and photos of this wonderful event online soon. See you all next year, Ken

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Fwd: Bit Serial Computer Workshop - OSHUG Sunday 25th August
by Ken Boak 23 Aug '24

23 Aug '24

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Ken Boak <ken.boak(a)gmail.com> Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2024 at 15:55 Subject: Bit Serial Computer Workshop - OSHUG Sunday 25th August To: Andy Bennett <andyjpb(a)register-dynamics.co.uk>, Alan Wood < folknology(a)gmail.com>, Open Source Hardware User Group Discussion List < oshug(a)oshug.org> Hi All, We are rapidly approaching our long weekend of tech activities in Hebden Bridge. Al Wood and I will be jointly hosting a workshop session on Sunday 25th August. This year, following on from Al's excellent custom keyboard workshop last August will have something more of a RetroComputing theme. The goal of the workshop is to build from scratch, up to 20, 8-bit, bit serial computers, known as "Tick" based, almost entirely on 74HCxx series logic. For this workshop to run smoothly, there are a number of pre-requisites, needed to be downloaded which will allow us to get off to a quick start. If you wish to attend, could you please install the following packages: 1. H. Neemann's "Digital" simulator https://github.com/hneemann/Digital 2. Once you have "Digital" you will then be able to access the relevant schematics, simulations and build guides from my Github repo. The bulk of the teaching documentation will be held on my "Tick-Talk" repo, here https://github.com/monsonite/TICK_TALK/tree/main Ignore anything more than 2 weeks old - the relevant info is from the last 3 days. 3. You will be given a Pi Pico clone to act as the interface to the Tick CPU and it's memory. To program this, I have been using Arduino, with board files installed for the RP2040 microcontroller. The downloads are on this repo: https://github.com/earlephilhower/arduino-pico So, on Sunday, if you have all 3 repos accessible on your laptop - it will allow us to get off to a good start. I will have given an overview of the workshop and the "Tick" project during my presentation on Saturday. This will be a hands on, practical course, involving a fair amount of soldering of through-hole components. If you are not experienced in soldering, I am sure that you can be "buddied up" with someone who can guide you. The pcb is 110mm x 110mm and holds 28 small 74HCxx ICs plus a "ROM" and and RAM. All components including ICs and sockets, passives, connectors, switches, LEDs and the Pi Pico clone will be supplied. However the Pi Pico needs a USB C cable. There are 2 solutions - bring your own genuine Pi Pico with the micro USB cable or bring a USB C cable for the low cost clone Pico. The build sequence is broken down into 5 separate stages. Each stage covers a small subset of the components - about 5 or 6 ICs, and there is a scope available so you can test the stage works before you move onto the next stage. If we start at 10am, we should complete the pcbs before 3pm. I would strongly suggest that you organise yourselves into small teams of 3 or 4. Even if we only build 5 or 6 boards on Sunday, new pcbs will be issued in September, so its perhaps better to save your kit for the revised pcb. One should have a strong hardware construction skillset, another should be a competent programmer and the third should focus on finding documents and reading instructions for the other team members. Finally: A shout-out for anyone to bring in their personal soldering stations, flux, solder and rework tools and possibly fume extraction. There are about 650 IC through-hole pins to solder. A full kit component kit will be issued on receipt of £20. A V2 kit (pcb + connectors) will be offered at a discount, when available. All socketed ICs can be reused in V2. Don't forget either a USB C cable or bring your own Pi Pico and micro USB cable. Thanks in advance, Ken

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OSHCamp 2024 programme changes.
by Andrew Back 28 Jul '24

28 Jul '24

Hello, Unfortunately Matt Venn is now unable to give a talk on CI for Semiconductors at Open Source Hardware Camp. However, we do have a new talk from Chris Simmonds on Putting Linux into devices using Yocto Project. For details please see the updated programme at: https://oshug.org/event/oshcamp2024 Cheers, Andrew -- Andrew Back https://abopen.com

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Wuthering Bytes Social, Friday 23rd August.
by Andrew Back 28 Jul '24

28 Jul '24

Hello, Just a heads-up that, in addition to the OSHCamp Social on the evening of Saturday 24th, there will be a WB Festival Day Social the evening before. This will be hosted at Nelsons Wine Bar in Hebden Bridge town centre, with music, drinks and food as in previous years. However, one major difference is that we will not have exclusive use of the venue and in an effort to help ensure we have somewhere to sit and eat, we have a group booking for a large portion of the space. The way this will work is that, if you do plan to have a meal, you can purchase a separate ticket which is essentially a dinner reservation and can be redeemed on the evening for £10 towards your food bill. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/wuthering-bytes-2024-social-tickets-95417953… Before booking please take a look at their menu and also see the T&Cs on the Eventbrite page to make sure that you are happy with these. It's a far from ideal system, but better than turning up en masse at a popular venue and then being disappointed when most if not all of the tables are booked. The plan is to announce more widely tomorrow and with limited tickets available it is advisable to book sooner rather than later if you'd like to eat. Of course, you could also just try your chances on the day or head down after having eaten elsewhere. Cheers, Andrew -- Andrew Back https://abopen.com

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Open Source Hardware Camp 2024 — Sat 24th & Sun 25th August, Hebden Bridge.
by Andrew Back 10 Jul '24

10 Jul '24

Hi All, I'm pleased to announce that we have a total of 12 talks and 4 workshops confirmed for Open Source Hardware Camp 2024! As in previous years, there will be a social event on the Saturday evening and OSHCamp is once again being hosted to coincide with the Wuthering Bytes technology festival. https://wutheringbytes.com The programme for Festival Day (Fri 23/08) should be announced within the coming weeks and for details of speakers confirmed so far, see: https://wutheringbytes.com/whatson/festival-day Cheers, Andrew // Open Source Hardware Camp 2024 On the 24th August 2024, 09:00 Saturday morning - 16:00 on the Sunday afternoon at The Birchcliffe Centre, Birchcliffe Road, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7 8DG, UK [map] (53.743433, -2.008952) Registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/open-source-hardware-camp-2024-tickets-90883… Open Source Hardware Camp 2024 will take place in the Pennine town of Hebden Bridge, where it will be hosted as part of the Wuthering Bytes technology festival. Hebden Bridge is approximately 1 hour by rail from Leeds and Manchester. Budget accommodation is available at the Hebden Bridge Hostel. Details of other local accommodation can be found at www.hebdenbridge.co.uk and via Airbnb and Booking.com etc. There will be a social event on the Saturday evening from 7PM. *** Saturday :: Talks *** — Adventures in Manufacturing: Things you don’t learn at school This talk is an open book of our collective experiences, filled with the kind of know-how that can only be picked up from the factory floor. Join us for a candid conversation where we peel back the curtain on the world of electronics product manufacturing. Expect invaluable lessons learned from the ground up, offering practical advice wrapped in entertaining stories. * Stuart Childs has spent the past few years working in the strange space between engineers, product owners and factories — setting up production lines and working with a variety of suppliers, from prototypes to mass production. * Omer Kilic is an Embedded Systems and Manufacturing Consultant who works at the various intersections of hardware and software engineering practices, product development and manufacturing. — Open Source Rocketry Tools, FreeCAD and beyond Rocketry has its challenges, but there are numerous open source tools available to enable the design, simulation and manufacture of amateur, high power and experimental airframes. In this talk Jo will show some of these tools and usage, highlighting along the way how it’s only open source community development that could possibly enable such interesting and interoperable tools to be developed. * Jo Hinchliffe is a technical author, maker, and community developer who has an interest in space. Jo has developed and flown numerous open source rocket designs and has pushed the development of open source rocketry tools. Jo has worked with Libre Space Foundation who built and launched a completely open source satellite off the International Space Station, as well as other on orbit open source space projects. Jo has a wide range of clients he writes for and is the author of “FreeCAD for Makers” available for free download from the Raspberry Pi Press. — The National Museum of Computing EDSAC Replica EDSAC was the first practical general purpose, stored program, electronic, digital computer and provided a computing service for the University of Cambridge. It ran its first program (Squares of 1 – 100) on 6th May1949. Because of the significance of EDSAC to British Computing, it was decided to create a replica at TNMOC. Our task is to build a working reconstruction of EDSAC as it was at the start of its life, providing the world’s first computing service from 1949 to 1958. Money was raised from around 2010, and design work started a couple of years later. With the paper tape reader not yet available, we use an Arduino-based Solid State Injector unit to program the computer, and a Cypress FX2 USB2 clone as a logic analyser with PulseView software. Raspberry Pi Picos are also used as wireless logic analysers. * Tony Abbey received a BSc in Electronic Engineering in 1968 at Southampton University and went on to work for the East Midlands Gas Board on communications and instrumentation, where he found that computers could be used for control purposes. There he worked on the Westinghouse “DP2 and a half” computer and DEC PDP11 systems. After EMGAS he worked for 35 years at Leicester University Space Research Dept, where he designed and commissioned X-ray detectors for satellites, getting to Cape Canaveral twice and French Guyana for three satellite launces. He still has cryogenically cooled CCDs in space in the satellites XMM-Newton, Swift and Astrosat, and he provides consulting services as a director of Helaton Services, together with his wife. In retirement Tony has been a director of Leicester Hackspace and he also finds time to race a K1 dinghy at Rutland Water. Software-defined radio has been an interest for several years and helping out at TNMOC has been occupying a lot of his time. — Look, no FPGA! When creating a robust WiFi logic analyser, it is tempting to use complex programmable logic devices; however, there are alternatives, as this talk will show. The end-result is a low-cost unit using a Pi RP2040 microcontroller that can store 500,000 16-bit samples and stream them at high speed across a WiFi network to a Web browser. I’ll be describing simple techniques to tackle the various hardware, software and networking issues, with an end-result that is applicable for a wide range of data-streaming applications – without requiring any logic programming. * Jeremy Bentham has been experimenting with electronics from an early age. After graduating with an engineering degree, he worked for London Undergound, specialising in 600-volt DC railway traction systems, and on-train electronics. On leaving LUL, he worked for various Cambridge startup companies, including a one-person consultancy specialising in embedded systems hardware & software development. Based on this experience, he wrote the book ‘TCP/IP Lean’, selling over 15,000 copies in 2 editions, and was recruited by a small vehicle tracking company to create the hardware and software for their tracking systems, of which over 500,000 units were installed. In retirement, his interest in railway engineering was re-ignited by joining a team restoring a 1938-vintage 'Q' stock underground train to run in heritage service, and another team creating a 7 ¼ inch narrow-gauge railway. He was also asked to create some high-speed wireless logic analyser units for the valve-based EDSAC computer that has been built at the National Museum of Computing in Bletchley. His open-source projects are freely available (no advertisements) on iosoft.blog. — Dye Sublimation Printing on PCBs PCB colour choices have come a long way since the green of the 1980s, and it seems like every colour of the rainbow is available. But when Spencer decided to make a Pride based rainbow coloured modular computer in 2023, he found the choices offered by the PCB fabs to be far too limited. The solution he found was dye sublimation. This talk is about how this works with PCBs, the workflow he developed, obstacles overcome and how cheap equipment can be used to set up your own dye sublimation production line. It covers the advantages of printing your own full colour PCBs, and also some of the disadvantages and where it is not suitable. * Spencer Owen is a self confessed retro computer geek. In 2013 he built a Z80 based breadboard computer which went on to become the RC2014 kit computer. Since quitting a life in IT in 2016 for this little modular computer, it has taken him to events all over the world. He is passionate about hobby electronics, and always keen to try doing the things that other people haven’t done yet. — Continuous Integration for Semiconductors - how Tiny Tapeout makes chips Continuous integration has long been taken for granted by software engineers, but acceptance is still growing in hardware engineers. In this talk, Matt will show how we leverage GitHub Actions to build documentation, create FPGA bitstreams, run tests and create all the files needed to manufacture an open source chip. Together, these automated jobs allow us to regularly manufacture chips filled with hundreds of tiny designs with minimal manual intervention. * Matthew Venn is is a science & technology communicator and electronic engineer. He has been involved with open source silicon for the last 4 years and has sent 20 chips for manufacture. He has helped over 400 people learn the tools through his course, with hundreds more sending designs for manufacture via Tiny Tapeout. — Revisiting the Bit-Serial Computer Architecture Developed near the dawn of the electronic computing age, around the end of WW2, the bit-serial architecture played an important role in computing and calculating machines, as a result of its simplicity and low component count. Indeed up until about 1960, bit-serial l was the mainstay of computing architecture, as a result of being significantly cheaper than a parallel architecture. Similarly, in the late 1960s bit-serial was adopted for most of the early desktop and pocket electronic calculators. This talk explores the bit-serial architecture and reveals how it is still relevant today, some 80 years on. * Ken Boak has been tinkering with electronics and computing for over five decades. His 6th birthday present was a soldering iron! He has interests in minimal computing devices and pre-1981 computer history. Ken currently works in the renewables field, on hydrogen fuel cells and the conversion of ammonia to hydrogen fuel for stationary and marine internal combustion engines. — STEAM Punk Sunflower Andy has been pondering how to build an "interesting" take on an LED matrix since the mid-90s. At last year's OSHCamp, the swap table offered a glut of LEDs and control chips that finally gave him the push he needed. After the conference he went back home and set to work. Taking inspiration from Jiří Praus, Mohite Bhoite and one maths professor's website that he's referred to for far too many projects, he designed something that he hopes is an original take on an LED matrix. At it's heart, this talk will be an OSHCamp community story that covers the scientific, technological, electronic, artistic and mathematical basis for a LED sunflower sculpture. * Andy Bennett trained as an Electronic & Electrical Engineer and has a background in consumer electronics, FPGAs, operating systems and device drivers. For the last 15 years he has been building companies around distributed database technology. He is currently Director of Register Dynamics who help companies and governments apply their data usefully, responsibly and ethically. Andy is a Technologist that likes to inhabit the void between users, software and the hardware that it all runs on. His love of ceramic taps is well-documented. — Building digital cameras for fun and science This talk gives an introduction to how CMOS digital cameras work, from the diode up. It goes on to describe some custom cameras designed to make modulated light measurements and their scientific applications. The modulated light technique can be used with conventional cameras or photodiodes by using lower modulation frequencies. * Roger Light did a PhD in Electronic Engineering at the University of Nottingham, then moved on to being a researcher and finally lecturer, designing various scientific camera chips along the way, to help with problems ranging from biological measurement, to characterisation of grain structure in metals. Back in 2009 Roger started the Mosquitto MQTT broker project, and as a now ex-academic he is working as a software developer at Cedalo, who offer support and extra functionality for Mosquitto. He still hankers after building more cameras. — Cost Cutting OSHW with Crafty Concurrency Embedded hardware and software need to tackle both real-time responses to concurrent real world demands and events, further it needs to do this in a predictable, deterministic and safe manner. How can we achieve these seemingly irreconcilable goals? Moreover is it possible do do so with basic tooling and without incurring excessive manpower and costs. As someone who battles these challenges with multi disciplined professional teams for fully funded commercial projects, you might be surprised that Alan has discovered a secret low cost formula that anyone can source and develop using fully open source tooling. He will open Pandora's box so you can take a peek. * Alan Wood has been working with parallel distributed programming for several decades. His recent work includes smart grids, 3D printers, robotics, automation biotec diagnostics and flow computation. His current research is focused on multilayer concurrency and mixed language models for complex embedded systems. He is a long term advocate of open source communities, a moderator (aka Folknology) for xCORE, the co-founder of myStorm open hardware FPGA community, as well as a co-founder of Surrey and Hampshire Makerspace. — Showing that you care about security for your open source (hardware) project Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), Supply-chain Levels for Software Aritfacts (SLSA) and Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) Scorecards form a trifecta of security practices and deliverables that let people know that you're paying attention to the security of your project. This presentation will begin with an overview of the trifecta, looking at why each is needed and how they relate to each other. It will then go into practical steps to incorporate them into a project repo. We will also look at the ongoing maintenance involved once scorecards have been implemented, and how aspects of that maintenance can be better automated to minimize toil. * Chris Swan has been tinkering with electronics since he was at primary school, and got into software when he realised that it was necessary to make hardware do interesting things. In his day job as an Engineer at Atsign, he's helping to build the atPlatform, a Networking 2.0 technology that is putting people in control of their data and removing the frictions and surveillance associated with today’s Internet. On evenings and weekends he can often be found making some sort of project around a dev board, which have mostly been RISC-V recently. Chris is an InfoQ Editor writing about cloud, DevOps and security, he co-hosts the Tech Debt Burndown Podcast and is a Dart Google Developer Expert (GDE). — Why is my robot doing that? Live visualisation of sensor data Many sensors are a lot cheaper than they used to be. Ultrasonic, IR, time of flight and even lidar are (kind of) within budget for enthusiasts, and you can write code against them fairly easily. But when debugging, it's really handy to look at the raw sensor data in a format that isn't just raw numbers, and that's where data visualisation techniques can help. In this talk, I'll discuss, with easy examples, how data visualisation can help you work out why your robot is going the wrong way. * Rick Walker used to be a real scientist, but since leaving academia the only thing he sciences is data. He likes clear explanations, cares a lot about effective data visualization, and wishes he was better with robots. // Compered by: // Kevin Murrell is a trustee of The National Museum of Computing with a particular interest in computer technology from the 1950s and 1960s. Kevin recently completed a rebuild of the Wireless World Computer which was published in 1967. During working hours, Kevin is technical director of a UK software house providing systems for the UK, Canada and Ireland. Kevin is the proud owner of a Myford Super 7 - which occupies his spare time! *** Sunday :: Workshops *** — Bit Serial Computing Build your own bit serial computer from modern 74HC series logic. The workshop introduces the concepts of bit serial arithmetic, starting with a simple ALU. The addition of a timing sequence generator and memory allows 8-bit computation to be performed. There will be a limit of 20 participants on the workshop, and a £20 charge to cover the cost of PCBs, components and consumables. Participants should bring: - A laptop and if possible install "H. Neemann's "Digital" simulator from his GitHub repository. Run by: Ken Boak. — Dye Sublimation Printing on PCBs Following on from the talk yesterday, Spencer will provide some simple blinky LED PCBs and show you how to get your colourful designs on to it. If you have a laptop with you, you will be able to use an Inkscape template to create your design. This could be something unique that you have drawn yourself, or any drawing or photo that you want to use. Alternatively, fountain pens with CYMK ink can be provided to make a totally one-off design. Once printed and cooled down the PCB can be assembled, so basic through-hole soldering experience may be required. Participants should bring: - A laptop with Inkscape installed. Run by: Spencer Owen. — Retro Computing Simulation Some of us hanker after an original minicomputer with all the switches and lights but no longer have access to the hardware. Indeed, few of us have the space required to recreate installations from those early days when disk drives were the size of washing machines! There are excellent software emulations of many of these early systems, but the excitement of operating a functioning front panel cannot be beaten! We will show the systems running and welcome user interaction. So, get out the old CP/M handbook and the DEC Introduction to Programming and off we go! We expect to be demonstrating the following running replicas: - Wireless World Computer - Raspberry Pi-based PDP8 - Raspberry Pi-based PDP11 - LGP-30 - IMSAI 8080 - Raspberry Pi-based PDP10 — possibly just the unboxing! Participants should bring: - A laptop. Run by: Kevin Murrell. — Raftabar the Robot A follow-up to the Festival Day talk of the same title. This is not a workshop in the normal sense and there will not be any pre-organised hands-on tasks. It’s more of a casual/informal drop-in to see Raftabar performing, and for more comprehensive and technical discussion about his construction and innermost secrets. We can talk about: - Mechanical construction using MDF, plastic and metal – No 3D printing I’m afraid, although in many cases it would have made a much better job than my hacksaw, file, pedestal drill and lathe. - A bit of analogue electronics. - Ultrasonic obstacle detection and distance measurement. - PWM motor and servo control. - How to follow a light beam back to bed. - PID control. - Raftbar’s software uses several finite-state machines, something that Rod is quite passionate about and loves to talk about. - Running multiple Python 3 scripts on a Raspberry Pi and communicating between scripts. - Invoking Python 3 scripts on Raspberry Pi boot-up. - Raspberry Pi LAN and communication to PC using RealVNC. - Raspberry Pi to Raspberry Pi serial communication using UART. - Face detection and recognition. - Audio speech to text conversion and Text to audio conversion. Rod emphasises that he is not an expert in all areas, but will do his best to explain the principles. * Rod Moody was born in 1940 and at 15 years of age started an electrical engineering apprenticeship with Dale Electric, a manufacturer of diesel-engine driven electrical generators ranging from a few kW to a few MW, for both base load and standby applications. Through day release and night class he gained an HNC in electrical engineering, and at the age of 19 was appointed to the post of Test Department Manager. He went on to become Electrical Engineering Manager responsible for running the design office and designing control systems using relay logic, and following which Engineering Director. In 1992, at 52 years of age Rod joined Deep Sea Electronics as their Engineering Manager. DSE were quite small at that time and using through-hole technology, but with improved product design and the introduction of SMT production they grew very rapidly over the eight years before Rod retired in year 2000 at 60 years of age. DSE are now the leading supplier of microprocessor based controllers to generating set manufacturing companies worldwide. In retirement Rod spends most of his spare time with projects involving mechanics, electronics, and software using the Raspberry Pi and Arduino microcontrollers. He continues to be a keen gardener as he has been from an early age, has a keen interest in all aspects of science and engineering, and is currently leader of the York U3A Science & Engineering World group. NOTE: - There are separate tickets for Saturday and Sunday. - A light lunch 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. -- Andrew Back https://abopen.com

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Upcoming Meetings in London
by Andy Bennett 07 Apr '24

07 Apr '24

Hi all, It was great to see so many people at the Christmas drinks. Since then, Omer and I have been chatting about how to get something going in London again. We'd like to solicit some feedback on our proposed format (below) and also to invite you to submit your proposals for talks on this Google Form: https://forms.gle/rBQopohr6UHWNRcq9 Our goals are to do in person meetups in/around Central London because we received a lot of feedback where people said that it was the personal community feel that was most valuable. Online events of talks don't seem to be much better than pre-recorded talks that you can consume in your own time. We'd like to propose a similar but slightly different format to the old one. 2 or 3 slots per session of no more than 30 minutes each, with plenty of time for questions. We'd like to have a larger social aspect to the evening, including time during the event for 5->10 minute lightning talks or show and tell sessions. There are a lot of people doing lots of interesting things but who can't commit to a big talk. This could also be a channel for periodic updates on ongoing projects from people who are working on something and who would like input or who do not feel they are finished enough to present a longer talk. The evening would start with a meet-and-greet at the venue, but perhaps with food or snacks, depending on the host. After the talks we would retire to the pub, but hopefully early enough that people can stay for at least one drink before leaving for trains. For now we'd like to solicit some feedback on this format and also to invite you to submit your proposals for talks on this Google Form: https://forms.gle/rBQopohr6UHWNRcq9 We're aiming to set up a pipeline of events so that when we launch we can be sure to have events regularly. Best wishes, @ndy -- andyjpb(a)ashurst.eu.org http://www.ashurst.eu.org/ 0x7EBA75FF

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OSHCamp 2024 submission deadline, 30/04.
by Andrew Back 03 Apr '24

03 Apr '24

Hi All, Just a reminder that the deadline for submitting a talk and/or workshop proposal for Open Source Hardware Camp 2024 is a little under 4 weeks away, Tuesday 30th April. Submissions can be made via the form at: https://forms.gle/v1mauARqgd9kWYy16 Any questions don't hesitate to get in touch! Cheers, Andrew -- Andrew Back http://abopen.com

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Open Source Hardware Camp 2024 CFP — Sat 24/08 & Sun 25/08, Hebden Bridge.
by Andrew Back 04 Mar '24

04 Mar '24

Hello, Please find details below of the call for participation for Open Source Hardware Camp 2024. Tickets are not on sale yet, but these will be £12/day and this includes lunch, plus tea/coffee. Those presenting and running workshops will receive free tickets. Budget accommodation is available at Hebden Bridge Hostel, which adjoins the venue, and there are plenty of B&Bs, plus a number of small hotels in the area. OSHCamp will once again be hosted as part of the Wuthering Bytes technology festival, which this year is celebrating its 11th anniversary, with the launch “Festival Day” on Friday 23rd August. Further details will be made available via the website in due course: https://wutheringbytes.com/ Any questions don't hesitate to get in touch! Cheers, Andrew // -+- Open Source Hardware Camp 2024 -+- This year Open Source Hardware Camp will take place over the weekend of Saturday 24th & Sunday 25th August, at The Birchcliffe Centre, Birchcliffe Road, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7 8DG. Proposals for talks and workshops for OSHCamp 2024 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 If you would like to give a talk on the Saturday and/or run a workshop on the Sunday, please submit details via the form at: https://forms.gle/v1mauARqgd9kWYy16 Any questions can either be sent to myself. A social event is planned for Saturday evening. **** Note that the deadline for submitting titles and abstracts is Tuesday 30th April at 17:00. If you would like to discuss ideas etc. please get in touch sooner, rather than later. **** -- Andrew Back http://abopen.com

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littlewire kit from Wuthering Bytes 2013
by Sevan Janiyan 31 Jan '24

31 Jan '24

Hi folks, Hope you're all doing well. I've been working on building a bunch of tools targetting embedded hardware and as a test that things are working have fished out various bits of hardware that I have lying around. As a test for avrdude I wanted to program the latest version of the littlewire firmware for the board we put together at Wuthering Bytes, erm some 10 years ago :) There was a specific issue with the firmware requiring something or another that I can't recall now. I was wondering if anyone remembers what the issue was on that day in 2013, and what the workaround was. The site moved to github pages at some point http://littlewire.github.io and you can get the latest firmware files from there (old url littlewire dot cc is squatted) Sevan

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More Meetups!
by Andy Bennett 19 Dec '23

19 Dec '23

Hi all, It was great to see so many of you a week or so ago at Wuthering Bytes and OSHCamp in Hebden Bridge. It was a sell-out and there were definitely more chairs in the hall compared to 2019. All the thanks and credit must go to Andrew Back who organised another wonderful weekend with a great lineup of speakers and workshoppes. Several of you approached me over that weekend or have been in touch since to say that you really enjoyed the sense of community and to ask about the old meetups in London. It was clear that many people were out of contact with OSHUG and that communications have been sparse. This is my fault so I apologise. Some of you will know that we used to co-organize meetups once a month in London with the BCS Open Source Specialist Group. The turnout was generally good and when lockdown happened in early March 2020 the meetings went online. For the first year things were well attended, seeing audience numbers more than double from the in-person meetups with attendees all over the country and speakers from Europe and occasionally the US or other places in the world. However, very few of these were advertised to the OSHUG membership base because announcements only went out when there was a very strong hardware focus. Moreover, although the attendance was incredibly high, the sense of community, especially the serendipitous interaction and networking, was completely absent. Over the recent weekend, and since, people have spoken and it seems that there might be a renewed opportunity to do something about this. If you were one of those people, or have the same sentiments, I'd like to invite you to reply to this message on the mailing list so that we can get the discussion out into the open. I'm in London so can help organise something here, including finding a venue, perhaps again at the BCS or maybe somewhere else. If anyone anywhere else in the country would like to do something similar then please also speak up. It was great to see so many people in Hebden Bridge and hopefully see a few of you again soon! Please reply to this message with your thoughts about a renewed set of meetups as well as where in the country you'd like to see them. -- andyjpb(a)ashurst.eu.org http://www.ashurst.eu.org/ http://www.gonumber.com/andyjpb 0x7EBA75FF

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Drinks Monday Evening
by Richard Baker 18 Dec '23

18 Dec '23

2 1

Intro and a question
by Andre Maia Chagas 13 Sep '23

13 Sep '23

Hi OSH enthusiasts! My name is Andre and I have stumbled on this list a couple of years ago (I think?), and I am very happy to see more OSH folks out there and more activity in the list too! I work at the University of Sussex (in Brighton) and have been developing open tools and solutions for research as well as teaching others (mostly as a volunteer at TReND in Africa) how to build things with electronics and fast prototyping tools over the past 10 years (initially in Germany, and since 2018 in the UK)... (a lot of the work we do can be seen here https://github.com/sussex-neuroscience) Super cool to see people thinking about meet ups in London! If at some point people would like to come down to the coast, we have space at the University to host it. Now, on to my question/request: In a conversation with people from the UK Reproducibility Network, I thought it would be a good idea to map out Open Source/ Open Science Hardware practitioners based in UK academic institutions. The idea is to know how big is that community in the UK and see how it can work together for awareness, policy, chatting with granting agencies, etc. So if you are a member of this community, or if you know someone who is, send me a message? thanks! Andre Maia Chagas Research Bioengineer Sussex Neuroscience +44 (0)1273 678846

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Keyboard Workshop for OSHCamp 2023 reference repo
by Alan Wood 09 Sep '23

09 Sep '23

I have started to document various useful references/docs and some pics from the OSHCamp 2023 Keyboard workshop <https://github.com/folknology/Keyboard-Workshop> for anyone that may be interested. -- regards Al

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OSHCamp 2023 Badge Details and Soldering Workshop
by Omer Kilic 06 Aug '23

06 Aug '23

Hi folks, With international logistics deities on our side, we will have PCB badges this year at OSHCamp. Details and photos at: https://lab.electrolama.com/hacks/oshcamp23-badge All hardware files, EE and mechanical, and some example code up at: https://github.com/electrolama/oshcamp23-badge Bare boards will be handed out to all attendees, and we will run a solder paste/stencil workshop on Sunday for folks interested in building their own badges. For the impatient amongst us, production files that will allow you to pre-order assembled badges from a well-known PCB manufacturer/assembly service (the blue one) are also included in the repo. I will also discuss some interesting bits about this design during my talk on Saturday morning. We'll figure out and announce the logistics of the workshop closer to the date, but for now, this is both a heads-up for badge-hacking folks and a reminder to book your tickets if you have not done so already :-) I look forward to catching up with OSHUG/OSHCamp regulars and meeting new folks in a few weeks time! Cheers, Omer. PS: Please drop me an email off-list if you are interested in the "build your badge" workshop, so I can get a sense of how many component kits to put together. This is not a commitment or a guarantee that you will get a kit (workshop will be first come first served) but merely an informal head count.

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OSHCamp swap table and Wuthering Bytes tickets.
by Andrew Back 12 Jul '23

12 Jul '23

Hello, Due to popular request there will be swap table at OSHCamp again this year. So feel free to bring along any unused dev kits, components and half-baked projects — within reason! No VDUs, printers or other big items, please... — to swap. One person's rubbish is another's treasure etc. On another note, registration is now open for Wuthering Bytes Festival Day, which this year will feature a keynote from Bill Thompson entitled, "This is not my beautiful web...", along with talks on the architecture of telephone exchange buildings, learn to design your own open source microchips, Daphne Oram and drawn sound on the Acorn Archimedes, the rise and fall of ICL, and more. For details, see: https://wutheringbytes.com/whatson/festival-day/schedule Cheers, Andrew -- Andrew Back http://abopen.com

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Open Source Hardware Camp 2023 — Sat 26th & Sun 27th August, Hebden Bridge.
by Andrew Back 07 Jun '23

07 Jun '23

Hi All, I'm pleased to announce that we have a total of 12 talks and 4 workshops confirmed for Open Source Hardware Camp 2023! As in previous years, there will be a social event on the Saturday evening and OSHCamp is once again being hosted to coincide with the Wuthering Bytes technology festival. https://wutheringbytes.com/ <http://wutheringbytes.com/> The programme for Festival Day (Fri 25/08) should be announced within the coming weeks and for details of speakers confirmed so far, see: https://wutheringbytes.com/whatson/festival-day Cheers, Andrew // Open Source Hardware Camp 2023 On the 26th August 2023, 09:00 Saturday morning - 16:00 on the Sunday afternoon at Hebden Bridge Town Hall, St. George's Street, Hebden Bridge, HX7 7BY, UK (53.742436, -2.012918) Registration: https://oshug.org/event/oshcamp2023 Open Source Hardware Camp 2023 will take place in the Pennine town of Hebden Bridge, where it will return to be hosted as part of the Wuthering Bytes technology festival. Hebden Bridge is approximately 1 hour by rail from Leeds and Manchester. Budget accommodation is available at the Hebden Bridge Hostel which adjoins the venue, with private rooms available and discounts for group bookings. Details of other local accommodation can be found at www.hebdenbridge.co.uk and via Airbnb and Booking.com etc. There will be a social event on the Saturday evening from 8PM. *** Saturday :: Talks *** — Life beyond 2-layer FR4: A high-speed peek into the world of PCBs The perfect combination of open source tools exponentially getting better and the availability of affordable and easy-to-use printed circuit board manufacturing services have enabled many folks to get their weekend projects “fabbed”. While laying out a 2-layer board is relatively straightforward, there is a much wider world when one gets into the nitty-gritty of the humble circuit board for more complex designs. From materials and finishes to multi-layer stack-ups and exotic drilling and milling options, we will take a quick peek at the world of printed circuit boards. * Omer Kilic is an Embedded Systems and Manufacturing Consultant who works at the various intersections of hardware and software engineering practices, product development and manufacturing. — Automated irrigation using a novel approach to determine soil moisture level Rod spoke at OSHCamp 2017 about his greenhouse and garden automation project in York, with particular emphasis on his design of a capacitance sensor for measuring soil moisture level. In 2019 he undertook another project near Scarborough on the East coast of Yorkshire, this time to irrigate 16 vegetable planting areas in a one acre garden. The project went into service in the spring of that year and has continued to work very successfully up to the present time. As with the previous garden project, the Arduino Mega2560 was used but a number of problems were envisaged using capacitance probes. This talk will largely focus on the novel approach used to determine soil moisture level without the need for physical soil moisture sensors. Instead, employing a predictive algorithm that uses rainfall and climatic temperature and humidity to derive the soil moisture level of each planting area. * Rod Moody was born in 1940, and at 15 years of age started an electrical engineering apprenticeship with Dale Electric, a manufacturer of diesel-engine driven electrical generators ranging from a few kW to a few MW for both base load and standby applications. Through day release and night class he gained an HNC in electrical engineering, and at the age of 19 was appointed to the post of Test Department Manager, this led to many trips around the world to provide commissioning, trouble shooting and training. In his mid-twenties he was appointed to the position of Electrical Engineering Manager responsible for running the design office and designing control systems using relay logic. As technology advanced, and as a self-taught electronics engineer, he designed complex control systems using CMOS logic, and alternator AVRs using semiconductor analogue technology. In his early thirties Rod was appointed to the position of Engineering Director. In 1992, at 52 years of age he joined Deep Sea Electronics as their Engineering Manager. DSE were quite small at that time using through-hole technology, but through improved product design and the introduction of SMT production they grew very rapidly over the eight years before Rod retired in year 2000 at 60 years of age. DSE are now the leading supplier of microprocessor based controllers to generating set manufacturing companies worldwide. In retirement Rod spends most of his spare time with projects involving mechanics, electronics, and software using Raspberry Pi and Arduino microcontrollers. He continues to be a keen gardener as he has been from an early age, has a keen interest in all aspects of science and engineering, and is leader of the York U3A Science & Engineering World group. The Missing Bit: Recovering data from magnetic discs — Magnetic discs were - from the 1970s - how computer data was stored. A technical deep-dive into how these relics can be read using modern equipment, by digital an analogue means, and how to handle the problems which creep in. * By training Phil Pemberton is a software engineer, electronics hobbyist and ham radio operator from Leeds. In his spare time he plays with old computers, reverse-engineers old radio equipment, and tries valiantly to fix his house without destroying it in the process. Phil is an active member of the Stardot retrocomputing community and can often be seen recovering strange and unusual data from magnetic discs. — The story of Älgen guitar: how to mix traditional hand-craft woodwork with cutting edge digital fabrication Michael spent the last year designing and building a novel guitar that tries to bring in the best of both traditional luthiery and cutting edge digital fabrication techniques like 3D-printing (not just plastic, but also metal and carbon fibre), and generative design. The result is Älgen, a light-weight, visually distinct, uniquely engineered instrument. This talk will focus on the design behind the guitar, looking at what you can do with generative design and 3D-printing, how to interface the old and new construction techniques (e.g., mating a walnut body with 3D printed nylon sides), and how to decide what bits to do with which technique. * By training Michael Dales is a Software Engineer with experience in numerous Cambridge startups and more established companies, and currently works at the University of Cambridge, helping ecologists build tools and methodologies for assessing the impact of climate change on biodiversity of plants and animals. By passion Michael builds custom guitars and guitar related things: whilst he has a love for the craft that goes into hand-build instruments, he also has an equal love for new manufacturing techniques such as generative-design and 3D-printing in metal, and has branched out into building instruments that sit at the intersection of those two worlds. — MicroPython for Hardware Hackers Nowadays it should only be necessary to use assembly language for the most demanding and time-critical applications. MicroPython is a port of Python to microcontroller hardware. This talk, followed by workshop on the second day of OSHCamp, explains how the Python programmer interacts with various typical pieces of hardware, and gives you the opportunity to get some hands-on experience. * Steve Holden has worked with computers since 1967 and started using Python at version 1.4 in 1995. He has since written about Python, created instructor-led training, delivered it to an international audience, and built 40 hours of video training for “reluctant Python users.” An Emeritus Fellow of the Python Software Foundation, Steve served as a director of the Foundation for eight years and as its chairman for three; he created PyCon, the Python community's international conference series and was presented with the Frank Willison Award for services to the Python community. He lives in Hastings, England and works as Technical Architect for the UK Department for International Trade, where he is responsible for the systems that maintain and regulate the trading environment. — Why not build an oscilloscope? How hard can it be? Tom will discuss the trials and tribulations in building a mid-performance digital oscilloscope (1 gigasample per second 8-bit ADC, 100MHz bandwidth, 4 channels) using a Xilinx Zynq FPGA, a Raspberry Pi, and a few leaked datasheets. In the talk, he will discuss what he learned about oscilloscope architecture, FPGA's and the Raspberry Pi's camera interface, what he'd do differently, and why he did it (because, well, how hard can it be?) There may be a demonstration. The project is open source and available on GitHub. * Tom Oldbury is an electronics, FPGA and software engineer now living and working in Cambridgeshire, currently working for a company designing and manufacturing thermal imaging systems. He studied Electronics Engineering at the University of Leeds, but has been playing with electronics and software from a young age. — Reinventing the Single 8 home movie format When home movies on 8mm film were king, there was a format war between Kodak's Super 8 and Fuji's SIngle 8. Just like Sony's Betamax in the home video wars, Fuji's technically superior contender lost the battle, and the final Single 8 cartridges were manufactured in about2010. The physical dimensions of the film are the same though, so here in 2023 it should be possible to load a SIngle 8 camera with film from a Super 8 cartridge. This is the story of the revival and reinvention of a lost film format through OpenSCAD and 3D printing, done mostly without an original cartridge to copy. * Jenny List is an electronic engineer and technical journalist, writing mostly as a contributing editor for hackaday.com. — Open Hardware in Bio Labs and Clinical Diagnostics Technology — even when developed for consumer use — has great potential in healthcare and clinical applications, and open source hardware can speed development. We enthusiastically use open source hardware in our biomedical technology research group, for example to shrink critical diagnostic microbiology tests and transport them out of the lab closer to patients. We will present our experience developing a simple to build open source robotic microfluidic blood test platform built around Raspberry Pi imaging. However, although clinical diagnostic testing used to rely entirely on fully open and totally transparent methods, a strong recent trend has replaced these with closed proprietary products. In this "double act" Ruya will describe the benefits of open source technology for a biomedical engineering PhD student, then Al will raise some bigger questions and discussion points about trends in science and technology, such as: Are we losing the ability to make medical decisions based on fully understood and publicly shared testing methods? Could open source hardware avoid this problem? Is it possible to return to open access and transparency in clinical diagnostics? * Al Edwards is Associate Professor in Biomedical Technology, and has been exploring ways to improve diagnosis of a range of clinically important health problems, from heart attack to bacterial infection, for nearly 15 years. One major aim is to simplify complex laboratory instrumentation using the latest components, such as smartphone cameras. Wherever possible our laboratory uses open source hardware, although we also work towards commercialisation to ensure our developments can become useful products. * Ruya Meltem Sariyer is currently finishing her PhD using miniaturised blood tests towards improved epidemiology of cardiovascular disease. Arriving in the UK in the depths of covid-19 lab closure, she was able to start building an open source imaging system in her room using a Raspberry Pi zero. Alongside her doctoral laboratory research into blood tests to measure variation in cardiovascular function, she has explored the use of open source hardware as an alternative to expensive lab instruments. — The Fuller Stack Engineer The abstractions on which we build software go so much further than what the software industry normally considers a "Full Stack Engineer". This term really just covers the tip of the iceberg. Going lower, into the realm of circuit boards, micro-controllers, and even silicon, is easier than ever. It no longer means working with nasty chemicals, proprietary software, expensive development boards, low level programming languages or processes that are only available to businesses willing to shell out extremely large sums of currency units. I'll explore some of the open software, libraries, tools, that are now available, as well as hardware, services, and educational resources that make it possible, and comparatively easy, to explore the entire tech stack: From GUIs all the way down to doped silicon. Join me on my quest to become a Fuller Stack Engineer, it has never been easier. * Christian Jacobsen is a “fuller stack" engineer. When he isn't procrastinating on writing an ODBC to REST bridge for KiCad, he writes largeish Python backends and tinkers with hardware design. He is an active open-source contributor and in a previous life he ran occam code on a lot of small computers. — Breaking proprietary smart home lock-in: untangling OpenThread and does it Matter? Will the promising Thread and Matter standards and their open source implementations free us from proprietary smart home solutions, and what advantages does it offer for security, privacy and reliability? * Andrew Robinson. Bio to follow. — The Open Source Keyboard Matrix - A dive down into the Open Source keyboard rabbit hole A fun journey into the world of Open Source keyboards. Most folks accept the keyboard that comes with a PC without even thinking about it, however many of us want to build or hack our own personal keyboard designs. This leads to a wide diversity of interesting bespoke keyboards. We will take a journey through this diversity and explain common requirements and features available to hack your very own personalised keyboard. We will look at the OpenSource hardware and the software that enable the concoction of virtually any keyboard design. You will get to dive into the keyboard rabbit hole and see just how deep it goes. * 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 for embedded automation using FPGA and µC. He is a long term advocate of open source communities, a moderator (aka Folknology) for xCORE, the co-founder of myStorm open hardware FPGA community, as well as a co-founder of Surrey and Hampshire Makerspace. — LibreCores CI - why did it fail? And did it? In 2016 the FOSSi Foundation presented the LibreCores project — an attempt to build an all-in-one hub for open digital hardware developers. To some extent it was an open source rebuild of OpenCores with many added value solutions like LibreCores CI which was presented in 2017 at Hebden Bridge. In 2022 the whole LibreCores infrastructure was shut down, although many bits remain available to end users in GitHub repositories. This talk is a retrospective on the project of building a reusable CI solution for open hardware projects. Let's talk about what worked there and what didn't, and what could be done better to sustain an open hardware and open EDA project. Please talk would be useful to contributors and especially maintainers who want to ensure a long-term sustainability of their projects and attract more contributors. * Oleg Nenashev is a serial community builder currently working on WireMock and WireMock Cloud ecosystems. He's passionate open source software and open hardware advocate. Oleg is a core maintainer and board member in the Jenkins project where he writes code, mentors contributors and organizes community events. He is a TOC member in the Continuous Delivery Foundation, and also a CDF and CNCF ambassador. Oleg has a PhD degree in electronics design and volunteers in the Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation. /\/ Compered by: /\/ Kevin Murrell is is a trustee of The National Museum of Computing with a particular interest in computer technology from the 1950s and 1960s. Kevin recently completed a rebuild of the Wireless World Computer which was published in 1967. During working hours, Kevin is technical director of a UK software house providing systems for the UK, Canada and Ireland. Kevin is the proud owner of a Myford Super 7 - which occupies his spare time! *** Sunday :: Workshops *** — Solder Paste and Stencil Workshop - Build your own WiFi Device! This hands-on workshop demonstrates the usage of solder paste and stencils with SMD devices in a hobbyist home-lab capacity. Participants will be provided with a kit of electronic parts to assemble a small WiFi device with a few functions, details of which and code examples to be published closer to the event. Some familiarity tinkering with electronic devices would be beneficial, but is not required. Participants should bring: - USB battery pack and USB-C cable. - A laptop if you would like to customise the firmware. * Run by: Omer Kilic. — MicroPython for Hardware Hackers This workshop follows on from the talk on Saturday and gives you the opportunity to get some hands-on experience. Participants should bring: - A laptop. * Run by: Steve Holden. — Build your first Open Source keyboard to take away and customise This workshop follows on from the talk on Saturday and participants will get to build their own keyboard. * Run by: Alan Wood. — Writing Python Games on a Quirky Pico Device Having high level languages available on cheap microcontrollers massively lower the bar to creating interesting software on small devices. Take the Roto, a small handheld with a screen, a Raspberry Pi Pico, and a quirky input setup and write some Python to implement a drawing program, a game, or whatever else takes your fancy, all in a couple of hundred lines of code. And the worst that can happen? You'll get a helpful stacktrace on a tiny screen. The hardware is available to take home at the cost price. Participants should bring: - A laptop with the mu code editor installed. * Run by: Christian Jacobsen. NOTE: - There are separate tickets for 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. -- Andrew Back http://abopen.com

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List migrated to Mailman 3.
by Andrew Back 18 May '23

18 May '23

Hi All, Just to let you know that the mailing list has been migrated to Mailman 3, which means that the subscription management URL for this has changed to: https://lists.oshug.org/postorius/lists/oshug.oshug.org/ And unfortunately the archives link has also changed: https://lists.oshug.org/hyperkitty/list/oshug@oshug.org/ The list address of course remains the same. I haven't fully explored this new major release yet, but the archives at least seem to be a bit more advanced and the UI feels less ancient (can't decide if this is a good thing). Should you spot any issues don't hesitate to drop me a line. Cheers, Andrew PS. The OSHCamp 2023 programme should be finalised in the next week or so and registration opened up. It's shaping up to be an excellent event and I'm looking forward to it after a 3 year absence! -- Andrew Back http://abopen.com

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OSHCamp 2023 (26th & 27th August) Call for Talks & Workshops.
by Andrew Back 05 Apr '23

05 Apr '23

Hello, After a three year absence Open Source Hardware Camp will be making a return and hosted at Hebden Bridge Town Hall, over the weekend of Saturday 26th & Sunday 27th August. OSHCamp will once again be running as part of the Wuthering Bytes festival, with the launch "Festival Day" being held on Friday 25th August. Further details will be added to the Wuthering Bytes website in due course and you can sign up to the mailing list in order to receive updates direct to your inbox. https://wutheringbytes.com/about Details of the OSHCamp call for talks and workshops can be found below. Hope to see you in August! Regards, Andrew // -+- Open Source Hardware Camp 2023 -+- This year Open Source Hardware Camp will take place over the weekend of Saturday 26th & Sunday 27th August at Hebden Bridge Town Hall, St George's St, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7 7BY. Proposals for talks and workshops for OSHCamp 2023 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 If you would like to give a talk on the Saturday and/or run a workshop on the Sunday, please submit details via the form at: https://forms.gle/xkkuX476rtQNzTpJA Any questions can either be directed to the list or sent to andrew at abopen.com. **** Note that the deadline for submitting titles and abstracts is Sunday 30th April at 17:00. If you would like to discuss ideas etc. please get in touch sooner, rather than later. **** A social is planned for the Saturday evening and details of accommodation nearby to the venue will be provided in due course. -- Andrew Back http://abopen.com

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RISC-V London Meetup Monday 15 Jan 2023
by Jeremy Bennett 15 Jan '23

15 Jan '23

Hi OSHUG members, A last reminder that the first RISC-V London group meetup of 2023 is being held tomorrow, Monday 15 January, at BCS London offices and online for those who cannot attend in person. Like all RISC-V London meetups, the focus is on the open source aspects of RISC-V. Details of the talks and registration: https://ossg.bcs.org/blog/event/london-open-source-meetup-for-risc-v-q1-202… We have one research talk and one tutorial. A team of Masters students from the University of Southampton will present their work attempting to create the world's smallest RISC-V AI processor. This talk is particularly interesting, because the project did not go as planned. As well as presenting the technology, the group will look at the difficulties of project managing a short project developing advanced technology. Nandni Jamnadi, project lead for the Open Hardware Group's GNU tool chain development will give a tutorial on how to add a builtin (intrinsic) function to GCC. This is based on her work with the CV32E40P, a 32-bit RISC-V processor with 8 ISA extensions, comprising well over 200 additional instructions. I look forward to seeing you in person or online. Jeremy Bennett Open Source Specialist Group events team -- Cell: +44 (7970) 676050 SkypeID: jeremybennett Twitter: @bcsossg Email: jeremy.bennett(a)embecosm.com Web: ossg.bcs.org PGP key: 1024D/BEF58172FB4754E1 2009-03-20 -- Cell: +44 7970 676050 (UK), +49 172 683 5745 (Germany) SkypeID: jeremybennett Twitter: @jeremypbennett Email: jeremy.bennett(a)embecosm.com Web: www.embecosm.com PGP key: 1024D/BEF58172FB4754E1 2009-03-20

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OSHCamp 2023, 26-27th August (save the date).
by Andrew Back 15 Jan '23

15 Jan '23

Hello, This is just a save-the-date for OSHCamp, which will return on the weekend of Sat 26th and Sun 27th August. A CFP with more info should go out around the end of the month. In the meantime I'll be migrating the lists to a new server. The list e-mail addresses should remain the same, but the subscription management and archive URLs will change. Cheers, Andrew -- Andrew Back http://abopen.com

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Lead the BCS Open Source Group
by Andy Bennett 12 Oct '22

12 Oct '22

Hi Oshugs! I hope everyone is well. OSHUG and the BCS Open Source Group have been holding joint meetings for some years now and it's nearly time for their AGM again. In fact, it's next Thursday (20th!). and we will be holding elections for all the positions In particular, our current chair has moved away from the UK and therefore we're looking for someone who might lead the group over the next year. The responsibilites are not onerous because there are others who take on a lot of the work of organising meetings. However, the candidate must be an active member of the BCS. If anyone is interested in standing for this position, please let me know and we can put you on the nominations list of next Thurday. If you're currently an active member of the BCS, please seriously consider applying! Best wishes, @ndy -- andyjpb(a)ashurst.eu.org http://www.ashurst.eu.org/ 0x7EBA75FF

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An evening on the theme of POWER & PowerPC
by Sevan Janiyan 01 Jul '21

01 Jul '21

Hi folks, This months virtual BCS OSSG meeting is on the theme of POWER ISA from IBM & PowerPC with talks about the PowerPC laptop project and OpenPOWER from IBM. As usual, you can serve your own tea and biscuits from 6pm :) and join the event (url below), with the talks starting at 6:30. The meeting is going to be hosted at https://meet.gwdg.de/b/jul-u4v-l81-jna (there is no registration involved) Prepare yourself for the Open Hardware GNU/Linux PowerPC Laptop https://www.powerpc-notebook.org/en/ We expect before the end of 2021 to see the life of the first three prototypes of Open Hardware GNU/Linux PowerPC Laptop. The project started in late 2014, After a brief summary of the previous episodes, we try to describe the scenarios of the immediate future of the project and how each person can be driven by a certain passion for both progress for all and how the sharing of knowledge can be a protagonist in this project. Roberto Innocenti is one of the founders of the project Open Hardware PowerPC Notebook and an ambassador of the project. President of the association Power Progress Community which deals with the promotion and dissemination of free software and open hardware. Ambassador and responsible in the last humanist forums of the area “Technology for improving the living conditions of mankind”. Roberto is a software architect with Open Source tools, by profession. OpenPOWER Overview and latest key collaborations with OpenPOWER Academia Ganesan Narayanasamy is an OpenPOWER/POWER leader for Academia and research at the IBM Lab. Ganesan is best known for his contributions to High Performance Computing as senior leader for nearly 1.5 decades. He is also leading the WW Academia work group for OpenPOWER and putting together OpenPOWER ECO System development activities like setting up OpenPOWER and AI center of excellence, OpenPOWER labs, Curriculum development etc. Ganesan is always passionate about working with Universities and research Institutes and provide all kinds of technical mentoring Concept to Silicon Tape out using OpenPOWER Cores Arjun Nag has been leading Design Verification field of VLSI for more than a decade with hands on experience in System Verilog , Verilog and VHDL. He has been mentoring many researchers in SoC , RTL related areas. See you there, Sevan

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Hardware/Software Co-design: The Coming Golden Age
by Sevan Janiyan 27 May '21

27 May '21

This video landed today on twitter, Bryan Cantrill giving a talk about hardware/software co-design (with somewhat of an open stack) + some history thrown in. It compliments their new computer company website which they announced yesterday https://oxide.computer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY07zWzhyn4 Sevan

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spare dev boards
by Ilya Dmitrichenko 16 Mar '21

16 Mar '21

Hi Folks, I've got some boards that I don't have much use for since a few years now, and my field of work has shifted away from hardware. Having had these in my drawer for a few years, I doubt I'll get back to these in my spare time, and would like someone to have these, ideally someone who wouldn't be able to afford buying these brand new. I have compiled a list of all what I've got, please have a look here and feel free to reply directly or share: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IyXKDG44M33ye8oGhTphg-HlSJKEezbZBOpKFL8… Ilya

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