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OSHG Camp Talk Slides
by Alan Barnard 03 Sep '26

03 Sep '26

My talk had to be cut short before the afternoon coffee break and I was asked if I had a website. Short answer: Yes Long answer: I have never used it (what use is a website where you cannot edit the HTML?) Even longer answer: I have now put my slides up but, as they make little sense without the notes, I have added them to the slides. https://theopenschoolsphysicsproject.wordpress.com/2026/09/01/oshg-camp-202… Alan Barnard The Open School Physics Project

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Schedule for oshcamp2026
by Rohit Gupta 28 Aug '26

28 Aug '26

Hello all, Hope all goes well. I am wondering if there is an official schedule for the camp tomorrow. I have been searching for it on the page, but there seems to be none. I come from Madrid, Spain. Currently, I am with friends in York. When will the event end tomorrow? This information will help me see if I need to book accommodation in Hebden or I can go back to York. Thanks a lot, Cheers, Rohit

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Pre-OSHCamp drinks, Fri 28th.
by Andrew Back 28 Aug '26

28 Aug '26

Hello, Should anyone be in town and at a loose end tomorrow evening, a group of us are planning to head to The White Lion in Heptonstall for around 7PM. Not to be confused with The White Lion pub in Hebden Bridge! There is a 596 bus from Hebden Bridge every half hour and it's a reasonably short journey — but as anyone who has walked up from town will attest, a rather vertical one. Hence the bus is highly recommended. https://bustimes.org/services/596-hebden-bridge-blackshaw-head?date=2026-08… (traveling towards Blackshaw Head) The White Lion is not currently serving food, but The Cross — the first pub as you enter the village — do pretty good Thai food. Cheers, Andrew -- Andrew Back https://abopen.com

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OSHCamp 2026 registration closing!
by Andrew Back 25 Aug '26

25 Aug '26

Hello, Just a final call in case there is anyone who plans to attend and has not registered yet. Registration is set to close at 09:00 tomorrow morning so that we can confirm numbers with the caterers. https://oshug.org/event/oshcamp2026 Best, Andrew -- Andrew Back https://abopen.com

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12th talk added to OSHCamp 2026 programme.
by Andrew Back 04 Aug '26

04 Aug '26

Hello, I'm pleased to announce that a twelfth talk has been added to the programme for OSHCamp 2026: — Raftabar, ChatGPT, and me - The next generation. Rod Moody. What started out as little more than asking ChatGPT a question, turned into an extensive dialogue, and a wonderful working partnership with ideas, tests and experiments being bounced back and forth for several days between Rod and ChatGPT. Rod will talk about this journey, and the milestones along the way that resulted in the development of a cutting-edge Raspberry Pi, AI Vision Engine that will be integrated into Raftabar, and available as a comprehensive manual, for anyone wanting to build such a system. For details of the complete programme, please see: https://oshug.org/event/oshcamp2026 It would be great if those who plan to head along but haven't registered yet, could do so at some point over the next couple of weeks so that we can make all the catering etc. arrangements. Cheers, Andrew -- Andrew Back https://abopen.com

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Open Source Hardware Camp 2026 — Sat 29th & Sun 30th August, Hebden Bridge.
by Andrew Back 21 Jul '26

21 Jul '26

Hello, I'm pleased to announce that we have a total of 11 talks and 3 workshops confirmed for Open Source Hardware Camp 2026! As in previous years, there will be a social event on the Saturday evening. The Wuthering Bytes festival is not running this year, but will hopefully make a return in 2027. Cheers, Andrew // Open Source Hardware Camp 2026 On the 29th August 2026, 09:00 Saturday morning - 16:00 on the Sunday afternoon at The Birchcliffe Centre, Birchcliffe Road, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7 8DG, UK. Registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/open-source-hardware-camp-2026-tickets-19922… Open Source Hardware Camp 2026 will take place in the Pennine town of Hebden Bridge, which is approximately 1 hour by rail from Leeds and Manchester. Budget accommodation is available at the Hebden Bridge IOU 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. Any questions should be directed to the Discussion List. Open Source Hardware Camp 2026 is dedicated to the memory of Ken Boak (1966-2026), a founding member of the group, a prolific contributor and a good friend to many. *** Saturday :: Talks *** — Technical Cartoons for Fun (and Profit?) What happens if you combine a traditional text book, a bunch of hand drawn diagrams, and a cartoon robot? Electro-Magnetic Compatibility (EMC) has a reputation as one of the more mysterious electronics subjects. This project is an attempt to make learning about this subject more intuitive and fun through the power of cartoons. In this talk, James will touch on the subject of Electro-Static Discharges (ESD), inspirations behind this project, different learning styles, the self-publishing process, and lessons learned along the way. * James Pawson is an electronics engineer, trainer, practitioner of the dark arts (EMC), and now author. — Clean-room reverse engineering the ATTiny 1-series On Chip Debugging peripheral The 1-series is a range of ATtiny microcontrollers released by Microchip in 2016. They contain an avrxmega3 CPU and a UPDI interface for programming and debugging. The vendor datasheet for the part documents the UPDI protocol and provides information to use the the Chip Erase, NVM programming and User Row Programming functionality. The information provided also allows the interactive reading and writing of the entire CPU Data Space, which allows host-side interaction with main memory and the on chip peripherals. As a result, these features are all well supported in open source tools. Finally, the UPDI chapter of the datasheet promises a range of debugging features including hardware breakpoints, run-time readout of program counter, stack pointer and CPI status registers for code-profiling and program flow control (go, stop, reset, step into). However it is silent on the details required to make use of them. In this talk Andy will explain the how he reverse engineered the On Chip Debugger to write a datasheet that has been used to implement a GDB Server for these devices. * Andy Bennett is a highly skilled technologist, business leader, entrepreneur and problem solver with almost 20 years experience working in technology. He has worked in a wide variety of industries including government, finance, higher education and consumer electronics. He has a passion for new technologies and has often been at the forefront of pioneering research, development and new product launches, offering both strategic oversight and hands-on development. — A tale of two tiles: custom chips at home Open source silicon provides ordinary people with an opportunity to manufacture real chips! Hundreds of people have made their own designs, but what does the journey look like? This talk will cover the who, what, how and why of the process, with a look at two of Kristaps’ own submissions and a light dive into tools that make it possible. * Kristaps Jurkans is a recent graduate of the University of Lincoln, an open source hardware and software enthusiast, and a big fan of disassembling anything just to learn more about it. — What does the future hold for an electronics engineer in the age of AI? Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the last few years, you will have noticed that the world is changing at an unprecedented pace. The rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) is impacting all areas of knowledge work, doubly so for technology related roles. So, what does the future hold for an engineer as we move into this new era? In this talk we will take a look at some exploratory work Alan has been performing over the last year or so to see what's possible with LLMs in the open source hardware space, and what this might mean for the future of open engineering in general. We will look at some of the tools that are already available, and some of the exciting possibilities that are on the horizon. We will also discuss some of the challenges that we will need to overcome in order to fully realize the quality, educational and productivity benefits emerging in OSHW. So, if you are an electronics engineer, a hobbyist or just interested in the future of open source hardware, this talk is for you! * Alan Wood has been working with embedded electronics and FPGAs for many years. His recent work includes smart grids, 3D printers, robotics, automation biotec diagnostics, flow computation, measurement and multi protocol integration. His current research is focused on multilayer concurrency, mixed language models for complex systems, linux and Rust based embedded development, realtime testing, capture and analysis. He is a long term advocate of open source communities, previously 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. — RISC-V — the road to ubiquity Systems based on the open source RISC-V instruction set architecture are becoming more available and popular in both MCUs and SOCs. The MCU ecosystem is already well developed, but SOCs have greater dependencies, and software stacks that have only recently been marked as production ready. As always happens with new stuff, the hardware people are waiting for broader software support, and the software people are waiting for a larger hardware installed base. This talk will examine the forces that are driving RISC-V forward, and what still needs to happen for RISC-V SOCs to go mainstream. * Chris Swan is a long term member of the OSHUG community, and past speaker on security, homebrew projects and the Open Compute Project. In his Engineer role at Atsign he’s been involved in bringing RISC-V support for the Dart programming language into Docker official images. That’s given him a front row seat to how hardware and software have been developing over the past few years. Chris contributes to the broader community as a Google Developer Expert (GDE), InfoQ editor and co-host for the Tech Debt Burndown Podcast. — Emulating the great machines of the past! There are now many excellent software emulations of early systems such as the PDP-8 and PDP-11 and as such they work well and support the various operating systems and applications. However, the excitement of operating the functioning front panel cannot be beaten! The range of DEC machines now available as functioning replicas will be shown and the techniques used to emulate both the software and hardware will be discussed. * Kevin Murrell is a retired software industry entrepreneur. He co-founded The National Museum of Computing with Tony Sale in 2005. He is the author of several books on the history of British computing and is an authority early home computing. He is a committee member of the Computer Conservation Society and serves as editor of its journal, Resurrection. — This is Not a Chip Butty, but bare silicon needs COB and a PCB, Dave Getting custom, open-source silicon back from the foundry is amazing, but a piece of silicon won't do much without connectivity. This talk offers a look into the practicalities of getting bare, open-source die connected to the PCB using Chip-on-Board (COB) wire bonding. While COB is a standard industry process, most factories expect automated, high-volume runs. When you turn up with an artisanal batch of assorted chips, things can get somewhat experimental. We will dive into how multiple Open Source ASIC project die were bonded to boards, the physical realities of the assembly process, and the fun to be had along the way. * Stuart Childs has spent the last decade working directly with factories in China, acting as the glue between the clever people and the manufacturing hubs that can make the things. Before diving into industrial production, Stuart was a member of the UK Maker Belt and wider UK Maker scene, increasingly bringing colour, silliness, and fun to the workplace. As a member of Tiny Tapeout and a long-term Wuthering Bytes attendee, he combines a passion for open-source hardware with the joy of working with others on unusual projects. — A Multi-Function Instrument for School Physics Experiments An overview of school physics apparatus shows that much can be traced back to the work of the Nuffield Science Teaching Project in the 1960’s. Modern equivalents, having no other commercial use, are expensive. Off-the-Shelf commercial instruments are a poor match to educational requirements. Solutions using general purpose computers raise many IT support problems in a school environment. The multi-function instrument can replace several separate instruments. The emphasis is on suitability for the school environment: robust, simple to use, and lacking extra features that serve little pedagogical purpose. The objective is to produce an open hardware and software design that can be easily reproduced by others or form the basis for alternative variations. * Alan Bernard. After an apprenticeship with Thorn Electrical Industries leading to a degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Bradford University Alan joined a small company where he designed nucleonic equipment, electronic organs, and apparatus for the Nuffield Physics Project. After running his own business manufacturing instrumentation for the wire-drawing industry he joined ITT developing liquid crystal displays. This led to him designing Public Information Displays for airports, bus and train stations, and on-board trains. Finally, he worked as a physics technician at Bradford Grammar School; a position he held for 12 years before retiring at age 72. — Powering Your Home With Your Car How to utilise your very own Big Battery for '1/10th' the price of a "Home Power Wall". (The car comes for free!) This adventure takes low cost overnight “off-peak” electricity, and the occasionally available zero cost excess grid electricity. By utilising the woefully underutilised battery in my EV, it is possible to then power a home each day with those low cost electrons to avoid the much more expensive non-off-peak electrons. Except… There are no UK agreed standards for doing that yet. Here is a personal all-Open-Source story for economically connecting a home to a Big Battery on wheels. * Martin Lomas has followed the world of computers since the beginnings of the home computer revolution in the UK. He gained degrees in Computer Engineering and subsequently Computer Systems Design. At Fujitsu he worked on, at the time, the world’s largest Application Specific Integrated Circuit ICs. He moved back to academia to develop cutting edge Scanning Probe Microscopes for biophysical investigations at the dept of Pharmaceutical Sciences, The University of Nottingham, gaining his PhD. Martin then supported a multinational pharma research company for all their open source server and computing needs, becoming their IT Director. Since then, he works for himself. More recently, he is considering his next career adventure! Especially, he enjoys making new things and making them work well! He also enjoys hiking, beer, wine, cheese, and the world of Linux. His interests span across technology and science, and computing and the ongoing old/new phenomenon now Marketed as “AI”. — FreeCAD Improvements and Exciting Uses FreeCAD the open source CAD package for mechanical engineering and more has had heaps of development in the last few years. Whilst we aren't quite at the "replace Catia or Solidworks in all sectors" tipping point yet we have lots more users, a better (but by no means perfect) user experience and we are beginning to see FreeCAD getting used in all manner of cutting edge use cases. In this talk Jo will quickly run through some of the developments and explore why it might be worth people who previously didn't enjoy FreeCAD to take another look. We'll blast by some high end applications of FreeCAD such as computational fluid dynamics, multi body dynamics and FEA and also squint at some interesting projects undertaken by organisations you might not at first glance think would use FreeCAD! I'll throw in some fun aspects of the community development and talk about FreeCAD's upcoming (but hopefully delivered by the time this talk takes place) first round of their global open source hardware design competition! * Jo Hinchliffe is a freelance technical writer and community developer working across a variety of technical sectors with a passion for open source. Jo is the author of FreeCAD for Makers, a well received book from the Raspberry Pi Press covering beginner and intermediate level usage of FreeCAD. Also on the Raspberry Pi Press Jo has authored “Design an RP2040 Board with KiCad” which not only covers the basics of designing a PCB for fabrication, it goes on to cover automated assembly services, virtual warehousing and more. In article form Jo has written for many platforms, these include multiple STEM/STEAM articles for the American magazine Kids Code and Computer Science, these articles range from tutorials on micro controller projects, to fun maths activities and articles highlighting historic STEM figures. For the Raspberry Pi Press magazines Jo has written dozens of articles and features. Often his own projects, these have included a wide variety of subjects, wooden boat building, an opensource carbon fibre filament winding machine, watch making, cable lacing in space, and much more. A somewhat complete list of articles can be found here. Toms Hardware, Jo has written numerous articles for Toms Hardware including a series on basic use of the Linux terminal. Finally when Jo isn’t writing for his paid clients he can currently be found writing, designing and publishing a free and open source magazine of his own called SOURCE. — Open Wetware: How a bioart project inspired a biopunk future This talk will summarise the current trend in biodesign/art to open source 'recipes', through the lens of a recent art project Phycologica, which attempted rather foolishly to reimagine a LCD screen made out of algae. While I wouldn't recommend anyone else reproducing our design- it would just lead to more ewaste- I believe there was still great value in the process of doing this project and in sparking imagination. This was never intended to be rebuilt in its current form. Through preparing this talk I would like to explore, while documenting the important bits of project- the recipes, the care guide, the ethics, what is the value of documenting a project like this? I am also interested in exploring the documentation itself as an artwork- beyond the original piece. We won't reach a more technologically sustainable (solarpunk) future without community collaboration and sharing- the exact ethos of open source hardware. Therefore I propose that the goal of documenting this project will be to collate a library of alternative, bio appropriate technologies that are more aligned to a sustainable society that we want to see in the future. Jon Somerscales is an Experience Designer & Interaction Prototyper researching novel interactions and regenerative design that could highlight better outcomes for us and the planet through a critical making practice. His interactive design work spans digital software, services and installations. Studio Blue Green's Phycologica artwork is a collaboration between Jon Somerscales and Andrew Stone. Studio Blue Green aims to Amplify and recenter living systems through experience design and creative technology, creating impactful, planet-first interventions, encouraging environmental stewardship and ecological consciousness. // Compered by: Kevin Murrell // Swap Table Due to popular demand there will once again be a swap table at Open Source Hardware Camp, where delegates can bring along surplus components, dev kits and (smaller!) unfinished projects to give away and swap with others. Please note that larger items such as VDUs and printers must not be brought along and any unwanted items must be removed at the end of the day! ITEMS ARE PROVIDED “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE ORGANISERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF ITEMS RECEIVED, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. *** Sunday :: Workshops *** — Practising the use of LLMs with open source electronics projects This workshop will explore some hands-on use of some of the emerging tools, LLMs and strategies for using them in the engineering space. We will play with some of what is already available, and explore exciting possibilities on the horizon. We will also discuss common challenges that we need to overcome including pitfalls, risks and limitations. So, if you are practicing hardware/firmware engineer, or hobbyist this workshop gives you an opportunity to tinker with the OSHW future. Participants should bring: - A laptop. Hosted by: Alan Wood. — 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 expect to be demonstrating the following running replicas: - Wireless World Computer - Raspberry Pi based PDP-1, PDP-8, PDP-11 and the PDP-10 - FPGA-based LGP-30 - FPGA-based PDP-8 - IMSAI 8080 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! Participants should bring: - A laptop. Hosted by: Kevin Murrell. — The Project Salon The project salon is part show and tell and part project clinic, which will provide an opportunity to discuss projects and share skills and experience with fellow OSHCamp delegates. For example, this might be showing off your latest creation, sharing details of a neat hack, or seeking advice on a particularly tricky problem which has brought your project to a standstill. Rod Moody will be bringing along Raftabar — the autonomous robot which made its debut at OSHCamp 2024 — and sharing details of numerous upgrades made over the past few years. Short presentations are welcome and if using slides these should be in PDF or OpenDocument Presentation format. Participants should optionally bring: - A project. Exercise common sense! E.g. nothing large or dangerous etc. - Slides (PDF or OpenDocument Presentation format). Hosted by: * Andy Bennett. * 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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Help with OSHCamp 2026 publicity.
by Andrew Back 02 Jul '26

02 Jul '26

Hi All, I was a bit late in finalising the programme for this year's Open Source Hardware Camp and opening up registration. Hence any help folks could offer in spreading the word would be very much appreciated! Feel free to reuse the text from the announcement email I sent a couple of weeks ago, and of course details can also be found at: https://oshug.org/event/oshcamp2026 Cheers, Andrew -- Andrew Back https://abopen.com

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Open Source Hardware Camp 2026 CFP — Sat 29/08 & Sun 30/08, Hebden Bridge..
by Andrew Back 17 Apr '26

17 Apr '26

Hello, Please find details below of the call for participation for Open Source Hardware Camp 2026, which will mark 15 years since the very first OSHCamp was held at C4CC in London. 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 IOU Hostel, which adjoins the venue, and there are plenty of B&Bs, plus a number of small hotels in the area. Any questions don't hesitate to get in touch! Cheers, Andrew // -+- Open Source Hardware Camp 2026 -+- This year Open Source Hardware Camp will take place over the weekend of Saturday 29th & Sunday 30th August, at The Birchcliffe Centre, Birchcliffe Road, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7 8DG. Proposals for talks and workshops for OSHCamp 2026 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/CgJFtjpMUmsMpvQa8 Any questions can be sent to andrew at abopen.com. ~~ A social event is planned for the Saturday evening ~~ **** Note that the deadline for submitting titles and abstracts is Thursday 30th April at 17:00. If you would like to discuss ideas etc. please get in touch sooner, rather than later. **** -- Andrew Back https://abopen.com

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Sniffing PCIe on a budget
by Sevan Janiyan 08 Apr '26

08 Apr '26

Hiya, This video showed up in my bubble. Someone setup hooking up a PCIe bus over fibre optic cable, and then with that working used a splitter cable to pass a copy of the traffic to another device which sniffs & dumps the traffic to disk for analysis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaDa9bBucEI Sevan

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The Queen's Head - 24/02/2026
by Sevan Janiyan 24 Feb '26

24 Feb '26

Hi, Should we meet up for old times sake as a one off, given the recent news about Ken? I was thinking The Queen's Head on the 24th of February (Tuesday), 6:30 onwards. 66 Acton Street London WC1X 9NB https://www.queensheadlondon.com Sincerely, Sevan

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Re: The Queen's Head - 24/02/2026
by Sevan Janiyan 05 Feb '26

05 Feb '26

Hi Lawrence, On 05/02/2026 17:41, Lawrence Archard wrote: > I think that's a great idea, but it is the night of IoTLondon. I'm sure > Alex would be pleased to combine the events if you get in touch. > Currently (as usual) oversubscribed. Thanks for the heads up about the event. The Queen's Head was a pub we used to head to after OSHUG, when it was held at the Centre for Creative Collaboration, which was just on the other end of the road to the pub. Sevan

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Sad news about Ken Boak
by Sevan Janiyan 31 Jan '26

31 Jan '26

Hi, This showed up in my bubble https://retrocomputingforum.com/t/rip-ken-boak-aka-monsonite/5536 apparently Ken passed away. :( Sincerely, Sevan

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ShrimpingIt website
by Sevan Janiyan 30 Jan '26

30 Jan '26

Hi folks, Hope you're all doing ok. I randomly looked up ShrimpingIt last night and realised the site is gone and the domain is up for sale. Seems like it was active up until early September this year. Anyone know what happened to the site? Sincerely, Sevan

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Free Barcode Scanners
by Andy Bennett 06 Aug '25

06 Aug '25

Hi, I have some old PTC-960SL Barcode Scanners that I bought many years ago. You know, because we all do a barcode project at some point and I know they have been popular on the swap table before. :-) Now is the time that I need to pass them on. They're free to a good home. If you're interested in obtaining them, read on! Here's what they are: * 5x Telxon PTC-960SL handheld barcode scanners. * The Telxon brand means they predate the Symbol acquistion in 2000. * They run embedded MS-DOS and have "RamSaver" (which means you can replace the battery without a reboot). * The software includes a TCP stack, telnet, rlogin and configuration menu. * Integrated laser barcode reader. * They only read 1D barcodes. No QR codes, data matrix or anything like that. * They have some kind of 2.4GHz spread spectrum radio that the software detects as 802.11. * i.e. original Wifi - no a, b, g, n or any of that other stuff. * You'll need to write your own app to make these do anything interesting. They have telnet and rlogin clients and you can switch the trigger and laser scanner on for the appropriate fields at the appropriate times. * 6 old battery packs. * They work but if you do anything serious with them you'll probably want to strip them down and replace the cells. * A 4-bay battery charging station with PSU. * They look very cool. * They beep and have lasers. Here's some photos of what you'll get and a link to some of the docs. http://www.ashurst.eu.org/download/tmp/gal-barcode-scanners/index.html Collection only from Battersea Accessible via Nothern Line to Battersea Power Station, Southern Rail to Battersea Park, South Western Rail to Queenstown Road, and Buses 44, 137, 452, 436, 156. Free to a good home. Caveat emptor. No returns. Best wishes, @ndy -- andyjpb(a)ashurst.eu.org http://www.ashurst.eu.org/ 0x7EBA75FF

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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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