- oshug - lists.oshug.org

Printer PCBs with a modified epson printer
by Sevan / Venture37 25 Aug '12

25 Aug '12

http://diydrones.com/profiles/blogs/direct-pcb-printer Sevan

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[OT] Ohm's Law badges.
by Andrew Back 25 Aug '12

25 Aug '12

Hello, At the last OSHUG meeting a couple of folk mentioned that they'd like one of the Ohm's Law badges [1]. Well, I finally got round to getting some more made and if anyone would like one (they're not free, I'm afraid) they can contact me off-list. Cheers, Andrew [1] http://andrewback.net/works/VIR

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OSHCamp tenth talk added.
by Andrew Back 17 Aug '12

17 Aug '12

All, Pleased to announce that Edward Strickland will be giving a talk on developing a heavy lift UAV for OpenRelief and plans to bring the airframe with him. Details of his talk are now on the website at: http://oshug.org/event/oshcamp2012 I've also added a few more details on the workshops. Cheers, Andrew

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Re: [oshug] oshug Digest, Vol 29, Issue 1
by Mark.itto 10 Aug '12

10 Aug '12

is there any other option for accommodation less comfortable and/or cheaper? Regards. On Fri, Aug 10, 2012 at 1:00 PM, <oshug-request(a)oshug.org> wrote: > Send oshug mailing list submissions to > oshug(a)oshug.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > http://oshug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/oshug > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > oshug-request(a)oshug.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > oshug-owner(a)oshug.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of oshug digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. OSHCamp 2012 update. (Andrew Back) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2012 11:25:20 +0100 > From: Andrew Back <arback(a)computer.org> > To: Open Source Hardware User Group Discussion List <oshug(a)oshug.org> > Subject: [oshug] OSHCamp 2012 update. > Message-ID: > < > CADj1OPD-FcFr-aP9Noi_Gn4cEUL4w0HUtDh_jHA25EFzUY50WQ(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > Hello, > > I just wanted to let folks know that OSHCamp is now at half capacity > with 50 people registered and over a month still to go. So if you are > planning to attend it may be advisable not to leave it to the last > minute to book. > > With regards accommodation, for those that prefer the comforts of a > B&B or a hotel: > > The Angeldale is very central and quite reasonably priced: > > http://www.angeldale.co.uk/ > > The White Lion Hotel is perhaps a bit more upmarket, the food looks > great and I can vouch that the beer is well kept: > > http://www.whitelionhotel.net/ > > And groups may wish to consider booking an apartment (although you > could also book a 4 bed room at the hostel): > > http://www.croftmill.com/ > > As ever, happy to answer any questions direct or via the list. > > Cheers, > > Andrew > > PS. We have a 10th talk confirmed for the Saturday, on the OpenRelief > CTOL open source UAV airframe (which will be brought along!) > > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > oshug mailing list > oshug(a)oshug.org > http://oshug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/oshug > > > End of oshug Digest, Vol 29, Issue 1 > ************************************ >

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Open Source Hardware Camp 2012.
by Andrew Back 24 Jul '12

24 Jul '12

Hello, Registration is now live for this year's OSHCamp, details of which are pasted below. The cost for attending is £10, but this includes lunch and tea/coffee on the Saturday, and there will be an OSHCamp goody bag kindly supplied by SK Pang and Oomlout. For those that require accommodation the Hebden Bridge Hostel (http://www.hebdenbridgehostel.co.uk/) adjoins the venue and looks pretty good. Most of the dorms are 4 bed and discounts are available for group bookings, plus they also have double/twin rooms. And for those on a very tight budget a dorm bunk can be had for £12.50, although this does require that you bring a sleeping bag. Further local information will be posted here and/or to the website in due course, and there will be some sort of social event on the Saturday evening (a round about way of saying the pub!) Please post any questions to the list, or to me direct if you prefer. Cheers, Andrew // Open Source Hardware Camp 2012 On the 15th September 2012, 09:00 - 16th September 2012, 16:00 at The Birchcliffe Centre, Birchcliffe Road, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7 8DG, UK — Registration: http://oshug.org/event/oshcamp2012 Open Source Hardware Camp 2012 will take place place in the north of England in the Pennine town of Hebden Bridge. Building on the success of last year's OSHCamp, it will be a weekend long event with nine talks on the Saturday and four parallel workshops on the Sunday. 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 discounts available for group bookings. - Practical Experiences with the Google Android Accessory Development Kit (ADK) The ADK is an exciting development platform that makes it possible to easily combine Android applications with custom hardware built around Arduino. Such combinations have the best of both worlds by enabling the creation of a mobile phone application with access to peripheral devices that is only limited by your imagination. This talk will cover two projects that extend what the phone can do by integrating both input and output devices. And will cover some of the dos and don'ts of using the ADK and associated IDEs. If time permits there will also be a demonstration with a quick run through of the code. Paul Tanner is a consultant, developer and maker in wood, metal, plastic, electronics and software. His day job is IT-based business improvement for SMEs. By night he turns energy nut, creating tools to optimise energy use. Paul graduated in electronics and was responsible for hardware and software product development and customer services in several product and service start-ups, switching to consulting in 2000. If you can't wait to get your hands on the ADK software browse to http://developer.android.com/tools/adk. - The Internet of Things and Arduino As connecting hardware to the network becomes cheaper and cheaper we're seeing the rise of what is being called the Internet of Things, or “IoT” for short. This talk will give an introduction to the Internet of Things and explain how open hardware platforms such as Arduino are helping it grow. With plenty of examples of IoT projects, from using sensors to map global radiation levels to bakeries that tweet when the bread is fresh out of the oven. Adrian McEwen has been connecting odd things to the Internet since the mid-90s. Starting with cash registers, and then as part of the team who were first to put a web browser onto a mobile phone. As the mobile phone and set-top box work became more mainstream he dropped down a level to Arduino which led to Internet-enabled bubble machines and chicken-food silos... Adrian has been working with Arduino since 2008 — which is when Bubblino, the aforementioned bubble machine which watches twitter, was created — and is charge of the Arduino Ethernet library. He is based in Liverpool, where he runs MCQN Ltd, a company that builds IoT devices and products. - Developing Linux on Embedded Devices This talk will provide an introduction to developing Linux on embedded devices. Firstly we will look at the capabilities of popular boards such as the BeagleBone and the Raspberry Pi. Then using the example of a BeagleBone controller for a 3D printer the talk with explain how to develop for an embedded device. It will consider what comprises an embedded Linux software stack. The talk will discuss boot loaders, kernels and root filesystems. We will discuss what are the minimum software packages required in a root file system. The talk will then go on to consider the tools required to develop for an embedded target. It will look at what tools are available to help the embedded developer and speed up this development process. Once you have developed your software you need to debug it. The talk will look at what debugging tools are available for debugging embedded devices. Melanie Rhianna Lewis started a life long love of electronics as a child when her Dad helped her make a "crystal" radio with an ear piece, a coil of wire, a diode and a radiator! At the same time the home computer revolution started and she would lust after the "build your own computers" advertised in the electronics magazines of the time. She never got one but did end up the proud owner of a BBC Micro. Melanie learnt everything she could about the machine and including assembler, operating systems, drivers, interrupt, and, thanks to the circuit diagram in the Advanced User Guide, digital electronics. After the BBC Micro came the Acorn Archimedes and so started a long relationship with ARM processors. In the 90s Melanie became interested in Linux and then developed one of the first ARM Linux distributions running on an Acorn RISC PC. The hobby became a job and Melanie currently works for an embedded device consultancy near Bradford where a lot of her work is still with ARM processors. - Interfacing the Raspberry Pi to the World — Everything you need to know about P1 You've received your Pi, set up a web server on it and maybe played a few rounds of Quake. You're looking for a new challenge and suddenly the header on the corner of the board catches your eye. A quick Google search for "P1 Raspbery Pi" gets you to the eLinux wiki page on Low level peripherals, and you suddenly realise that you can do all sorts of fun stuff by adding extra bits to your Raspberry Pi using this magical expansion port. Where do you start? Is it safe to connect a motor directly to the pins? What sort of interesting components are out there? In this talk we will look at the ways we can communicate with the outside world using the GPIO pins on the Raspberry Pi. We will explore the mechanical, electrical and software side of things and talk about a few example projects you can try at home, and the hardware limitations will be covered and workarounds provided. Omer Kilic is theoretically still a research student at the University of Kent, although he intends to submit his thesis (which is about a reconfigurable heterogeneous computing framework) pretty soon. He likes tiny computers, things that 'just work' and beer. He currently works for Erlang Solutions in London, exploring the use of Erlang programming language in the Embedded Systems domain and develops tools and support material to help the adoption of this technology. This talk will also serve as an introduction for the Raspberry Pi workshop on the Sunday, where we will explore the example projects covered in more detail. - Sensing Wearable Technology An introduction to wearable technology that will include examples which incorporate sensors, plus work which makes use of the LilyPad Arduino, an open source, sewable microcontroller. Rain Ashford creates wearable technology & electronic art, her most recent work involves investigating physiological sensing technologies and how they can be applied to wearable artworks to measure and interpret moods, health and lifestyle data. Rain also creates fun, interactive and aesthetically pleasing works that include gaming and musical elements. She is keen to demonstrate that electronics, components and circuitry doesn't have to be regarded as cold, boring, hard and boxy and instead can be fun, colourful and elegant, plus be integrated into an overall design of a work. Rain’s background is in developing online activities for the BBC as a Senior Producer at BBC Learning and also as Technologist at BBC R&D, co-running BBC Backstage. She currently works as a freelance consultant for the Open University and for Technocamps designing and leading workshops in coding and electronics in the form of wearable technology for 11-19 year-olds, plus is a PhD researcher, peering into wearable electronics & art. - Running OpenBTS in the Real World This talk will explore the OpenBTS project and describe how it uses software-defined radio and open source Internet telephony to create a small but complete GSM mobile phone network. Experiences of operating OpenBTS installations on the Pacific island of Niue and at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert will be covered, along with how OpenBTS has been integrated with other systems for use in disaster relief. Licensing permitting there will also be a live demonstration. Tim Panton is a software engineer with a particular interest in projects that blend web applications and person-to-person speech into an integrated user experience. He has many years hands-on experience with the OpenBTS project, working closely with the core development team on numerous installations. Tim is currently working on the Phono.com, Tropo.com and Rayo.org products at VoxeoLabs, producing web developer-friendly APIs by using XMPP protocols to drive innovative telephony applications that can be used anywhere by anyone. - The 3D Printed Revolution Over recent years Open Source 3D printers have quickly developed alongside their commercial counterparts offering affordable and accessible alternatives. This talk will cover experiences using commercial printers and how the speaker's interests have moved to open source designs and how the two compare. Examples will be shown of projects using these technologies, such as "Fable", a clock manufactured by Selective Laser Sintering, and a wrist watch designed to be printed on a RepRap. There will also be a run through of the design considerations and how files were created, fixed and sliced in preparation to print on a RepRap. Mark Gilbert graduated in 2000 from Sheffield Hallam University with a degree in Industrial Design Innovation. After several years working as a design engineer, Mark started working as a freelance industrial designer for several companies in the Northwest. Over the last 6 years he has also worked closely with the Bolton Science and Technology Centre as the "Designer in Residence" where he has developed workshops around the centre's 3D printing and CAD facilities. In 2008 Mark set up the design studio Gilbert13 with his wife Angela where they design and develop products inspired by experimentation into digital manufacturing processes, 3D printing and additive manufacturing. Recent projects have taken their experience from rapid prototyping to use 3D printing as a manufacturing tool that can change the way people design, co create and distribute objects. - The Bots are Coming In the last two decades we have seen software and data change the fabric of economics, and the advent of personal computing and the Internet enable many new business models. However, the next two decades will be even more radical as that wave of innovation shifts from the virtual domain to a physical manifestation. Atoms are the new bits and the open sourcing and democratisation of bot technology is allowing us to enter into an era of personal production. And this talk will explore how 3D printing and additive manufacturing are revolutionising production as we know it. Alan Wood originally trained in systems engineering, got lost in software engineering and open source for a decade, before returning back to his hardware roots via the open source hardware and makers movement that has gathered momentum over the last few years. - DIYBIO - The Next Frontier DIYBIOMCR is an public group based at MadLab dedicated to making biology an accessible pursuit for citizen scientists, amateur biologists and biological engineers who value openness and safety. This talk will give an overview of the movement, and what is going on at MadLab involving not only biology but also diverse fields such as hardware-hackers, artists, journalists and the open-source movement. Hwa Young Jung is a co-founder and a director of MadLab, a community centre for creative, tech and science based the Manchester. Over 50 user groups meet once a month, including DIYBIOMCR, initially a joint funded project with MMU and the Wellcome Trust. ** Sunday Workshops Workshops will be reasonably informal and shaped by the participants, and details are subject to change depending upon the level of interest expressed. Please feel free to bring along equipment and components provided that you are able to take full responsibility for your own personal safety and that of others. Common sense should be exercised! - Practical IoT Applications with the Google ADK and Arduino Hands on IoT building sessions that follow on from Saturday's ADK and Arduino talks. - Interfacing the Raspberry Pi to the World - Here you will learn how to connect a selection of devices to your Raspberry Pi utilising the methods discussed during Saturday's talk. We will have a few Raspberry Pi boards available for the workshop but please bring your own if you were one of the lucky ones to have received one. - Building GSM Networks with Open Source A look at the practical steps involved in creating a low power GSM network using open source technology. Note: this workshop will be subject to a spectrum licence being granted. - Practical 3D Printing Details TBC. Note: * Please aim to arrive for 09:00 on the Saturday as the event will start at 09:30 prompt. * A light lunch and refreshments will be provided on the Saturday. Sponsored by: Capital SCF: http://www.capitalscf.com DesignSpark: http://www.designspark.com Cosm: https://cosm.com OSHCamp kit bags provided by: SK Pang: http://www.skpang.co.uk Oomlout: http://oomlout.com

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OpenBSD on the Pandaboard
by Sevan / Venture37 11 Jul '12

11 Jul '12

http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20120711142958 Sevan

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OSHUG #20 — Drones (UDB4, OpenRelief, ARDrone + Kinect), Thurs 21st June.
by Andrew Back 08 Jun '12

08 Jun '12

Hello, The next OSHUG meeting will be on Thursday 21st June. Details and registration link below. Regards, Andrew // OSHUG #20 — Drones (UDB4, OpenRelief, ARDrone + Kinect) On the 21st June 2012, 18:00 - 20:00 at Centre for Creative Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG (51.529049, -0.116436) Sponsored by Embecosm: http://www.embecosm.com — Registration: http://oshug.org/event/20 Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), or drones, are increasingly making the news, but when they do so it's usually because of their use in warfare. However, drones can be put to use in many other, far more positive applications. And at the twentieth OSHUG meeting we will hear talks on an experimental attitude and heading reference system (AHRS), using open source technology to build drones for use in disaster relief, and on a fun and novel method of flying drones via gesture control. - Using UDB4 for an Experimental AHRS The UAV Development Board is a very versatile development board that has been around for the past five or so years, and which has been supported by small team led by William Premerlani. The board comes with a dsPIC30F4011 microcontroller, an MMA7260 three axis accelerometer and two dual-axis Inversense IXZ500 gyroscopes. It has supported various forms of platforms ranging from inverted pendulums to multicoptors. It has primarily been a development platform for experimenters and it is in its fourth major revision. The talk intends to give a high level view of the MatrixPilot firmware as a general introduction to autopilots, with a demonstration of the Hardware in loop simulation to show how it behaves in flight for a fixed wing aircraft. Anish Mohammed has been an electronics hobbyist and software hacker since his early teens. He spent almost a decade in research and development in security and cryptography, and these days he works for the Big Five in consulting. He is a confirmed UAV addict who owns a dozen AHRS/Autopilots, both open and partially closed, with interests in multicopters, fixed wings and rovers. - OpenRelief — Open Source Software and Open Hardware For Frontline Disaster Relief This talk will explore how the OpenRelief team, inspired by challenges seen during the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, is using Open Source Software and Open Hardware to create disaster relief tools. The first step is to develop a small drone that can take off from anywhere, recognize roads, people and smoke while also measuring weather and radiation. It can be built for less than 1,000 USD, and easily shares information with Open Source and proprietary disaster management systems. The goal is to gather critical information for relief workers on the ground, and contribute to getting aid where it is needed. Karl Lattimer is an engineer who started early with electronics and programming, and has worked on all kinds of projects for many companies developing software to solve a wide variety of problems. He currently works for Codethink Ltd, an engineering firm based in Manchester, UK. Karl is enthusiastic about Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision, Robotics and related engineering disciplines. He is a firm believer that we can engineer a future that is more sustainable, adaptive and integrated. His interest in OpenRelief stems from a desire to engineer solutions to the problems faced in disaster scenarios, and the desire to drive the permeation of robots into our everyday lives. - Flying an ARDrone Like a 7-year Old Child Controlling a Parrot ARDrone using URBI, python and an MS Kinect camera, allowing people to fly it by holding their arms out and pretending to be an airplane like a small child. This was in truth an exploration in how to couple independent projects and to explore and exploit the APIs presented by the kinect and the drone's software. Ben O'Steen is a freelance developer with an interest in the fuzzy divide between physical and digital spaces, such as how we perceive and use objects differently based on how they are (re)produced, presented or controlled. Currently, he can be found working on digital library and archive projects for academic institutions, art installations and his newly completed 3d printer. — Registration: http://oshug.org/event/20

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OSHCamp 2012 planning.
by Andrew Back 21 May '12

21 May '12

Hello, As many of you know the plan is to hold this year's OSHCamp in the north of England in Hebden Bridge, which is a pretty town (I might be biased!) in the foothills of the Pennines and roughly half way between Leeds and Manchester and easily accessible (<1 hour by train) from both. It will also be a two day event and will take place over a weekend, with provisional dates of 15th & 16th September. I've uploaded a few photos of the venue to Flickr (more/better ones to be uploaded in due course): http://www.flickr.com/photos/carrierdetect/7234510996/in/set-72157629815372… The venue also has a hostel on the site and I'll see if any sort of group booking deal can be arranged. http://www.hebdenbridgehostel.co.uk/ Of course there also hotels and guests houses, or should you wish you could even hire a canal boat. http://www.bronteboathire.co.uk/ Although this might be a bit of a waste if you're only returning to sleep on it... I think the plan will be to host talks on the Saturday, with hands-on sessions on the Sunday. But obviously I'm keen to hear any suggestions that people might have as to the structure, as well as themes and talk topics. And as always, offers to present or run a workshop are most welcome. Discuss here or e-mail me direct — whichever suits. I'll provide updates to this list as and when plans develop. Best, Andrew

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open source airborne wind generator
by Rod Read 18 May '12

18 May '12

I've got a fancy kite design. It's proving to be pretty useful. I've done loads of online research and would like to give something back with the design being Open Source. Cern license the best one for me? Rod Read http://kitepowercoop.org http://www.youtube.com/user/roddyread <http://www.roddys-photos.com>roderickread (skype)

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OSHUG #19 — Kits (Homesense, Quick2Wire), Thursday 31st May 2012.
by Andrew Back 16 May '12

16 May '12

Hello, Registration for OSHUG #19 is now open, details below. Best, Andrew // OSHUG #19 — Kits (Homesense, Quick2Wire) 31st May 2012, 18:00 - 20:00 at Centre for Creative Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG, [map] (51.529049, -0.116436) Sponsored by DesignSpark: http://www.designspark.com/ — Registration: http://oshug.org/event/19 For those that are new to hardware development it can prove a daunting prospect, and kits that address the needs of those with little or no experience in this area have a vital role to play. At the nineteenth OSHUG meeting we will be hearing about two such kits, one that was designed to support user-led smart home innovation and that was based around the Arduino platform, and an experimenters kit for the Raspberry Pi that is currently in development. - The Homesense Project The Homesense project was a European user-led, smart-home development project employing open source hardware. The project was led by Tinker London and EDF and engaged households supported by local experts in the design and development of smart home concepts. The project was developed as a reaction to top-down design approaches commonly observed in technological development and home building. Most early research viewed smart homes as a single complex system that is designed and constructed from the ground up, and assumes that most aspects (physical building, digital infrastructure, furniture, appliances) are under the control of a single smart-home developer. (Kortuem et al. 2010) In the contrasting reality however of multi-vendor development and retrofitting this is rarely the case. Inspired also by an argument that smart homes are developed by experts in a top down approach subsequently living with a smart home is acknowledged to be problematic to non-experts who lack control over respective technologies. The Homesense project was therefore designed to enable user-led innovation within the home environment, building alongside existing environmental and social conditions allowing end-users to address their own concerns in their physical and ‘lived in’ space. Homesense sought to bring the open collaboration methods of online communities to physical infrastructures in the home. Designing a toolkit to support this approach is explored as a topic of this presentation. Natasha Carolan is a PhD student at HighWire Doctoral Training Centre, Lancaster University where her research considers commodification of design and production processes in the digital economy. A product designer by background, her research explores open and user innovation, service design and value co-creation in areas of NPD and manufacturing. Natasha co-designed the Homesense toolkit by situating the toolkit as a cultural probe a strategy that Natasha believes is important in placing open source hardware in a democratic system as a tool for learning and empowerment. - Quick2Wire Quick2Wire Limited is a start-up that is developing a range of OSH/OSS add-on products for the Raspberry Pi. The first product is an experimenter's kit, contaning an expansion board, a set of components with which to experiment, software to drive the Pi, and an instruction manual. This will be followed by a series of expansion kits, using I2C and SPI to add capabilities like ADC, DAC, PWM and stepper motor drivers. All the hardware and software will be released under open source licences. The presentation will conclude with a demonstration using hardware prototypes driven by a Raspberry Pi. Romilly Cocking spent the ten years before his 'retirement' as an agile software developer, coach and trainer. He spent the first two years of retirement experimenting with robotics. Then Raspberry Pi came along, and now Romilly works full-time running Quick2Wire. Note: Please aim to arrive for 18:00 - 18:20 as the event will start at 18:30 prompt. — Registration: http://oshug.org/event/19

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MusicTechFest 17-19 May in London
by Nils Hitze 08 May '12

08 May '12

Hi there, i am new to this group (and based in Munich, Germany not London) but nevertheless a friend of mine is organizing an event in London that you might find interesting: http://www.musictechfest.org/#register A three day, free Music Hack Day/TechFest. Be fast, there might still be some tickets left Kind Regards Nils -- Nils Hitze Email: nhitze(a)gmail.com Mobil: +49 179 9429701 Blog: silberkind.de <http://www.silberkind.de> G+: silberkind.de/+ Twitter: @kojote <http://twitter.com/kojote>

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Wikipedia entry for OSHUG
by Jeremy Bennett 04 May '12

04 May '12

I have created a stub Wikipedia entry for OSHUG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSHUG Perhaps others would like to expand this. More information on the origins, and a list of meetings would be useful. Best wishes, Jeremy -- Tel: +44 (1590) 610184 Cell: +44 (7970) 676050 SkypeID: jeremybennett Email: jeremy.bennett(a)embecosm.com Web: www.embecosm.com

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Microsoft infiltrating the Cabinet Office Open Source consultation
by Jeremy Bennett 27 Apr '12

27 Apr '12

It seems big business will try anything to stop government's supporting open source. This government announcement is of interest - not least because of them doing the right thing about it! http://digital.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/2012/04/26/open-standards-consultation-… Although we are an open source hardware group, many members overlap into the open source software world. You may like to respond to the consultation and your MP. Best wishes, Jeremy -- Tel: +44 (1590) 610184 Cell: +44 (7970) 676050 SkypeID: jeremybennett Email: jeremy.bennett(a)embecosm.com Web: www.embecosm.com

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Modular OpenChronos firmware
by Sevan / Venture37 22 Apr '12

22 Apr '12

Hiya, The OpenChronos devs have announced a modular firmware for the Ti EZ430 watches, details on whats new & how to obtain the code are covered here: http://groups.google.com/group/openchronos/browse_thread/thread/5ba4b073ea5… Sevan

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London Raspberry Pi Meetup, Thursday 26th April.
by Andrew Back 19 Apr '12

19 Apr '12

Hello, Those attending OSHUG #18 next Thursday evening may be interested in coming along to an informal Raspberry Pi meetup that is being hosted by C4CC earlier the same day. Details pasted below. Cheers, Andrew // London Raspberry Pi Meetup #01 On the 26th April 2012, 15:00 - 17:30 at Centre for Creative Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG (51.529049, -0.116436) * Do you have a Raspberry Pi? * Perhaps you have a Raspberry Pi-based project in mind. * Or you would just like to find out more... The people behind OSHUG, and DesignSpark and the Centre for Creative Collaboration invite you to the first London Raspberry Pi meetup. Come along and meet other RasPi users and enthusiasts, share experiences and demo projects. Should we organise regular meetings or workshops? Here is an opportunity to get involved with shaping future events! Note: this will be an informal meetup with no particular structure or presentations, and so please set your expectations accordingly. - Registration: http://londonraspi01.eventbrite.co.uk/ //

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OSHUG #18 — Energy-efficient Computing, Thursday 26th April.
by Andrew Back 05 Apr '12

05 Apr '12

Hello, Just to let folks know that registration is now open for this month's meeting, which will also be our second anniversary! And with thanks to SK Pang for kindly sponsoring OSHUG this month. Cheers, Andrew -- OSHUG #18 — Energy-efficient Computing (Open Compute, BeagleBoard, Event-driven XCore) On the 26th April 2012, 18:00 - 20:00 at Centre for Creative Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG (51.529049, -0.116436) // Sponsored by SK Pang Electronics: http://www.skpang.co.uk // - Registration: http://oshug.org/event/18 At the eighteenth OSHUG meeting we will hear how open source collaboration is being used to transform data centre design, and how open source hardware and software have been used to enable low cost ARM development. It will also be the OSHUG 2nd anniversary, and two years on we are delighted to welcome back XMOS, who will be giving us an introduction to event-driven programming with XCore. — The Open Compute Project Facebook uses a lot of servers, and those servers use a lot of energy. To minimise the costs associated with those servers and data center facilities, Facebook engineers came up with a fresh design. To build a community around that design it has been open sourced via the Open Compute Project (OCP). OCP is now involved in taking the requirements of many large data center users, and turning them into designs for servers, the racks that hold them, the facilities that power and cool them, and the management interfaces that control them. This presentation will give an overview of what Facebook have built, and how OCP plans to transform data centers elsewhere. Chris Swan has been an electronics hobbyist and software hacker since primary school. These days he's an IT guy at a large bank, focussed on security and innovation - including mobile, consumerisation and cloud computing. Alongside his day job Chris chairs the infrastructure working group at the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA), which is partnered with the Open Compute Project (OCP). — BeagleBoard.org Community - Open Hardware, Open Software, Open Platforms BeagleBoard.org has created a number of products since its conception a few years ago, from the initial 'BeagleBoard' single board computer, through to the enhanced 'BeagleBoard-xM' with more performance and connectivity, and its most recent and expandable platform, the 'BeagleBone'. All of these have set out to achieve a goal of bringing high performance ARM-based processing technology to a wide 'community' of developers and users, in low-cost 'open' platforms, giving access to as much of the system-on-chip features as possible. The recent launch of the 'BeagleBone' was a great testament to this vibrant 'community', key to Beagleboard.org, which enabled a wealth of advanced platform and application software to be immediately available, and a large amount of hardware expertise providing feedback and ready to start building add-ons and clones. This was exactly what was hoped for when the project was initially conceived by a couple of engineers discussing at the coffee machine about how their technology could be made more widely accessible. The community continues to grow each day, with more and more exciting and innovative uses for these low-cost, open platforms revealed on the various mailing lists and chat rooms - from 'football playing robots' to 'media servers', the list, expertise and imagination seems endless! This presentation hopes to give an overview of the BeagleBoard.org community project and how the products have been created and supported. There have been many exciting moments, many challenges and many lessons learned throughout this project - some of which will hopefully be covered during this presentation and discussion. Roger Monk is a System Applications Engineer for Texas Instruments, and has spent the last 10+ years working closely with customers to build hi-tech electronic products based around Texas Instruments Embedded Processing technology across a range of application areas. Roger is passionate about open-source technology and the ability for it to help deliver higher quality, more innovative products to market quickly. He has been closely involved with the BeagleBoard.org community project since its conception. — Event-driven Programming with XCore XMOS designs concurrent, event-driven processor cores. Because of the deterministic nature of the architecture both real-time algorithms and hardware interfaces can be developed as software. The event-driven nature of the processor means that all programs pause until they need to perform a task, making them inherently efficient. In this talk we will discuss events, concurrency, and how hardware interfaces can be programmed in software. We will then show the design of the slice-kit development system, which enables XCores to be easily attached to peripheral PCB's containing, for example, an Ethernet PHY. Henk Muller is currently the Principal Technologist at XMOS Ltd. In that role he has been involved in the design and implementation of hardware and software for real time systems. Prior to that, Henk worked in Academia for 20 years in computer architecture, compilers, and ubiquitous computing. He holds a doctorate from the University of Amsterdam. Note: Please aim to arrive for 18:00 - 18:20 as the event will start at 18:30 prompt. - Registration: http://oshug.org/event/18

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OSHUG #17: Practical System-on-Chip event preparation
by Julius Baxter 27 Mar '12

27 Mar '12

Hi all For those intending on coming along to OSHUG 17 on Thursday, can I recommend you visit the following page on OpenCores for some details on what you'll need to install to participate in some of the practical parts of the evening: http://opencores.org/or1k/OSHUG We don't have a nice, neat distribution of the OpenRISC cross-compiler readily available yet, so part of the process is to build the tool chain. Otherwise, the rest is just obtaining a copy of the OpenRISC repository so we can simulate things on the evening. Coming with these preparations will save a lot of time and hopefully allow those who want to play along to do so. If you have any questions, let us know here, or on the OpenRISC mailing list at http://lists.openrisc.net Thanks Julius

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Next Thursday and help at C4CC.
by Andrew Back 23 Mar '12

23 Mar '12

Hello, Just a reminder that next Thursday evening it will be OSHUG #17: http://oshug.org/event/17 And we'd be interested in hearing from anyone who might be bringing their own FPGA development board along to try out an ORSoC/OpenRISC build. Also, our generous hosts at the Centre for Creative Collaboration are in need of a favour. They've just picked up a couple of network switches in advance of a Pachube workshop that is taking place during the day next Weds & Thurs, and could do with a hand setting these up. I've not checked, but it might even be possible to attend the aforementioned workshop too. In any case, if you may be able to help out please contact Brian Condon (CC'ed) direct as he's not subscribed to this list. Cheers, Andrew

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OSHUG #17 — Practical System-on-Chip, Thursday 29th March.
by Andrew Back 01 Mar '12

01 Mar '12

Hello, Registration is now open for the March OSHUG meeting. Cheers, Andrew -- OSHUG #17 — Practical System-on-Chip (Program your own open source FPGA SoC) 29th March 2012, 18:00 - 20:00 at Centre for Creative Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG (51.529049, -0.116436) // Sponsored by DesignSpark: http://www.designspark.com // - Registration: http://oshug.org/event/17 At the ninth OSHUG meeting we were given an introduction to FPGA development, and to the OpenCores community and the OpenRISC 1000 open source processor family. At the seventeenth OSHUG meeting we will be given a comprehensive introduction to the practicalities of programming your own open source FPGA system-on-chip. — How to Program Your Own Open Source FPGA System-on-Chip It is possible to buy a FPGA prototyping board like the Terasic DE0-nano, capable of running a complete 32-bit System-on-Chip for around £50. Even larger boards with the memory capacity to bring up a full Linux system on the design cost a few hundred pounds. In this talk Julius Baxter and Jeremy Bennett will present the OpenRISC architecture and OpenRISC Reference Platform SoC (ORPSoC), and show how to take this open source design and get it running on an FPGA board. This is a practical evening, aimed at users who have never done any chip design. Using a Xilinx ML501 prototyping board, Julius Baxter will demonstrate all the steps from obtaining the initial hardware design through to bringing up the board and booting a full Linux system. The following topics will be covered: * an overview of OpenCores and the OpenRISC project * an introduction to the Verilog Hardware Design Language * how to synthesize the design into a FPGA bitstream * what needs modifying to run on different boards * how to get software running * porting a simple (newlib) library to the board * demonstration of Linux booting // Note that this will be an interactive session, and participants are encouraged to bring their along own FPGA dev boards and laptops and to join in, should they wish. If you have a board that is not listed as having a preconfigured ORPSoC build, or you have any other questions concerning the practicalities of this, you should direct your question to the OSHUG discussion list. // Julius Baxter has been involved with the OpenRISC project for 4 years, and during that time he's worked on everything from processor Verilog RTL to the Linux kernel port. After finishing undergraduate studies in his native Australia, he then studied a System-on-Chip design Master's at KTH in Stockholm, Sweden, while working at ORSoC AB - the owners and operators of OpenCores.org. Now living and working Cambridge, Julius maintains a role as an active developer and maintainer on the OpenRISC project, largely dealing with RTL, toolchain and architecture work. Dr Jeremy Bennett is Chief Executive of Embecosm which provides open source services, tools and models to facilitate embedded software development with complex systems-on-chip. He has been involved with OpenCores for the past decade, and is responsible for much of the software tool chain. Contact him at jeremy.bennett(a)embecosm.com. Note: Please aim to arrive for 18:00 - 18:20 as the event will start at 18:30 prompt. - Registration: http://oshug.org/event/17

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jHome: Using JavaEE and open-source hardware to automatize your house
by Jim Holmes 07 Feb '12

07 Feb '12

This list may well be interested in this free presentation by Yara Senger at Skills Matter in London in a couple of weeks. http://skillsmatter.com/podcast/java-jee/jhome EVENT DETAILS What:London Java Community:jHome: Using JavaEE and open-source hardware to automatize your houseWhere:The Skills Matter eXchange, London<http://skillsmatter.com/location-details/java-jee/1268/96> When:21 Feb 2012 Starts at 18:30 jHome: Using JavaEE and open-source hardware to automatize your house During this presentation we will be showing how you can use Java EE and open-source hardware, like Arduino, to automatize your house. Using jHome, a complete Java EE 6 API for home automation, you can control lamps, wall sockets, electric gates and doors using Web App and Twitter. We will not present a product! It's a complete solution that you can do it yourself with open-source hardware and software and you will have a lot of fun with Java EE 6 with this different usage context! This talk will cover: - Introduction to Home Automation and open-source hardware - Project jHome Cool demos: - Servlets controlling lamps - Controllling RGB with jQuery - Scheduling coffee-machine with EJB's - Using sounds and FFT(fast fourier transforming) to control your house This is a basic talk and useful for any developer professional level. I'm not sure about "automatizing" anything, and no doubt this will all be very basic for some here, but of interest I hope.

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Five open source hardware projects that could change the world.
by Andrew Back 07 Feb '12

07 Feb '12

Hello, I wrote an article for The H on five open source hardware projects that could change the world. Whilst many will know most of the projects covered, it may be of interest to some. http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Five-open-source-hardware-projects-th… Regards, Andrew

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OSHUG #16 — Manufacturing, Thursday 23rd February 2012.
by Andrew Back 06 Feb '12

06 Feb '12

Hello, Registration is now open for the February meeting and details are below. Also, there is room for a third speaker if anyone would like to propose a manufacturing related talk. Wouldn't need to be too long, and could be on any topic, experiences or challenges etc to do with the manufacturing of open source hardware. If interested drop me a line asap. Regards, Andrew -- OSHUG #16 — Manufacturing (Breadboard to Finished Product, Arduino Shield) On the 23rd February 2012, 18:00 - 20:00 at Centre for Creative Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG (51.529049, -0.116436) Registration: http://oshug.org/event/16 At the sixteenth OSHUG meeting we will be hearing about first-hand experiences of taking an open source hardware design from being a project to a product. With insights into prototyping, some of the manufacturing options available and the challenges that may be encountered. — From Breadboard to Finished Product You have a cool project, people are sending you emails asking where they could get their hands on one and you find yourself googling "electronics manufacturing"... Should you get yourself a toaster oven and start a miniature production line in your living room or should you just outsource it? What challenges await you if you decide to go down the contract manufacturing route? This talk aims to give the audience an overview of the electronics manufacturing process, using a project recently completed by the speaker as a case study. Omer Kilic is theoretically still a research student at the University of Kent, although he intends to submit his thesis (which is about a reconfigurable heterogeneous computing framework) pretty soon. He likes tiny computers, things that 'just work' and beer. He currently works for Erlang Solutions in London, exploring the use of Erlang programming language in the Embedded Systems domain and develops tools and support material to help the adoption of this technology. — Arduino Shield: From Design to Manufacturing The Arduino CAN-Bus shield gives the Arduino CAN-Bus capability. In this presentation we will learn about the design process from PCB layout and prototyping, to testing with a simulator and eventually testing with a real car. And about the perils of using a simulator, small scale production and outsourcing. Sukkin Pang is a design engineer and a director at SK Pang Electronics Ltd. He graduated from the University of Hertfordshire and has over 20 years of industrial experience. He is passionate about open source hardware and has four Arduino shields published. He used to tinker in assembler on the Z80, 6502, PIC and AVR, but nowadays he mainly uses C and C++. Note: Please aim to arrive for 18:00 - 18:20 as the talks will start at 18:30 prompt. Registration: http://oshug.org/event/16

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Barcamp Canterbury
by Martin Ellis 28 Jan '12

28 Jan '12

Hi guys, Thought you might be interested in an event we are organising. Barcamp Canterbury[0] is an un-conference all about technology. Barcamps[1] are run all around the country for and buy technology enthusiasts, and what's better they are totally free! The event is going to run on weekend of the 28th and 29th of April. thank Martin [0]http://www.barcampcanterbury.com/ [1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp

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OSHUG #15 — Wireless (Hacking Commodity Wireless, Practical Wireless, Contiki OS, CWIG) — Thursday 26th January.
by Andrew Back 05 Jan '12

05 Jan '12

Hello, Registration is now open for January's meeting. Regards, Andrew -- Event #15 — Wireless (Hacking Commodity Wireless, Practical Wireless, Contiki OS, CWIG) On the 26th January 2012, 18:00 - 20:00 at Centre for Creative Collaboration, 16 Acton Street, London, WC1X 9NG, (51.529049, -0.116436) ** Registration: http://oshug.org/event/15 ** At the fifteenth OSHUG meeting we'll be taking a look at wireless technologies. We will hear how you can repurpose low cost commodity equipment, we will be given an introduction to RF basics, we will learn about the Contiki operating system, and we will be introduced to Ciseco's new Wireless Internet Gateway. - Hacking Commodity Wireless Many people build their hacks from the ground up, but those short of time sometimes prefer to repurpose cheap off-the-shelf components that can be made to fit the bill. A good example being a wireless thermometer for external use, where an off-the-shelf device provides an inexpensive option complete with the requisite weatherproof packaging. However, such devices typically use proprietary protocols and good documentation is rarely available. This talk will look at how to interface such devices where a degree of reverse-engineering is frequently required. Paul Tanner is a consultant, developer and maker in wood, metal, plastic, electronics and software. His day job is IT-based business improvement for SMEs. By night he turns energy nut, creating tools to optimise energy use. Paul graduated in electronics and was responsible for hardware and software product development and customer services in several product and service start-ups, switching to consulting in 2000. - Practical Wireless Adding wireless connectivity to your latest open hardware project is not difficult, provided that you take the time to understand some of the principles of RF communication. In this talk we will learn about the basics of wireless propagation, and take a look at some of the low cost modules which now make adding wireless even easier. Ken Boak joined BBC Research Department after graduating and worked on digital picture processing of HDTV images, and coding algorithms for video distribution around studios. Since then, Ken has worked in laboratory instrumentation, telecommunications, low power wireless and consumer electronics produced in the Far East. With an interest in renewables, Ken now develops laboratory instruments to teach undergraduates the principles of photovoltaic and wind power. Outside of work, Ken is interested in smart wireless sensors, open source hardware and low cost solutions for the Internet of Things. - An Introduction to the Contiki O/S This talk is aimed to introduce the Contiki OS and some of the development hardware. We will learn about the process of bootstrapping the development environment and there will be a hands-on tutorial. Ilya Dmitrichenko was born in Soviet Latvia in 1985, grew up and attended a secondary school there, and moved to UK as soon as Latvia joined the EU. He attended the biggest university in London and was rather disappointed with the education, but nevertheless carried on and had fun working on a final year engineering project which served as an introduction to the topic of this talk. Ilya is interested in various aspects of hardware and software, spanning from WSN to DSP and several other random fields. - CWIG — The Ciseco Wireless Internet Gateway The CWIG is a new open hardware device that is designed to be the "one and only" platform you'd need for a wireless gateway. It employs the same ATmega328 microcontroller that is familiar to Arduino users and supports Ciseco's TI CC1110-based XRF module, XBee, Bluetooth, RFM12B, X10/HomeEasy, FRAM, SD, Ethernet and over-the-air programming with AVRDude. It's sized to be housed in a low cost, compact enclosure and to be cheap to build using through-hole components. In this talk we will be given an introduction to the CWIG and also to the XRF wireless UART and programmable RF module. Miles Hodkinson's twenty-odd year relationship with IT ended around six years ago when he decided that it was time to do something completely different. He had looked around without success for something to log and control his wind turbine, solar panels and Lister single cylinder engine, and found that nothing was flexible enough for the money he wanted to pay (tens of pounds per device), so he decided he would try and build it himself. After a number of years working on a human-focused method of networking originally built using XBee modules and now termed LLAP, his company developed the TI CC1110-based XRF module. Note: Please aim to arrive for 18:00 - 18:20 as the talks will start at 18:30 prompt. ** Registration: http://oshug.org/event/15 **

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Free XMOS XC-1A dev kits.
by Andrew Back 16 Dec '11

16 Dec '11

Hello, Just in case anyone hadn't spotted this, XMOS are running a promotion where you can pick up an XC-1A dev kit for free: http://blog.solderpad.com/post/14114783567/free-xmos-xc-1a-development-kits For the sake of clarity: SolderPad blog link as we were asked to help promote this, and I couldn't see a link to the form on either xmos.com or xcore.com. Cheers, Andrew

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