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

07 Jun '23

Hi All, I'm pleased to announce that we have a total of 12 talks and 4 workshops confirmed for Open Source Hardware Camp 2023! As in previous years, there will be a social event on the Saturday evening and OSHCamp is once again being hosted to coincide with the Wuthering Bytes technology festival. https://wutheringbytes.com/ <http://wutheringbytes.com/> The programme for Festival Day (Fri 25/08) should be announced within the coming weeks and for details of speakers confirmed so far, see: https://wutheringbytes.com/whatson/festival-day Cheers, Andrew // Open Source Hardware Camp 2023 On the 26th August 2023, 09:00 Saturday morning - 16:00 on the Sunday afternoon at Hebden Bridge Town Hall, St. George's Street, Hebden Bridge, HX7 7BY, UK (53.742436, -2.012918) Registration: https://oshug.org/event/oshcamp2023 Open Source Hardware Camp 2023 will take place in the Pennine town of Hebden Bridge, where it will return to be hosted as part of the Wuthering Bytes technology festival. Hebden Bridge is approximately 1 hour by rail from Leeds and Manchester. Budget accommodation is available at the Hebden Bridge Hostel which adjoins the venue, with private rooms available and discounts for group bookings. Details of other local accommodation can be found at www.hebdenbridge.co.uk and via Airbnb and Booking.com etc. There will be a social event on the Saturday evening from 8PM. *** Saturday :: Talks *** — Life beyond 2-layer FR4: A high-speed peek into the world of PCBs The perfect combination of open source tools exponentially getting better and the availability of affordable and easy-to-use printed circuit board manufacturing services have enabled many folks to get their weekend projects “fabbed”. While laying out a 2-layer board is relatively straightforward, there is a much wider world when one gets into the nitty-gritty of the humble circuit board for more complex designs. From materials and finishes to multi-layer stack-ups and exotic drilling and milling options, we will take a quick peek at the world of printed circuit boards. * Omer Kilic is an Embedded Systems and Manufacturing Consultant who works at the various intersections of hardware and software engineering practices, product development and manufacturing. — Automated irrigation using a novel approach to determine soil moisture level Rod spoke at OSHCamp 2017 about his greenhouse and garden automation project in York, with particular emphasis on his design of a capacitance sensor for measuring soil moisture level. In 2019 he undertook another project near Scarborough on the East coast of Yorkshire, this time to irrigate 16 vegetable planting areas in a one acre garden. The project went into service in the spring of that year and has continued to work very successfully up to the present time. As with the previous garden project, the Arduino Mega2560 was used but a number of problems were envisaged using capacitance probes. This talk will largely focus on the novel approach used to determine soil moisture level without the need for physical soil moisture sensors. Instead, employing a predictive algorithm that uses rainfall and climatic temperature and humidity to derive the soil moisture level of each planting area. * Rod Moody was born in 1940, and at 15 years of age started an electrical engineering apprenticeship with Dale Electric, a manufacturer of diesel-engine driven electrical generators ranging from a few kW to a few MW for both base load and standby applications. Through day release and night class he gained an HNC in electrical engineering, and at the age of 19 was appointed to the post of Test Department Manager, this led to many trips around the world to provide commissioning, trouble shooting and training. In his mid-twenties he was appointed to the position of Electrical Engineering Manager responsible for running the design office and designing control systems using relay logic. As technology advanced, and as a self-taught electronics engineer, he designed complex control systems using CMOS logic, and alternator AVRs using semiconductor analogue technology. In his early thirties Rod was appointed to the position of Engineering Director. In 1992, at 52 years of age he joined Deep Sea Electronics as their Engineering Manager. DSE were quite small at that time using through-hole technology, but through improved product design and the introduction of SMT production they grew very rapidly over the eight years before Rod retired in year 2000 at 60 years of age. DSE are now the leading supplier of microprocessor based controllers to generating set manufacturing companies worldwide. In retirement Rod spends most of his spare time with projects involving mechanics, electronics, and software using Raspberry Pi and Arduino microcontrollers. He continues to be a keen gardener as he has been from an early age, has a keen interest in all aspects of science and engineering, and is leader of the York U3A Science & Engineering World group. The Missing Bit: Recovering data from magnetic discs — Magnetic discs were - from the 1970s - how computer data was stored. A technical deep-dive into how these relics can be read using modern equipment, by digital an analogue means, and how to handle the problems which creep in. * By training Phil Pemberton is a software engineer, electronics hobbyist and ham radio operator from Leeds. In his spare time he plays with old computers, reverse-engineers old radio equipment, and tries valiantly to fix his house without destroying it in the process. Phil is an active member of the Stardot retrocomputing community and can often be seen recovering strange and unusual data from magnetic discs. — The story of Älgen guitar: how to mix traditional hand-craft woodwork with cutting edge digital fabrication Michael spent the last year designing and building a novel guitar that tries to bring in the best of both traditional luthiery and cutting edge digital fabrication techniques like 3D-printing (not just plastic, but also metal and carbon fibre), and generative design. The result is Älgen, a light-weight, visually distinct, uniquely engineered instrument. This talk will focus on the design behind the guitar, looking at what you can do with generative design and 3D-printing, how to interface the old and new construction techniques (e.g., mating a walnut body with 3D printed nylon sides), and how to decide what bits to do with which technique. * By training Michael Dales is a Software Engineer with experience in numerous Cambridge startups and more established companies, and currently works at the University of Cambridge, helping ecologists build tools and methodologies for assessing the impact of climate change on biodiversity of plants and animals. By passion Michael builds custom guitars and guitar related things: whilst he has a love for the craft that goes into hand-build instruments, he also has an equal love for new manufacturing techniques such as generative-design and 3D-printing in metal, and has branched out into building instruments that sit at the intersection of those two worlds. — MicroPython for Hardware Hackers Nowadays it should only be necessary to use assembly language for the most demanding and time-critical applications. MicroPython is a port of Python to microcontroller hardware. This talk, followed by workshop on the second day of OSHCamp, explains how the Python programmer interacts with various typical pieces of hardware, and gives you the opportunity to get some hands-on experience. * Steve Holden has worked with computers since 1967 and started using Python at version 1.4 in 1995. He has since written about Python, created instructor-led training, delivered it to an international audience, and built 40 hours of video training for “reluctant Python users.” An Emeritus Fellow of the Python Software Foundation, Steve served as a director of the Foundation for eight years and as its chairman for three; he created PyCon, the Python community's international conference series and was presented with the Frank Willison Award for services to the Python community. He lives in Hastings, England and works as Technical Architect for the UK Department for International Trade, where he is responsible for the systems that maintain and regulate the trading environment. — Why not build an oscilloscope? How hard can it be? Tom will discuss the trials and tribulations in building a mid-performance digital oscilloscope (1 gigasample per second 8-bit ADC, 100MHz bandwidth, 4 channels) using a Xilinx Zynq FPGA, a Raspberry Pi, and a few leaked datasheets. In the talk, he will discuss what he learned about oscilloscope architecture, FPGA's and the Raspberry Pi's camera interface, what he'd do differently, and why he did it (because, well, how hard can it be?) There may be a demonstration. The project is open source and available on GitHub. * Tom Oldbury is an electronics, FPGA and software engineer now living and working in Cambridgeshire, currently working for a company designing and manufacturing thermal imaging systems. He studied Electronics Engineering at the University of Leeds, but has been playing with electronics and software from a young age. — Reinventing the Single 8 home movie format When home movies on 8mm film were king, there was a format war between Kodak's Super 8 and Fuji's SIngle 8. Just like Sony's Betamax in the home video wars, Fuji's technically superior contender lost the battle, and the final Single 8 cartridges were manufactured in about2010. The physical dimensions of the film are the same though, so here in 2023 it should be possible to load a SIngle 8 camera with film from a Super 8 cartridge. This is the story of the revival and reinvention of a lost film format through OpenSCAD and 3D printing, done mostly without an original cartridge to copy. * Jenny List is an electronic engineer and technical journalist, writing mostly as a contributing editor for hackaday.com. — Open Hardware in Bio Labs and Clinical Diagnostics Technology — even when developed for consumer use — has great potential in healthcare and clinical applications, and open source hardware can speed development. We enthusiastically use open source hardware in our biomedical technology research group, for example to shrink critical diagnostic microbiology tests and transport them out of the lab closer to patients. We will present our experience developing a simple to build open source robotic microfluidic blood test platform built around Raspberry Pi imaging. However, although clinical diagnostic testing used to rely entirely on fully open and totally transparent methods, a strong recent trend has replaced these with closed proprietary products. In this "double act" Ruya will describe the benefits of open source technology for a biomedical engineering PhD student, then Al will raise some bigger questions and discussion points about trends in science and technology, such as: Are we losing the ability to make medical decisions based on fully understood and publicly shared testing methods? Could open source hardware avoid this problem? Is it possible to return to open access and transparency in clinical diagnostics? * Al Edwards is Associate Professor in Biomedical Technology, and has been exploring ways to improve diagnosis of a range of clinically important health problems, from heart attack to bacterial infection, for nearly 15 years. One major aim is to simplify complex laboratory instrumentation using the latest components, such as smartphone cameras. Wherever possible our laboratory uses open source hardware, although we also work towards commercialisation to ensure our developments can become useful products. * Ruya Meltem Sariyer is currently finishing her PhD using miniaturised blood tests towards improved epidemiology of cardiovascular disease. Arriving in the UK in the depths of covid-19 lab closure, she was able to start building an open source imaging system in her room using a Raspberry Pi zero. Alongside her doctoral laboratory research into blood tests to measure variation in cardiovascular function, she has explored the use of open source hardware as an alternative to expensive lab instruments. — The Fuller Stack Engineer The abstractions on which we build software go so much further than what the software industry normally considers a "Full Stack Engineer". This term really just covers the tip of the iceberg. Going lower, into the realm of circuit boards, micro-controllers, and even silicon, is easier than ever. It no longer means working with nasty chemicals, proprietary software, expensive development boards, low level programming languages or processes that are only available to businesses willing to shell out extremely large sums of currency units. I'll explore some of the open software, libraries, tools, that are now available, as well as hardware, services, and educational resources that make it possible, and comparatively easy, to explore the entire tech stack: From GUIs all the way down to doped silicon. Join me on my quest to become a Fuller Stack Engineer, it has never been easier. * Christian Jacobsen is a “fuller stack" engineer. When he isn't procrastinating on writing an ODBC to REST bridge for KiCad, he writes largeish Python backends and tinkers with hardware design. He is an active open-source contributor and in a previous life he ran occam code on a lot of small computers. — Breaking proprietary smart home lock-in: untangling OpenThread and does it Matter? Will the promising Thread and Matter standards and their open source implementations free us from proprietary smart home solutions, and what advantages does it offer for security, privacy and reliability? * Andrew Robinson. Bio to follow. — The Open Source Keyboard Matrix - A dive down into the Open Source keyboard rabbit hole A fun journey into the world of Open Source keyboards. Most folks accept the keyboard that comes with a PC without even thinking about it, however many of us want to build or hack our own personal keyboard designs. This leads to a wide diversity of interesting bespoke keyboards. We will take a journey through this diversity and explain common requirements and features available to hack your very own personalised keyboard. We will look at the OpenSource hardware and the software that enable the concoction of virtually any keyboard design. You will get to dive into the keyboard rabbit hole and see just how deep it goes. * Alan Wood has been working with parallel distributed programming for several decades. His recent work includes smart grids, 3D printers, robotics, automation and biotec diagnostics. His current research is focused on machine learning for embedded automation using FPGA and µC. He is a long term advocate of open source communities, a moderator (aka Folknology) for xCORE, the co-founder of myStorm open hardware FPGA community, as well as a co-founder of Surrey and Hampshire Makerspace. — LibreCores CI - why did it fail? And did it? In 2016 the FOSSi Foundation presented the LibreCores project — an attempt to build an all-in-one hub for open digital hardware developers. To some extent it was an open source rebuild of OpenCores with many added value solutions like LibreCores CI which was presented in 2017 at Hebden Bridge. In 2022 the whole LibreCores infrastructure was shut down, although many bits remain available to end users in GitHub repositories. This talk is a retrospective on the project of building a reusable CI solution for open hardware projects. Let's talk about what worked there and what didn't, and what could be done better to sustain an open hardware and open EDA project. Please talk would be useful to contributors and especially maintainers who want to ensure a long-term sustainability of their projects and attract more contributors. * Oleg Nenashev is a serial community builder currently working on WireMock and WireMock Cloud ecosystems. He's passionate open source software and open hardware advocate. Oleg is a core maintainer and board member in the Jenkins project where he writes code, mentors contributors and organizes community events. He is a TOC member in the Continuous Delivery Foundation, and also a CDF and CNCF ambassador. Oleg has a PhD degree in electronics design and volunteers in the Free and Open Source Silicon Foundation. /\/ Compered by: /\/ Kevin Murrell is is a trustee of The National Museum of Computing with a particular interest in computer technology from the 1950s and 1960s. Kevin recently completed a rebuild of the Wireless World Computer which was published in 1967. During working hours, Kevin is technical director of a UK software house providing systems for the UK, Canada and Ireland. Kevin is the proud owner of a Myford Super 7 - which occupies his spare time! *** Sunday :: Workshops *** — Solder Paste and Stencil Workshop - Build your own WiFi Device! This hands-on workshop demonstrates the usage of solder paste and stencils with SMD devices in a hobbyist home-lab capacity. Participants will be provided with a kit of electronic parts to assemble a small WiFi device with a few functions, details of which and code examples to be published closer to the event. Some familiarity tinkering with electronic devices would be beneficial, but is not required. Participants should bring: - USB battery pack and USB-C cable. - A laptop if you would like to customise the firmware. * Run by: Omer Kilic. — MicroPython for Hardware Hackers This workshop follows on from the talk on Saturday and gives you the opportunity to get some hands-on experience. Participants should bring: - A laptop. * Run by: Steve Holden. — Build your first Open Source keyboard to take away and customise This workshop follows on from the talk on Saturday and participants will get to build their own keyboard. * Run by: Alan Wood. — Writing Python Games on a Quirky Pico Device Having high level languages available on cheap microcontrollers massively lower the bar to creating interesting software on small devices. Take the Roto, a small handheld with a screen, a Raspberry Pi Pico, and a quirky input setup and write some Python to implement a drawing program, a game, or whatever else takes your fancy, all in a couple of hundred lines of code. And the worst that can happen? You'll get a helpful stacktrace on a tiny screen. The hardware is available to take home at the cost price. Participants should bring: - A laptop with the mu code editor installed. * Run by: Christian Jacobsen. NOTE: - There are separate tickets for Saturday and Sunday. - A light lunch and refreshments will be provided each day. - Please aim to arrive between 09:00 and 09:15 on the Saturday as the event will start at 09:20 prompt. -- Andrew Back http://abopen.com

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

18 May '23

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

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

05 Apr '23

Hello, After a three year absence Open Source Hardware Camp will be making a return and hosted at Hebden Bridge Town Hall, over the weekend of Saturday 26th & Sunday 27th August. OSHCamp will once again be running as part of the Wuthering Bytes festival, with the launch "Festival Day" being held on Friday 25th August. Further details will be added to the Wuthering Bytes website in due course and you can sign up to the mailing list in order to receive updates direct to your inbox. https://wutheringbytes.com/about Details of the OSHCamp call for talks and workshops can be found below. Hope to see you in August! Regards, Andrew // -+- Open Source Hardware Camp 2023 -+- This year Open Source Hardware Camp will take place over the weekend of Saturday 26th & Sunday 27th August at Hebden Bridge Town Hall, St George's St, Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire, HX7 7BY. Proposals for talks and workshops for OSHCamp 2023 are invited! There is no theme and topics may include, for example: * Open source hardware projects * Open development practices and principles * Novel/interesting/fun projects built using open source hardware * Tools (hardware and software) * Skills and techniques, e.g. PCB fab, DIY SMT assembly * Relevant technologies, e.g. SPI/I2C bus programming * ...something else relevant to the community If you would like to give a talk on the Saturday and/or run a workshop on the Sunday, please submit details via the form at: https://forms.gle/xkkuX476rtQNzTpJA Any questions can either be directed to the list or sent to andrew at abopen.com. **** Note that the deadline for submitting titles and abstracts is Sunday 30th April at 17:00. If you would like to discuss ideas etc. please get in touch sooner, rather than later. **** A social is planned for the Saturday evening and details of accommodation nearby to the venue will be provided in due course. -- Andrew Back http://abopen.com

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

15 Jan '23

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

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

15 Jan '23

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

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

12 Oct '22

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

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

01 Jul '21

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

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

27 May '21

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

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spare dev boards
by Ilya Dmitrichenko 16 Mar '21

16 Mar '21

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

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Re: [oshug] Portugal provider NOS and 4G box
by Stuart Clark 19 Feb '21

19 Feb '21

On 19/02/2021 12:00, oshug-request(a)oshug.org wrote: > Hi everyone, > > NOS is a provider here in portugal. > > They own the boxes you get when you have a 4G access with them. > > My contract is over. But I still have the hardware for the moment. > > I just got a concurrent prepaid 4G SIM. I tried to access the web > interface on the LAN and it asked to insert a SIM. > > The box is Huawei hardware. (locked with NOS settings) > > When I tried the new SIM, I almost bricked/locked it but didn't. > > I could use that box a moment and give it back to them after their shop > re-opens (locked-down !) > > Can I safelly install openWRT on it without damaging the hardware ? is > it safe legally ? If the hardware is owned by them and they are waiting to receive it back from you it sounds like it might not be great legally. -- Stuart Clark

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