Hi All,
This year we will be hosting OSHCamp in the historic town of Lincoln,
over the weekend of Sat 30th June & Sun 1st July. Details below.
A huge thanks to Sarah Markall for volunteering to be our local expert
on the ground and having arranged an excellent venue to host us.
Don't delay in getting those proposals in!
//
-- Open Source Hardware Camp 2018 --
This year Open Source Hardware Camp will take place over the weekend
of Saturday 30th June & Sunday 1st July, at the Blue Room, Lincoln, LN1 3BU.
We’re excited to be hosting OSHCamp for the first time ever in the
historic county town of Lincoln — home to, amongst others, noted engine
builders Ruston & Hornsby (now Siemens, via GEC and English Electric).
Lincoln is well served by rail, reachable from Leeds and London within
2-2.5 hours, and 4-5 hours from Edinburgh and Southampton.
Proposals for talks and workshops for OSHCamp 2018 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://docs.google.com/forms/d/1pLyItcKRDYmegNXtAXRgpt21yOFXdWlBO_K6uu0LlB…
Any questions can either be directed to the list or sent to
andrew(a)abopen.com.
**** Note that the deadline for submitting titles and abstracts is
Monday 25th March 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
Hi Folks,
It's been a while since I posted here last time. I've not been involved with
either hardware or embedded systems in general lately. I mostly work on
cloud-native infrastructure, and the Kubernetes project.
Kubernetes [1] is an open-source container orchestration system, and
many people see it as the best abstraction and management layer for
running applications in any cloud provider, and bare-metal or virtual
machines. Kubernetes naturally allows clusters with any kind of hardware,
as long as it can be used with Linux. In some cases certain applications
benefit from certain hardware features. When user deploys an app [2] to
a Kubernetes cluster, they can express an intention that certain apps have
particular hardware needs, and they would do so by means of labels [3].
An example: you have some number of machines running Kubernetes.
Some machines have faster storage then others, and a few have GPUs.
You have apps that don't care where they run, but you also have apps
that access data on disk very often, e.g. a database. You also a have
apps that crunch data using GPUs. So you want to put these apps in
the right places without having to care where exactly they run and get
best utilisation you can out of hardware you have, in fully automated
manner. Kubernetes will take care of this for you.
Why could this be of interest? The most recent version of Kubernetes
(v1.10) supports device plugins [4], which is a mechanism for making
any kind of hardware discoverable and allocatable.
If folks here are interested to hear more, I'm happy to connect in-person,
or present at the meetup.
Ilya
[1]: https://kubernetes.io/
[2]:
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/run-application/run-stateless-application-…
[3]:
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/overview/working-with-objects/labels/
[4]:
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/cluster-administration/device-plugins/
Hi Folks,
I thought I'd post here before going to ebay.
I have a brand new MicroZed board [1] that I bought a few years ago and
never got
a chance to use it. I'd be happy to give it to anyone interested for a
reasonable offer.
It's sold for $199 on avnet. I think it's still fairly modern and popular.
I'm happy to take
any offer from someone working on an open-source project, a student or for
those who
run community labs of some sort.
As a bonus, I'd be happy to throw in a book by R. Sass and A. Schmidt,
"Embedded
Systems Design with Platform FPGAs: Principles and Practices" [2]. Which is
a little
older then the MicroZed board, but still is a very nice and valuable book.
I've enjoyed
reading it, but just don't get to do much of these things a present. I have
other books
I might put on Amazon, let me know if you are interested – I'd be happy for
one person
to take a whole package.
Ilya
[1]: http://zedboard.org/product/microzed
[2]:
https://www.elsevier.com/books/embedded-systems-design-with-platform-fpgas/…
Hello,
Registration is now open for the 66th meeting, a Shrimping workshop for
children and adults, held in partnership with BCS OSSG.
Cheers,
Andrew
//
OSHUG #66 — Shrimping (hand-built Arduino) workshop for children and adults
19 April 2018, 18:30 - 20:00 at BCS London, 1st Floor, The Davidson
Building, 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA.
Registration: http://oshug.org/event/66
The shrimp is a small Arduino compatible computer built on a breadboard.
In this 1.5 hour workshop you will learn how to build and program a
Shrimp, with two projects. Bring your children (7 and up)
— Workshop details
Project 1. Flashing LED. This project is to get you started. You will
build the shrimp, and get it to flash a small LED. You will then learn
how to program the shrimp to change how the LED flashes.
Project 2. Persistence of vision. You will add a line of LEDs to your
shrimp, and program it to flash them at very high speed, so when waved
in the air it spells out a message.
At the end of the workshop you can take your shrimp home with you.
This workshop is suitable for anyone over the age of 7. For children
7-11, it is very much about following instructions to build a computer.
For older children (our record is 92), you will start to understand how
a computer works and want to explore how much it can be modified.
Pre-requisits
BCS Open Source SG will supply the Shrimping kits. You'll need to bring
a laptop with the free Arduino IDE installed
— Speaker Biographies
Dr Jeremy Bennett is Chair of the BCS Open Source Specialist Group. He
is also Chief Executive of Embecosm who provide open source compiler
development services. A former academic he is author of the standard
textbook "Introduciton to Compiling Techniques" (McGraw-Hill 1990, 1995,
2003).
Note: Please aim to arrive by 18:15 as the event will start at 18:30 prompt.
//
--
Andrew Back
http://abopen.com
Hi All,
Thanks to Sarah we are particularly well organised this year and below
you can find details of the venue, local accommodation and travel for
OSHCamp 2018.
We have our own room reserved at The Wig and Mitre
(http://www.wigandmitre.com/) for the social on the evening of Sat 30th
June, with details of the venue (pub!) for pre-OSHCamp drinks on Fri
29th to follow.
The first few talks and workshops have been confirmed and just a
reminder that the closing date for proposals is a little over a month
away, 25th March. So if you would like to give a talk and/or host a
workshop, please enter details via the form at:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1pLyItcKRDYmegNXtAXRgpt21yOFXdWlBO_K6uu0LlB…
Cheers,
Andrew
//
— Venue
The event will be held at The Blue Room, The Lawn, Union Road, Lincoln,
LN1 3BU (map location https://goo.gl/maps/mdW1g8Pmk492).
Lincoln is a city of two halves, the uphill and the downhill. The OSHUG
venue is located uphill in the historic area of the city, home to the
castle and cathedral, museums, pubs and a quaint shopping area The Bailgate.
The downhill area of Lincoln is the shopping and transport hub, and also
contains the Brayford Pool and most ‘night-life’.
— Where to stay
There are a variety of accommodation options within and around Lincoln
from self-contained lets, guest houses, hotels, farms and camping. Visit
the Visit Lincoln Website for lots of options,
https://www.visitlincoln.com/stay/
Some nearby, reasonably priced accommodation includes:
202 Guest House, 07767 497 189
http://www.202guesthouse.co.uk/lincoln/rooms-and-accommodation.asp (0.5
miles from conference venue – mid hill location.)
St Clements Old Rectory Apartments, 5 Self Catering Apartments and 1
Guest room available, (0)1522 538087 http://www.stayatstclements.co.uk/
(0.5 miles from conference - uphill location). 2 Night minimum.
— Travel
For downloadable PDF maps and guides of Lincoln including Bus Routes,
Cycle Routes and a Train Map visit the Visit Lincoln website.
* By Road
>From the North
Via the A15 (Hull) or the A46 (Grimsby)
>From the South
Via the A46 (Leicester, Nottingham, Newark) or the A1 and A15 (London,
East Anglia)
>From the East
Via the A158 (Skegness)
>From the West
Via the A1 and A57 (Leeds, Worksop, Sheffield)
* Lincoln Car Parks
There is a large council run car park at The Lawn, chargeable on the day
at the ticket machines. (Has 2 fast-charge spaces.)
There are many other car parks in the area, and both up and downhill.
https://en.parkopedia.co.uk/parking/parking_in_lincoln/
Electric Charging points -
https://www.lincoln.gov.uk/living-in-lincoln/transport-travel-and-parking/p…
* By Train
Lincoln Central railway station is located in the south of the city
centre within easy walking distance of Lincoln High Street, the main
shopping areas and the historic Cathedral Quarter.
Direct connections are provided by East Midlands Trains, Virgin Trains
East Coast and Northern Rail which operate daily services to
Peterborough, Leicester, Nottingham, Sheffield, Doncaster and London.
We would advise you to plan your trip in advance with an online route
planner or by phone with TrainTracker 0871 200 49. More information on
the train station and its services can be found here.
You can find the station at:
Lincoln Railway Station
St Mary’s Street
Lincoln
Lincolnshire
LN5 7EW
The train station is fully accessible for wheelchairs.
* By Bus
There are good bus connections throughout Lincolnshire and Lincoln.
Lincoln Bus Station:
You can find the (brand new!) central bus station, near the train
station and at:
18-20 Sincil Bank, Lincoln LN5 7ET
For all timetable and route information please visit the Lincolnshire
County Council website or call in to the Travel Shop at the bus station.
Local operators include Stagecoach and PC Coaches.
Walk & Ride Steep Hill Shuttle:
The Lincoln Walk & Ride Steep Hill Shuttle is a useful local bus service
which operates to link the Cathedral Quarter with the High Street,
Cultural and Brayford Waterfront Quarters stopping at most key points
across the city.
The Walk & Ride Steep Hill Shuttle runs 6 days a week throughout the
year: Monday to Saturday: 9.10am – 2:47pm, 4:10pm – 5:22pm.
Walk & Ride tickets can be purchased on the bus.
Park and Ride:
For details see:
https://lincolnbus.co.uk/special-services/lincoln-park-and-ride
--
Andrew Back
http://abopen.com
Hello,
We have another 1-day event in March, which this time will be dedicated
to the topic of open source software compliance, featuring talks and
workshops on topics such as OpenChain, SW360 and FOSSology.
There are additional sessions in the pipeline, but we were keen to get
details out sooner rather than later, given this is a full day, now less
than 2 months away, and diaries fill up quick.
Further details will be provided in due course!
Cheers,
Andrew
//
OSHUG #65 — Yanking the Chain: open source software compliance in the
supply chain
On the 22 March 2018, 09:00 - 17:00 at BCS London, 1st Floor, The
Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA.
Registration: http://oshug.org/event/65
With the ever increasing complexity of embedded device software stacks,
coupled with the proliferation of new mechanisms for distributing
complex server software stacks, open source compliance has never been
more important — or indeed more of a challenge.
Fortunately, there are growing number of tools and methods at our
disposal to support open source software compliance efforts. This 1-day
event will feature talks and hands-on workshops covering a number of
these, with insights into practical experiences and lessons learned.
The preliminary programme can be found below and please note that
further details will be published in due course as additional sessions
are confirmed.
***Talks
— Introducing OpenChain
OpenChain is a scalable, flexible compliance programme, developed by the
Linux Foundation. It provides a great foundation for businesses of all
sizes to adopt appropriate practices and procedures in place to control
development and supply chain risks. Already adopted by companies like
Qualcomm, Toyota and ARM, it's equally applicable to SMEs.
* Andrew Katz is a lawyer and former programmer who advises extensively
on free and open source software and other opens. He is head of the
technology department at Moorcrofts LLP, a boutique technology law firm,
which is one of the 5 OpenChain pilot partners in the world, and has
been involved in drafting many of the OpenChain materials.
— Eclipse SW360 - Open Source Management with Open Source
SW360 manages software components with their license compliance
documentation in SPDX and allows for setting up bills-of-material to
provide comprehensive documentation for products and projects.
Organizations can use SW360 as a one-stop shop for sharing component
information, tracking their usage in projects or products. This involves
the handing of compliance information, but also, as an example, matching
for vulnerabilities from data providers.
As an EPL-1.0 licensed Open Source project, it is highly customizable,
letting organizations keep their confidential product development data
on premises, and prevents them from becoming dependent on a single
vendor. This presentation shows briefly features and a walk through the
application to demonstrate capabilities and use cases of SW360.
* Michael C. Jaeger is one of the maintainers for the projects,
FOSSology and SW360, both of which are in the area of license compliance
and component management with open source software. At Siemens Corporate
Technology in Munich, Germany, Michael manages the Siemens contributions
to SW360 and FOSSology. Michael is a certified software architect and
received a German PhD degree from the faculty of electrical engineering
and computer science at TU Berlin.
*** Workshops
— Using FOSSology - License Analysis Hands On
FOSSology is an open source license compliance software system and
toolkit. As a toolkit, you can run license, copyright and export control
scans from the command line. As a system, a database and Web user
interface provide you with user interface and functionality to analyse
the licensing situation of open source software.
* Hosted by: Michael C. Jaeger.
Note: Please aim to arrive by 08:45 as the workshop will start at 09:00
prompt.
--
Andrew Back
http://abopen.com
Hello,
Details can be found below for the 63rd and first meeting of 2018, the
theme for which is open source musical software and hardware.
I should note also that this is another excellent programme that we have
Sevan to thank for putting together.
Cheers,
Andrew
//
Event #63 — Collaborative music making, ultra-low latency audio and
sensor processing.
On the 18 January 2018, 18:00 - 21:00 at BCS London, 1st Floor, The
Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA.
http://oshug.org/event/63
We start the new year with an event on the theme of open source musical
software and hardware.
— Bela, an embedded platform for ultra-low latency audio and sensor
processing
Bela started off as a research project at Centre For Digital Music
(Queen Mary University of London) and is now a commercial product,
mainly aimed at makers, programmers and researchers that work with
audio. The platform is based on a BeagleBone Black with a custom
expansion cape and a dedicated software environment. The board runs
Debian Linux with Xenomai as a real-time co-kernel. The combined use of
Xenomai and the BeagleBone Black's on-board PRU microcontroller allows
to achieve sub-millisecond latency for audio and sensor processing,
while node.js is used to provide a user-friendly web-based IDE. The
project is entirely open source, hardware and software.
* Giulio Moro is a PhD student in the Centre for Digital Music at Queen
Mary University of London. A sound engineer by training, he is now
researching in the field of performer-instrument interaction. He is one
of the inventors and core developers of Bela.
— Female Laptop Orchestra: exploring geographical, cultural, technical
and artistic challenges of collaborative music making
As a collective of female musicians, artists, engineers, computer
scientists and researchers, Female Laptop Orchestra has been pushing the
boundaries of technology and cross-cultural co-located and distributed
collaborative music making since 2014. Besides musical instruments, we
use a variety of open source and commercial tools to create music,
stream music and connect with our audience during the performance. We
often collaborate with classical composers and ensembles, filmmakers,
visual designers, choreographers and dancers. Recently, we also
collaborated with members of Women in Music Technology (a student
organization whose goal is to encouraging more women to join the music
tech field of study and highlight the often unsung role of women in
music technology, based at Georgia Tech Centre for Music Technology in
US) and Sonora (a collaborative network bringing together artists and
researchers interested in feminist manifestations in the context of the
arts, based in Brazil).
* Nela Brown is a sound artist, technologist, researcher and educator.
In the past decade, she composed music and designed sound for
award-winning projects including theatre performances, dance, mobile,
film, documentaries and interactive installations. She is the founder of
the Female Laptop Orchestra (FLO), an eclectic group of female musicians
and technologists exploring co-located and distributed collaborative
music making within different contexts and across different geographical
locations. As a creative director of FLO since 2014, Nela co-ordinated 7
national and international FLO performances involving 36 collaborators
from 21 different countries.
— Talk #3 TBA
Note: Please aim to arrive by 18:15 as the event will start at 18:30 prompt.
Closing date for bookings is Tuesday 16th January 2018 at 11:30 pm. No
more bookings will be taken after this date. For overseas delegates who
wish to attend the event please note that BCS does not issue invitation
letters
//
--
Andrew Back
http://abopen.com
Hi All,
Registration is now open for the first workshop of 2018, which will
provide hands-on experience with using the Intel Movidius Neural Compute
Stick and open source frameworks to deploy deep neural networks.
As this is likely to prove popular, registering sooner rather than later
is recommended if you do plan to come along.
Cheers,
Andrew
//
OSHUG #64 — Intel® Movidius™ Neural Compute Stick Workshop.
On the 22 February 2018, 09:00 - 17:00 at BCS London, 1st Floor, The
Davidson Building, 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA.
http://oshug.org/event/64
Learn how to use the Intel® Movidius™ Neural Compute Stick and open
source frameworks to deploy deep neural networks at the edge.
— Workshop details
Market research estimates there will be as many as 20 billion connected
devices in the market by 2020. These devices are expected to generate
billions of petabytes of data traffic between cloud and edge devices. In
2017 alone, 8.4B connected devices are expected in the market which is
sparking a strong need to pre-process data at the edge. This has led
many IoT device manufacturers, especially those working on vision based
devices like smart cameras, drones, robots, AR/VR, etc., to bring
intelligence to the edge.
Through the recent addition of the Movidius™ VPU technology to its
existing AI edge solutions portfolio, Intel is well positioned to
provide solutions that help developers and data scientists pioneer the
low-power intelligent edge devices segment. This workshop will provide
hands-on experience with Intel’s Neural Compute Stick – a low-cost,
form-factor developer kit for low-power vision based embedded inference
applications.
What You Will Learn:
* Insights into how Movidius™ VPUs are pioneering DNN accelerated vision
processing.
* Introduction to hardware and software components of NCS.
* Workflow of network profiling and application development using NCS.
* Detection/Classification models
* Advanced functionalities
* Hands-on with advanced demos and sample codes built using NC SDK’s API
framework, which includes support for Caffe and TensorFlow
— Participant requirements
** Participants are required to bring a laptop computer with Ubuntu
16.04 and Neural Compute SDK installed **
https://github.com/movidius/ncsdk
— What is provided
* NCS hardware will be provided for use during the workshop
* A light lunch will be provided and please ensure that any dietary
requirements are made clear during registration
— Hosted by
The workshop will be hosted by Intel engineers.
This workshop is free to attend and hosted by Intel in partnership with
the BCS Open Source Specialist Group and the Open Source Hardware User
Group.
* Sponsored by DesignSpark — https://www.rs-online.com/designspark/home
Note: Please aim to arrive by 08:45 as the workshop will start at 09:00
prompt.
--
Andrew Back
http://abopen.com