I have been lurking for a while hoping that I would eventually find some time to create an embedded Linux, but time seems to have run out, and now I need help.
I work for Baobab Health Partnership (www.baobabhealth.org) which builds computer systems for hospitals and HIV clinics in Malawi. Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world, has 2 million HIV positive people, and just 100 doctors in the entire country. Our system uses touchscreen computers to help clinicians serve more people and make fewer mistakes. Our hardware is based on donated iOpener computers (http://www.ltsp.org/documentation/iopener.php). These are x86 systems with an integrated LCD screen, 32MB of memory and 16MB of flash disk space. We add a touchscreen controller and a few other components to complete our hardware. At the moment we are adding on a second flash disk and boot into windows 98 to run some VB apps that we have created. This is not the best solution. :-) Our goal is to have a customized embedded Linux on the iopener. Besides the obvious need of supporting the hardware, we also need it to run a modern (Ajax capable) web browser. Various people have already managed to get Linux running on the device (http://m4i.homeip.net/) but nobody has come up with exactly what we need. I understand the web browser may be difficult, but the good people at Opera have already expressed an interest in helping us out in case we need them. We have fundraised some money for this project, so we will be able to pay the implementer. Ideally the person will be near to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania so that he/she can spend some time with Gerry Douglas our hardware hacker, but if not we can probably work something out. (Being near Malawi would be even better but not very likely) Please get in touch if you are interested. Cheers, Mike McKay PS Here is a video of our current system in action (registering patients) in case you are interested: http://www.vdomck.org/~crazy/PatientRegistration.mov -- [email protected] mailing list
