Greetings List Lurkers,
We finally realized that we could no longer function in the electronic
dreck that the lab at Pellet House Barre had become, so last week we began
an assault on entropy. The battle continues...Entropy is still at large
in the lab... Meh..
So, this is the official notice of the Barre Open Systems Institute (BOSI)
Adult Swim. The swim stars at 5:00 PM EST, our latest pomp being to
include a goggle hangout https://www.google.com/calendar/render?pli=1
until 7:00 PM EST.
The google-cast aspect is coming right along. Presuming that we have network
connectivity (presume away :^), we may actually repeat the whole video babble
fest thing that has worked so well for the last few meetings. This week the
machine we use (named wotpd) will once again hold forth Kevin Cole G+'ing in
from DC, and maybe some special guests to boot at 5:00 EST.
We have been spring cleaning to beat the band, as well as attending all
of the Barre Labor Hall leftist socialist activity. We expect to be
installing the next step the
EnGenius directional 801.11 G distance WAN between the
Barre Old Labor Hall and the Barre Central Library. The goal here is to
allow the library another source of income, so that we can help defray the cost
of the LinuxWorld subscription. These radio link things are very cool. The
radio links for 802.11 can go about 2 miles, we are looking for other test
sites as well. Want 300 Mb/s for about 2 miles? Respond and we can set
you up.
The opto isolators as well as the right controller are now here for the
snobot. But due to the cleaning the lab is offline. We can and will
consider testing what Bit Ed helped us figure out about how to cascade
Arduino motor control shield H-bridges to the Big Ass FETS (BAFs) that run
the two control motors. Up till the lab went offline for spring cleaning,
the Elves are frantically documenting the interface, and a stationary test
platform was in the works. This coming week after we clean up the Pellet
House lab is when we can take a shot at this.
At the risk of endless repetition, the theory here is you can graduate from a
toy car to a robot and not change a thing in software. So where the opto
isolators come in, is we hook them to a motor shield in order to cascade the
Arduino motor shield H-bridges to the BAFs (Big Ass Fets) on the snobot (ne
powered wheelchair) controller. This will no doubt be placed in one of the new
wire-mould boxes that allow for a roomy enclose of the Arduino and a few
shields. These big boxes allow for a very nice fit, and pix shall be posted on
G+ and the web site. The old skinny wire-mould boxes are to end up in the
furmon project. We are currently trying to order the double wide Wiremould
boxes for PI's. Stop me if you have heard this one... I am having trouble
getting the supplier to email with me. These big size ones are the most
promising.
As we have mentioned, the Raspberry Pi enclosure the idea for is to use an old
5.25" floppy box, this works great, again, I expect to get this up as pictures.
Do not forget, if you try this mount the pi pretty far from the edges as you
will need as much as one inch connector clearance. The Wiremould "Trailer
Park" project may change my mind about this as an ideal enclosure. A
whole bunch of folks are entering the Raspberry Pi enclosure biz right
now. As a matter of form from now on we will abbreviate Raspberry Pi as
"rPi" gotta love camel case.
We hope to expand use of "Andro-Mouse", which is a series of apps for an
Android controller and a Java control element.
The "tsp" site has stabilized (http://docbox.flint.com:8081/tsp) there are now
live shots and consolidated shots of the working beasts (look at the first
three links off this site). One goal is to get the pictures better organized,
and we expect to have pictures of the spiffy new enclosure. You will find on
the site the actual programs that exploit the python miniterm class to gather
data from the Arduino based temperature sensors via the USB. The software
interface between the Arduino and mrtg is solid and have what we need in that
department. This baby is done for the first phase, now for the rewrite...
With mrtg you can trend the sample data, and this is an example that shows you
how to configure MRTG to display this date. There is also a thing called pylab
that makes time-series data plotting and analysis a snap. Hopefully this coming
week will let us play more with pylab.
As mentioned last week, the Xbee radio link work from the pellet furnace is now
on the pbug development system. This is a milestone since we now have live
data to play with. For more information see the furmon site as detailed below.
The software should launch, OK - or maybe later. Testing on the 802.11
transmitter that can replace the point-to-point system, is completed, we are
just waiting the the right customer...
The ever growing list of projects includes:
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/furmon - monitor that pellet furnace.
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/arduino - moving in the arduino groove
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/javajive - to get better at Javascript
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/tsp - Temperature Sensors Project
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/robotsrules - The quest for Roberts Rules - - -
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/visual.bash - Yea, I am not kidding...
- http://docbox.flint.com:8081/mrtg - remedial raw mrtg for the slow...
Otherwise, Barre indeed remains a great venue for a Linux and Open Source
Software meeting and general system rejuvenation. That said, we expect to
assemble more of the Dallas Semi "1-wire" temperature probes, and we have two
Arduinos, with lots of fixin's as well as several Raspberry Pi's and a boat
load of radio modules.
Needless to say the Arduino remains the coolest thing for 2012, the Raspberry
Pi the coolest thing this year, and Ras-BMC the coolest thing for the month of
April...
Do not forget that the Barre library stocks "Linux World", and the latest issue
is here. The DVD's are available to checkout and copy, as I just made isos of
each and every one.
Anyway, come and do open source stuff. For more information about the BOSI
Adult Swim meeting time and location try this:
http://family.flint.com/adult_swim_location/index_html
Show up at the the Hedding United Methodist Church Basement if you have
questions or are interested in Linux or the concept of free and open systems,
The basement of the Hedding UMC facility is actually working out pretty well.
If you wish to be included on the "Linux_adult_swim" mailing list, send a
response to this note. Note that the mailing list system is a bit peevish
right now. Let me know if you have any difficulties. Note that I will be
updating the list-server by next week.
Kindest Regards,
Paul Flint
/************************************
Based upon email reliability concerns,
please send an acknowledgment in response to this note.
Paul Flint
Barre Open Systems Institute
17 Averill Street
Barre, VT
05641
http://www.bosivt.org
http://www.flint.com/home
skype: flintinfotech
(802) 479-2360 Home
(802) 595-9365 Cell
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