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Shakthi updated gplcver to fix a crash upon launch.

Dean Glazeski updated openocd to 0.5.0.

I’ll be giving a talk at 28c3 this year on December 29 at 6:30PM about a Man in the Middle attack on HDCP that I discretely embodied within the NeTV. The sharp fellows at rootlabs noticed the trick and disclosed the attack in a blog post from September, which was further elaborated by The Register. I will disclose all the naughty bits about the attack’s implementation in my talk this December.

Now that I have departed chumby, I will produce an open-source version of NeTV to support developers & OEMs through my Singapore-registered company, Sutajio Ko-Usagi. Adafruit.com is currently taking pre-orders. Thank you Phil and Limor for taking the time during peak season to get the product up on your website! You guys rock.

Stay tuned for more…

Here are some minor updates on the FEL:

• dinotrace – new update was pushed on testing repositories
• fped – new update was pushed to stable repositories
• geda-gaf  (Fixes broken dependency libgmp.so.3 on rawhide and FTBFS with glib headers, Fixes RHBZ#604288, RHBZ#710281, L#704829 – Refresh on in-use tab causes crashes)
• vhd2vl 2.4 – new update was pushed on testing repositories
• Fritzing will soon be part of Fedora repositories
• Toped will have a technology editor which will reduce days of porting foundry’s tech files.

For the past couple weeks I’ve been wrapped up in finals at ITP, and in producing the ITP winter show 2011, along with my colleague Marianne Petit. I lost count of all the great Arduino projects in the show, but probably somewhere around 70% of the 110 projects in the show have a little blue board somewhere inside. If you’re in New York City today or tomorrow, come on down, it’s a good time, with lots of creative projects covering a range of application areas from healthcare  to fashion to video sculpture to politics, data visualization, assistive technologies, and more.

Here are a few selected at random that are using Arduino:

• FOLKBOX is a device that allows a person with limited left-hand dexterity to play the acoustic guitar, by Justin Lange.
• Glute-o-licious is a virtual cycling experience in which the user controls the speed of a first-person video by riding a stationary bike, by Courtney Mitchell
• HeartRacer is a portable exercise-based video game that plugs into your TV and is powered by your heartbeat, by Nick Santaniello
• Kinetic Sculpture 5 is composed of five pendulums that the viewer can control. Simply wave your hand over the sensors to “play” the piece, by Ben Light
• Metrochange is a charity donation platform using New York City subway cards, by Genevieve Hoffman, Paul May, and Stepan Boltalin
• RFID Beat Box is an instrument that lets you create and play your own music using RFID tags, by Danne Woo and Stefanie Kleinman
• Nostalgia is an interactive art piece where you can view a memory of the artist’s past by typing, by Yoonjo Choi

I've been working on a new version of our ArduEye using one of our "Stonyman" image sensor chips and decided to see if I can grab four dimensions of optical flow (X shift, Y shift, curl, and divergence) from a wide field of view. I wirebonded a Stonyman chip to a 1" square breakout board, and attached it to an Arduino Mega256 using a simple connecting shield board. I then glued a simple flat printed pinhole onto the chip using (yay!) 5-minute model airplane epoxy. With a little black paint around the edges, the result is a simple low resolution very wide field of view camera that can operated using the Arduino.

I programmed the Arduino to grab five 8x8 pixel regions- region 0 is forward while the other four regions are about 50 degrees diagonally off forward as shown. In each region the Arduino computed X and Y optical flow and odometry (essentially an accumulation of optical flow over time).

To compute X and Y shift, the algorithm summed respectively the X and Y odometry measurements from the five pixel regions. These are the first two dimensions of optical flow that most people are familiar with. To compute curl and divergence, the algorithm added the appropriate X or Y odometries from the corresponding pixel regions. For curl this results in a measurement of how the sensor rotates around it's forward axis. For divergence this results in a measurement of motion parallel to the forward axis.

In the current configuration the system operates at about 5 to 6 Hz, though when the serial dump is on that slows to about 2 Hz. Most of the delay is in the acquisition and involves wasteful array lookups to select which pixels to read out. Using an external ADC (which the middle board supports) and better code there is room for probably an order of magnitude speed increase.

The video shows a few test runs where I exposed the sensor to three of the four fundamental motions. Y shift was implemented using an air track (like some of you used in physics class). Curl motion was implemented with the aid of a well-loved turntable. Divergence was implemented by hand by moving the sensor to and from clutter. The corresponding plots show the response of all four motions, with the "correct" one emphasized.

You can see that the four components are largely independent. There is some crosstalk- curl and divergence tend to be the biggest recipients of crosstalk since they are effectively a difference between signals (and getting an accurate number by subtracting two noisy numbers is not easy). Factors such as varying distances around the camera can cause uneven stimulation of the different pixel fields, resulting in phantom curl and div. There is also a little bit of drift. There is a lot of room for optimizing the system for sure.

One immediate improvement would be to use two of these Stonyman cameras back-to-back so that near omnidirectional sensing could be performed. This would give us more information to separate the different components (X,Y,curl,div) as well as allow us to separate out the other two axes of rotation from X and Y.

A setup similar to this formed the basis for our recent single sensor yaw and heave (height) stability sensor demonstration.

What could something like this be used for? You could put it on a ground vehicle and do some odometry with it, either looking down or even looking up, though for looking up the odometry measurements would depend on distance to other objects in the environment. You could also mount this on a quad looking down- X and Y would give your basic optical flow for sideways drift regulation. Curl give you yaw rotation (though you already have that with a gyro). Divergence is most interesting- it would tell you about change in height.

You could also implement something similar with five of Randy's optical flow sensors aimed to look in the same five directions. (You could probably dispense with sensor 0 to save weight/cost in this case.)

The test results for the FPGA time to digital converter (TDC) core are available from OHWR. Except from one problem which I believe is due to external signal integrity problems, the core worked well on the SPEC. From these tests, the 2-sigma precision is +/- 52 ps.

For those of us isolated from the rest of the world by shark-infested oceans and 10-hour plane trips, seeing all the Open Hardware action in the US and Europe has left us feeling just a little bit jealous. Over the last few years I've looked enviously at pictures of the huge O'Reilly Maker Faire, wishing there was such a thing in Australia.

Now, thanks to the hard work of Paul Szymkowiak (@paulzee to his friends!) and his army of helpers, my dream is coming true!

Within a few hours the venue will be announced (it's all settled, pending some official paperwork) and the call for Makers to exhibit has already gone out.

The Mini Maker Faire Melbourne will take place on Saturday January 14th, 2012 to coincide with the start of linux.conf.au in Ballarat, so if you're coming into town for LCA you can drop in at Mini Maker Faire Melbourne first and then head on to the conference.

More details can be found at www.makerfairemelbourne.com.

Hello everyone,

Next Monday morning we'll perform a maintenance update on the ohwr site.

On this update we'll add a new section to the top menu (Home, My Page, Projects, Companies) called "Licenses". It will include all licenses used in OHWR, including the CERN OHL license.

We'll also change the order in which the project tabs are presented (placing the "Wiki" tab in second place) and will darken the text tone a bit, to increase its legibility.

The upgrade process is scheduled to start at 08:30 CEST and is estimated to take around 20 minutes. The ohwr website will not be available during that time.

Thanks and regards,

The OHR-Support team

Spanish artist and Fine Arts professor Rubén Tortosa partnered with Computer Science professor Miguel Sánchez, both from Universitat Politècnica de València, to create an interactive arts installation that captures visitors’ silhouettes using a Kinect depth-camera and print them on the wall using an Arduino and a couple of stepper motors. Image processing uses OpenCV library and Daniel Shiffman’s Kinect library for Processing. Arduino code is tasked to act as an interface between the PC and a couple of microstepping motor drivers.

Check the other videos in Miguel’s profile to fully understand how this works. He promised to make better documentation as soon as he has the time, but he couldn’t help sending his proof of concept to our blog as soon as it was done.

Thanks Miguel for the videos, this is beautiful!

By popular request, I’ve compiled all the wares from the 2011 Name that Ware season and put them into a wall calendar for 2012. This will be available to next year’s winners of Name that Ware as one of the prize choices, or you can buy one yourself at the bunniestudios cafepress shop.

Each month pictures the featured ware from the previous year, annotated with the identity of the ware and the competition winner … with the exception of December, of course, as this month’s competition has yet to conclude!

Watch the fine folks at Tinkerforge explain their modular hardware kit at http://youtu.be/3DwzskCmTgE
They have chosen the CERN Open Hardware License for their designs.

This site has transitioned to an upgraded server. The transition should be transparent, but if anyone notices anything amiss, please comment!

The Ware for December 2011 brings us from 1945 back to the modern day:

Happy holidays!

The Ware for November 2011 is a Westinghouse JAN-CWL-861 vacuum tube. Thanks to Mike Fitzmorris for contributing this wonderfully preserved retro-ware. It was identified in under one hour from posting, which I didn’t expect. Some people definitely know their vacuum tubes!

Here’s a photo of the whole tube for context:

plum33 is the first person to correctly guess the ware, congrats and email me for your prize!

[Rave Rover's Chris Williamson] made a portable DIY dancefloor, sharing instructions and schematics.

Like with many projects similar to this, an Arduino board controls pretty much everything. The floor is dominated by powerful LED lights, which respond to a Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI). A small computer is also inside (complete with Wi-fi), along with a car radio hooked up to speakers. Oh, and thanks to additional wheelchair motors, the floor can be wheeled away to wherever it’s needed.

Chris managed to build the dance floor in just one month, and documented how to do it on Instructables for anyone who wants to make their own. And now you’ve seen this, would you really want to throw a party without one?

via [PCworld] source [Instructables]

TriggerTrap, is a very interesting product developed by Ziah Fogel & Haje Jan Kamps. Arduino-based & open-source, is now on preorder. What does it do? (Watch Video)

(With TriggerTrap) your camera will be easily controlled in a number of ways either by sound, by breaking a laser beam, time or any other method you can think of using its built in a Aux port.

TriggerTrap comes in the well designed, finished product and with the TT Shield (75$). More info soon.

via [GeekyGadgets] source [TriggerTrap]

The Hall Effect and Proximity Sensor Module is a versatile and tiny device, great for sensing magnets or other physical objects nearby:

Applications include detecting shaft rotation: put a magnet on a rotating shaft and then use the Hall Effect Sensor to count / measure the frequency of rotation, giving you RPM. The module also includes a very handy "triggered" LED, so all you need to do to test it is apply power and watch the LED! Great for debugging your project while getting it sorted.

There's example code and a wiring diagram on the Hall Effect Magnetic and Proximity Sensor Module Quickstart Guide.

John Boxall of TronixStuff fame (one of the best sources of Arduino tutorials anywhere!) has just posted a quick review of a whole bunch of our new modules. Included in the review are even a couple of videos, including this one showing our RGB LED Module displaying different colours:

He also combined a couple of modules, like in this video where he used the Light Sensor Module to control the frequency of a tone being driven to the Sound & Buzzer Module:

Check out John's review here:

http://tronixstuff.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/review-freetronics-module-family/

We bought a copyleft FPGA Develop/Bitcoin Mining board: Icarus made by Ngzhang, the PCB, FPGA code, Mining software is all open. for more information please check bitcointalk.org.

I setup the Icarus with my server.here is the script file to keep it minng all the time. you can find more logs here.

[Andre Konig] is sharing Fritzing’s Christmas Challenge (ending the 18th of December).

[...]Take a look at what you’ve built with Fritzing this year, and snap a couple of photos/screenshots. If you think it’s an interesting concept, a technical masterpiece, or just fun, we want to see it all.  
Then either upload it to our projects gallery or mail them to info (ät) fritzing.org. (Also, you must agree that we may publish what you send us (if you prefer, anonymized).

Deadline is Sunday, December 18th.

[Fritzing Blog]