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Wow…kind of a long episode this week (but totally worth it), due to having TWO guests on the show! Jason Kridner of the BeagleBoard Project and Texas Instruments and our regular co-co-host, Jeff Keyzer of MightyOhm.com.
- Some of Jason’s favorite projects for the BeagleBoard are robotics, including some that utilize the libfreenect library.
- Jason sees the BeagleBoard getting smaller and cheaper in the future, trending towards other projects like Raspberry Pi
- The Gadgeteer (from Microsoft) doesn’t appear to be open source hardware, but is a way for .NET programmers to start with hardware.
- Though the hardware may not be OSHW, the .NET Micro Framework is FOSS. And using .NET on Linux is a possibility in part by Miguel de Icaza.
- Jason’s next project with the BeagleBoard will be to remove the need for his iPad for his retro gaming interface system, the iCade.
- Due to frustration over a broken 40 pin zif socket Jeff went out and bought and fell in love with a Hakko 808 desoldering station.
- Jason has seen some crazy BGA mods. Send in pictures of your favorite board mods to be featured on the show.
- Software on the BeagleBoard is pretty varied. The Angstrom Distribution is based upon similar code to WebOS, the main software of the temporarily cheap and available HP touchpads.
- Roel Adriaans took The Amp Hour Bingo concept to a new level! Follow along when you listen to the show!
- Bill Porter did an unconventional thing: he proposed to his girlfriend by hijacking her PCB panel order from @Laen!
- A new competition in the works: a 7400 logic series competition from Dangerous Protoypes!
- Jeff had a great time at the Chaos Communication Camp, held outside of Berlin Germany. Check out his photos on the MightyOhm Flickr Page.
- There was a talk about sending hackers (in satellite or human form) to space in the near future.
- Jeff compared it to Burning Man, the annual art festival in the desert of the US.
- Jeff was selling his Geiger Counter kit at the CCC and will continue to at the NY Maker Faire.
- Why isn’t there overnight camping at any of the MakerFaire events?
There was a lot to talk about, so we went over by about 15 minutes, but hopefully you can wait it out. It’s all worth it in the end! And the very end of the show has some fun news. Enjoy!
Thanks for the mention guys!
The PCB is functional for the project she designed it for: it’s a basic breakout for an LED driving shift register. I can’t take credit for the ring design or PCB specs, that was all Neal. The best part of the surprise was the fact it was her design that she was expecting to get, but not with this addition.
I dread to think how many puppies were slaughtered during this episode 🙂
Oh yeah, we should email that guy and explain it was our guests who brought up “The Amp Hour Items Which Shall Not Be Named”
Another nifty Beagleboard project that I’ve found is based on http://www.rtklib.com/
It’s a replacement of the super-high-end differential GPS/GNSS positioning systems that you can find on tractors, survey equipment, etc. Kind of a cool tool for robotics and navigation projects.
40 pin socket desoldering is easy. Try a 160 odd pin socket that is attached to 11 mylar flexi boards, with each layer having all holes soldered ( not all traces on each layer, just all holes) which is being replaced because of a broken pin, which is unfortunately used ( around 30 odd pins were not used in the socket, but SOD’s law always prevailed) to do a signal connection. Had a 30% success rate on those, more often than not I would have to order all the different flexi boards, the 5 sockets they went to as well, and desolder them from the backplane.
Was nice to do using a Weller DS 701C solder station. Still have the one bit I bought ( at a ruinous price too) for desoldering flatpaks, as otherwise they were a pain to replace if faulty. Still have the last board I was going to fix, but never did. Has one faulty PM5404 on it, it popped the lid off when it failed.
So much stuff in this week’s show! One thing I would request for the new Beagleboard: Can I PLEASE have all the components at multiples of 90 degrees? That 45 degree JTAG connector really sets off my OCD. I’m not sure how well a Beagleboard without a video output will do, that is the killer feature for me. With the Raspberry Pi doing it for $25 there is no excuse.
Incidentally, BeagleBoard’s official supplier in the UK, Farnell, sells them excluding tax for £120. That is £144 including VAT,or $230. So there is definitely a need for a cheaper design.
People avoid using .NET stuff on Linux like the plague. They have a very good reason for avoiding it, Microsoft hast plastered .NET with patents, and the patent licensing situation for the Linux .NET clone is rather muddy. The Linux .NET (called Mono) is also incomplete.
Yes, Mono is a nice idea but it’s doomed to forever be 2 or 3 years behind the full .Net class libraries. I first used Mono about 5 years ago, I wrote a simple command line calendar program (with appointments and anniversaries etc). I was able to drop that onto a USB stick to carry it around with me, then it could just be plugged into any windows or linux PC and just use that same binary on both OS’s. It worked awesomely well and there was no fuss at all.
However the ONLY reason it was a command line app was that Mono had none of the newer GUI components that the main .Net stuff had. So I dropped Mono forever and never went back to it since it doesn’t seem to be faring any better these days.
I think it’s good that it .Net/Mono exists in the personal computer realm, but I despise the fact that MS have stooped to new levels of cynicism with their new .Net based microcontroller products. That codebase (even in it’s “micro” form) is 500x fatter and heavier than an existing equivalent micro architecture. How that helps anyone achieve anything I’ll never know.
I liked the Beagleboard discussion and the rest of the show.
Was this the beagle board sbc alternative:
http://www.themaximitecomputer.com/the-maximite-computer/ ?
It looks pretty cool since it’s running a BASIC interpreter! I think there’s another project that runs a python interpreter, which is also quite interesting!
http://blog.screamingcircuits.com/
Jeff, I read you also did a talk recently about hacking the asus router (at the chaos communication conference?)
I’ve got a wl500g, and out of the box it has a media server (upnp), print server, offline bittorrenting, usb ports (ala pogoplug), etc.. I’m curious what features did you add? dual ssid?
Thanks!
Truly no matter if someone doesn