TUXCON FOSS and OSHW conference 2018 in Plovdiv is just 18 days away, so plan your visit properly ;)

TuxCon 2018 conference about Free Open Source Software and Open Source Hardware will be June 9 and 10th in Plovdiv.

This is community driven event done by volunteers with the support of local IT companies and it’s totally free to participate.

In Saturday 9th of June in the Technical University building there will be two rooms, for lectures and workshops.

Hacking Risc-V core, implemented on iCE40 FPGA and playing with it’s instruction set and making small “monitor” program which allow you to enter programs written on machine code and executed on iCE40HX8K-EVB + iCE40-IO will be demonstrated, so if you want to touch and make your first program on RISC-V “computer” with VGA monitor and keyboard you may find Rangel Ivanov lecture interesting.

Plamen Vaisolov is retro computer maniac and keep working on them, implementing modern floppy disk emulators and other peripherials. He will share his experience with all these who miss Karateka and Load Runner 🙂

Neven Boyanov will talk about his experience with LoRA network and how to start on low budged.

Dimitar Gamishev has two interesting talks, one is for the Open Source Hardware and Software GPS car navigation he made. In the  second he will speak about the home assistants like Google Home and Alexa, how to implement them with small Linux computer like OLinuXino and even with ESP32-Lyra and how to impress your girlfriend by switching on and off appliances and lights with your voice.

There will be KiCAD workshop where everyone (even with no knowledge) will learn how to install, configure and make small robot PCB with KiCAD. Then some general knowledges about PCB materials and how to prepare all files and send to PCB board house for manufacturing. How to select the components, footprints, good routing practices, DRC/ERC checks, Gerber generation and tips how to design your PCBs in way to be produced at lower cost. At the workshop will be our design engineers and you can talk to them directly about issues you encountered when worked with KiCAD or other CAD product.

 

In Sunday 10th of June we will have traditional Soldering workshop at Olimex training building, where we will assembly and program with Arduino small robot which can follow line or escape from labyrinth. This will be the same robot which PCB we will design in the KiCAD workshop in the previous day. We will go detailed through the program and study how modifications affect it.

The workshop with end with barbeque in Olimex backyard 🙂

 

We are looking forward to see you in Plovdiv soon!

Hardware Hackathon June 4th at OLIMEX training building

Here is map how to get to us tomorrow. Normal path from Boulevard “6-ti Septemvri” which is being reconstructed more than year is marked with blue.

Do not take this route with car. Walking is possible but adventurous 🙂

The new path is from Boulevard “Tsarigradsko shose”, right turn at “Kemera” street, then left and right to “Prohlada” street and left turn when you cross “Pravda” street.

The Hackathon starts at 11.00 o’clock . The goal will be to Do-It-Yourself this sweet board:

First we will speak a bit about the different electronic components which are used and how to solder them properly. Then we will assembly 100 kits and learn how to install Arduino IDE and program them.

We will experiment with capacitive buttons implementation – the Kitty nose. Then we will try to compose different melodies and upload them.

The Hackathon will end 17.00 o’clock and we will move somewhere to drink beer.

TuxCon 2017 Open Source Hardware and Software conference will be 3-4 of June in Plovdiv

Just 70 days ahead is the 4th TuxCon conference in Plovdiv dedicated to Open Source Hardware and Software. For more info watch on conference page at http://tuxcon.mobi/

The entrance is free for all visitors. TuxCon is a community event and it is organized by volunteers.

3rd of June is the day for lectures and lighting talks, if you have something interesting to share please send your request to info@tuxcon.mobi

On 4th of June we invite you to the traditional soldering hardware hackathon in Olimex training building.

HackFMI 6 “Hack the gadgets” Three days long Hackathon is this weekend

This weekend is HackFMI – three days Hackathon. Olimex will be present these by Stefan Mavrudiev as mentor.

The Hackathon starts in Friday 17.00 o’clock and is named “Hack for gadgeds” and as the name points will be about building and hacking hardware gadgeds.

For all teams Olimex will provide 20% discount coupons so they can order and use all boards and sensors we have, as we have mentor here he will bring all orders with him, so there will be no shipping also.

TuxCon conference – only 10 days left

Just 10 days left till TuxCon conference in Plovdiv!

For these who didn’t hear yet: TuxCon is a free community event about free and open-source software for Internet of Things, mobile, embedded and wearable devices.

In Saturday 11th of July there will be lectures and Lighting talks. Peter Valkov from Olimex will talk about ESP8266-IoT Firmware and six other lecturers are registered.

In Sunday 12th of July we will have Hackathon at Olimex training building including  IoT workshop with ESP8266 and SMT components soldering workshop.

The Help day for June and July will be combined with this event, so if you have questions how to use our boards or want help from our developers they will be available all day long.

Open Fest 2014 is approaching, get ready for the Hardware Hackathon!

This weekend is Open Fest 2014 in Sofia! We will be there with table and Hardware Hackathon. This time we will have two new boards to assembly but we will keep this as secret 🙂

Also Olimex will have lecture “Programmable Home” presenting the new boards and solutions we work on for Home Automation.

Here are some pictures of the Hardware Hackathon we did on Open Fest in 2013.

This time we will have more and different boards to choose from, and of course the Hackathon will be free (as beer, not speech 😉 ), so you can take the board you assembly with you after the Hackathon.

Looking forward to see you there!

TuxCon 2014 Hardware and Software Hackathons 29 of June

 

 

On 29.06 in Saturday from 10.00 started the Hardware Hackathon in Olimex’s training building, many people were coming and going until 16.30 oclock, about 60 FOSDEM-85 Arduino clone boards were build from kits by people who come mostly from FOSS world and have never touch soldering iron.

The results were amazing, you can see here TuxCon glasses made with FOSDEM-85 kit:

some pictures from the Hackathon are here

 

The Software Hckathon was about programming of Interractive table:

The setup was: 8×8 matrix of 64 pcs RGB LEDs connected with four US-020 Ultra sonic distance sensors connected to OLIMEXINO-328 (Arduino DueMilaNove clone) then connected via USB to A10-OLinuXino-LIME with WIFI running Debian.

LIME was registered in the local WIFI and everyone could log in through SSH and to write his own code.

The project goal was to make something interesting and interactive.

Unfortunately we found bug in our Arduino code which prevented the Hackathon to complete correctly, so we decided to do as follows:

Radoslav Kolev presented his patch work to AVR dude which allow any Linux computer with GPIOs to write code to AVR processors via GPIO fs.

What we are going to do this week is to connect some of the LIME GPIOs to Arduino ICSP so Arduino could be pre-programmed by LIME.

Also we are going to setup web camera which to point to the interactive table and to open access to the LIME in the table from internet. Then we will give 1 week time to everyone who wants to develop something on this table and test his code to may do so.

We will put detailed instructions how to login, how to program the AVR and how to program the RGB/sensors, so the Hackathon will no longer be limited to local area. Anyone from anywhere in the world could participate.

To prevent problems made by the parallel login and programming we encourage the developers to enter in #olimex IRC channel and coordinate the programming and table use.

The prize for the most interesting program will be A20-OLinuXino-MICRO.

We hope the table to be ready for hacking by the end of this week!

TuxCon the FOSS Conference for Mobile and Embedded devices is less than 2 weeks away

TuxCon  is a community-driven event about free and open-source software for mobile and embedded devices. The event is organized by Plovdiv’s hackerspace Hackafe and the entry is free.

Saturday, 28th of June is the day for lectures: the schedule is available at TuxCon web http://tuxcon.mobi/#schedule

During the event there are two lectures where OLinuXino Open Source Hardware Linux computers will be discussed:

The first lecture is “Physical computing with Linux” in which it will be explained at a non-embedded developers level how to access all hardware resources from the Linux user space for OLinuXino like GPIOs, I2C, SPI, UARTs, the Power management – how to make your code aware of whether it runs on Battery or on Mains power supply, what is the temperature of the processor, is the battery charging or not, etc. It will also be explained how to connect sensors, how to connect steppers and servos, how to control them from Linux, how to setup a web server on OLinuXino, how to make all of the hardware resources, offered by this board, available via web interface as well as how to attach camera and do OpenCV processing, and more.

The Second lecture is “Linux driver” where it will be explained how a Linux Driver is created and there will be a step-by-step explanation of how a driver for new hardware like MOD-IO board connected to OLinuXino via UEXT is created. MOD-IO boards have relays and ADCs which will be made available for use in Linux user space via the written driver.

Of course there will be other interesting lectures about Android, FirefoxOS, Tizen etc.

Do not forget that on Sunday 29th of June at the Olimex training building we will run Hardware and Software Hackathons.

There will be a soldering workshop for the well-known FOSDEM Arduino clone board, where you will be trained how to solder alone your first Arduino and then program it and use it.

There will also be two Software tasks for the Hackathon:

 

To make fancy web interface for controlling an interactive RGB LED table: the RGB table have 8×8 RGB Leds which are addressable individually and four proximity sensors at the four sides which detect if someone sits on this side.

 

The second task is to do same for the Coctail-Mixing-Machine – it has 6 fluid pumps connected to the relays which could be opened/closed for a certain amount of time; controlling the volume of the drink in the recipe, flow sensors will give feed back if the fluid is flowing through the pipes; RGB addressable LEDs will be put under every bottle and pump which will make a LED animation while preparing the drink or will signal when the bottle is empty.

Both Hardware tasks will be performed with OLinuXino and all hardware resources will be available through User space APIs, so if you want to participate start thinking in advance and surprise us with your solution 🙂

Everyone who participates in the Hardware Hackathon will keep the Arduino board they built for themselves as a prize.

For everyone participating in the Software Hackathon there will be FOSDEM board prizes and the best solutions will win two A20-OLinuXino-MICRO.

 

Be ready for TuxCon 28-29 of June, Hardware Hackathon, Pimp my Linux machine and more

TuxCon is a community-driven event about free and open-source software for mobile and embedded devices.

This year as part of this conference we are going to make Hardware Hackathon at Olimex on 29/06. We still prepare the details, but the Hardware hackathon will include soldering and programming both on Arduino and OLinuXino projects.

So if you want to learn a bit more about hardware, soldering, how to program embedded devices or to troubleshoot project you have with OLinuXino or Arduino, our developers will be available  🙂

Stay tuned for more news to follow 🙂

FOSDEM 2014 – one great event for all who like Free/Open Source Technologies

This year it was our second visit to FOSDEM and I think this year there were even more people than last year.
At least on FOSDEM 2013 Friday beer event at Delirium cafe we managed somehow to get to the bar and drink a beer, this year there was no way, Delirium was so loaded that we couldn’t get near on the streets in Friday evening. So we went to a pub near (fortunately there are plenty of bars in this area).

Some people say FOSDEM 2014 had 6000 other say 8000 visitors, the WIFI statistics say that about 3000 people were connected at same time in the peak hours, great job done by the organizers as the internet was good, and there were plenty of spots where you can get quickly something to drink and eat!
You can feel the crowd mostly when you decide to leave at the evening and can’t get on few buses full of people, but at least you are surrounded by good company and can chat meantime while next bus arrives.

FOSDEM is primary Free Open Software event. As we already blogged we made this cute Arduino Tiny85 kit for FOSDEM Hackathon:

It was cool to see how many people were attracted to try their first board soldering. We were surprised as in the first day out of about 100 kits soldered just one didn’t work, on the second day there were few more, but still less than 1% of all soldered kits were damaged, great achievment for beginners 🙂

For us the best reward was to see the big smiles on the people who see their boards working 🙂

The Hackathon was noticed and featured in the popular German c’t Hardware Hacks Magazine

Olimex also got approved this year for 15 minutes Lighting Talk about OSHW and OLinuXino

For these who missed this event, my slides are at SlideShare  and here you can see my video and hear my funny accent 🙂

Overall the feeling from FOSDEM is that FOSS people still don’t know what Open Source Harware is and how it slowly changes the world we know like FOSS software does.

People keep confusing and think that once some project have PDF schematics this make it open source hardware 🙂 you can hear this on Leon’s lecture for Tizen or Oliver lecture for Allwinner SOCs.

Also what we saw is that the people willing to solder were more than our one table with 4 soldering irons could handle 🙂

We apologize to all who didn’t manage to get seat, for next event we may prepare more soldering seats so more people to give it a try.
What we saw for sure is that among FOSDEM visitors there are lot of people who love to learn new stuff and to build thing by themself!

 

EDIT: we got from G+ picture of another 8 years old Hacker who built FOSDEM-85: http://flic.kr/p/jSUGrY